The Art of Love

by Kayla C. Oliver

  His grin slid off his face like melted butter. He leaned back in the seat, putting his left arm along the back of the seat. Then he shrugged. “I told you, I was in a meeting. Which you rudely interrupted.”

  “Should’ve turned off your phone, then,” I snapped angrily at him. “What the fuck?”

  “What is your problem?”

  “My problem is that you just went to another publishing house to discuss publishing your new book with them!” I couldn’t help how angry I was, even if I wanted to. Because it wasn’t just that he’d gone somewhere else to publish—he’d been doing that from the beginning, and we both agreed that it wasn’t a big deal. He wanted to break out on his own. I didn’t want to have to mix business with pleasure, or displeasure depending on how the friendship was swinging that week.

  Trent looked over at me, his features serious. He was cool as a cucumber, which told me that he wasn’t kidding around. “Our relationship is purely platonic—and there’s no damn business involved. It’s always been that way, and that’s why it’s worked out.”

  He paused for a long moment, possibly waiting for me to get mad enough for my fucking head to explode. Then he grinned, just a little, and said, “Besides, it’s important to keep my options open.”

  That cheeky, fucking bastard, I thought.

  Gritting my teeth, I tried hard to keep calm as I shot back, “Fine. Options, great, what the fuck ever. But did it have to be with S&W Publishing? The only company out there that’s owned by my ex-college piece-of-shit roommate? Seriously?”

  Trent grimaced at that, for the first time since sliding into the limo with me looking slightly apologetic. “Yeah, sorry about that. But I got this call—”

  I interrupted him. “I don’t care about any fucking call! Jesus, Trent! You could have gone anywhere. I’ll give you a list of ten different publishing houses right now that would treat you right. But you cannot choose S&W Publishing over Tarvish. Do you know what that’ll do to my reputation? ‘Best friend of Tarvish owner goes to rival company, S&W. Is Tarvish tanking?’”

  Trent rolled his eyes at me. “You’re so dramatic. Tarvish is not going to tank just because I didn’t sign with you.”

  “No. It’ll tank because I can’t even make a good enough deal to get my best friend to sign with me.”

  I let those words sink in, desperately wanting him to understand that I didn’t care if he didn’t sign with me—so long as he didn’t sign with them.

  Finally, Trent sighed. “Look, you know the deal,” he began, turning in his seat slightly to better face me. “This is a friendship, not a business relationship. What I’m working on with S&W is business.” He paused there, making a face like maybe he wasn’t sure that was a hundred percent true, and suddenly I was wondering if there was something else going on that he wasn’t telling me. But he continued before I could press it. “These are two different things. You want this to be business? You’d better do it right.”

  I stared at him like he’d just grown a second head. I wanted to tell him he was such an ass for making this into a formal thing, especially when I didn’t even give a damn about fucking signing him! I just didn’t want him to sign with S&W.

  But he’d made himself pretty damn clear on the whole thing. If I wanted to get Trent away from S&W, then I was going to have to pitch him a deal—and it had better be a doozy.

  Groaning, I slumped back in my seat. “Fine, you asshole.”

  He grinned at me, enjoying his small victory.

  “We’ll do brunch. Next Thursday.”

  “Perfect,” he agreed and I had the limo drive him home. I spent the entire time wanting to smack that canary-eating grin right off his smug face.

  Bastard.

  Chapter Seven

  Marnie

  A week after my initial meeting with Trent Parker, I found myself sitting in my office trying to balance a pencil on my nose. I was supposed to be in a meeting with the aforementioned Mr. Parker, but instead all I was doing was leaving graphite stains on my nose.

  He was almost an hour late, and with a sigh, I had to finally accept that I’d been stood up.

  Funny, getting stood up doesn’t feel any better in a business scenario than it does in a relationship one.

  After one last failed attempt at balancing my pencil on my nose, I tossed it aside and stood. Maybe I’d gotten the time or the date wrong. Maybe there had been a message for me about him being late or canceling or rescheduling. Maybe there was one goddamned mothereffing reason for why he was not here right this damn second.

