in luck,” Jerome answered, his voice oozing sweetness and light. “She just got out of a meeting. If you hurry, you can catch her before she leaves for her ten o’clock. And I like Focaccio’s.”
“Great,” answered Rosie. “I’ll be right there. And we’ll set up a lunch at Furca—Forcha—whatever. Bye.” She quickly hung up the phone.
“You got an appointment with She Who Rules?” asked an elated Pam.
Rosie brushed a curl out of her eyes. “Yes. And in the too near future, I’m buying lunch for He Who Blackmails.”
“I knew that’d work with Jerome. But it’s a small price, girlfriend. Wish I wasn’t tied up with meetings the rest of the day—I’ll be dying to know how your Paige encounter went. Tonight, over dinner, you’ll have to spill all.”
“Deal.” Rosie stood, smoothing her hands over her skirt. “How do I look?”
“Take off those stockings in the ladies’ room. Otherwise, you look…like Mr. Real.” With a wink, Pam set down the dinosaur, which rattled a path across the desk, the pom-poms rising and falling.
ROSIE STOPPED at the women’s bathroom down the hallway from Paige Leighton’s office. Slipping inside, she scrambled out of her splattered leggings and started to stuff them into her skirt pocket, then changed her mind. She didn’t want to look as though had a lump on her thigh—not in the elegant Paige Leighton’s inner sanctum. Rosie tossed the hose behind the trash can to retrieve later. I really should carry a purse instead of relying on pockets.
She closed her eyes and told herself to relax, to breathe. Opening her eyes, she checked her reflection in the mirror. She had an eerie blueish glow, which she hoped was due to the fluorescent lights. Maybe her mother was right—maybe she should wear makeup.
Poking at the chaos of curls that framed her face, she scrutinized her overall presence. To combat the blue and the anxiousness in her eyes, it was time to adopt a goddess. I’ll stick with Artemis. Goddess of the Hunt, Artemis always aimed for her target, knowing her arrows unerringly reached their mark.
Like me, aiming to be Mr. Real.
She didn’t have to strain any brain cells to know they wanted a man in the job. After all, it would be false advertising if the “A Real Man Answers Real Questions” column was written by a woman. But an interim Mr. Real would be a coup—an opportunity for her to escape the gulch and prove she could write. Otherwise, she’d be stuck proofing and copyediting until her brown curls grew gray, her last dying moment spent crossing out an errant comma.
She checked her watch. Goddess time!
A few moments later, Rosie passed Jerome, who smiled slyly at her as she walked into Paige’s office. He’d always made her uncomfortable the way he eyeballed women. Worse, she’d soon have to sit across from those eyeballs at lunch. That Focha-whatever place would probably cost Rosie a month’s worth of her favorite nutri-quasi Twinkie bars.
Her footsteps slowed as she stepped onto the plush egg-white carpeting that cushioned the floor of the vast office. Paige, who could be a stand-in for Lauren Bacall, sat behind a metal-and-glass desk. Seeing Rosie, she pulled off her reading glasses and set them aside. Folding her hands in front of her, she smiled without crinkling her eyes. “Jerome told me you had something important to discuss. I have only a few minutes….”
A few? Rosie dove in. “The ‘A Real Man Answers Real Questions’ column is currently without a columnist.”
Paige blinked, then nodded, not one iota of emotion flickering across her powdered face. “And—?”
“I would like the…opportunity to be the interim columnist until you find another Mr. Real.” Her brother the salesman always said to hit hard and hit fast when you wanted something. Well, thanks to Artemis, she’d just done that. Rosie eased in a slow breath, waiting for Paige’s reaction.
“Rosie,” Paige began, elongating the O in Rosie. “Didn’t you have several previous ‘opportunities’?” One shapely eyebrow raised slightly, emphasizing the question in her voice.
“Uh, yes.” Ugh. So even Paige Leighton, the managing editor high priestess, had heard about those first two writing assignments that Rosie had mangled.
“I seem to recall,” Paige continued, “that Sophia Weston needed an article on ‘Women Who Need to Please’ and you wrote about…”
Rosie cringed inwardly. Persephone, the goddess of the underworld who expresses a woman’s tendency toward passivity and a need to please. Rosie had thought, at the time, she was being brilliant. But Sophia Weston, senior features editor, was so irked, Rosie worried for two solid days that she would be the next goddess of the underworld for her rampant creativity. Rosie forced a smile. “I misinterpreted Ms. Weston’s guidelines.”
Paige tapped one pink-polished nail against the glass desk. “And I believe there was another incident?”
Incident? When had writing assignments become incidents? “Well, yes, there was a second, small writing assignment. Very small.” She debated whether to call it infinitesimal, but decided that might be pushing it. “Ad copy.”
“Bridal ad, I believe.”
Sheesh. Paige might be old enough to have dated Humphrey Bogart, but she had a young memory. What did she do? Binge on ginkgo biloba? “Yes,” Rosie admitted. “It was a bridal ad.”
“One of our best advertisers, as I recall. Seemed they found a rather…unsightly typo?”
“Hera,” Rosie admitted. She might as well hit hard and hit fast with the truth, too, and put a stop to this trip down memory lane. “I changed ‘Her beauty’ to ‘Hera beauty.”’
“Right. Hera beauty. I remember now.” Paige leaned forward, her gray-blue eyes nearly matching her mauve earrings. “How did that happen?”
Double ugh. Now she had to explain the “Hera Incident.” “I thought it would…enhance the ad to use the name Hera, the goddess of marriage.” And, oh boy, did she enhance it. Only because the head of sales had pacified the irate customer by offering free ad space for six months was Rosie able to keep her job.
“Oh-h-h.”
Rosie wondered if Paige always elongated her O’s.
Paige tapped her fingernail again. “You seem to have a thing for goddesses.”
If Rosie admitted that at this very moment she was Artemis, she could kiss off being Mr. Real. Instead, she offered a half smile, not wanting to explain how she had to be a goddess to survive her four brothers’ antics.
“Mr. Real isn’t a goddess,” Paige said drolly.
“No, he’s not.” But he’d make a great Athena.
“And this is a job for a seasoned writer. Which you’re not. And for someone with a good track record. Which you don’t have.”
Think Artemis. Be strong. “I am a seasoned writer,” Rosie began, hoping Paige Leighton didn’t hear the quaver in her voice. “I worked for two years on the high school newspaper, the last year as its editor. After that, I graduated from college with a degree in journalism. I worked on the
