Right Where I Want You

by Jessica Hawkins

  “It’s almost as bad as—” I cringed. “I can’t even say it.”

  “Merkin?”

  A man on the elevator glanced up from his phone.

  “A vagina wig,” Justin explained.

  “Ah.” The man nodded and returned to browsing Reddit.

  Now, I wouldn’t be able to get that image out of my head all day. “I’ve already told you not to talk to me about that.”

  “I’ll let you off the hook, only because of today’s date.” He nodded once at me. “How are you holding up?”

  This day clocked in as one of my worse ones. I’d made a woman cry within minutes of finding out my job was in jeopardy a year to the day that I’d held my mom’s warm hand for the last time as she’d succumbed to cancer. Somehow, my first fall without a mother was already upon us. Not that I was going to say all that to an elevator of strangers, or even to Justin. If I so much as tried, I’d never make it through the day. “I’m fine,” I said and checked my watch for the umpteenth time since getting Justin’s call. “I just can’t believe Vance hired this guy without my input. You’re sure it’s a done deal?”

  “Derek texted me because the guy has some kind of presentation, so he needed the projector set up. Want me to head to IT and grill Derek?”

  “There’s no more time.” I switched the tray to my other hand and adjusted my tie in the reflection of the doors. “Meeting starts in fifteen.”

  Justin exited on thirty-five, but I rode the elevator up a few more floors. I walked through the executive level of Dixon Media Group to my editor-in-chief’s office, game face on, even though the girl in the coffee shop had threatened my focus with her tears.

  Vance’s secretary was on the phone. I set one of the black coffees on her desk, and she smiled as she waved me through. I knocked once and entered. Reclined in a leather chair with a phone to his ear, my boss motioned for me to enter. I sat across the desk from him and set down the tray.

  “Let me call you back,” Vance said, eyeing the iced coffee. “I have a meeting downstairs.”

  As he hung up, I pulled out the drink and passed it over. “Extra cream and sugar.”

  “Sorry to break it to you,” Vance said, accepting the cup, “but I already have an assistant, and she’s not going anywhere. You’re underqualified anyway.”

  “What’s so hard about the position? Sucking dick or kissing ass—either way, I’m still on my knees.”

  “Jesus Christ, Quinn.” Vance threw a palm in the air, shaking his head. “Don’t even joke about that. HR has ears everywhere.” He glanced around the room and said clearly, “There is no dick sucking happening in this office.” He turned back to me. “And when have you ever kissed my ass—until now?”

  “Vance, don’t do this. Call off today’s meeting and tell this guy to return to the bridge he crawled out from under.”

  “Can’t.” Vance stood and raised his cup to me. “But thanks for the coffee.”

  “I have to say my piece one last time.”

  “You’ve said it, I’ve heard it, and I’ve made my decision. Cream and sugar won’t change my mind. I’m sorry.”

  “You could’ve given me some notice,” I said. “You went and hired him without my input or approval.”

  “Bad PR waits for no man. The media is already having a field day with the exposé. They’re throwing around phrases like sexually charged workplace, chauvinism, and toxic masculinity, whatever the fuck that means.”

  The words came at me like poison darts, and I had to stand there and take it. Because I’d done this to myself. I envisioned my mother making the sign of the cross after reading those things about her only son. It wasn’t as if she hadn’t known what people thought of me, but even if she knew those things weren’t true, that didn’t make it hurt any less.

  “You promoted me years ago to turn this magazine around,” I said, “and that’s what I did, even though it cost me. You didn’t have a problem with hypermasculinity or objectification of women when it was making the company money.”

  “Well, it’s not anymore.”

  “But we can’t ignore that it got us here. That’s what has grown our readership. We’re a men’s lifestyle magazine that mainly covers beautiful women, some other stuff, and how not to fuck up with beautiful women. We’ve crafted an image of what goes on behind the scenes, and yes, it’s exaggerated, but it sells our brand.”

  “Well, that ‘brand’ has come back to bite us in the ass. What was once an asset is now a liability. Not only has it garnered us national attention, but it’s also the final feather in the cap of a shitty year for Modern Man.”