  Shoving the door open, I found Courtney at her desk. She was typing away rapidly at her keyboard, not even so much as glancing up at me. That was how she was. Focused, hard-working, she often ignored you if she deemed you unworthy of her attention in that exact moment.

  “What. The. Ever-loving. Hell?” I demanded, coming to stand right in front of her desk, my hands on my full hips.

  “What the hell what?” she repeated back to me, still not glancing up from her keyboard. She was one hell of a typist.

  “Where is he? I mean, he made a damn appointment, right?”

  Some part of me knew that I was being a royal bitch to Courtney and she likely didn’t deserve it, but I couldn’t help it. This was the biggest deal of my life and if I didn’t make it stick, then I could wave that pretty little promotion goodbye. And when you waved one promotion goodbye, it was like a death sentence. Suddenly, people like Gary down the hall were getting your new clients. And Gary was being told what a go-getter he was. And Gary was getting that fucking beautiful corner office that had my goddamned mothereffing name on it!

  So, yes, I was being a little bitchy.

  Finally, Courtney paused in her writing and shifted to look at me. She frowned a little, considering me for a moment. Finally, she held up a single finger and said, “First, stop being a dick to me. I haven’t done anything wrong.” Putting up a second finger, she added, “Second, I don’t know what the hell is going on. Mr. Parker stopped at my desk after your meeting, and we set up an appointment. I told him ten on Thursday—the following week, meaning the meeting was set for today. I even wrote him a stupid little reminder card just in case he was too much of a prick to remember important dates on his own.” She held up a third finger. “Finally, he’s fucking sexy—did you see that man? But he’s a cocky prick, and I didn’t succumb to his charm.”

  My shoulders slumped at this information—well, the part about him stopping by to make the appointment, not the him being sexy bit. I hadn’t realized how much I was hoping that we’d just messed something clerical up until she’d confirmed that we hadn’t.

  Which I knew. Courtney doesn’t make mistakes.

  “Damn it,” I muttered. “Sorry, Court. I’d really been hoping—”

  “That you could throw me under the bus?” she said, leaning back in her chair. Today she was wearing burgundy, which went well with her blonde hair, the contrast making her lips and eyes pop. Her heels were taller than mine, I knew, and she still only came up to my shoulders when we were standing side by side, but she pulled the whole thing off well.

  Sighing, I shrugged a little and offered an apologetic smile. “I’m a dick.”

  She waited a beat, then said, “Yeah, you are. But I know how much you want this contract.”

  I sat on the edge of her desk as I groaned. “No shit. This would be it for me, you know? A corner office. Partner. I mean, that is the fucking dream, right?”

  Courtney nodded. “Yeah, it is. For you, anyway.”

  “I really am sorry. I should’ve known you didn’t fuck up. You never do.”

  “No, I really don’t,” she confirmed, patting her curls. Today her hair was mostly up, rolled along the bottom so that it sat in a single thick curl at the base of her neck. “What are we gonna do about our no-show?”

  Sighing, I considered my options. I could just give up and let him swim away to somewhere else, which would mean losing my partnership and everything I’d worked
for. Option number two was to beg him to come back by giving him everything he wanted, which wasn’t a great way to do business and would probably get me into a lot of trouble. Or option number three…

  Slowly, a smile slipped across my lips.

  “Uh-oh,” Courtney said upon seeing it. “Dare I ask what you’ve just come up with?”

  “Nothing against the rules,” I informed her. “Yet.”

  She snorted indelicately. “Yet. All right, I’ll bite. What’s the plan, boss?”

  “I want you to call that agent of his—Malcom or whatever his name was—and get the lowdown on his schedule. I want to know first who he ditched me for, then I want to know the deets on why he left his last publisher.”

  Courtney raised her eyebrows at me. “I’m not sure how forthcoming he’ll be with that information.”

  I waved off her concern. “Work your magic. You’ve already got the guy wrapped around your pinky finger or Parker never would have showed up for the first meeting. I want information and I think this Malcom guy is going to be the place to get it from.”

