Starting from Scratch (5 page)

“O
kay, I quit. I quit, I quit, I QUIT!” Paula Reynolds shouted in a voice of full-blown, hair-pulling hysteria.

She ended her ten-year career by slamming the door as she left Rockefeller Randolph's spacious office.

Breathing fire, the now former senior editor pushed her way past Elisha. As she hurried by, Paula's eyes looked more than just a little possessed. “He's a monster!”

The pronouncement echoed in the hall, causing heads to turn and people to look out of their cubicles and small offices.

Bemused, Elisha knocked once on Rocky's door and then let herself in. Rocky was probably in the throes of recovering from whatever salvo Paula had fired in her wake. He did not do confrontations well and he was at his best when the good ship Randolph & Sons was sailing through tranquil waters.

Rocky's eyes rolled as she stepped over the threshold. The fine features of his face ceased looking so pinched.

“Thank God it's you.” He breathed a heartfelt sigh of relief. “I thought she was coming back to strangle me. Never knew Paula was so emotional.”

She was here to tell him that Sinclair had called earlier from the road to announce that the book tour was going well and that he had a spot on one of the morning shows, but she tabled that news for the time being. Rocky was obviously dealing with some crisis and that took precedence over friendly chitchat.

Elisha took a seat in his guest chair. “I take it that reference to monster she just yelled wasn't meant to describe you.”

Rocky shook his head, then mentioned the name of the most famous and most difficult star in their stable. “She was talking about Ryan Sutherland.”

A smile played across her lips. “Thought as much.” The day was windy. From her window, she watched a bird in the distance struggling to fly to his intended destination. “What does that make now, three editors he's chewed his way through since Parks retired?”

Taking a deep breath, Rocky let it slowly out before answering, “Four. Milo Benson lasted a week.”

“Right, Milo. I forgot about him.” The young Harvard graduate had been Jason Parks's heir apparent, trained by the older man to eventually take his place. No one, however, had thought that “eventually” would turn into “immediately,” but heart attacks don't follow timetables. Jason's had been entirely unexpected, considering how well the man cared for his health. In comparison to most, it had been a minor attack, but Jason felt it was a sign that he needed to retire to do something less stressful than deal with deadlines and prima donnas.

Left in the lurch, Rocky had handed the jewel of the Randolph lineup to Milo. The thinking had been that Milo would see to the demanding author while arrangements were made to transition the blockbuster author to another senior editor. The best-laid plans of mice and men and publishers often went awry. As in this case. Milo had left after a week to take a more lucrative offer with another firm. Or so he had said. Elisha had a feeling that the young man had said what he had in order to cover his pride and allow himself to make a quick getaway.

Because Rocky looked as if he needed to unwind and because she possessed more than a healthy share of curiosity, Elisha asked, “So what's the complaint this time?”

“Paula called Sutherland a male chauvinist pig.”

Elisha pretended to wince, not at the accusation, but at the term Paula had used. She struggled to keep the amused look off her face. She knew that at the moment Rocky wouldn't appreciate it. “Haven't heard that one in a long time. You would have thought that someone as modern and forward thinking as Paula would have come up with a more up-to-date term.”

Rocky shrugged. “Sometimes the old standards work best.” The comment was said more into his shirt than to her.

Elisha was instantly on her guard. “You're mumbling, Rocky. Does that mean you're going to ask me to do something I won't like?”

He sighed and shook his head. “You know me too well.”

Elisha frowned. “And apparently you don't know me at all. Hello.” Moving forward on her seat, she put her hand out to him. “I'm Elisha Reed. Perhaps you've seen my office. It's the one with the overflowing paper leaking out through the cracks and beneath the door.” She slid back on her seat, her eyes never leaving Rocky's face. Surely he was kidding about what she thought he was going to ask her to do. “I already work a twenty-six-hour day.”

“Twenty-four,” Rocky corrected automatically. “There are twenty-four hours in a day.”

“I know.” She shot the zinger at him with the accuracy of a mischievous child with an old-fashioned slingshot. “I've been borrowing hours against the future. I'm up to the year 2025.”

He did his best to sound upbeat as he tried to move forward. “Look, Elisha, I know that you're overworked…”

When he used her given name, she knew that the deck was stacked against her and that she'd lost before the game had ever begun. “I've always loved your flair for understatement, Rocky.”

“I can give the newer authors to Edlestein, free you up a little.”

“To do what?”

Rocky sighed, a man between a rock and a hard place with no promise of a pillow anywhere in sight. “Don't make this hard, Elisha.”

She looked at him sweetly. “Then don't say the words, Rocky.”

“What words?”

She'd heard all the rumors and each time she did, she gave up a quick, silent prayer that she wasn't the one dealing with Sutherland. Now, apparently, she would be.

