Total pages in book: 92
Estimated words: 85593 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 428(@200wpm)___ 342(@250wpm)___ 285(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 85593 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 428(@200wpm)___ 342(@250wpm)___ 285(@300wpm)
I blinked, looking toward the conference room. This wasn’t happening. I murmured something to Elizabeth about how she couldn’t have my panties and then wandered to my station in a fog. I passed several groups of co-workers who were all clustered together like football players getting ready for the final drive of the game.
I’d signed on at The Squawker after an absolute disaster of a college career. I wrote an expose Junior year at Columbia that should’ve been my ticket to an internship with The Union Coast, which had pretty much been my life’s trajectory since middle school. But thanks to a very frustrating, sort of long story, that piece ended up getting me expelled from school. I finished out my degree in journalism at a community college and this job at The Squawker was all I could land. It had taken me almost two years, but I’d eventually convinced myself this was all for the best.
After all, how did I know writing for The Union Coast would be so great, anyway? Once the goal felt out of reach, it seemed more clear that it had never been my goal in the first place. That was just my dad shoving me toward the life he wished he’d captured for himself.
Little by little, I’d been building a new life and a new dream at this job. Jasmine Marshall seemed like a permanent fixture in my life, and I’d wanted to prove my value to her more than anything. I wanted my own weekly feature. I wanted to prove you could write something meaningful, even if it was just for an entertainment magazine.
And now? I looked around the office and felt like I barely recognized it. All the easy smiling faces and casual din of conversation was gone. People were tense. They looked like they were getting ready for war, and they might as well be. A new boss would mean restructuring. The magazine was going to change, and anybody who disagreed with those changes was probably going to be first on the cutting block.
I wondered if the magazine I cared about would still exist when the dust settled.
“Hey,” Farhad said, knocking on my desk. “You coming? The meeting starts in five.”
“Meeting?” I asked.
Farhad looked at me like I was crazy. He was Persian, handsome as hell, and had what might’ve been the best head of hair I’d ever seen. He mostly helped with the fashion and trends portion of the magazine, which was easy to believe because he always looked amazing. He creased his dark, thick brows. “The email, Darcy. Come on,” he said, leaning in and lowering his voice. “I like you, so do your best to survive this thing, okay? That means not missing the first meeting our new boss calls for.”
I nodded shakily, smiling before he rushed off with the rest of my co-workers toward the conference room.
I could do this. I just needed to get my head on straight. Most importantly, I needed to resist the urge to berate this asshole during the meeting for destroying everything I loved.
This was going to be a challenge.
3
DARCY
There was an unnatural hush in the conference room. In total, I had seventeen co-workers at The Squawker. Eighteen if you included the I.T. guy, who was just one big pile of beard, long hair, and glasses with a strong enough prescription that his eyes were magnified to terrifying proportions–just wide, watery orbs of terror. Everybody–even the I.T. guy, was completely silent. Normally, meetings here were raucous and we could barely get anything done because people kept sidetracking Jasmine or too many background conversations were happening.
Something about the way the man in the front of the room stood there shut us all up. He practically radiated command, like it was oozing off him in icy waves that sealed our throats shut and magnetized our eyes to him.
He’d set his blue suit jacket on the back of a chair at the head of the table and had his sleeves rolled up. I was surprised to see tattoos up both of his arms and even some peeking out from beneath his collar. I hadn’t taken him for the inked up type, and my stupid vagina practically began penning me an enthusiastic letter about how we’d maybe misjudged him and shouldn’t write him off as a complete irredeemable asshole just yet.
Cool it, Vag, I thought.
I folded my arms, glaring at him to remind myself to stay strong. Stupid handsome sex god. So what if he could probably rock my world behind the nearest locked door? That didn’t excuse being such a prick. And why the hell did he look so familiar?
“Alright,” he said calmly. There was that voice again. It was dirty little angels serenading me directly in the ear hole. It was candy on my tongue and warmth down to my core.