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remind the
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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
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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. ‘
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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