“The words condemning me to dance in attendance to a man who could serve as the poster boy for anger–management classes—the ‘before' side.”

“Lise, the man writes tremendous blockbusters for us. We need to keep him happy.”

The stories about working with Sutherland were legion. None was uplifting. “From what I'd heard, I don't think the man is capable of ‘happy.' Unless you mean allowing him to toss vestal virgins into a volcano. That might bring a smile to his face.”

“Women find him charming.”

Rocky was referring to cocktail parties. Sutherland had attended Sinclair's launch party. And had been mobbed as she recalled. “Women who don't have to be working with him.”

Rocky tried to recall all the kind comments he'd heard leveled at the writer. “He's a man's man—”

“Fine, give him to some man.” Her eyes widened as she thought of the perfect solution. Or at least a solution that would keep her off the hook for a while. “You, for instance.”

The thought clearly horrified Rocky. He turned ash white. “He'd break me in two—verbally. The guy's an ex–Navy SEAL among other things. I think he was also a mercenary for a while.”

“Take a bodyguard and have him frisked before you start working together.” Not that Sutherland liked or welcomed any input from anyone but himself. As far as she was concerned, that made him a walking ego.

Rocky rose from behind his desk and came to stand in front of her. Apparently begging was easier for him at closer quarters. “Lise, please, you're my only hope.”

She hated when he looked so sad. “Don't give me those puppy-dog eyes, Rocky—”

“Rumor has it that he's thinking of leaving us, of going to Horizon Publishing. If I lose him, my father might decide to really come out of retirement and take over. That means he'll be looking over everyone's shoulder again.”

The older Randolph showed up once or twice a week as it was, haunting the halls, nosing into people's progress and schedules. “To ‘come out of retirement,' your father would have had to fully ‘go into retirement.'”

Rocky fixed Elisha with a long, forlorn look. “Please?”

She sighed. “You've got nobody else?”

Rocky shook his head solemnly. “Nobody.”

She thought of her assistant. This, she believed, would be perfect payback. The conniving woman wouldn't even know what hit her.

“How about Carole Chambers?” Elisha asked sweetly. “She's dying to sink her teeth into someone of renown and she's terrific at kissing up.”

“She's very competent,” he said seriously, “but she's not ready for someone of Sutherland's stature. She doesn't have your background or your expertise.”

Elisha eyed him, her expression never changing. “And this is the part where I'm supposed to jump to my feet and declare, “Give him to me, Rocky. I can do it.”

“A little hammy but yes.”

“You've been watching too many Mickey Rooney, Judy Garland movies.” The man said nothing, he merely continued looking at her with eyes that silently pleaded for her understanding and compliance. After a beat, knowing she couldn't find it in her heart to turn him down, she sighed and shook her head. “Oh, all right. I don't have a life, anyway. And he
is
the biggest draw we have.”

“The biggest,” Rocky agreed.

“You know, for a man who runs a publishing house, you're not very eloquent.”

For the first time since he'd made the request, he smiled. “I don't have to be, I have you.”

“That remains to be seen.”

His smile faded. “What do you mean?”

“I mean, if Sutherland starts giving me ulcers, I might have to go Paula's route and quit.”

“I'll take him away before I'd let you quit.”

She looked at him. Rocky had managed to surprise her. “You mean that?”

“Yes, I do.”

“Okay, then we have a deal. Bring on the ex-SEAL. Maybe I can teach him to behave.”

Rocky shook his head. “Not even you, Lise. I'm just hoping for some kind of semi-peaceful existence.”

“Ah, Rocky, a man's grasp should extend his reach, or what's a heaven for?”

“Just make sure you stay out of Sutherland's grasp.”

She looked at him. “Am I going to have to worry about that, too?”

“Don't worry, I'll handle him if anything gets out of hand.”

She leveled her gaze at him. “All right, I will hold you to your word.”

They shook hands on it. Elisha was pretty certain that the one Rocky kept out of her line of vision had its fingers crossed.

“S
o, are you the latest sacrificial lamb they've decided to send into the arena?”

She had been braced for this all day. All week, really. Ever since she'd shaken Rocky's hand and agreed to take on Ryan Sutherland, Randolph & Sons' highest-drawing card, as her author.

She knew him, of course. It was hard to work for the publishing house and not know the tall, bombastic man who looked every bit the action hero he detailed in his books.

He moved into her office like a dark storm crouching on the horizon and inching its way across the sea. At approximately five-eleven, he was not an overly tall man, but he had a larger-than-life quality as well as an aura of danger that she sensed he was careful to cultivate. It was good for sales and good for drawing women to him. As if his celebrity status wasn't enough.

