Page 31 of Mark my Words

“Hello all,” Greg said with a smile as his gaze swept the room, briefly pausing on me with a wink. Great. Thanks, Jackass. Make it obvious, why don’t you? “I’ll keep my time here brief. Thank you, Ms. Graves, for letting me address your team.”

“The floor is yours for a few, Mr. Willard.” Judging the smile she aimed in his direction, she’d bought his nice guy routine. Ugh. Charming prick.

“We will work closely with your Public Relations department over the next several months, ensuring we have enough people on the ground to keep the momentum going with Vivid Press. That means that some of you may be taking on extra roles with your authors, as you know their projects as well as they do.” He wasn’t wrong. The editing teams often read through the material dozens of times and knew it, as well as the creators. All the little intricacies and plot points, what parts might draw the reader in to look for more.

“We need our teams to start flagging parts of manuscripts that would be good for readings, social media promotion, and previews on digital media. That’s where all of you come in. The marketing experts need material easily accessible to start making ad copy to release to our network of street teams and ARC readers to promote before the book ever hits the printing press.”

“Mr. Willard is saying that we are rolling out a new software system that will make it easier for our copy editors and their interns to mark parts of the book for the marketing team without combing an entire manuscript to find the juicy parts.”

“Hey.” My chair shifted as a body settled into the seat next to mine, a warm hand grazing the outside of my kneecap. Judging by the spark that shot up my leg at the contact, even through the material of my pants, I knew it was Sam without glancing back.

“You’re late,” I hissed out of the corner of my mouth.

“Sorry,” he laughed, his warm breath fanning across my neck. Don’t look at him, Kristine. “What did I miss?”

“Just my brother invading my space,” I muttered. And he did it with absolutely no warning whatsoever, because the Willard men did what they wanted, when they wanted, even if it meant bombarding someone by surprise. Not to mention invading others’ professional bubbles without remorse. Stupid prick being good at his job. It wasn’t a surprise his firm had been hired, but he still could have told me he’d be coming here instead of ambushing me at a staff meeting where he knew I couldn’t—and wouldn’t—make a scene.

“What?”

“Nothing, just new computer software that we have to learn.”

“Hmm.”

Clapping drew my attention back to the front of the room, Greg smiling widely, eating up the attention. I still couldn’t believe he’d come into my office without giving me a heads-up. I knew he’d been working with the New York office, but this was a little much, even for him. He’d told me about how he landed my publisher as a client a few months back, and I asked him how Vivid was even on his radar, but I knew how. Our father. Mason just couldn’t help himself.

“Alright, settle down,” Sloane called the room back to order, and my brother sat down at the far end of the table, flashing me a raised eyebrow and a smug smile with a head nod in Sam’s direction. Shit.

“Showtime,” Sam whispered, nudging his leg against mine.

“Quit touching me, Spam.”

I knew I was being bitchy, but my brother was an expert at reading my emotions. Sam could not be obvious around him because that meant my mother would know about him within minutes of my brother leaving the room. He had a big mouth and couldn’t help feeding my mother the juicy gossip. He’d been doing it all our lives, part of why I left New York. Everyone worshiped at the altar of Gregory Abernathy Willard. Even his middle name was pretentious.

Fucking douche had been making my life complicated from day one.

Why can’t you be well-behaved like your brother?

Why won’t you go to Yale like your brother?

Your brother wants to stay in New York because he loves his family...

Yeah, and he also liked the big fat check my parents gave him to pay for his living expenses. And the way our father had dropped his resume on the desk of the head of marketing of the company of his choice. The job he now held, the position I’m sure our father paid for before he even had his first interview.

Gregory was brilliant, with enough charisma to fuel his enormous ego, and he was classically handsome and good at sports; everyone loved him. And then I was born. The child who didn’t do what she was told. The one who talked back and told teachers they didn’t know what they were doing. The little girl who was kicked out of dance class for not listening to the instructor. The daughter who refused to wear dresses or play nice with the little trust fund babies they threw in her path when they decided it didn’t matter if she was smart because they were determined to marry her off to a rich idiot before her twenty-first birthday.

“You alright?” Sam whispered, and I looked down at my lap, my hands clenched in fists as whatever Sloane was talking about at the front of the room went in one ear and right out the other. No, Sam. I’m not okay.

“Fine.”

The backs of his fingers brushed against my pant leg again, and I batted him away, trying to keep my expression neutral as my brother continued to smirk at me across the room, studying my face.

“Now that we’ve taken care of the standard business,” Sloane continued from her place, standing at the head of the long table. “We need the candidates for the copy editor positions to stay behind for a few minutes. Sam, Kristine, Cole, Sofia, Nate, you all need to hang out here with your supervisors for a few moments.”

As everyone filtered out of the room, leaving the ten of us at the table, I watched my brother cross the room and stop behind my chair. Sam’s hand was perched on his knee, a respectable distance away from me but still close enough to put me on high alert.

“We’ve got reservations for 7:00,” Greg told me quietly as he leaned over my shoulder. I glanced back at him, hating that he didn’t even check to see if I had plans. The fact that I didn’t wasn’t relevant. He expected me to drop everything to accommodate him. “Just the two of us, or...?”

I frowned, and then he glanced over at Sam, who was looking down at his phone. He briefly looked up and locked eyes with me before he nodded at my brother, holding his hand out toward him. Shit. Quit being polite, Sam.

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