  As if I wasn’t aware. My magazine had already been suffering before the exposé had gone and thrown punches at our content and my character. We had our moments like any group of men expected to report on our favorite topics, but we weren’t bad guys. “If you hire someone to come in and soften our image, we can kiss the magazine goodbye.” Along with my job and all the hard work I’d invested into it.

  “I don’t have to tell you subscription rates have not only stalled but have started to decline.” Vance blew out a breath. “Look, I know it’s been a tough year for you, but my hands are tied. You’ve had nearly four quarters to shift tactics, but after last week’s PR debacle, advertisers have lost their patience.”

  What he wasn’t saying was that I’d gotten us into this mess, but I knew better than to use my personal life as an excuse. Here, the bottom line ruled, and it’d been falling out from under us for a while. Being named in the exposé had only hurt our stock more. “Then give me an alternative, Vance, but don’t bring in some bullshit consultant who’s going to strip away everything that makes Modern Man what it is.”

  “There’s only one alternative, and it’s that I replace you, Sebastian. I don’t want to do that, but something has to give.”

  “Replace me?” I sat back in my seat and gaped at him. This job was my life. I’d spent high school working my ass off for a scholarship to a top-tier university, and then my college years hustling to make every connection I could just for the chance at a summer internship in journalism. Modern Man, a struggling publication with small-time circulation, hadn’t been my first choice, but I’d been grateful for a job in research and fact-checking. And the magazine had been on the brink of failure until I’d worked my way to the top and turned it around. This wasn’t just my job—it was my blood, sweat, and tears. “We might not be standing here having this conversation if not for me. What about the past ten years?”

  “As our creative director, you made this magazine what it is,” he agreed, “but at the end of the day, it doesn’t belong to you. It belongs to the advertisers and the board, and they’re spooked. Dos Equis has already halved their budget, and Breitling is threatening the same if we don’t turn things around now. Accepting help won’t shrivel your balls, I promise.”

  “It’s not a matter of pride,” I said. Did I believe that? Not really. But I’d always been good at making my case. “It’s that I know our reader inside out. You’re bringing a man onto my team that you didn’t even know we needed a week ago.”

  Vance leaned on the desk with steepled fingers. “Let me be clear, Quinn. I’m not bringing anyone onto your team. You’ll be running things together. That’s how co-management works. And you better make it work, because if it doesn’t, you won’t survive the next restructure. Consider this an unofficial warning.”

  My heart pounded. Restructure? Co-management? It made no sense. So the last year had been a bit stagnant. That was the economy. Subscription rates had to slow at some point—anyone in the industry knew that. And maybe it was true that since Mom’s death, I’d been struggling to find meaning in what we did, but I shouldn’t have to lose my job over it.

  I took an absentminded sip of my coffee and cringed. I’d only strayed from my beloved Dunkin’ Donuts for Vance. It was just another hit to my day, paying twice as much for a shittier cup of coffee before meeting my new babysitter. “If this goes south, it’
s on your shoulders,” I said.

  “I’m the editor-in-chief,” Vance said, “there’s so much shit on my shoulders, I might as well live in a toilet.”

  “Hey, that’s good,” I said wryly, standing. “You should submit it to the jokes department.”

  I took my crappy coffee back to my office. There was no getting out of this. My team and I had been strategizing ways to reach more potential subscribers since numbers had begun to fall off last year, but so far nothing had stuck. As creative director, it’d taken years, but I’d perfected my team. I knew all of their strengths and weaknesses—knew that Garth worked best with a deadline, and Albert without one, and that Boris’s excitement waned unless I showed equal enthusiasm for his work. When they needed fresh ideas, I employed my dogs-and-dicks strategy. We ordered hotdogs and left our brains at the door as we sealed ourselves in my office to dickstorm. No idea was too crude, macho, or gross. Poop jokes, double entendres, food fights, pranks. Once, a soul-baring discussion about how our moms had packed our lunch boxes had devolved into ranking hockey goalies by the sexiness of their wives. Maybe it wasn’t politically correct, but by the end, we generally had three or four useable topics for that month’s issue.