But they had never done more than nod at one another whenever their paths crossed, either in the halls of Randolph & Sons Publishing or at a book launch. She had been to several of his launches. He, in turn, had attended a handful of others for people he might not call friend but to whom he felt he owed some sort of allegiance.

Either that or it was a good excuse to imbibe alcohol, which he was able to do on a grand scale without looking the slightest bit inebriated.

Part of his SEAL training, no doubt.

Feeling a little like someone whose ramparts had just been scaled, Elisha forced her mouth to curve as she sat back in her chair. She slid off her glasses and took a good look at the man who was going to make her life a living hell.

“A sacrificial lamb? Now, that's an interesting metaphor, Mr. Sutherland. Do you see yourself as a gladiator or a butcher?”

Ryan smiled at his new editor. He hadn't expected a comeback. Most editors, particularly those of the softer sex, usually mumbled and laughed self-consciously. He threw people off-kilter and he liked it. “I see myself as someone who doesn't suffer fools gladly.”

If he expected her to cringe, he was going to be disappointed, Elisha thought. She was more than up to the challenge he represented. “Judging by your last contract, I doubt if you suffer at all. I understand bales of money were involved.”

He was accustomed to his editors bowing and scraping, had come to take it for granted. This woman looked as if she wanted to go fifteen rounds with him. He was in no mood for a sparring partner.

“Bales of money that wouldn't have appeared on Randolph's doorstep without the product of the sweat of my brow. Namely, my talent.” He looked at the chair before her desk. “Mind if I sit?”

She gestured toward the chair. “Please.” She waited until he had lowered what looked to be his still-taut body into the chair. Once upon a time, when she had thought about life taking a different turn, this would have been the kind of “hero” she might have invented for herself. But now he was just a writer, albeit a very successful writer, and her regard of him was in a purely professional capacity.

“Granted,” she continued once Sutherland had placed his leather briefcase on the floor, “but as I hear it, half that money was spent on headache tablets and tranquilizers.”

He looked at her, vaguely puzzled. They'd given him a babbler, he thought with a disgust he didn't attempt to hide. “I don't take tranquilizers.”

No, but you do keep the companies who make them in business.
“I was referring to all the editors you've chewed up then spit out in the last year.”

Piercing blue eyes narrowed on her. He'd stopped by his publisher's, as was his habit whenever he was in the city. This time there had been more of a specific purpose to his visit. But he was beginning to regret it. “Did Rockefeller select you to antagonize me?”

“No, to work with you.” She flashed him her best, most disarming smile, hoping to get them back on track. “Maybe we should get to know each other a little better before we leap into the creative process.”

Ryan moved his torso forward as he slid to the edge of the chair. He gave her the impression of a commando about to jump from a plane and yell “Geronimo.” His voice was so low when he spoke, it seemed to rumble in her chest first before she heard it with her ears.

“One, I neither need nor want to get to know you. I don't need to know the name of your parents, or that you called your first pet, a goldfish, Simon. None of that matters. You are what the publisher whimsically wishes to call my editor, not my intended mate. And two,
we
are not leaping anywhere, least of all into a creative process. That process is strictly for me alone. Your main job is to take what I have done and bring it over to the production department.”

She stared at him, trying desperately to keep a poker face and not let the writer see that she thought he was just about the biggest egotist she had ever met. “Like a messenger.”

His sardonic expression never changed. “You have a fairly good grasp of the language, I see.”

She could understand why Paula had fled after three months of this. Paula thought of herself as the end product of a long line of incredibly intelligent women. To be regarded as a single-celled amoeba would have been difficult for her. She, on the other hand, was not about to allow herself to get rattled. She decided to think of this as a tennis game. She was going to hit back every ball the man lobbed at her.

She smiled, exuding a calmness that only went down to the first layer. Beneath that was an entirely different matter.

“I have an infinitely wonderful grasp of the English language,” she replied, “which is why I am a successful editor. And for the time being, until God or Rockefeller Randolph tears us asunder, I am your editor, Mr. Sutherland. That means I will be editing.” Her gaze never wavered as she looked him straight in the eye. “Undoubtedly lightly, but I
will
be editing.”

He glanced down at the briefcase he'd brought. Inside were the fruits of his latest labor. Protocol dictated that he present it to his newest editor. No thought was given to its pages being marked up because that just didn't happen with one of his works. “Change one word of what I've written and you won't have to wait for God to tear us asunder. I'll do it myself. With my bare hands if I have to.”

She read between the lines. “Editing isn't an insult, Mr. Sutherland. Even Hemingway and Fitzgerald had Maxwell Perkins.”

The reference, coming out of nowhere, amused him. “And you fancy yourself my Maxwell?”

