Mr. Perfect Read online

  “Let me get back to you,” she said. “I’m already booked for the next two and a half years.”

  “Figures,” he said, and winked.

  She was so early that the puke-green hallway was empty. She was not so early, however, that some of the nerds weren’t ahead of her. She paused to read the new elevator sign: REMEMBER: FIRST YOU PILLAGE, THEN YOU BURN. THOSE WHO DO NOT COMPLY WILL BE SUSPENDED FROM THE RAIDING TEAM.

  There, she felt better; a day without an elevator sign was a terrible thing to endure.

  She was in her office before she realized the reporters and guard hadn’t upset her. They weren’t important. Her battle with Sam was far more interesting, especially since they both knew where it was heading. She had never had an affair before, but she figured the one she would have with Sam would singe the sheets. Not that she intended to be too easy for him; he was going to have to fight to get her, even after she was on birth control pills. It was the principle of the thing.

  Besides, frustrating him would be fun.

  Gina Landretti came into work early, too. “Oh, good,” she said, her eyes lighting when she saw Jaine at her desk. “I need to talk to you, and I hoped you would be in early so we wouldn’t have an audience.”

  Jaine gave an internal groan. She could see what was coming from a mile away.

  “Pam called me last night,” she began. “You know, my sister. Anyway, she’s been trying to get in touch with you, and guess what? She wants to book you on the show! Good Morning America! Isn’t that exciting? Well, all four of you, of course, but I told her you were probably the spokesperson.”

  “Ah … I don’t think we have a spokesperson,” Jaine said, a little nonplused by Gina’s assumption.

  “Oh. Well, if you did, you would be it. The spokesperson.”

  Gina seemed so proud that Jaine cast about for a diplomatic way of saying, “No way.”

  “I didn’t know your sister was a program booker.”

  “Oh, she isn’t, but she spoke to the booker and she’s very interested, too. This would be a feather in Pam’s cap,” Gina confided. “The word is out the other networks will probably contact you today, so Pam wanted to get the jump on them. This could really help her career.”

  Meaning that if she, Jaine, didn’t cooperate, any setbacks in Gina’s sister’s career would be laid directly on her doorstep.

  “There might be a problem,” Jaine said, looking as contrite as possible. “T.J.’s husband isn’t happy with all this publicity—”

  Gina shrugged. “So only three of you go on the show. Actually, it would probably be just fine if you were the only one—”

  “Luna’s much prettier—”

  “Well, yeah, but she’s so young. She doesn’t have your authority.”

  Great. Now Jaine had “authority.”

  She tried to use some of that authority and infuse her tone with firmness. “I don’t know. I don’t like all this publicity, either. I’d rather the whole thing just faded away.”

  Gina looked at her in horror. “You can’t mean that! Don’t you want to be rich and famous?”

  “Rich, I wouldn’t mind. Famous, no. And I don’t see how going on Good Morning America would make me rich.”

  “You could get a book deal out of this! One of those multimillion-dollar advances, you know, like those women who wrote the book about rules.”

  “Gina!” Jaine half-shouted. “Reality check here! How could the List be a book, unless the preferred size of a man’s penis is discussed for three hundred pages?”

  “Three hundred?” Gina looked dubious. “I think a hundred and fifty would be plenty.”

  Jaine looked around for something against which to bang her head.

  “Please, please say you’ll say yes to Pam,” Gina pleaded, folding her hands together in the classic supplicant pose.

  In a flash of inspiration, Jaine said, “I’ll have to talk to the other three. It’ll be a group deal, or nothing at all.”

  “But you said T.J.—”

  “I’ll talk to the other three,” she repeated.

  Gina looked unhappy, but evidently recognized some of that mysterious authority she thought Jaine possessed. “I thought you’d be thrilled,” she mumbled.

  “I’m not. I like my privacy.”

  “Then why did you put the List in the newsletter?”

  “I didn’t. Marci got drunk and let it slip to Dawna what’s-her-name.”

  “Oh.” Gina looked even more unhappy, as if she realized Jaine was even less thrilled about the whole situation than she had previously thought.

  “My whole family is mad at me about this,” Jaine grumbled.

  Despite her disappointment, Gina was a nice woman. She sat down on the edge of Jaine’s desk, her expression changing to one of sympathy. “Why? What does it have to do with them?”

  “My opinion exactly. My sister says I’ve embarrassed her and she won’t be able to hold her head up in church, and my fourteen-year-old niece got the entire transcript off the Web, so Shelley’s angry about that, too. My brother is angry because I’ve embarrassed him in front of the guys where he works—”

  “I don’t see how, unless they’ve been comparing themselves in the rest room and he came up short,” Gina commented, then giggled.

  Jaine said, “I don’t want to think about that”; then she began giggling, too. She and Gina looked at each other and burst into gales of laughter, laughing until tears welled and ruined their mascara. Sniffing, they giggled their way to the ladies’ room to repair the damage.

  At nine o’clock, Jaine was called into her immediate supervisor’s office.

  His name was Ashford M. deWynter. Every time she heard the name, she thought she was dreaming of Manderley. She dearly wanted to ask if the M stood for “Max,” but was afraid to find out. Maybe he was playing to the illusion, but he always dressed in a very European manner and had been known to say “shedule” instead of “schedule.”

  He was also an asshole.

  Some people come by it naturally. Others work very hard at it. Ashford deWynter did both.

  He didn’t ask Jaine to be seated. She sat anyway, earning a frown for her presumption. She suspected the reason for this little conference and wanted to be comfortable while he chewed her out.

  “Ms. Bright,” he began, looking as if he smelled something distasteful.

  “Mr. deWynter,” she replied.

  Another frown, from which she deduced it hadn’t been her turn to speak.

  “The situation at the gate has become untenable.”

  “I agree. Perhaps if you tried a court order …” She let the suggestion trail off, knowing he didn’t have the authority to obtain one even if there was a basis for it, which she doubted. The “situation” wasn’t endangering anyone, nor were the newspeople hindering the employees.

  The frown became a glare. “Your facetiousness is unappreciated. You know very well this situation is your doing. It’s unseemly and distracting, and people are becoming unhappy.”

  For “people,” she thought, read “his superiors.”

  “How is it my doing?” she asked mildly.

  “That vulgar List of yours …”

  Maybe he and Leah Street had been separated at birth, she mused. “The List isn’t mine, any more than it’s Marci Dean’s. It was a collaborative effort.” What was it with everyone, holding her solely responsible for the List? Was it that mysterious “authority” again? If she had that kind of power, maybe she should start wielding it more often. She could make shoppers let her go to the head of the line, or have her street plowed first when it snowed.

  “Ms. Bright,” Ashford deWynter said in quelling tones. “Please.”

  Meaning, please don’t take him for an idiot. He was too late; she already did.

  “Your brand of humor is very recognizable,” he added. “Perhaps you weren’t the only one involved, but you were undeniably the chief instigator. Therefore it falls to you to rectify the situation.”