  Courtney shrugged but agreed. “Okay. I make no promises, but I’ll get ahold of him and see what I can do.”

  “Thanks, Court. You’re the best.”

  She rolled her eyes. “Yeah, yeah. Just remember that the next time you go all Bitchinator on me—and when bonuses roll around.”

  I laughed at her. “Honey, please. When have you ever not gotten a bonus from me?”

  “True. Just make sure that it keeps coming.”

  She winked at me then, letting me know that if I got fired that day and she was suddenly stuck with a new boss, she wouldn’t hold it against me. Hell, she’d probably follow me into the unknown. Courtney was loyal like that.

  Reaching for her phone, she quickly dialed a number. It rang for a while, and I waited quietly as someone eventually picked up.

  “Hello, Mr. Resner, this is Courtney Hughes from S&W Publishing.” She paused, then I thought I saw her blush slightly. “Malcom, sorry.”

  I raised my eyebrows at her. First-name basis? I mouthed, but she ignored me.

  “I was actually calling because Mr. Parker had an appointment set up in my office here for today—an hour ago.”

  She waited for his response, and I wished desperately that I could hear what he was saying on the other end. I felt like I had ants in my pants, that was how impatient I was, and the short conversation Courtney was having was eating me alive.

  When Courtney winced, I instantly sat up straighter. “What?” I whispered. “What happened?”

  She waved me off, frowning as she tried to concentrate on what this Malcom guy was saying to her. After a moment, she said, “I see. No, I don’t think that’ll be necessary. I’ll get ahold of you if there’s further information we need to discuss.” She paused, and then I swore I saw her blush again. “Yes, you, too.”

  She hung up then and looked up at me. She offered me a sympathetic smile, which was definitely not a good thing. “I’m sorry, Marnie. But Malcom said he was in a meeting—with another publisher.”

  “God damn him!”

  I shot up off the desk angrier than I’d been in years. This was my one shot at partner, and that jackass Parker was screwing it all up! “Who the fuck with?”

  “You’re not going to like it,” she told me briefly.

  I threw up my arms dramatically at her. “I already don’t like it!”

  She sighed. “Tarvish Press.”

  And just like that, everything came to a crashing, tumbling, and burning halt. “Tarvish Press.”

  There were a lot of publishing houses out there these days. In addition to the big seven, there were hundreds of subsidiaries, and God knew how many indie publishing houses that were trying to break into the market and make a name for themselves. But there was only one place that I hated more than anything else on this planet, and that was Tarvish Press. He could have gone to Shit-And-Swine Publishing for all I cared, but to lose this contract to Tarvish?

  No. I couldn’t allow it. I’d rather eat glass.

  “I want to know who he was meeting with. I want to know what they talked about. I want dirty laundry in the hamper, and I want it now.”

  Courtney didn’t even argue with me about how much of a bitch I was being nor did she try to get me to calm down. Instead, she just nodded and turned to her computer. She started typing away to get what dirt she could find.

  We’ll find something. Some kind of leverage. I’m not going down without a fight, not to some bastard, old-money company like Tarvish.

  This meant war.

  Chapter Eight

  Marnie

  Courtney was working on getting the lowdown on who exactly Parker had been meeting with at Tarvish Press while I tried to do a little work of my own. Besides my regular clients—whom I had to deal with in a moderate capacity today—I had one manuscript to finish proofing and a report to send up to Dorian. Thank God it wasn’t a report on the Parker project, because I didn’t want to flat out lie to Dorian, but I wasn’t about to tell him how poorly things were going. I at least wanted the chance to fuck things up grandly on my own.

  But once I got the report done and the manuscript sent back to the author, I started in on my real work. Digging into the closet of Tarvish Press.

  I started with a simple internet search. Who was Tarvish Press? What were their policies? How many people did they deal with regularly? All of it was basic, almost trivial information, but I wanted to be armed with ammunition against Tarvish when I tried to win Parker over to the dark side.

