How to Sleep with a Movie Star (3 page)

“Do what?” I asked, my eyes following the self-conscious Marla, then settling back on Jeffrey. I tried to stop imagining the diamond ring that Tom might be picking out at this very moment. Princess cut? Channel set? One carat, or two?

“Torture those poor young girls,” Jeffrey answered, placing a hand on my cubicle wall and leaning forward, apparently oblivious to the admittedly unrealistic visions of Tiffany rings dancing through my head. “They all come to
Mod
with big dreams of being fashion editors and leave thinking they have to weigh ninety pounds and be six feet tall to succeed.”

“I know,” I said with a sigh. But at
Mod,
they actually
did
have to weigh ninety pounds to make it under Sidra. So poor Marla was completely correct. I wondered if she knew about the last-season designer rule (“Those who recycle last season’s fashions aren’t worthy to walk the streets of New York,” Sidra had once sniffed). Or how to hold her nose to mimic Sidra’s nasal tone.

“They’re getting worse,” Jeffrey said in a stage whisper. “You should see the way Sidra talks to her. And the others, Sally and Samantha. They’re just like Sidra. Something’s up with them, girl.”

“Something’s up?” I repeated skeptically. Jeffrey tended to go just a bit overboard sometimes.

“I don’t know what it is, but something’s not right in their little designer world,” Jeffrey said. He leaned forward again and grinned mischievously. “Maybe Sidra finally realized that all the collagen, chemical peels, and silicone in Manhattan can’t make her look twenty-five anymore.” I laughed.

“About time she realized,” I muttered. It had been a long time since Sidra had looked twenty-five, but I had a feeling she didn’t know that.

“You know that’s why you piss her off so much, don’t you?” Jeffrey asked, an eyebrow arched. He grinned at me. “You’re everything she wants to be. She’s just fifteen years too late.”

I laughed and shook my head.

“Nah,” I said. “She just hates me because I’m beautiful.” I winked.

Jeffrey laughed—a little too heartily, I might add—then wrinkled his brow in concern and looked somberly at me.

“Really, doll, I’d watch your back,” he said, suddenly dead serious. “With the executive editor position opening up, she’s getting antsy and is bound to start backstabbing anyone she feels threatened by.”

I stared at Jeffrey for a moment, sure I had heard him wrong.

“What?” I asked. “The executive editor position?”

“You haven’t heard?” Jeffrey asked, his eyes sparkling again. He loved being the one to deliver gossip. “Donna Foley just announced that she’s retiring on August fifteenth. The word is that Smith-Baker has decided to let Margaret hand-pick a successor in-house.”

I felt my eyebrows shoot up in surprise. More often than not, magazines hired from the outside to fill major vacated positions. Then again, most magazines didn’t have a woman like Margaret, with virtually no editorial skills, at the helm. I suppose that put
Mod
into a different category altogether. It was no wonder we were still struggling at sub-
Cosmo
circulation levels.

“Apparently, Margaret has said she’s narrowed it down to two people,” Jeffrey said, flicking his eyes around again and arching an eyebrow. “It’s between Maite and Sidra, and they have the summer to prove themselves to her before she makes a final decision.”

I stared at him for a moment, speechless.

“Sidra?” I finally asked, my voice hoarse. It made no sense. Maite Taveras was our managing editor. She’d been in the business for twenty years and was infinitely more qualified for the position. Granted, Sidra had been working in magazines for over a decade, but her experience was all on the fashion side. I wasn’t entirely sure she was capable of stringing together an entire sentence that didn’t include a condescending fashion reference.

I could just see it now. She’d probably require all
Mod
staffers to get breast implants and liposuction so that we’d weigh in at under a hundred pounds and match her two protégées in the fashion department. I resisted the urge to cast a suspicious gaze down at my own less-than-generous, decidedly A-cup bosom. Then again, I’d probably be out on the street, anyhow. My five-foot frame wouldn’t fit with Sidra’s supermodel ideal.

