Last but far from least, thank you to the fantastic team at Gemma Halliday Publishing, especially to Danielle Kuhns, editor of Now a Major Motion Picture, and Sandra Barkevich, editor of 30 First Dates. These stories are so much better because of your sharp eyes and insight.
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Stacey Wiedower had barely blown out the candles on her 21st birthday cake when she took her first job as a reporter at a daily newspaper. She later followed her passion to interior design school and spent three years working at a firm with bizarre similarities to the set of Designing Women. Today she funnels that experience into her work as a full-time freelance writer, penning everything from magazine articles to website copy to a bi-weekly column called Inside Design. She also writes romantic comedy, and the zany characters she’s met poke their heads into her stories from time to time. Stacey lives in Memphis, Tennessee, with her husband, also a writer, and a son who’s inherited their overactive imaginations.
To learn more about Stacey Wiedower, visit her online at: http://staceywiedower.com
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BOOKS BY STACEY WIEDOWER
30 First Dates
Now a Major Motion Picture
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SNEAK PEEK
of another humorous romantic read from Gemma Halliday Publishing:
50 ACTS OF KINDNESS
by
ELLYN OAKSMITH
PROLOGUE
There’s an African proverb. If you want to go fast, travel alone. If you want to go far, travel together. It took me a long time to understand this lesson. First, I was knocked down. Then I went home. I’m still not sure which was more painful.
CHAPTER ONE
Revenge is sweet and not fattening.
—Alfred Hitchcock
It happened on a fair June morning, as most horrible things do. Manhattan was misted with morning fog promising to burn off into silvery blue. Rectangles of Central Park grass were draped in picnic blankets anticipating office workers who would mysteriously break out in hives, sick kids, barfing pets, or broken water pipes. Of course, I didn’t notice any of it. Glued to my desk since 5:00 a.m., I was slaving away on a presentation that my account assistant, Betsy, had failed to have ready. Again. My under-slept brain was the consistency of sticky tarpaper mixed with grit. Since college, I’d rocketed upward so fast I’d honed myself to a razor sharp edge, perfectly suited to the world of high-tech marketing. At twenty-eight I had the world by a string. I was going places. Fast.
By midmorning my admin, Stella, delivered on tiptoe my usual piping-hot half-caff Americano with soy. My biological clock knew that at 10:15, I moved my hand and coffee materialized. It was a crazy life, but it had its perks.
Normally Stella drifted away like fog, but today, as I was about to connect a call, she whispered, “Kylie, B-b-b-Bob wants to s-s-see you.”
Startled, I jumped, spilling my Americano, tangling myself in the phone headset.
Stella flew to the Kleenex box on my desk, extracting a handful, frantically blotting at the stain, her hands far too close to my crotch. “Hey!” I batted her away, my hands tangled in black cord.
Stella quivered. “S-s-sorry.”
Yes, I felt bad. Yes, I should be more patient. When you’re a former fat girl living your dream in Manhattan, you lived in constant fear of being exposed. Your whole life hinged on climbing so fast that no one ever suspected that you’re just another poseur terrified of failure.
Welcome to Manhattan.
Stella remained at the open door, studying me, with what—pity? I had to take her out to lunch. Soon.
“What? It doesn’t show. I’ll live.” It was annoying that she hadn’t buzzed me before entering, but then again, maybe she had. Sometimes I was oblivious.
When I’d hired Stella three months ago, she was a fresh-faced college grad with a degree in communications, perfect diction, and a ramrod spine. Taking her on, I thought maybe I could be her mentor, toughen her up. Unfortunately, she’d wilted like lettuce in the hot sun, acquiring the nervous stutter.
I slipped into my cream linen Zac Posen jacket. “Did he say what it was about?”
“N-n-n-n-no,” said Stella. Why on earth didn’t she just shake her head?
It wasn’t like Bob to summon me to the seventeenth floor unless it was something unusual.
Like a promotion.
It all made perfect sense. After a mere five years, I’d reeled in Maxxilate Software. Although they weren’t a whale, they were a nimble tiger shark. They could, with my help, become a thrashing great white. The timing was ideal.
My mind whirled with possibilities. This was the moment I’d been planning since sophomore year of college, when I’d dropped all social activity in favor of graduating magna cum laude. Sure, it was lonely, but I rationalized that there’d be time for friends later, in Manhattan, once my career was launched. Had the time finally arrived for me to branch out?
I looked up from my reverie. Stella was slumped in the doorway, the same worried look plastered to her face. Despite the fact that she was five years younger than I, she reminded me of my hippie mother, always puzzling over our vastly different natures.
“Anything else?” Why was a girl whose paycheck barely kept her in heavily rotated Ann Taylor Express separates worried about me? I had a fabulous job, a shiny new condo on the Upper West Side. I was about to get promoted.
Stella opened her mouth as if she was going to spit out something but lost her courage. She sprinted back to her warren.
In the elevator, I practiced acting surprised, checking my expression in the brass panels. I couldn’t look too shocked, like I was secretly terrified, wondering if some random monkey could do better. But I couldn’t look like someone coasting to the top between power naps. Sucking in my gut, I threw back my shoulders and marched across the sea of open-concept desks. Something was definitely up. People were staring.
