Public Relations

by Tibby Armstrong

Peter held out his cup, and the bright gurgle of coffee hitting ceramic told him Carl got the hint. He took a sip and closed his eyes, savoring the dark roast.

  “I’m buying them.” Actually he was calling in the loan for bad collateral, but nobody outside the execs he planned to fire needed to know one of his businesses had stepped in a pile of steaming shit. “Lock, stock, and barrel.”

  In the process of sliding his laptop from his bag, Carl paused.

  Peter met his gaze, and Carl gave a little shake of his head as the corners of his lips quirked. “Journalism in its entirety? Or just the one newspaper?”

  Peter gave him his best, most sardonic stare.

  The smirk fell from Carl’s face, and he cleared his throat. “I guess that’s one way to go about getting the columnist’s name.”

  Never one to debate the obvious, Peter went back to typing up the e-mail to his acquisitions people.

  “Why don’t you date real women?” Carl asked after a moment.

  Peter whipped his head up so quick his neck twinged.

  “What?” Of course he dated real women. He rubbed at his nape with the fingertips of both hands. “They’re not transvestites, Carl. They’re female employees.”

  “Now there’s a refreshing defense against sexual harassment. ‘But, your honor, that’s why I hired her.’”

  Peter chuckled despite himself. Sunlight bounced off the steel surfaces in the kitchen. He stood and flicked a switch, fogging the glass and blocking the too-bright rays.

  “I don’t date real women, as you call them, because I don’t need complications.” When Peter sat across from Carl again, he made certain to look the man in the eye. “My arrangements fulfill complementary needs, one physical and the other economic.”

  Carl stared back at him, unblinking. “But without the threat of lifetime alimony payments and loss of your favorite real estate holdings?”

  “Exactly!”

  “But your parents were happy.” Carl trailed his fingers absentmindedly along the keyboard without typing anything. “Are happy.”

  “No. No way. You can’t use them as an example.” Crossing his arms over his chest, Peter leaned back. “How rare is that?”

  “True.” Carl’s attention skittered away. “Mine were miserable.”

  The fridge clicked on, and a hum permeated the otherwise quiet room. Peter stared at the president of Galaxy One Public Relations and wondered what to say. Sorry didn’t seem adequate in the face of such a personal statement, and anything more seemed too intimate for a man who prided himself on privacy and an old-fashioned work ethic.

  Finally Peter settled on, “Well, I guess we all need something to drive us, right?”

  “What drives you?” Carl pinned him with a steady stare over tortoiseshell rims.

  Dust seemed to settle in Peter’s throat as he stared back, caught in a web of emotion the question elicited. Memories of Thanksgiving with bread and butter for dinner. Then the nights they’d all gone to bed cold as his parents piled all the blankets on him and his three brothers, leaving no covers for themselves. Even at fourteen years old, Peter knew if he could control his environment—every last detail—he’d be able to make sure nothing so horrible happened to the people he loved again. Keeping his family safe meant being vigilant and hardworking. Diligent and honest. All these thoughts and memories rushed through his head as he worked away the dryness in his mouth.

  When he answered Carl’s question, none of these stories came out.

  “Money,” he said, returning to his work. “Just money.”

  Chapter Four

  Jammed in an elevator, caught between two couriers who’d neglected personal hygiene, Georgia faced the Monday morning after her weeklong Moroccan vacation.

  Juggling two coffees, her briefcase, and a stack of week-old magazines with photos of the chairman and majority shareholder of Wells Industries on the glossy covers, she swore. The stunned look on Peter’s devilishly handsome face as he stared up at her from the cover of Businessweek stung her conscience. She rearranged the stack of magazines so she had a view of an automobile ad on the back cover, but ended with fumbling the coffee.

  “No!” she wailed as the elevator doors slid open, and she jostled the cup. Brown liquid spread in a rapid stain on the front of her cream silk blouse.

  Focused on the Niagara Falls of scalding liquid, she raced past scores of empty desks to the back of the wide-open room. Placing the coffees on her desk and tossing the rest of her belongings on her chair, she mostly failed to register the eerie silence of the newsroom. She dug in her top drawer, found her stain-release pen, and swiped at the ruined blouse with all the success of using correction fluid on a can of spilled paint.

