by Kait Nolan
“Well if you really did what had to be done, then Greg would have been fired the last time something like this happened on his watch. You and I both know that Macy had nothing to do with this. She wasn’t even helping him with that part of the launch.”
“If we have to let someone go, it should be the most junior member of the team. Besides, she doesn’t mesh with the vibe we’ve got going. Getting rid of Greg would ruin that. No reason to get your panties in a twist. What’s the real problem here, Bull? Are you fucking her?”
Drew’s vision glazed with red as he tipped over the edge from reined-in irritation to pure fury.
“Unlike everybody else around here, I’m not thinking with my dick.” The steel in his voice would have instantly cowed a smarter man than Chad. “She’s the best person on the team, barring me, and if you weren’t so interested in palling around with the guys instead of leading them, you’d know it. I’m telling you, Greg needs to go. If you trust me to do the job, trust me on that.”
A smarter man would also take Drew seriously, but Chad definitely came up short in the brains department. Instead, he burst into explosive laughter, rising from his chair to come around and clap Drew on the back like they were friends.
“Bull, you always cut right through the shit. That’s what I appreciate about you. Fire him, don’t fire her, I don’t care. Just do what it takes to fix this fuck up with the Station 8 acquisition.”
“I’ll meet with the team immediately. It’s still early, so no real damage is done. Someone at Station 8 probably talked. Just let me handle it.”
“Whatever, Bull. Get it done.” Chad waved his hand dismissively, like the matter was already forgotten. “Want a scotch? It’s five o’clock somewhere, and I need a top off.”
Drew tried not to let his distaste show—it was barely three o’clock in the afternoon. He needed a drink after dealing with this shit, but he had the willpower to wait until he got home for the day. It was clear from Chad’s breath that this wasn’t his first drink, and likely not his last.
“I’m good, thanks. Gotta get back to it.” Chad didn’t even respond, already busy at the bar cart in the corner.
Drew retreated to the bullpen of cubes outside Chad’s office, where a group was clustering around Macy’s empty desk.
“Michaelson gave her the boot, finally.” Greg was boasting as Drew approached, a smug look making his pinched features look even more hawkish. “She was dead weight, we all knew it except for Bull. He likes having a pretty face around, you know…when you can’t get some out of the office, you bring some to you!”
The group roared with laughter and Drew felt his hands tightening into fists. Greg was hired long before Drew took over the department. He considered himself untouchable, which is why he put in the minimum amount of work needed to make himself look busy on the rare occasions that Chad was in his office.
“Party’s over, guys. And Macy’s been reinstated since I explained to Chad just exactly who was responsible for the Station 8 execution.” Drew looked pointedly at Greg, whose answering smirk proved he had had more temerity than he did sense. “And if I hear shit like I just walked up on again, then the only one who is going to be getting the boot is the one I personally walk down to HR.”
“You know we’re just kidding, Bull. Nobody would blame you, Macy’s a hot piece, right guys?” Greg leered, poking the account supervisor next to him in the side. “Like I said, when you can’t get some out of the office…”
“Who says I’m not getting some outside the office?” Drew heard himself say. What the fuck, man? You don’t owe these jokers an explanation about your private life, he thought.
“Come on, man, you’re always here until all hours,” said Steve, the other senior account executive. “You can’t meet girls when you’re chained to your laptop. You never come drink with us, never come out to the club. You’re married to work, Bull.”
“It’s true, dude.” Chad sauntered up to them with a half-full glass of scotch on the rocks in his hand. “Come out with us tonight and we’ll get you laid. You could use it.”
Drew took a deep breath and counted backward in his mind, trying to harness his desire to quit on the spot. All you have to do is get your bonus in a month, and then you can kiss this shit goodbye. Just get your bonus, and then you can start the ball rolling to open your own agency. He hated the constant entreaties to go out and hit on women as if they were some kind of commodity to invest in. The public relations department at Strong Man acted like an immature fraternity with absolutely zero respect for women. Sometimes he didn’t know why Macy and the few other girls in marketing and PR stuck it out in such a boys’ club. Sometimes he didn’t know why he did, either. What started as a love of comics that drew him to the biggest comics company in the business felt like a lifetime ago.