  Story impregnation by idea ejaculation.

  But would my co-manager see the brilliance of it? Was he too refined for dogs and dicks? Would he run crying to HR at the first sign of a crass joke? Break bro code and risk the safety we’d cultivated after years in a vault?

  After I’d trashed the coffee and sent an intern on an emergency run to reliable old Dunkin’ Donuts, my hometown staple, I went to my office to find Justin horizontal on my couch. “Don’t you have your own kingdom to lord over?” I asked him.

  “Yeah, but I already took my morning shit,” Justin said.

  “I’m talking about your cubicle, not the bathroom. Why are you always in here?”

  “Booze. Couch. Privacy.” He sighed. “I never understood why you get a corner office to yourself, and I have to share a box with Girly Garth.”

  “Exhibit A—we’ve only been at work fifteen minutes and you’re already napping. You’re a shitty employee.”

  Justin sat up on his elbow with a pout. “You don’t mean that.”

  “You’re lucky you’re good at what you do, or you’d have been out on your ass a long time ago.”

  “Aw. I choose to see that as a compliment, so, thanks, honey.”

  Vance leaned into the office and nodded at me. “It’s time. Better take your PMS medicine, or it could get ugly.”

  “Fuck off, both of you,” I said as they laughed.

  “Oh, stop sulking, Quinn,” Vance said. “Do what she says, and things’ll be back to normal in no time.”

  She? I started to ask who he meant, but a voice from the hallway spoke first. “That’s great advice in most situations,” a woman said. “You must be married.”

  Vance turned around. “Miss Keller. I’m sorry—you snuck up on me.”

  I raised my eyebrows. Keller? I’d heard the name before but hadn’t been aware of any recent hires. I tried to see through the doorway.

  “I’m sorry we didn’t get to debrief upstairs,” she said. “I meant to arrive a few minutes earlier but ran into an issue on the way here.”

  “No problem at all,” Vance said. “Come and meet some of your team before the meeting starts.”

  I blinked. Team? Vance turned sideways for a pretty, petite, freckle-nosed woman with a mocha latte in one hand and a back issue of Modern Man sticking out of her bag. When our gazes met, her perfect posture faltered as she stopped short, and a wave of silky auburn hair fell over one eye. We each inhaled a sharp breath.

  I stood face to face with the coffee shop sniper.

  I’d been a bit harsh on her, yes—but not enough to warrant her taking it this far. “Did you follow me here?” I asked.

  She pushed her hair out of her face. “Did you follow me here?”

  “You two know each other?” Vance cut in.

  Locked in a staredown with her, I didn’t dare flinch. Or notice that her eyes were distractingly pale green. Or that her plump lips glistened with a fresh coat of gloss. Or that her coffee-stained, stuffy button-down had somehow morphed into a low-cut top that displayed cleavage she was trying—and failing—to cover with her blazer.

  Fuck. There was a reason I’d chatted her up at the pick-up counter—she was hot, sizzling even, her hair a rich burgundy in the sunlight coming through my office windows.

  I really needed my dick to stay out of this, at least until I’d gotten my bearings.

  “We met downstairs,” she said, not looking away from me. She tilted her head. “In fact, we practically shared a coffee.”

  “Great,” Vance said. “Sebastian, meet George Keller. She’ll be working alongside you the next eight weeks.”

  George Keller. It’d sounded familiar because it was a name Vance had thrown out last week along with the possibility of hiring a consultant. I slowly shifted my gaze from George to Vance, who had this thumbnail between his teeth. “You left out an important piece of information about George Keller,” I said.

  “Well—”

  George looked at Vance as well. “You didn’t tell him I was a woman?”

  I snorted. “With a name like George, he’s hardly to blame.”

  “It’s Georgina,” she snapped, then smoothed her hands over her skirt and shook her head. “I mean, in my personal life,” she added coolly. “At the office, George is fine. Or Miss Keller will do.”