On top of that, of course, was Sidra’s one-sided feud with me. I was no stranger to people snubbing me out of professional jealousy. It came with the territory of being the youngest senior editor in the competitive and often catty world of women’s magazines. But Sidra took it to the extreme. She and the other Triplets were always snickering at my fashion choices, and Sidra had even been quoted on Page Six once saying that a “certain extremely young celebrity editor” at a “certain women’s magazine” had a habit of coming into work “drunk as a skunk.” I’d confronted her, of course, and she had innocently batted her eyes at me and claimed that she
obviously
wasn’t talking about me.

“Sidra,” Jeffrey confirmed with an astonished nod, bringing me back to the present. “I know. I couldn’t believe it either. But apparently Margaret is thinking about taking
Mod
in a more fashion-oriented direction. You know, more
Vogue
-ish. It’s her latest plan to compete with
Cosmo.
”

“Unbelievable,” I muttered.

“And can you imagine?” Jeffrey continued, leaning in closer. “Can you just imagine how drunk with power Sidra would be? She would basically be running the whole magazine. It would be a complete nightmare.”

“I guess it would be,” I murmured, suddenly feeling very uneasy about my job.

“Stranger things have happened,” he said. “Get ready for some catfights, doll. Sidra can be vicious when she’s after something she really wants.”

*

I finished the one-night-stand piece by 4 p.m., and to be honest, I was pretty proud of it. Not proud of its content, of course—how could I be?—but proud that I’d managed to make it coherent and that I’d managed to come up with a list of ten reasons why one-night stands were actually a pretty good idea. (Hey, you actually got laid in a one-night stand, right? More than I could say for the current state of my relationship.) Wendy, the die-hard food aficionado, had insisted upon including reason number nine: “Because it’s a good excuse to order breakfast in.” (Mangia, the favorite gourmet breakfast delivery restaurant in Manhattan, probably had
her
number on speed-dial. It was only a matter of time before she ran out of Manhattan waiters and had to switch to Mangia’s delivery boys.)

My personal favorite was reason number three: “Because you might really hit it off with the guy and begin to develop a relationship.” (Wendy snorted, stifled a laugh, and said something about me living in Never-Neverland.) We’d both agreed that reason number ten was a good kicker: “Because we all know that getting laid feels pretty damned good.” (Well, I had foggy memories of it feeling good, anyhow. And Wendy helpfully vouched for the statement’s veracity.)

I didn’t exactly feel good about myself for writing several pages in support of sleeping around, but the article could have been worse in someone else’s hands. Heck, who was I kidding? Maybe I should have taken a stand and refused to do it on moral grounds. But I had better battles to fight.

Or more accurately, better battles to avoid, which seemed to be my latest combat plan.

Besides, our readers were going to go out and have sex whether I told them to or not. Hooray for them. Maybe I should write Tom an article: “Ten Reasons You Should Have Sex with Your Girlfriend Who Sleeps Beside You Every Night.”

I knocked lightly on Margaret’s door, which was ajar, and let myself into her office.

“Here it is,” I announced grandly, plunking a printed-out, pared-down final draft of the article on her desk. She looked up, surprised, her over-tweaked dark brows arching upward. She lifted a corner of the draft with two perfectly manicured fingernails, looked at it from over the top of her perfect diamond-studded glasses, and reached up to brush a speck of invisible lint from the collar of her perfect Chloe shirt.

“Claire, darling,” she said with that sappy formality and hint of a British accent she’d somehow adopted after a recent trip to Paris. She’d forgotten, apparently, that we all knew she was born and raised in Ohio. “I must have forgotten to tell you,” she said.

“Forgotten to tell me what?” I asked suspiciously. I held my breath as she did what appeared to be a little pirouette behind her desk. Rarely a meeting went by when she didn’t remind the
Mod
staff that her mother, Anabella, had been a prima ballerina. Those of us who valued our jobs refrained from adding that Anabella had peaked with the Dayton City Ballet. Nothing to be ashamed of, but it wasn’t like she had performed arabesques and pliés around the world with Baryshnikov.