“I fancy myself part of the team that is putting out your books, Mr. Sutherland.” Her mouth curved again, because what she said was true. “I am your first audience, devoid of the hero worship.”

Thunder rolled across the plains again. The look in his eyes darkened. “You don't like my books?”

She'd found his Achilles' heel, she thought. Despite his bombastic manner, he felt a thread of insecurity about his books. Good, she'd make that work for her. “I never said I didn't like your books, Mr. Sutherland. But it's not my job to read them for pleasure.”

His mouth twitched in dismissive disgust. “Perhaps you should. Everyone else who's plunking down their hard-earned money is going to be doing just that, reading for pleasure, for entertainment. For escape. Maybe you would better serve your employer and the public by remembering that and trying to implement those principles when you read the results of my efforts.”

She didn't particularly like the way he'd lingered on the word
serve.
Sutherland undoubtedly viewed her as some sort of servant. If that's what he thought, man, did he have the wrong job description.

“It might have slipped your mind, but we're supposed to be a team,” she reminded him.

“It never slipped my mind because it was never on my mind to begin with.” His eyes were penetrating as he looked at her, pulling out her secrets. Making her feel that he had somehow been blessed with X-ray vision. It took everything she had not to shift uncomfortably. “The last ‘team member' I had jumped out of a helicopter with me into the Indian Ocean at two o'clock in the morning. He didn't make it back.”

“Was he reading one of your manuscripts at the time?”

Ryan opened his mouth to answer, then stopped. Instead of saying something, he began to laugh. It was a deep, rumbling sound, like the beginnings of an earthquake deep within the bowels of the earth.

He gave up the opposition. For now. “All right, tell Rockefeller you're acceptable.”

She wondered if everyone wanted to pluck out every dark hair on his head within five minutes of the initial introduction, or if she was setting some kind of record. “He already knows that.”

“To me,” Ryan emphasized, not caring a damn what anyone else thought on the subject. He was the one who would have to deal with her, although he was determined to keep the contact down to a minimum. Maybe if she were more attractive, he might feel more inclined to interact with her, but she made him think of an old-fashioned schoolmarm, right down to the glasses atop her dark blond head. That had never been the type to pique his interest. “Tell him you're acceptable to me.”

She knew that he was trying to make her look away. She stared back harder. And smiled wider. “He already assumed as much.”

Ryan wasn't sure whether he admired her bravado or was annoyed by it. “Oh, he did, did he? And why is that?”

“Because he's never met an author who didn't like me.” She was very proud of that. Rocky had once said that, if he had a worthwhile story to tell, she could probably get along with the devil himself. Obviously, he had decided to put that theory to the test.

Sutherland made no effort to mask his disdain. “You're not one of those needy types who needs people to like her, are you?”

“No.” She didn't strictly “need” it. She did, however, like it. “It's just a happy by-product of my work.” Maybe he'd treat her with more respect if she began to sound more like an editor and less like a verbal sparring partner, she thought. Elisha took out a pad from the middle drawer. “Now then, I see by the notes that Paula left—”

Sutherland looked away. His sneer seemed to fill up the room. “A thoroughly scattered female.”

Maybe another editor might have tried to placate him by murmuring something in agreement, but she couldn't. She didn't even like Paula, but the woman didn't deserve to be reviled like this. She needed someone to stand up for her and for lack of anyone else in the room, the lot fell to her. “She was a very competent editor until you peeled her like a grape.”

He blew out a breath that was meant to dismiss not only Paula and her theory, but Elisha, as well. “Her nerves were far too close to the surface. If she'd been a Navy SEAL, she would have been killed the second she entered enemy territory.”

“In case you didn't notice, Paula wasn't a Navy SEAL, she was an editor,” Elisha pointed out, refusing to back down. “And do you consider yourself enemy territory?”

His eyes held hers. Again she felt as if she were being breached. “I am if you intend to invade.”

She spread her hands wide in complete innocence. “I'm just here to facilitate the tremendous effort it takes to produce the blockbusters you write.”

“Well, ‘Max,' you can facilitate the ‘tremendous effort'—and you're right about that—by staying out of my way and letting me do what I do best.”

“Filleting those around you?” she guessed.

For the second time since he'd walked into her office, Ryan Sutherland laughed.

“Only as a last resort.” After a moment's debate, he picked up the worn leather briefcase that was resting against his chair. After putting it on his lap, he withdrew a considerably large manuscript from within. Leaning forward, he placed the book on her desk. “All right, here it is.”

She eyed the offering, wondering if he expected her to bow down before it. “Your first draft?”

“My
only
draft.”

Shivers raced down her back. They weren't the kind she had once welcomed. These were meant to warn her and keep her alive.