  Once I had their foundation down, I started to dig further.

  Who had they screwed? How many books had they published that were lemons? How many covers looked like the drawings of four-year-olds and fanboys? How many customers ragged on them?

  I brought up articles about Tarvish, their wins and their failures. How many times they’d gone bankrupt—which, admittedly, wasn’t many—and how many times they’d had to push back paying their clients.

  I even did basic searches on their intern programs, their hiring policies, and how much women made versus men. Because you never know. I highly doubted someone like Parker would be swayed by the plights of women, but I’d take any point to argue just then. I didn’t even care if Parker signed with me so long as I didn’t lose him to fucking Tarvish Press!

  Okay, not true, I thought, closing out of a bogus article about the Tarvish owner requiring all female employees to get breast implants. Definitely something fashioned from the rumor mill. I definitely want Parker to sign with us, but if I have to lose him, I won’t lose him to the one publishing house out there that will get my ass fired.

  Because Dorian would fire me over that. It wouldn’t matter how much he thought I was a great editor or how good I was with difficult customers. He would 110 percent fire me. He hated the owner of Tarvish that much.

  Gathering up my notes, I headed out of my office to sit on the corner of Courtney’s desk again. “Did you know that the Tarvish owner—something Reid—was sleeping with a married model while vacationing in Paris with his dying mother? I mean, who does that?”

  Courtney snorted. “Guys do that. And at the risk of defending one, you know that’s probably a bogus story, right?”

  I shrugged. “Yeah, probably. It’s still pretty juicy, though.”

  Shaking her head a little, she eyed my butt planted on her papers. “Why don’t you just get a damn chair so you can stop sitting on my desk?”

  Without looking up from my papers, I deadpanned, “Because that would encourage people to stay and sit.”

  “You’re such a sociable person.”

  “That’s me, social butterfly.”

  “Well, Ms. Social Butterfly, I have some information for you—and you’re definitely not going to like it.”

  That got my attention. I looked up from the papers I was going over to stare at Courtney. “Tear it off like a Band-Aid.”

  “You want me to take as much
leg hair with it as humanly possible?” she quipped.

  I shot her a glare. “Just give it to me, will you?”

  Clearing her throat, she said, “We all know Tarvish Press is run by billionaire son Mr. Callum Reid.”

  “Callum,” I muttered. “I couldn’t think of that damn name.”

  Ignoring me, she continued. “There are all sorts of rumors about him—he likes to fool around with models, for instance—most about his personal life, but there’s a ton on his business practices, too. He’s a real shark.”

  I nodded. None of this was news to me thanks to Dorian’s rants about him and my own research just now.

  “All of that isn’t really our concern,” she continued. “Except for one tiny detail that is going to majorly screw us.”

  “Which is?” I prompted.

  She hesitated, then winced and just told me. “The guy who’s trying to sign Trent Parker from Tarvish Press? It’s the owner of Tarvish Press.”

  I felt my jaw drop a little and the blood rush from my face. Seriously? How did this even happen? It wasn’t unheard of for owners of publishing houses to sign people. That was common practice, as much as editors like me signing them. In fact, in indie houses, that was almost exclusively the case. Mostly that was due to a complete lack of staff, but that wasn’t the point.

  What was the point? That it was just my fucking luck that I’d get railroaded by the one place that my boss would kill me over by the one guy who wouldn’t be bought off.

  “Please tell me you’re joking.”

  She shook her head. “And that’s not all.”

  “But wait! There’s more!” I quoted, using my best game show host voice.

  She ignored my sarcasm, mostly, I think, because she knew that whatever she was about to say to me was going to devastate my entire fucking life. And I didn’t want to think about it. But I nodded once to tell her to go ahead.

  “The reason that Callum Reid is trying to sign Trent Parker is because they’ve known each other for years. They were best friends in high school.”

  And just like that, the last hope I had of signing Trent Parker went down the drain. I was toast. I was shit on toast. I was bird shit on burnt toast. There was no salvaging this project… was there?