“Sorry, guys, but I have plans. My lady wouldn’t really appreciate me going out to troll for chicks instead of taking her to dinner as promised.”
Seriously, why are you still talking?! What is this bullshit coming out of your mouth?
“A lady, you say?” Chad raised a brow in question. “You’ve certainly been keeping that one quiet. How long have you been dating?’
Drew resisted the urge to open and close his mouth like a fish out of water. “You know I don’t mix business with pleasure. Besides, it’s only been a few months. Don’t want to jinx it.”
They’re not buying it, he thought frantically. Why the hell did I just say I had a girlfriend to a bunch of guys whose job it is to be nosy, pushy bastards? God, for a PR guy you’re the worst liar EVER, Turnbull.
“When do we get to meet this mystery girl and convince her she’s wasting her time on a no-fun guy like you?” Greg looked like a shark scenting the water for blood.
“If I get my way? The twelfth of never.” Drew pivoted on his heel to walk back toward his desk, but Chad’s voice stopped him cold.
“Bring her to the partner dinner next month. She’ll want to see you getting your big award, won’t she?”
Drew pasted on a smile before turning back around. “I’ll have to see if she’s free, but I’m sure she’d love to be there if she’s able.” If she’s not too busy, you know, not existing.
“What’s her name?” Greg asked. “I want to know what to yell when I take her home that night.”
Drew gritted his teeth while the other guys clapped Greg on the back, guffawing obnoxiously. “TooGoodforYou GetaLife, as far as you’re concerned, asshole.”
Greg’s grin dropped into a frown when he caught sight of the deadly serious look in Drew’s eyes. Chad, oblivious as usual, raised his glass in a salute.
“Looking forward to meeting the girl good enough to tear you away from the office, Bull. She must be one in a million. Hopefully it won’t be too much of a problem for her to join us. The partner dinner, well, it requires a partner.”
Something in Chad’s voice was sharper than he would have liked, but Drew forced himself to react normally. “She sure is. I’ll do my best to get her there!”
Now if only he knew where he could meet her.
Chapter Three
Ava Munoz cut him a disbelieving look over the rim of her wineglass. “Let me get this straight—instead of just telling them that you want to keep your personal and business lives separate, you invented a girl who doesn’t exist?”
"Just call me a glutton for punishment, I guess," said Drew. "Things have been a disaster lately, and I apparently need to make my life at that godforsaken place even more of a hell on earth than it already is. How they think I even have time for dating is a mystery. I’m too busy to have feelings that don’t involve exhaustion or extreme loathing.”
"I still don't get why you don't leave," Ava said. "You hate it, and you're worth thirty of those no-talent douchebags. Just walk out, say no, tell them where they can stick it."
"You know why." Drew banged his beer bottle down on the bartop. "I don't want to stay there any longer than I have to, but I'm so close. I
even went and looked at some office spaces last weekend!"
Ava’s eyes went round and she broke into a wide grin. ”Already? That's awesome! All the more reason to flip Chad the bird and peace out of bro hell."
"No, it just hit home how much more money I'm going to need if I want to go out on my own," he sighed. "Rent on an office is expensive, and I'm actually going to need to be able to pay for...well, everything. It's intimidating. The only thing working on Chad's team has going for it is the fact that he pays me really, really well for my troubles. I couldn't make nearly that much at any other company around here."
"Well, if your dream of being a successful entrepreneur is worth dealing with a bunch of has-been jocks who couldn't even recognize the comics their own company promotes...then more power to you, I guess." Ava raised her glass in mock salute and tossed back the rest of her wine. "But that still doesn't solve your girlfriend problem."
"I know." Drew scrubbed a hand over his face tiredly. "That's why I risked the inevitable mocking and ridicule and called you."
"Sometimes you're smarter than you look, Andrew."