OMG.
Bob ushered me in with a wave, finishing up a call while I mentally painted his office Benjamin Moore bright linen, laying down wainscoting. Accent color—hyacinth blue. One year, two max, I’d have his job.
While I waited for Bob, I itched with excitement. Where should we go to celebrate? Daniel? Le Bernadin? Per Se? There were a couple of people I’d invite. They’d put up a good front, but inside they’d be seething with jealousy. Honestly, I’d be the same way. It was a sad state of affairs, but that was just how things worked.
Bob hung up, turning his spaniel eyes on me with surprising anger. He didn’t look very pleased for a man about to share happy news. “Kylie, to be honest, I don’t understand this. You are one of our rising stars. You are driven, focused, and relentless when it comes to our clients.” He sighed heavily. “Given all that, I have to ask, do you have something to say?” He waved vaguely at his desk, clear but for his laptop and iPhone.
I was baffled. He was acting like a grade-school principal confronting a toilet-stuffing miscreant. Did he assume I already knew about the promotion? Was he distracted by another issue?
I smoothed my skirt primly. Far from any toilet stuffing, I got straight A’s. “Thank you?” I wondered when the rest of the executive team was going to file in, balancing a look that said “super busy” with “great for you.” Maybe they would bring in a cake. Or at least Starbucks.
“Thank you?” Bob was clearly puzzled. He ran a thin hand across his balding pate.
Why didn’t I wear a nicer dress? My new Lauren Black Label almost fits. My chestnut hair is freshly highlighted, rolled into a tight chignon. Maybe I do have a few extra pounds, but I hide it well, and I make up for my middling height with killer heels. Being the daughter of an orthodontist, I have flawless, if slightly small, teeth, which I call attention to with matte-red lipst
ick. “Um, maybe you’d better clue me in…” I smiled graciously, offering an opening.
“Seriously? Come on, Kylie. You have no idea?” Was I completely misreading his signals? “You have no clue why you are here?”
I’d get the ball rolling. “Not really, but while we’re here, I’d like to discuss transitioning Betsy to another department. Her pregnancy is proving to be challenging.” His eyes narrowed, so I elucidated. “For me.”
I was about to explain why someone else’s pregnancy was having a deleterious effect on me personally, when Bob groaned, rubbing his eyes. “Stop! Stop right there.” He shook his head. “How could you not know that your little performance with Betsy Rollins has gone viral?”
He typed something into his computer, turning the screen. A frisson of fear crept up my spine. What performance? For the last two days Betsy had called in sick. I was about to find out why.
Bob conveniently had YouTube on full screen. Onscreen I towered menacingly over Betsy, who did, as I now recalled, have her cell phone propped on her protuberant belly while I talked. Okay, yelled. At the time I thought she was monitoring her heart rate.
Stupid me.
It was hard not to wince as I watched myself. “And the bathroom breaks. My God, during the Cellex meeting, you left the conference room nine times. Nine times after one bottle of water!” I screeched. “The last time you came back with your skirt hiked into your underwear! The only thing they’re going to remember is granny panties! Who does that?” My voice was not my best feature when I was exhausted and overwhelmed. Shrewish came to mind. The tingle in my spine turned to ice. Was I really that mean?
“Pregnant women,” Betsy said. There were tears in her voice that I didn’t remember. Maybe because I wasn’t listening. Maybe because all I was thinking was, you’re slowing me down, which was, to me, one of the ten deadly sins, along with being unprepared and late. She’d hit every button. “The baby is pressing on my bladder.”
“And your brain.” The YouTube version of me sighed heavily. Inwardly, I died. “Does it say in What to Expect When You’re Expecting that your brain will be sucked out for the duration of the pregnancy? Because when I put the flash drive in at the Digitech meeting, do you know what I found?” Here I was very theatrical. “Your ultrasound. Yep. Those dudes had a great time. They decided that you are giving birth to a ghost/alien/zombie baby and then used the rest of the meeting to play foosball. I had nothing! I suck at foosball! You weren’t even there, because you had a doctor’s note. What is this, high school?”
“My doctor did say that.”
“We are a technology marketing company. People don’t want to see our underwear or ultrasounds or try to run a meeting while you jump up to pee.”
“I’m due in two weeks.”
Her whine was still grating on my nerves, but my recorded words sliced like knives. Was I the equivalent of that rooster my mom had that pecked at the hens? One morning Mom found him dead, pecked to death. I now thought, Please do not let this be my barnyard reckoning, even though things were clearly sliding in that direction.
On screen I plowed forward. “I cannot do your job and mine. It’s killing me. I need you on the ground running. Oh no, wait, you can’t run. Which is why you missed the flight from Miami, where you got ‘dehydrated.’“ I did air quotes around “dehydrated.”
Holy cow. I was so angry it blinded me to very fact she was recording.
“I was dehydrated.”
We were both so very tired. “Which is why you ended up lounging in Miami while I ran yet another meeting solo. I stayed up until three a.m. doing the PowerPoint you’d forgotten.”
