She's Got Mail!: She's Got Mail! / Forget Me? Not

Like me, aiming to be Mr. Real.

She didn’t have to strain any brain cells to know they wanted a man in the job. After all, it would be false advertising if the “A Real Man Answers Real Questions” column was written by a woman. But an interim Mr. Real would be a coup—an opportunity for her to escape the gulch and prove she could write. Otherwise, she’d be stuck proofing and copyediting until her brown curls grew gray, her last dying moment spent crossing out an errant comma.

She checked her watch. Goddess time!

A few moments later, Rosie passed Jerome, who smiled slyly at her as she walked into Paige’s office. He’d always made her uncomfortable the way he eyeballed women. Worse, she’d soon have to sit across from those eyeballs at lunch. That Focha-whatever place would probably cost Rosie a month’s worth of her favorite nutri-quasi Twinkie bars.

Her footsteps slowed as she stepped onto the plush egg-white carpeting that cushioned the floor of the vast office. Paige, who could be a stand-in for Lauren Bacall, sat behind a metal-and-glass desk. Seeing Rosie, she pulled off her reading glasses and set them aside. Folding her hands in front of her, she smiled without crinkling her eyes. “Jerome told me you had something important to discuss. I have only a few minutes….”

A few? Rosie dove in. “The ‘A Real Man Answers Real Questions’ column is currently without a columnist.”

Paige blinked, then nodded, not one iota of emotion flickering across her powdered face. “And—?”

“I would like the…opportunity to be the interim columnist until you find another Mr. Real.” Her brother the salesman always said to hit hard and hit fast when you wanted something. Well, thanks to Artemis, she’d just done that. Rosie eased in a slow breath, waiting for Paige’s reaction.

“Rosie,” Paige began, elongating the O in Rosie. “Didn’t you have several previous ‘opportunities’?” One shapely eyebrow raised slightly, emphasizing the question in her voice.

“Uh, yes.” Ugh. So even Paige Leighton, the managing editor high priestess, had heard about those first two writing assignments that Rosie had mangled.

“I seem to recall,” Paige continued, “that Sophia Weston needed an article on ‘Women Who Need to Please’ and you wrote about…”

Rosie cringed inwardly. Persephone, the goddess of the underworld who expresses a woman’s tendency toward passivity and a need to please. Rosie had thought, at the time, she was being brilliant. But Sophia Weston, senior features editor, was so irked, Rosie worried for two solid days that she would be the next goddess of the underworld for her rampant creativity. Rosie forced a smile. “I misinterpreted Ms. Weston’s guidelines.”

Paige tapped one pink-polished nail against the glass desk. “And I believe there was another incident?”

Incident? When had writing assignments become incidents? “Well, yes, there was a second, small writing assignment. Very small.” She debated whether to call it infinitesimal, but decided that might be pushing it. “Ad copy.”

“Bridal ad, I believe.”

Sheesh. Paige might be old enough to have dated Humphrey Bogart, but she had a young memory. What did she do? Binge on ginkgo biloba? “Yes,” Rosie admitted. “It was a bridal ad.”

“One of our best advertisers, as I recall. Seemed they found a rather…unsightly typo?”

“Hera,” Rosie admitted. She might as well hit hard and hit fast with the truth, too, and put a stop to this trip down memory lane. “I changed ‘Her beauty’ to ‘Hera beauty.”’

“Right. Hera beauty. I remember now.” Paige leaned forward, her gray-blue eyes nearly matching her mauve earrings. “How did that happen?”

Double ugh. Now she had to explain the “Hera Incident.” “I thought it would…enhance the ad to use the name Hera, the goddess of marriage.” And, oh boy, did she enhance it. Only because the head of sales had pacified the irate customer by offering free ad space for six months was Rosie able to keep her job.

“Oh-h-h.”

Rosie wondered if Paige always elongated her O’s.

Paige tapped her fingernail again. “You seem to have a thing for goddesses.”

If Rosie admitted that at this very moment she was Artemis, she could kiss off being Mr. Real. Instead, she offered a half smile, not wanting to explain how she had to be a goddess to survive her four brothers’ antics.

“Mr. Real isn’t a goddess,” Paige said drolly.

“No, he’s not.” But he’d make a great Athena.

“And this is a job for a seasoned writer. Which you’re not. And for someone with a good track record. Which you don’t have.”

