Page 30 of Mark my Words

“Exactly.” She grinned as she stood and walked to the front of her desk, sitting on the edge and crossing her ankles. “Word on the street is they are scouting for at least one of the head copy editor positions.”

“Genre?”

“Not sure yet, but it’s looking like fantasy.”

She chuckled as my lip curled up, knowing it wasn’t my favorite. I liked it well enough and often read fantasy novels, but they were hard to do developmental edits on sometimes because you were working outside of the constraints of the known universe. Worldbuilding was a tricky subject to do well, and fantasy authors hated when you picked apart their work.

“When?”

“Three to six months.”

“Internal interviews only, or are they opening up this one?” Sometimes management cast the net wider if they were looking to pull in new talent, but occasionally, they’d pit us against each other and let us fight it out. I swear they had a popcorn machine in the executive lounge they broke out to watch when they did shit like this.

“As far as I know, they’re only interviewing candidates internally and requiring a recommendation from their direct supervisor.”

I bit my lip, hoping my little outburst at her last week wouldn’t cause her to hold a grudge.

“Don’t worry. I already submitted your name.”

Not one to get excited and start flapping around, I nodded, flashing her a bright smile. “Thank you, Is. I mean it.”

“Adrian put in Sam’s name as well.”

Fuck.

I mean, I knew that he was much more competent than I’d initially believed, but this meant I might have legitimate competition, and our thing—whatever it was—might make it a touchy subject. Or a no-touchy subject. I wasn’t going to pursue Sam, but it’d been a rare treat to find a guy who knew how to use the equipment in his pants and didn’t mind taking a little direction in the bedroom. His dirty mouth had been an added bonus.

“Good to know.” She narrowed her eyes but said nothing about him or his boss.

“Chase is still out of contact. I’m starting to get a little worried.”

“Is it the new boyfriend?” I asked, wondering what was going on there. She’d been a little shifty when I saw her last.

“Boyfriend?”

Oh, shit. Apparently, Isobel was not aware of Chase’s new friend. My bad. I was usually the one finding out the gossip, not spreading it. I needed to get my head together.

“When you sent me to get...” Don’t call him Dickhead. “Adrian’s food last week, she was there with a guy. He looked familiar.”

“Hmm.” She pursed her lips as her jaw clenched. This was not a good sign. “Let’s see what she has to say for herself.”

“Don’t shoot the messenger,” I replied with a cringe.

“I’ll see you at the meeting.” She pulled out her phone and quickly typed out something on the screen. It seemed I was dismissed.

“See you there. Want me to save you a seat, or...?”

“Don’t bother, Adrian said he’d save me one.”

I wasn’t even going to comment on that one. I wasn’t sure what those two had going on, but it wasn’t like I could judge anymore. Sleeping with Sam had been a wild departure from my normal behavior, but after this past weekend, I didn’t regret it—not even for a moment.

My leg bounced nervously against the conference table’s underside as the room filled. I wasn’t nervous, per se, but this could be a step up for quite a few of us in this room. A chance to build a team, spread our wings and start overseeing the projects that were dropped into our laps. We could also begin to scout manuscripts and see if we could find the next big bestseller. Okay, so maybe it was a huge deal.

“Let’s settle down, people.” Sloane Graves, the head of digital publishing, stood at the front of the large conference room on the floor above the editing offices. She was tall and curvy, a no-nonsense bronze-skinned woman who didn’t take shit from anyone. If I admired Isobel for her backbone, I practically fangirled over how Sloane could work a room. She was ruthless when working on a project, not settling for mediocre work and insisting the entire publishing outfit came together to give the new launches for her A-team talent authors the best send-off into the world possible. “I’m sure the gossip has already started filtering through for this one, but I’m here to give you all the pertinent details.”

A tall, stoic, dark-haired man stood from the front of the table and stepped forward to her left. Shit. This was not what I was expecting. He hadn’t said anything. I didn’t even know he was in town—that little shit.

“This is Gregory Willard.” She motioned to my elder brother, who smiled warmly at the room, ready to turn on the Willard charm. And stomp all over my decision to do this on my own. A few heads turned in my direction as the connection clicked in their heads, but I just fastened on my trademark glare and dared them to say something. You could easily tell we were related, but I’d let them draw their own conclusions. It wasn’t any of their damn business. “He works for a firm the marketing department in New York has been trying to acquire to start doing in-house promotions for all our book tours. You might recognize his work from the last Whitmore Carlisle release, which has remained at the top of all the major book sales lists for the last six weeks straight.”

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