"Seriously, Ava, I need your help. What am I going to do?" He could feel the stress starting to tug at his gut. "It's not like I can just tell the guys at the office you're my secret ladyfriend."
"Why not? I'm totally hot." Ava gave an exaggerated preen, tossing her glossy black waves over one shoulder. "They know I'm your bestie since kindergarten, but we could totally make up a slow burn to something more. Happens all the time with friends."
"That might hold more weight if they hadn't heard you tell the story of how we kissed in college and then you threw up. Your rendition and the accompanying retching noises are really convincing.”
Ava tried, and failed, to smother a laugh. "Well, in your defense that was more to do with the fact that I was drunk on peppermint schnapps, not that I'm utterly repulsed by you. But I see your point. We're kind of the black hole of chemistry."
"Don't forget the fact that you're the worst liar in the entire world," Drew teased. "They've never seen you try to fib your way out of a speeding ticket."
"Whatever, dork. It's not like you're an Oscar winner, either. I'm surprised they didn't call you on your shit immediately." Ava punched him lightly in the arm and leaned over the bartop to flag down their bartender for another round. "So if I’m the Leia to your Luke instead of your Han, what are you going to do? Speed date and hope you hit it off with someone fast enough to pass her off as your girl?"
"Ugh, the idea of dating at all makes me want to go walk into traffic." Drew grabbed the fresh longneck right out of the bartender's hand and took a long pull. "Do you happen to have any single friends who might be willing to do your best friend a giant favor?"
Ava snorted into her drink. "None who could pull off this kind of a charade for a whole evening. Chastity has all the subtlety of a freight train, and Miranda would probably pick a fight with your boss in the first fifteen minutes and get you fired."
"Maybe she'd be a blessing in disguise."
"Maybe, but according to you the whole point of finding you a decoy girlfriend is to keep you in Chad's good graces and on his exorbitant payroll for a while longer. If we have to, we can unleash Miranda when you’re ready to cut and run.”
He lowered his head to the bar and began to thunk his forehead softly against the scarred wood. “I’m doomed. How the hell am I supposed to be a good PR guy if I can’t avoid lying my way into my own dumb mistakes?”
“We’ll figure it out, I promise.” Ava rubbed a soothing hand over his back. “In the meantime, get us signed up for trivia. You could use a distraction from all this, and I’m going to go powder my nose.”
She pushed her way through the gathering crowd around the bar while Drew signed their names to the trivia team sheet. Sometimes he wasn’t sure what he would do without Ava. As a nurse, she worked odd hours, so she was often around when no one else was for a late-night dinner or an even later nightcap when he got out of the office. If not for that, he wouldn’t see anyone but his coworkers most days. That was one reason Drew wanted so badly to start his own agency. Being able to set his hours, take on a reasonable workload, and spend time with his mom and friends was something he knew he needed in his life.
“Drew!” He looked up to see Ava careening around the bar at top speed, waving her phone in her hand excitedly. “I know how we can solve your problem!”
He raised a skeptical eyebrow. “You figured it out in one trip to the bathroom?”
“I did when I closed the stall door and saw this. I heard all about this app online last week, but I forgot until the ad jogged my memory.” She brought up the photo album app and shoved her phone in his hands, tapping one red nail against the screen. “They’ve just launched, and they’re supposed to be doing huge business already. Look.”
The poster featured a smiling couple gazing at a smartphone together, the picture of disgusting happiness. No time to meet that special someone? Don’t want to be a part of the dating scene? Virtual Match can find you the next best thing to fill in at family holidays and get Grandma off your back. Sign up today!
“What the hell is this, Ava? Another online dating service?” He raked his fingers through his hair, feeling a headache brewing behind his temples. “I don’t have time to date, you know that!”
“No, dummy, it’s better than that. You sign up and you get a girl to text you, email you, whatever…she pretends she’s your girlfriend, gives you proof that she exists, and it gets people off your back. They’ll even doctor pictures to put the two of you together or send you gifts at the office. It’s perfect to fool Chad and the fratboy flunkies.”
