Stilettos & Scoundrels (3 page)

My
lofty visions of being the first female CEO of McLaughlin Industries
had started to fade a while ago. I
kept at it because it was still a lucrative job and
because I didn’t know what else to do. I
worked countless hours and put up with abuse from top management, mostly
David, thinking it would get me
to the next level
—and
for what? Frankly,
I
had focused
on the same goal for so long I
w
asn’t sure how to change it; I was stuck in a rut. I
ke
pt working hard, the way I
had been raised to
do, t
hinking it was the right thing to do. Now it was changed for
me,
and surprisingly, it felt like a weight
had been
lifted
. Even if it was still truly my
dream to be a top executive, I
wasn’t going to sleep with anyone to get ahead.
Not
if it meant sleeping with David Ritter, the current CEO
. I
did have standards. Now if David Ritter looked like Brad Pitt, well, then things might have been different. That wouldn’t have been such a hardship
—more of
a win-win situation. People always complained about women who used sex to get ahead,
but my
motto was
Use what you got.
Sort of.

Unemployed or not, I was lucky. I
wasn’t completely without options. One of
my
friends sold Mary Kay and had been afte
r me
for months to become a representative. She was trying to meet a quota to earn a car and kept telling
me
how easy it was to get women to buy things to make them look better.
Another
friend of mine
was a restaurant manager and would probably t
ake pity on me and give me
a job, even t
hough he knew perfectly well I
was a klutz and
that having me
as a server would lose him more customers than
he’d
gain.
While
both
were
interesting proposition
s, somehow I couldn’t really see my
self aspiring to drive a pink
Cadillac or wait tables
.

What I
really h
ad a passion for, ever since I
was a freckled little girl, was writing. This was prior to wanting to be a ball
-
busting CEO.
I received my
first diary
as
a present,
on my twelfth birthday
and found great enjoyment in filling up those creamy white pages with scribble
—insignificant
to anyone but
me. I
wrote every day after school for years
,
cherishing my diary, filling it with my
private
thoughts, and later, stories I lost my
self in. It was the one place
I ever felt I
could truly
be honest. As the only girl, I
had grown up with a wild and vivi
d imagination. At age eight, I
thought
the Incredible Hulk lived in my
closet and was there to protect
me. At age fourteen, I
was convinced I
would be the next great American novelist or at least
a great romance writer. Sneaking my
mom’s Danielle Steele books and, later, Jackie Collins, taught
me
a lot
—
even
if I
didn’t understand
a lot of what was in those books then or now
.
That c
ould be why
my last boyfriend told me that my
expectations were too high and
that
life was not a romance novel.
Screw him
I
thought,
he should have been better in bed.
I
desired the romance-novel scenes.

Being a writer or working at Kentucky Fried Chicken
(as that was my
favorite restaurant as a little kid
) were my
goals
as
a young
girl
. In light of recent events, maybe Kentucky Fried Chicken wouldn’t have been that bad. At least there, you probably got free food and
I
couldn’t see the manager wanting sexual favors
—
who would want to work there
so
bad
that they’d do sexual favors?

I
still wrote a lot as an adult, but had neve
r been brave enough to share my
writing with anyon
e else. It was too personal. I
was always too afra
id. That’s why I
was completely shocked last week when, at
happy hour at Muldoon’s Pub, my
friend, Trevor Jameson, who just happened to be the editor of a new online magazine called
Our World
, offered me
a job to write a column for the human profile section of his magazine. Each month the magazine did a story on someone, as he put it,
“
of interest.
”
Personally,
I
described it as a piece on someone in the headlines that would attract readers. Even though
Our World
was supposed to be a serious magazine, people liked sensationalism. That’s what
helped
attract readers. Of course, I
would never say that
to Trevor; after all, he was my friend. Trevor told me
that the column’s writer told him she
wasn’t coming back from maternity leave
,
and he needed someone right away. At the time,
I
la
ughed it off, telling Trevor I
wasn’t possibly qualified to write, and the column didn’t pay enough to
allow me to quit my
day jo
b, although secretly inside, I
was just dying to take advantage of the opportu
nity, if only I
didn’t have such a
bad shopping habit that kept my
credit cards maxed out.
Was that why I
snapped today? Since last week, all
I
had been thinking about was Trevor’s offer and how frustrated
I
was
that I couldn’t take it. I
became increasingly unhappy at work and less tolerant
, spending more time trying to figure out what I
really wanted out of life. Granted, Trevor’s was a small magazine, but it was something. Maybe being fired was a sign. M
aybe the forces were telling me I
should take this opportunity
. M
aybe this was
my
fate
, t
o be a sta
rving writer sacrificing for my
craft because
I could handle
starving
?
Let’s do this,
I
thought. Excited
ly
,
and before I
could fully realize the consequences of
my
actions,
I
dialed T
revor’s number at work. Then I panicked a little. What was I thinking? I
was just about to hang up when he answered.