“I ended up in the hospital.”
“And missed the flight back to New York and yet another day of work. If you are dehydrated, drink water. It’s not rocket science!”
I remembered that day clearly. Sleep deprived from a red-eye, I’d left Betsy in Miami, begging her to prep for a meeting while she waited for her flight. When I got back, not only had she failed to e-mail me the PowerPoint;she’dgone straight home from the airport later that day. I’d missed another night’s sleep to finish them.
It was the perfect storm, and she’d caught it.
I leaned forward to downsize the screen. “Two-point-seven-million views?” She’d titled it “World’s Worst Boss?!” There were lots of comments, many expletives, and a passionate nine exclamation points in a row.
Bob dug a crust from his eye. “It’s not something to be proud of.”
My mind raced. How to spin this before he offered up his own damaging interpretation? I managed a casual shrug. “I’m in marketing. I can’t help it.”
“This makes us look so bad.”
It was crunch time. There was no room for complaints or excuses. “Does it though? Does it? What I see is that we expect a certain professionalism and energy from our employees, a requirement that, pregnant or not, they perform to the best of their abilities. My delivery was very rough, but it was a message she needed to hear.” He wasn’t buying. I grabbed for a straw. “Isn’t posting this on YouTube a violation of my privacy?”
“I don’t know,” Bob said wearily. “That’s 2.7 million negative hits with MLJK’s name attached.”
My heart clenched. I needed a cigarette. Now. “Whatever happened to ‘any publicity is good publicity’?”
He ignored my lame joke. “She’s threatening to file suit. I checked with legal. We can tie her up in court, but the claim is legit.”
I inhaled sharply, forgetting, in my growing panic, to exhale.
“Breathe, Kylie.”
“S-s-suing us?” Great, now I was stuttering.
“You called her fat. She says you created an unhealthy work environment.”
My jaw dropped. This was not the time to point out that, as a former chubette, I never, ever use the F word. “The operative word here is work. I was running on vapors.”
Bob got up and looked out the window at his fabulous view. “Stella, by the way, corroborates everything you’ve said.” My eyebrows shot up in alarm. “Yes, I’ve talked to her. I’ve talked to a few people, but the point is that sooner or later we all have to deal with this. Pregnant women deserve…” He stared off into the silver buildings and cloudless sky. When I’d entered, the view had felt empowering. Now it was an invitation to jump. “Latitude. We are a family-friendly company.”
I snickered bitterly. MLJK years were dog years. Most of the senior partners were divorced. “And what about women who aren’t ever going to have children? We just put up and shut up?” I knew this sounded whiney, but I couldn’t help myself. I felt like a tightrope walker studying the tiny figures below, waiting for me to fall. Then it struck me. I felt like this most of the time.
He gazed at me, his eyes weary. “Come on. You’re what, not even thirty? You don’t know that.” Bob was still in his marriage of origin.
“Look at me, Bob. My relationships have the longevity of a fruit fly. I have nothing left at the end of the day.” I have nothing left right now.
“Maybe it’s time to branch out.”
Clearly he pitied Betsy. It was time to grab the controls. “I can fix this. I can smooth things out. Get my assistant her own assistant. At least until she’s had it.”
“Her baby is not an it,” he snapped.
“Did I say ‘it’?” I’d been talking so quickly. It? Good move, Kylie.
“Yes,” Bob said quietly, losing his starch. Crossing his arms, he glanced at a framed photo: a gap-toothed, pigtailed toddler on a swing, pushed by his beaming, very pregnant wife. “You’re going to have to leave until this dies down.”
For a second I felt nothing but a weight pressing on the top of my head, a dull ringing in my ears. “This isn’t Survivor. You can’t let random strangers on YouTube vote me off because I lost my temper.”
“They’re not. Lance is.”
The CEO? I was in a tippy canoe, and by golly, there went my paddle.
I made a tiny bubble of an objec
tion as I sank. “She wasn’t doing her job.”
“Effective immediately,” he said. I knew what silently preceded those two words. Terminated.
This wasn’t a break.
This was permanent.
CHAPTER TWO
Speak when you are angry, and you will make
the best speech you will ever regret.
—Ambrose Bierse
I wasn’t quite sure how I’d made it to the fifteenth-floor bathroom. My heels clattered on the toilet lid as I reached for the pack of American Spirit cigarettes stashed in the ceiling tiles. My hands shook like a detoxing drunk as I lit up. Years ago, my former best friend, Melanie, taught me how to blow smoke rings into the PE bathroom ventilator shaft in the Cedar Falls High School. The shaft went into the office of the principal, who accused her secretary of sneaking smokes, until we were collared.
Thinking of Melanie tightened the knot in my stomach.
I couldn’t think of Melanie or my father or anything else. I’d been exterminated, and at this moment this blessedly empty bathroom was my sanctuary. I’d rather be here than at the Elizabeth Arden Red Door spa, which was, I thought, a truly horrible marker of how low I’d sunk. There were, I dreaded, many more fathoms to go.
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