  “Classic,” she muttered.

  Throwing open another drawer, she tossed the pen on her desk and rummaged for her emergency cardigan. It’d be a little shabby, but at least she wouldn’t look as if she’d had a freak accident with the coffee wagon. As she shoved her arms into the sweater sleeves, Sid rushed into the room looking like someone had lifted and shaken him by his underwear.

  “Georgie. Thank God!” Sid pulled her by the arm toward the conference room, babbling, “You’re his assistant. Do you hear me? Assistant.”

  Propelled more by jet lag than understanding, Georgia stumbled along in Sid’s wake until they burst into the conference room.

  “Here she is!” Sid exclaimed, shoving her to the front of the room.

  Caught unaware, Georgia tripped over her own two feet and would’ve performed a gold-medal-garnering face-plant if two strong arms hadn’t been there to catch her. Crisp linen and sharp spices mingled with a warmer scent that brought with it the impulse to bury her nose in the man’s solid chest. His arms tightened briefly, assuring her steadiness, before he set her away from him and backed up a pace.

  “Ms. Whitcomb. How good of you to join us.” That voice. Oh God, that voice. “The rest of you are dismissed. You stay too, Mr. Deloitte.”

  Georgia’s gaze drifted upward, and she had the distinct feeling of rubbernecking at her own three-car pileup when her gaze met that of Peter Wells. Mouth set into a stern line, cobalt eyes darkened with disapproval, he stared down at her. Maybe it was her lack of heels, but he seemed a lot taller than she’d remembered from their encounter outside the library.

  “I—” Georgia glanced past Peter at Sid, who mouthed the word assistant. “I stopped to get…coffee for…” Her tongue tripped over the American accent she automatically strengthened.

  “Mrs. Templeton,” Sid supplied in a rush. “Georgia usually gets her coffee on Mondays.”

  The rest of the newspaper staff had already scurried over themselves to leave the room. Putting two and two together, Georgia realized Sid had created this cover for her—the assistant. But why an assistant to Peter Wells? He didn’t work here. Taking in Sid’s unnaturally pale face, she again thought of funerals. Her own, in particular. What the hell was going on here?

  “Um. Where is Mrs. Templeton?” Georgia asked the safest question that came to mind.

  “Sit.” Peter indicated the seat closest to him. Furthest from Sid.

  Inexplicably, Georgia sat. Peter paced to the bank of windows on the far side of the table. She followed his movements, then squinted as he opened the blinds and sunlight cut across the room. Rather than move away from the glare, Peter remained with his back to the morning light. Only his dark suit lent any relief from the painfully bright rays. The fabric draped, hugged, and tucked in all the right places, wrapping a mantle of power around an already powerful man.

  “I think you know what I want to know.” The rumble of Peter’s voice rolled over the room like a storm. Georgia fought the urge to slouch. “I’ll give you thirty seconds to tell me the name of your gossip columnist.”

  A nervous bubble of laughter floated up from Georgia’s midsection. She clamped down on it and stared at her hands. She’d forgotten to take off her mauve polish, and it clashed with the fuchsia emergency cardigan.

/>   “Ms. Whitcomb?”

  Her chin shot up, and adrenaline flooded her midsection. She was fifteen and back in Madame Beaufort’s French history class. Except Peter, even coldly livid, was by far a sexier alternative.

  “Yes?”

  “Do you have a name for me?”

  Memories of the madame paralyzed her brain, but not her mouth. “Gigi Montrose.”

  Sid gasped. Not a single employee would’ve uttered the name she’d just given. Even if they had known the truth. Professionals one and all, they wouldn’t reveal someone who gave information, or who wrote factually, on the condition of anonymity.

  Peter’s protracted silence made Georgia look away.

  “You’re telling me Gigi Montrose is your gossip columnist?”