“I won’t be needing this for August after all,” she said casually, finishing her ballerina turn. My jaw dropped as I contemplated two lost and wasted days of my life. “We’ll use it for September, of course, darling. I’m sure it’s a great piece.” She took the article from me and tossed it into a stack of papers on the corner of her immense desk.

“Um, okay,” I said, my eyes following the article to her slush pile and returning to rest uneasily on her.

“But not to worry,” she said brightly. “We’ll be using the space for a feature on Cole Brannon.”

I looked at her in confusion.

“But I haven’t done a story on Cole Brannon,” I said blankly. He was the hottest young actor in Hollywood at the moment, and had been for the past few months. He had shared the screen with Julia Roberts, Reese Witherspoon, and Gwyneth Paltrow in the last year, and his movies drew millions of excited women—many of them
Mod
readers—like moths to the light. His tall, muscular frame, eternally tousled brown hair, and sparkling blue eyes had launched many a fantasy.

On top of that, he seemed to have quite the social life, too. He was always being linked in the tabloids—not that you could always believe them—to various A-list actresses. And a certain blond pop princess had been overheard by a Page Six reporter telling a friend over lunch how spectacular he was in bed. Accordingly,
People
magazine had just named him their Most Eligible Bachelor for the year.

Margaret had never even suggested an interview with him. And most of our celeb stories were about women. It was an unwritten rule among the Seven Sisters of women’s magazine publishing. Women wanted to read about women.

Although I supposed that any woman with a pulse would want to read about the delicious Cole Brannon too.

“Of course you haven’t done a story on him . . . yet,” Margaret said. “But his publicist has just agreed to let us speak with him, if we put him on the cover of the August issue.”

I tilted my head to the side and squinted at her.

“Just think,” Margaret said, gazing into space, already off in dreamland. “This could be the major story that helps us pass
Cosmo
. I can see it now. ‘
Mod
Magazine’s Exclusive Interview with Hollywood’s Most Eligible Bachelor, Cole Brannon!’ The August issue will fly off the newsstands!”

Margaret’s eyes were sparkling, and her collagen-injected lips were twisted into a bizarre smile.

“But we’re closing the August issue tonight,” I said blankly. That meant all the edits and editorial had to be in.

“But it doesn’t ship until Monday morning, darling,” Margaret said, smiling and ignoring my worried expression. “And your interview with Cole Brannon has been scheduled for tomorrow morning. That gives you two days.”

“Tomorrow morning?” I squeaked. Margaret smiled thinly.

“Yes,
tomorrow morning,
” Margaret mimicked me. “That will give you two whole days to get it in. I’m sure you’ll be able to, darling. After all, I don’t want to find out that my decision to make you the youngest senior editor in the business was a mistake. . . .”

Her voice trailed off and she looked at me meaningfully. I knew it was a threat. I didn’t even bother to pretend I wasn’t rolling my eyes.

“Anyhow, I trust you to get all the details right, so I won’t be calling the research department in over the weekend,” Margaret said casually. “You’ve never gotten a detail wrong before.”

It was true. My coworkers teased me, but I was so neurotic that I had to quadruple-check every quote, every detail, every line of text. I had never gotten even a minuscule detail wrong in my entire career, a fact I was immensely proud of.

“And besides, did you know we have to pay the researchers overtime if we call them in over the weekend?” Margaret added, sounding astonished. “It cuts into our bottom line.”

She looked momentarily perturbed. She was such a cheapskate.

“So I’m going to have Sidra DeSimon look it over instead,” Margaret continued breezily. “This will be a good chance for her to try her hand at editing.”

I could feel my jaw fall.

“Sidra?” I squeaked, suddenly finding it somewhat difficult to breathe. Margaret ignored me.

“Lots of women would love to be in your shoes, Claire,” she said brusquely. “After all, Cole Brannon is the most eligible bachelor in Hollywood at the moment.”

Which would probably translate into him being my dullest and most egotistical interview of the year so far. The glow of celebrity had long since worn off for me. I ignored Margaret’s smile, which was clearly an attempt to soften me up and convince me that we were indeed comrades.