“This is Trevor.”

Shit,
I thought, I
couldn’t hang up now. What if he had caller I.D. at the office?

“Hello?” he said again.

“Hey, Trevor. It’s Presley.”

“Hey, girl! What’s up? Did you call to meet for lunch, because if so I am swamped today and don’t think I can swing it. I think I am f
ree tomorrow. Let me check.” I
heard him rustling papers in his desk.

“No, actually, that’s not why I called. Remember last week at Muldoon’s when you mentioned the job opening you had for your human-interest column? Well, I wanted to see if that was still open.”

There was a brief pause on the other end and all of a sudden bad thoughts start
ed running through my
head. What if he only offered
me
the job
because he
th
ought I
would never do it?
M
aybe it had been the martinis talking; Trevor was a bit of a lightweight. What if he regretted saying it altogether and had been thankfu
l that I had turned it down? I
w
as just about to try to back my
way out of
the call and pretend I was kidding so I
didn’t feel like an idiot,
when
Trevor finally responded.

“Presley, I think that’s great. But what changed your mind? You seemed so sure you didn’t want to do this because you know I can hardly pay anything for this position.”

“It’s not that I didn’t want to, I just didn’t think I
could
afford to
,
but all that’s changed. I was fired. So my day job is no longer an obstacle and some mone
y is better than none,” I
said, trying to sound cheerful, although honestly it was
n’t taking much effort since I
real
ly wasn’t bothered by losing my
job, just
bothered about
being unemployed with no money.
M
aybe
,
if
I
were lucky, that would soon be changing to
employed with no money
.

“Good for you, Pres! You said you hated that job anyway. Well, let me fill you in on the details.”

******

I
got off the phone
so
ela
ted, I
wante
d to do cartwheels. This was my
chance
, my
big break to be a writer
. E
ven if it was for a small online magazine, it was a start. The story was to be about Senator Tom Daniels, an up-and-comer in the political arena who many felt should run for president in the next election. Coincide
ntly, he happened to be from my
ho
metown, Alkon, Illinois. I
didn’t particularly like Senator Daniels; or rather,
it was his view on politics I didn’t like. Who was I kidding? I
really didn’t care much about
politics one way or another. I
just tried to fake it i
n certain social settings so I
wouldn’t seem so shallow, which Trevor knew
,
so
he must have been desperate
to ask me
. However,
what I
had heard about Senator Daniels, both in the paper a
nd from my
parents, wasn’t always favorable. There was suspicion
that
he cheated on his wife and one instance of being accused of taking bribes. Nothing had ever been proven in either of these instances
,
but it still hung over his head. However, for a politician this type of stuff was normal
,
so it faded away quickly.

When Trevor first offered this writing job to
me
,
I
was excited and accepted the assignment without hesitation.
When I had
ten minutes
to think about it, I wondered what I
had be
en thinking. I
wasn’t a writer,
and I certainly wasn’t a
political
writer
.
Arg!
I
was much more of a
People
or
OK
magazine gal. Sometimes I
should really think about things be
fore committing to them. I
tended to leap into things without think
ing them through. My
motto was always
“
I’ll figure it out later
”
or
“I
t’ll work out in the end,
”
whichever best applied to the
situation. In addition, when I
got excited about something
, I
tended to not think objectively
,
which wasn’t always a smart thing.

I
stood looking at
the antique gilded mirror in my foyer, as if it would tell me
something, hoping for some kind of confirmation
—
confirmation
that I
wasn’t completely crazy and
that
thi
s job wasn’t completely over my
head. Luckily, there was no answer back or that might confirm
that I was truly
crazy. Just the reflection of a
n
average height, red
-
haired, hazel
-
eyed, thirty
three
year
old, in a killer outfit, who was currently unemployed.
What the hell.
I had savings I
could live off for a month or two
, if I really sucked at this. If I limited my
self to one box of macaroni
and cheese a day and gave up my
gym membership
(not a great sacrifice), I
might even make it three months. Tur
ning sideways in the mirror, I stuck out my
t
ongue at the reflection. I
could stand to lose a few pounds, so maybe cutting back to one meal a day woul
d have multiple benefits. As I stood there criticizing my
reflection, the phone rang.