  “No. I mean, I think my friend Gigi knows her name.” Words tumbled from her tongue, bypassing her brain. Sid’s sigh buoyed Georgia’s confidence, and she continued, the nasal stress she put on her vowels forcing her to speak with deliberation. Normally she supposed she sounded mostly American. At the moment she needed to be certain she sounded nothing at all like her alter ego. “Gigi might be a…go-between?”

  Technically, the last part wasn’t a lie. A shadow fell across Georgia’s face. Peter laid his palms on the conference table and captured her eyes. Her gaze never wavered as he stared her down.

  “Really?” His lips mesmerized her, and she almost didn’t register the sardonic warning in his question.

  “Really what?” Georgia whispered as images of passionate kisses in this man’s arms shorted out her senses. Despite what she knew about him—had witnessed him doing—it had been all she could do to shut him down the night he’d attempted to speak with her. And now…now she wished she hadn’t.

  “Really, you expect me to believe that you and all of your colleagues, including the woman I just purchased this business from, have no idea who has been writing your most successful column?” He leaned in closer until she felt the heat rolling off his torso through the wool of her sweater. “The column that kept this long-dead paper on life support six months longer than it should have been sustained?”

  “Mrs. Templeton sold you the paper?” Her voice went so high she choked, then gasped, “But—”

  “Hey,” Sid cooed in mock sympathy. “I know you’ll miss her, but Mr. Wells has some great ideas. And you do want to see the paper turned around, right, Georgia?”

  She gaped at them both.

  “Six months.” Peter straightened and swung his gaze to Sid. “Like I said before Ms. Whitcomb arrived, in that time I’ll help you all build a real news organization.”

  Georgia sucked air in through her nostrils. She’d begged for two years to be allowed to implement a number of changes to increase circulation, but Mrs. Templeton never wanted to take the chances the ideas involved. Who was this man that he thought he could walk in here and take over her dreams? As if he had a right to own them?

  Pacing at the front of the room, Peter withdrew a silver pen from his pocket and toyed with it between his index fingers. “Before your tardy entrance, I made your coworkers an offer. I’ll repeat that offer for you. In six months, if I’ve done as I promised and turned this place into a going concern, someone here will give me the name of the person who wrote this”—he jabbed the pen in the direction of a newspaper lying open on the table—“so-called article.”

  A vein in Georgia’s temple jumped. The silence grew strained as Peter leaned on his palms at the head of the table, the dark slash of his brows riding low over his eyes. She jutted her chin, unable to avoid stabbing him with her mutinous glare.

  “And if no one comes forward?”—Peter let the other shoe drop—“I’ll shut this place down. Forever.”

  Neither Sid nor Georgia spoke as he held their gazes until they squirmed. “Mr. Deloitte, you’re dismissed.”

  Sid cast Georgia a sympathetic look as he exited. Georgia sat in stunned silence. Shock at the realization she’d effectively been demoted from one of the paper’s most important assets to an administrative assistant crashed into her sense of reality. Admins were great—essential even—but this wasn’t her dream. Not only had this man shattered her plans for her life with an apparent stroke of a pen, he’d made her his reluctant toady.

  “Make reservations for two this evening. Le Bernardin. Eight o’clock.” Peter pulled a laptop from a leather bag as he spoke.

  Georgia looked up from her contemplation of stale doughnut crumbs someone had left littering her place at the table. “What? Don’t you have other people to do that?”

  “A table for two.” He held up two fingers. “Tonight.” A subsequent tap on the table with his index finger emphasized the point.

  Pulled out of her shock with the absurdity of his command as well as its arrogant delivery, Georgia snorted.

  “Is there a problem with accommodating that request, Ms. Whitcomb?”

  “You want reservations? For tonight?” Was the man stupid?

  “Yes. Tonight.” His right brow lifted.

  “At Le Bernardin?” She pronounced the name in flawless French, unlike his Americanized butchering.

  “Yes.” He leaned back and steepled his fingers, his posture speaking of infinite patience she had a suspicion he didn’t truly possess. “What exactly is the problem?”

  “I’m flattered at the stock you put in my connections, but”—Georgia smirked, unable to keep the derision-laden humor from her reply—“the place has three Michelin stars and you want a last-minute reservation?”

