her light gray eyes expressed shock. Totally lost in her deadline story, she had also lost track of time and everything else. Since she had less than an hour to get her assignment in, she really had to step it up. This was a very important feature she couldn’t dare to fudge on, not that she ever would. Laylah was a very conscientious reporter.
Ashley Roberson, a seven-year-old child, had been missing for over a week now. Thus far, not one clue had turned up. Byron Gates, the lead detective, had told Laylah he’d rarely worked on a case where there wasn’t at least something to go on. “Nothing about this story makes any sense to me,” he’d said at the end of the interview.
Ashley allegedly had been abducted from her own bedroom in the wee hours of the morning. The timing was just speculation on Renee Matthews’s part, since the single mother hadn’t discovered the child missing until 7:00 a.m., when she’d gone to the child’s bedroom to get her ready for the summer day-care program. Then Renee had dialed 911.
This sad and interesting story had intrigued her from the onset. Laylah always took great pride in her job at L.A. Press—she was known for writing her features in painstaking detail and with loads of passion. Once she was given an assignment, she went right to work on it, lending it her undivided attention until it was in actual print. Numerous awards had already been bestowed upon her for excellence in journalism and for her strong commitment to community service.
Laylah also penned various articles for several nationwide magazines; she positively lived and breathed her craft. The “All Around Town” column she wrote was a favorite to many.
“Laylah,” Joe Angleton called out from across the room, “March needs to see you in his office right away.” Joe chuckled lowly, knowing how their personalities clashed. Sparks flew whenever they were in the same room.
March Riverton was the boss, yet he wasn’t nearly as knowledgeable about running the newspaper office as Laylah. Not only did she know her job inside and out, she was able to execute everyone else’s duties with relative ease, including March’s.
“Ugh!” Laylah had no desire to butt heads with her boss yet again, especially not when she had more important things to take care of. March always seemed to know when she was a bit behind on her assignments, never failing to call her into his office at the most crucial, inopportune times. Most of what he’d call her in for was pure nonsense.
If anyone would ask Laylah why March was so hard on her, she’d be inclined to tell them she believed he had a romantic interest in her. While he was a very attractive man—tall, slim and velvety dark—she wasn’t the least bit attracted to him. In her opinion, no chemistry whatsoever existed between them. His sense of humor was about as dry as a bale of hay—and his cockiness was anything but a turn-on for her.
March had once been employed as a senior editor for a San Francisco–based newspaper. Shortly after he’d landed the heralded position of editor in chief with L.A. Press, he’d made his intentions toward Laylah known. When his initial flirtatious hints had gone totally ignored by her, it seemed to her that he’d made a conscious decision to annoy her instead of continuing to try to charm his way into her heart.
The entire staff thought he was a serious pain in the rear. Well, she thought, there is one exception. Amelia Markham thought March was the cat’s meow, the light in lightning. She was often horrible to Laylah because she also knew March had a romantic jones for Laylah.
The intercom line on Laylah’s desk phone suddenly buzzed, signaling an internal call. “Yes, March.” Intuitively, she had known it was him calling to personally make his demands known. He loved to rub her the wrong way, as often as possible.
“Did Joe not give you my message?” March inquired in a sarcastic tone.
“You know he did. Can you give me a few more minutes to wrap things up?”
“Right now works best for me, Miss Versailles. Step on it.” He had spoken in a tone that wouldn’t have brooked an argument from anyone other than her.
Laylah all but slammed down the receiver. Before closing the software program she was working in, she saved her last entries. Since she hoped to get right back to the job at hand, she didn’t bother to turn off her computer.
She looked youthful and fresh, dressed in white denim jeans and a cute red and white polka-dot sleeveless blouse that fit her slightly curvaceous figure to a T. After getting to her feet, she smoothed her hands down the thighs of her jeans, as if she thought the gesture would press out the slight wrinkles caused by sitting.
As she passed by Joe’s desk, she rolled her eyes to the back of her head to show him just how annoyed she was with March’s untimely disruption. Her co-worker was a great guy, sweet as he could be, and they had a great relationship.
Thirty-seven-year-old Joe stood just shy of six feet tall, possessing one of those hard bodies most men worked doubly hard to achieve. Fair complected, with bourbon-colored eyes, he was a dazzling light that brightened up everyone’s day. He wasn’t without a mischievous streak, but Joe was as harmless as a newborn baby.
As Joe was a very spiritual man, numerous staff members sought him out when they were down on their luck. He was always good for an uplifting word of prayer and also a guiding hand. He was the type of man who’d help anyone in need, the type who never met any strangers.
Without bothering to knock on the door, Laylah entered March’s office. Seeing his feet propped up on the desk only annoyed her more, causing a bit of red to infuse her rich, honey-brown complexion. He is such an arrogant, macho-male animal. Nodding in his direction, Laylah took the chair in front of the large desk.
“Good morning to you, too,” he snapped in a gruff tone. “How are the plans coming for Patricia Blakeley’s retirement dinner?”
No, he didn’t call me in here for that! Laylah seethed inwardly. As mad as she was with March, her expression belied how truly upset she was over his insensitivity toward her situation. She was only behind on her deadline because of all the other assignments he’d piled up on her. Many of them were his own. “Everything to do with the retirement party I turned over to Constance Waller, so you’ll have to ask her.”
“Excuse me? When I give you an assignment, it’s inappropriate for you to delegate it. Therefore, you need to get the information I’m after. STAT.”
As Laylah got to her feet, she held her temper in check. “As you wish, sir.” Knowing March hated it whenever she went formal on him, she celebrated inwardly at the frustrated look on his face.
March snorted. “I expect you to report back to me within the next half hour.”
Tired of constantly going toe-to-toe with March, Laylah had begun to seriously consider the generous job offer she’d recently received from L.A. Press’s top rivaling newspaper, the California Herald. The salary they’d offered her was off the chain. The only major drawback was the commute. She lived only a short distance away from where she currently worked and the California Herald was much farther.
Besides the long commute, Laylah had her eye trained on March’s job. As sure as she was breathing, she didn’t expect him to make it much longer in his current position at L.A. Press. He just didn’t have what it took to run a newspaper this size. There were too many serious complaints about his lack of ability. Several had reached corporate level.
She immediately went to Constance’s office, hoping she had the information March needed so she could get back to work. Since when did a retirement party become more important than a feature story, especially