  “I’m not calling you Miss Keller like you’re my grade-school teacher.” I turned to Vance. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

  “There, uh, hasn’t been a good time.”

  “Bullshit.”

  “Just the idea of bringing someone in made you cranky. I knew you wouldn’t understand why I chose her until you saw Georgina’s track record.”

  I took a lungful of air and looked back at George. Georgina. Miss Keller. Whatever-the-fuck. “I can’t do this with her.”

  She frowned. God help me if she broke into tears again. But instead, she raised her chin and leveled me with a cool, “You can’t do it without me.”

  Justin rubbed his hands together, excitement radiating off him. “Well, this is a very interesting turn of events indeed.”

  3

  GEORGINA

  I hated being caught off guard in professional situations. Work was the one area I had it together thanks to a take-no-shit boss who’d gotten where she was by shattering glass ceilings for fun. But she was also a nurturing and supportive mentor to those she considered worth her time. She’d taught me how to girl-boss. How to take care of myself. And that I should never feel guilty about wanting more out of my career. She was why I could become someone else, someone like her, in order to walk into a crisis with my head on straight.

  And she was why I stood here now, in front of my new co-manager. My new, disarmingly handsome co-manager—and the glue that held together the team I was about to join. A commanding, charming man who’d needed to believe I was also a man just to accept the idea of me. And a man who’d seen me cry.

  Sebastian Quinn.

  I hoped he didn’t notice the slight tremble of my hands. He’d already witnessed perhaps the one thing a businesswoman couldn’t come back from—showing emotion. How the hell did I expect him to take me seriously if he thought I might burst into tears at any moment?

  From my hurried research on Modern Man, I’d red-flagged the magazine’s creative director as one of the staff’s biggest liabilities. I hadn’t realized that man was Sebastian. And now it occurred to me why he’d looked so familiar at the café—I’d seen his image on the Modern Man website, had glanced over it in the exposé while in deep research mode, and had spotted him in social sections of magazines that’d covered Modern Man’s events but had assumed he was an editorial model.

  I quickly filtered through what I’d learned in the short amount of time I’d had to look into him: owner of a high-end F
ifth Avenue apartment, involved in an accident that ended with a totaled foreign sports car, considered a “bad boy” of publishing for the unapologetically masculine magazine he’d built, and a notorious playboy who couldn’t be tied down and had left heartbroken actresses, socialites, and models in his wake.

  Unfortunately, as I’d already proven, I belonged to the part of the female population that went wobbly-legged and tongue-tied around men like him. George didn’t, though. As long as I could stay in character and see Sebastian for what he was—a colleague—I could do this. I had to, because I was a professional, and work came first.

  “Let’s introduce you to the rest of the staff,” Vance said, interrupting the uncomfortable silence that had permeated Sebastian’s corner office. “Come with me, Miss Keller.”

  Vance led us down a long hallway, past some conference rooms. From behind, Sebastian lowered his voice and said, “Is that a tank top?”

  “At least it’s dry.” I tugged up the neckline. At a souvenir shop between the café and office, I’d swapped my crisp button-down for a ribbed Yankees jersey that’d only been available in extra-small.

  “I’m not saying I don’t like it,” he continued. “But it’s a good thing you weren’t wearing it when I met you. I might’ve forgotten all about my morning meeting.”

  The back of my neck warmed. If there’d been any question that he’d been flirting earlier, here was my proof. He walked close behind me to keep our conversation private, and it reminded me of how he’d kneeled at my feet before we’d ever even made eye contact. Neal would’ve said my tank was too revealing for the office. Toward the end of our relationship, only an arched eyebrow over his coffee mug would’ve been enough to send me back into our bedroom to change.

  My ex was the last person I needed to be thinking about in that moment, yet less than an hour in Sebastian’s presence and I was second-guessing my outfit. And myself. I had to be careful. Dionne had sent me here for a reason. Modern Man needed a female touch. My past assignments had mainly consisted of publications for women by women, and Sebastian’s staff had gone unchecked too long.