Think Artemis. Be strong. “I am a seasoned writer,” Rosie began, hoping Paige Leighton didn’t hear the quaver in her voice. “I worked for two years on the high school newspaper, the last year as its editor. After that, I graduated from college with a degree in journalism. I worked on the town paper, starting as gofer and working my way up to copy editor, then reporter. That’s ten years of writing—if that’s not seasoned, I’d like to know what you view as bland.”

That last comment sneaked out. This was Paige Leighton she was talking to. Rosie had to watch her tongue, something her mother had warned her of repeatedly.

Rosie quickly pushed ahead. “And it’s true I made those four paws—” From the look on Paige’s face, Rosie knew she’d butchered that French term. Darn. Why did she attempt to speak French when at best she knew a few sentences in Spanish? Because Paige was cultured classy, and owned that summer home in Provence.

“Four what?”

“Mistakes,” Rosie explained softly, wishing she’d dated that high school foreign exchange student, Guillaume, when she’d had the chance. She might have learned a few key French phrases. But no. Competitive Rosie opted to beat him at tennis instead of getting to know him over dinner.

“Oh.” Paige nodded slightly. “Faux pas.”

“Right. That’s what I meant.” Now that she’d bludgeoned French, Rosie decided to go for the hard-core truth—in English. “I wanted desperately to prove myself, and fell back on a favorite theme, goddesses,” she admitted quickly. “I know I blew those jobs. But after that, I dug in and studied the magazine, the readership and the corporate expectations. Real Men has a circulation that rivals larger, more established magazines such as Architectural Digest. Eighty-five percent of our readership is women, most of whom are in their late twenties, which is my age bracket. Which means I’m better qualified to write for that particular audience.”

Rosie let that sink in before continuing. She had definitely overstayed her “few minutes” but Paige hadn’t kicked her out…yet.

“Of course, there’s the small issue that I’m not a man—”

Paige arched one eyebrow in response.

“—but I sat only ten feet from William Clarington these past seven months. I heard everything he said, proofed much of what he wrote, both of which give me an edge to fill in for him until, of course, the magazine hires a man.” If Rosie wasn’t mistaken, Paige looked interested.

Paige stood, smoothed her silk jacket, then walked around the desk. Leaning back against it, she crossed her arms and leveled Rosie a look. “You’re hungry. I like that. And you put your nose to the grindstone and learned from your past mistakes. Like that even better. I’ll make a deal with you. You can be the interim Mr. Real on two conditions. One, not a single goddesslike word can touch that column, you understand?”

Rosie nodded.

“Two. It’s imperative the column’s tone sound like William, Mr. Real. We don’t want our readers—especially the growing number of men who write to Mr. Real—to ever suspect that he’s a woman. I think maybe you can pull off playing Mr. Real for a few weeks…if you agree to those two terms.”

Agree? She’d name her firstborn Paige if that’s what it took. “Yes,” Rosie whispered, not trusting her voice to behave.

Paige gave her a small smile as she headed back around the desk to her chair. Sitting down, she put her reading glasses back on. “Your few minutes are up.”

Rosie floated across the carpeting, past Jerome and down the hallway. She’d talked her way into being the interim Mr. Real! Goodbye gulchdom, hello writerville.

BEN SAT in the building office foyer, wondering if Rosie Myers remembered they’d agreed to meet here at noon, which was ten minutes ago. Except for the piped-in Muzak, he didn’t mind waiting. It was a relief to escape his office, where Meredith had spent the rest of the morning analyzing his couch, which should be a first in Freudian psychology.

Although considering Rosie was late, he should have asked her where she worked or how he might reach her. All he knew was her name, that she had an abnormal desire to possess his parking space, and that she favored the mud-splattered look.

He smiled, recalling the little spot of mud nestled in her hairline. Most women fretted if a hair was out of place or if their lipstick wasn’t on straight. At the other end of the spectrum was Rosie, who looked as though she’d just polished off a mud pie.

At that moment, Rosie charged into the foyer. Seeing Ben, she halted and heaved a few deep breaths. “Sorry I’m…late,” she said between pants. “I lost…track of time.”

She wet her lips, making him wonder if that was a nervous gesture because she was late—or if it was because of him. “That’s all right. I enjoyed the reprieve from Super-Ex.”

Frowning, Rosie swiped a curl off her forehead. “Super what?”