Bravo Unwrapped

“I figured you’d need it.”

“I do.” Assuming she could get it down without hurling. She gestured with the covered cardboard cup. “Okay. Let me have it.”

“Disaster, that’s all.”

Her stomach lurched. She swallowed. Hard. “I’m listening.”

“The Wise Brothers just broke up,” Giles said. “Their manager called Mike yesterday. They’re not going to be available for the Christmas cover story.”

The Wise Brothers were the biggest thing to hit popular music since…comparisons failed her. And this was not good. Very, very not good.

B.J. shoved a stack of back issues off Giles’s lone extra chair and sank into it, dropping her briefcase to the floor, letting her bag slide off her shoulder. “Tell me you’re joking.”

Giles did nothing of the kind. “I’m as serious as a cheap tie. Trust me. ‘Christmas with the Three Wise Men’ is history.”

“But…a different slant, maybe? Their new solo careers? Their, uh…”

Giles was shaking his golden head. “They don’t want to do it. They are all, and I’m quoting Mike quoting the manager, ‘devastated.’ They’re also all in seclusion, or some such crap. Mike tried all day yesterday to get through to at least one of them. No luck. And we both know that if Mike can’t get to them, nobody can.” Mike Gallato, one of the best, was Alpha’s top contributing editor.

And B. J. Carlyle never gave up a major story without a fight. She shouldered her bag again, grabbed up her briefcase and shot to her feet. “I’ll make a few calls.”

“Been done. It’s hopeless.”

“Never use that word around me.”

“Yes, Mistress.”

“Hah.” She started to turn.

Gingerly, from behind her, Giles suggested, “Just…a point or two more.”

She whirled back to him. “Speak. Fast.”

“Arnie wants a meeting at eleven to discuss your plans.” Arnie Dale was the managing editor. In recent years, Arnie pretty much ran things at Alpha, though B.J.’s father, who had created Alpha on their kitchen table back when B.J. was in diapers, had never relinquished his twin titles of publisher and editor-in-chief.

B.J. prompted, “My plans for…?”

Giles looked at her patiently. “The new Christmas-issue cover feature.”

She blew out a gusty breath. “Fine. Meeting at eleven.” She looked at her watch. Nine-thirty-two. She needed to get going on those calls. “Anything else?”

“Ah. Yes.” Giles wore the strangest expression, suddenly. Pitying? Worried? She couldn’t read it. B.J. made an awkward wrap-it-up gesture with the hand that held her briefcase, after which Giles clucked his tongue and tossed his golden locks again. Then, at last, the perfect line of his square jaw hardened. His fine nostrils flared. He yanked open his pencil drawer and whipped out the latest issue of TopMale magazine—the one Melanie had been reading so furtively a few minutes before.

“Oh, please,” B.J. said. “As if I’ve got time to read that rag with my December cover feature dead at my feet.”

Giles stood—or sat, in this case—firm. “Darling. You need to read this.”

“Just give me the salient points.”

Giles only shook his head and shoved the magazine toward her. “I marked the page. Go in your office, sit down, drink your lukewarm latte and then deal with that. And when you do, keep in mind that it’s nothing but meaningless drivel written by a dickless ass.”

In her office, with the door firmly shut, B.J. set down her bag and briefcase, tossed the November issue of TopMale to the side of her desk, hung her jacket on the coat rack in the corner, booted up her computer, and made those calls.

Giles had been right, of course. She got nowhere. The Wise Brothers had called it quits, they weren’t talking to anybody and she had no cover story for the issue that would hit the stands in twenty-eight days.

There would definitely be meetings. Several.

Her head pounded and her stomach churned. Still, gamely, she picked up her latte and removed the lid. She sniffed. Waited.

And didn’t gag.

Carefully, she sipped.

Oh, yes. Excellent. It was almost cold, but it went down fine.

Sipping some more, she considered. She had a half an hour until the meeting with Arnie. So? E-mail, phone messages—there had been several new ones while she was making all those hopeless calls—or TopMale?

She picked up the phone and punched the code for message pick-up.

Big mistake. The first one was from Buck. She heard his voice—so deep, so sexy, so gallingly tempting. “B.J. Give it up. Give me a damn call.”

She slammed the phone down. Later for messages.

With a heavy sigh, she slid TopMale—by a corner—from the side of her desk to right under her nose. She sneered down at the eye-candy guy on the cover. A winning smile and six-pack abs. Not terribly imaginative, but effective.

TopMale didn’t have Alpha’s market share, or its cachet. After all, Alpha managed to be all things to a wide cross-section of men. From bon vivants to backwoods survivalists to your everyday Joe with a beer in one hand and the remote in the other, they all bought Alpha. Still, the upstart TopMale did have a solid readership, a readership that kept growing….

B.J. flipped the magazine open to the page Giles had marked for her. She drank her cold latte and began reading.

Manhattan Man-Eater

Well, okay. A reasonably catchy title. Then she read the byline: by Wyatt Epperstall.

The last time she’d seen Wyatt was the day four months ago when she’d told him she wouldn’t be seeing him anymore.

Her hand began to shake. Cool milk and espresso sloshed on her wrist and stained her pink blouse.

He wouldn’t.

He couldn’t….

Oh, but he had.

You know her when you see her. She’s tall and she’s smart and she has great legs. Great legs and killer shoes on her narrow, perfect feet. You know the kind of shoes I mean. Shoes with fancy Italian names and price tags to match, shoes with high, pointed heels that have you dreaming of what it might be like if she wore them and took a walk on your chest.

If you’re lucky, she might do just that.

She makes the rules. And she makes sure you live by them. That is, until she’s through with you—which, believe me, will be sooner than you think.