He shook his head with a sigh. “That doesn’t actually get me a date to show up at the party, though.”
“No, but it at least buys you more time. If nothing else, you can pay extra and get your fake lady to stage a very public breakup phone call. Nobody will bother you about bringing a date to the dinner when they think you’re heartbroken.”
“No, they’ll just move it to the strip club and help me drink all my sorrows away,” Drew groused, taking a swallow of his beer. “I don’t know, Ava. I’m not sure it’s the right call.”
She picked up her wineglass and drained it in one go, setting it down on the bar with a smirk.
That look never promised good things.
“It’s too late, Romeo,” she said. “I signed you up already, so grab your coat and let’s go get you matched up with the nonexistent woman of your dreams.”
“Give me just a minute,” Drew said, signaling to the bartender again. “I’m going to need a shot of liquid courage before I can even think about this.”
Ava’s smirk grew even bigger. “All right, then. Hurry up and commune with Jose and let’s get going.”
He suppressed a long-suffering sigh. “Make it a double.”
~*~
“Virtual Match, anyone know about it?” Shelby Randall sat back in her plush office chair like a cool, regal queen and regarded the writers gathered around the conference table. Caroline was seated toward the back of the room and tried not to find herself pinned under Shelby’s intense gaze. The editor was notoriously hard to please, and her feedback on Caroline’s last piece had been a sea of red marks and track changes.
The group was silent, so Shelby sighed loudly and continued. “Seriously, I expect you guys to keep up with what’s going on in the world. It’s a new service that just opened up an office here—they got some serious seed funding from one of the big indie startup contests.”
“Oh no, I did hear about that!” Kelsie Jacobs, Caroline’s closest friend at the magazine, piped up beside her. “That’s the new not-dating service, right?”
Shelby steepled her fingers under her chin, barely inclining her head at Kelsie. “Glad at least one of you has been paying attention. Now, as Kelsie said, it’s not a dating service…but more of a smokescreen for those out there who need the illusion of a relationship but don’t have a si
gnificant other. They say it’s 100% anonymous, and not sex-focused at all. I want a ringside seat for when this eventually blows up in someone’s face.”
Caroline felt a shudder go down her spine. Modern was Shelby’s brainchild, and it had gained a huge readership in a short time with its witty writing and critical outlook at the modern world, for better or for worse. That’s why Caroline wanted to write for them, and was willing to schlep it on blogs until she was able to elbow her way into a story.
But Shelby was just a little bit terrifying. The lengths Caroline heard Shelby was willing to go for a story…well, they were a lot longer than Caroline herself would ever consider, that’s for sure.
“So, here’s the assignment. I need someone who can go work part-time for Virtual Match. Become someone’s significantly fake other, get me the behind-the-scenes scoop, find a juicy story. Whoever has the availability to take on a part-time job gets a feature byline on the piece—provided it’s any good. Adrian, what about you?”
“Hell no, Shelby.” The lead features writer shook his head emphatically. “My wife would have my balls in a sling, no matter how many times I told her it wasn’t for real.”
Murmurs of agreement came from around the room, winding down into an uncomfortable silence. “Well then, who the hell is going to write this piece then? It would fit perfectly into our love and dating issue. There’s a story there, I can feel it. Nothing is ever completely anonymous, and it all sounds a little too good to be true. And my instincts are almost never wrong.”
“Caroline can do it!” Kelsie blurted out. “She’s only working part-time, and she’s hands down our best blogger. She’d do great on a feature!”
Caroline felt her cheeks heat as bright as her hair as Shelby studied her and Kelsie critically.
“I’ll be the judge of that, I think. But if nobody else is available, I suppose Caroline will have to do.”
Thanks for the vote of confidence, boss lady. As much as she wanted her shot at a feature story, this one sounded like a hot mess just waiting to happen. And how the hell was she supposed to juggle writing, working at Limited Edition, and helping at the women’s center with a part-time job at Virtual Match?