People who are happily single are that way because they're happily independent. But everyone has to know their own limitations and when to staff things out. By surrounding yourself with people you can trust, life will be immeasurably easier.
—from 707 Ways to Cheat at Solitaire
" Wow, darling, relax. We're on this. It's taken care of," Candon Jeffries soothed, but Julia didn't sit. She paced IM the conference room and ignored its palatial views. The Manhattan skyline had never held so little appeal to her. All she could think was that Lance Collins was out there somewhere, loose in the city. He had used her like a scratch-off lottery ticket, trading her in for fifteen minutes of fame, and Julia wanted to make sure he wouldn't get a minute more.
"Come on," her editor went on. "Sit down. Drink some tea. Relax."
"Relax!" she yelled in a voice so high that she was lucky the windows didn't shatter and fall thirty-six floors to the street below. "I'm supposed to relax? My face is plastered across every sleazy rag in the country, with me looking like the world's biggest hypocrite! I can't believe you'd offer me tea. Do I look like I need caffeine? Plus"—Julia softened, sank into a seat at the table, and felt tears rush to the surface—"it's a really bad picture. I've got this whole"—she motioned to the makings of a double chin—"thing going on. "I look like a hypocrite. A fat hypocrite with a shopping disorder."
Candon slid into the seat beside her, saying, "I think it's a wonderful picture."
"Where's Harvey?" Julia asked abruptly. She picked up her cell phone and held it toward the windows as if there, in the middle of Manhattan, she might not have a signal. "Has Harvey called you?"
"I'm sure he'll call."
"I want my credibility back, Candon. I want it back, and I want it back now."
"We don't know it's been damaged. Let's look at the numbers and see."
"I don't care what the numbers say." She stood and slammed the newspaper, photo up, onto the table in front of him. "A picture's worth a thousand words."
***
Lance's eyes were starting to adjust to the dark shades that he didn't dare take off. He'd passed no fewer than ten newsstands, each one overflowing with pictures of him and a woman he barely knew. After the third person congratulated him on "getting some of that," he'd darted into a market and bought cheap sunglasses and a NY baseball cap. But even in the elevator alone, Lance couldn't remove his disguise. He didn't like the person he'd become overnight. That morning, his grin was on every newsstand in America, but Lance didn't feel like smiling.
The elevator doors opened to reveal the usual purgatory outside the office of Poindexter-Stone. Eager actors lined the walls, so Lance pulled the cap lower and turned up the collar of his jacket and tried to bolt toward the door, hoping to fly by so quickly that none of his compatriots could aim and fire. He wasn't ten feet away from the elevator when he heard the first whoop.
"There he is, the man of the hour."
"Way to go, Lance!"
"Don't forget the little people, man."
"Does she have a friend?"
Lance should have had a smile and a comeback for each bit of locker-room banter, but all he could think of was reaching the door and strangling Richard Stone. He hurled himself into the office, slammed the door, and pressed his back against it as if trying to stem the tide of "atta boy" that flowed from the other side.
Tammy must have called in sick, or quit, because she wasn't there. If not for the calendar on the wall, Lance might have sworn it had been twenty years since he'd last set foot in that room. Everything looked a little bit different and a little bit the same, especially the woman who was on the phone, reading Tammy's magazine, looking exactly like the receptionist's future self. Unlike Tammy, this woman bolted to her feet at the sight of Lance, sliding her office chair back so quickly that it rolled into the table behind her and knocked over a stack of foam cups and left a pot of thick coffee sloshing like toxic sludge.
"Oh!" she stuttered. "It's you!"
Lance quickly glanced at her left hand. No ring. This woman was single and, he guessed, a Julia James disciple. How, he wondered, were women taking the news that their crown princess was off the market, thanks to him?
He eased toward the woman and took his cap off, for politeness' sake. The sunglasses, however, he kept on. "Is Richard here?" he asked, not quite recognizing his own voice, as if he'd somehow put a disguise on that, too.
"Where is he? Where's my golden boy?" Richard Stone virtually leapt into view like a Broadway extra—the only thing missing was the jazz hands. "Come here, you beautiful boy. Is this kid photogenic or what?" He pulled a tall stack of newspapers from her desk, and holding one toward Future Tammy, he asked, "I mean, can this kid take a picture? Look at those teeth. What do we have here—braces, caps?" He stepped toward Lance and tried to look in his mouth like a trainer inspecting a Thoroughbred.
"I need to talk to you," Lance said, slapping Richard's hands away.
"Great," Richard said, oblivious to the tension in Lance's voice. "Gotta strike while the iron is hot. Glad to see you get it." He stepped toward the filing cabinets and the hallway behind them. "Babe," he said to Future Tammy. "Hold my calls."
Richard Stone's office was surprisingly clean. If it had been two days earlier, Lance would have taken that as a sign of professionalism, and he would have ignored the mayhem of the hall and the lobby. He would have convinced himself that his career was going somewhere. But in the last twenty-four hours, he had developed the perspective he needed to see Richard and his office for what they really were—sparse and empty.
"Take a load off." Richard walked behind an enormous desk and sat down. But Lance didn't take the seat in front of him. He didn't move at all.
"Your legs broke?" Richard asked, impatience creeping into his voice. "Sit."
Lance stayed standing. "Whatever you started yesterday, you need to find a way to stop it."