  Peter reached inside his jacket and withdrew his cell. Swiping at the screen, he muttered, “I forgot. You’re not Emma.” Then to her he said, “What’s your e-mail?”

  Georgia rattled off her address and wondered what name he had in the device that’d garner him a reservation at one of Manhattan’s most respected restaurants, even on a Monday night. When her phone buzzed, she glanced at his message, then up at him.

  “Senator Brammer? Isn’t he on the Ways and Means Committee?”

  Peter glanced up briefly from his laptop screen. “You’ll be responsible for these things until my PA returns from vacation.”

  “I—” Georgia choked on the rest of her sentence as the full implication of his demand broadsided what was left of her cognitive abilities.

  He wanted her to act as his personal assistant? To traipse along after him, doing his grocery shopping, making his reservations, probably even booking his hookers? She stared at his long fingers, their square-cut nails and broad palms working across the keys as he wrote an e-mail and flipped between Web browser screens and stock reports for she didn’t know how long.

  Could this day get any worse? As the paper’s new—and hopefully temporary—administrative assistant, she could’ve continued to write when he wasn’t around, and surely a man with his money and responsibilities wouldn’t be in the office much. Yet as his personal assistant, she’d be his “beck-and-call girl”—she snorted internally, doubting the job entailed that kind of fringe benefit—with no opportunity to do her real job. At a small paper, everyone had multiple jobs, all of them vital.

  “I—” She tried again and failed.

  “Do you have trouble speaking in full sentences, Ms. Whitcomb?” He regarded her as if she were a bug under his heel, already crushed, legs wiggling brokenly.

  “I’m used to doing research reports. Fact-checking. That sort of thing.” The excuse would only come across as petulant and lame, but she made it anyway, not knowing what else to say.

  “Then this task should be exceedingly easy for a woman of your expertise.” He looked up again, and she struggled not to be taken in by the startling blue of his eyes. “Unless you don’t want the job?”

  Good question. Did she want the job? If he’d purchased the paper hell-bent on revenge, wouldn’t it be best to leave before he succeeded in figuring out her real position? With no time to think clearly about the situation, she decided on a tactical retreat to regroup.

  “I’m sure I can manage
it.” She pasted on her brightest smile.

  He blinked at her for a moment, then narrowed his gaze to study her more closely. Something about the way his attention rested on each prominent point of her features—mouth, nose, the ridges of her cheekbones—gave her pause. Her skin tingled under his scrutiny. It was as if he thought he might know her. Trying not to appear nervous, she took calm, even breaths and held his gaze until he harrumphed and returned his attention to his laptop screen. She took the opportunity to make her escape.

  Out in the hall, Sid lurked in the alcove next to the men’s bathroom. As she passed, he fell into step with her.

  “Is he working in there?” Speaking out of the side of his mouth, Sid jerked his head toward the conference room.

  “Apparently,” Georgia answered in normal tones.

  “What are you going to do?”

  What was she going to do, indeed. Georgia quickened her pace, ignoring the question. Reaching the bull pen, where most of the journalists worked, she looked down at her desk. Something was off. “Where’s my stuff?”

  “I moved it to the admin desk outside of the executive offices.”

  She turned in a slow circle, first one way, then the other, the motion reminding her of a weather vane buffeted by inconsistent winds. The admin desk faced outward, its back toward the row of glass doors at the opposite end of the room. A lonely work space, it hadn’t been used in years. Beyond the desk, workmen scurried in and out of the largest office carrying paint cans and tools, apparently preparing to freshen the walls and replace the flooring.

  “Who in bloody hell ordered all this?” she asked.

  “I figured, you know, it should look like you actually used that desk,” Sid said, misunderstanding her question.

  “No. I see that. I meant—” Georgia lifted her chin toward the largest office. “Who ordered that work in there?”

  “Mr. Wells.”

  “His name is Peter.” Too angry to care that the man was Abercrombie-gorgeous, Georgia spat his name, using it as a substitute for an invective.

  Sid coughed behind his closed fist. “He invited us to call him Mr. Wells.”