Hard as Rock (The Rock Star's Seduction 3)

10

When we walked in, Glen was frosty to me, but immediately started doing his “I’m your biggest fan” dance with Ryan.

Ryan was

far

friendlier than Derek had been. I mean, come on, it’s hard to get much worse than, ‘Take your tongue out of my ass, buddy.’ So in the end, we all settled into our chairs with a fair amount of goodwill and civility.

The editor watched me closely, but his eyes kept glancing furtively over to Ryan.

“So… you have the story?” he asked.

“…no,” I said, my stomach feeling like there was a lead block inside it.

I saw Glen’s hands clench together on the desk. “I see. And when do you think you’ll be able to get it to me?”

I opened my mouth, but nothing came out. I cleared my throat and tried again. “…it might be a long time. It might be… a really,

really

long time.”

Glen’s face started to turn pink with anger. “I hired you specifically to – ”

“I know, Glen, I know, and I feel awful about it,” I said, and I

did

feel awful. In fact, I felt like shit. “But… we… broke up.”

He looked at me for a long moment… and then shook his head and flung out his hands like,

SO?

“I fail to see how that impacts your ability to finish the job I hired you to do,” he snapped.

“It’s… really hard.”

“That’s what being a

professional

is all about,” he said condescendingly. “You do the work even when it

is

hard.”

I wanted to jump across the desk and strangle the arrogant bastard.

But he had a really good point.

That’s what made him so infuriating.

But then Ryan jumped in with an even better one.

“How long have you covered musicians, Glen?” Ryan asked.

Immediately Glen dropped the whole pissed-off editor routine and became a huge sycophant. “Oh, almost twenty years, give or take.”

“For

Rolling Stone?”

Glen hesitated. “No… smaller magazines. I’ve only been here for the last year.”

Huh. This was the first I’d heard of it.

“Well, I’m sure you know from covering musicians that usually they

don’t

get the work done when thing are hard. When there are rifts in the band, when there are outside stresses, when things are falling apart… they don’t record. They cancel tours. They don’t get the work done.”

Glen didn’t like being contradicted, and his voice got a little smug, while still managing to stay halfway unctuous. “Well, Ryan – journalists and rock stars are two different things. We have to hold ourselves to a higher standard on when we deliver the goods.”

“So you’re saying you’re better than rock stars,” Ryan said with the tiniest bit of coldness in his voice.

“Oh, no, no no no no

no

– no, I wasn’t implying

that

– ”

“So you were placing punctuality above quality? Deadlines above genius?”

“No, with journalists, we need both punctuality

and

quality. And I hardly think that Ms. Reynolds qualifies as a genius,” he said with a snarky little glance over at me.

Asshole.

“Whether she is or not, I’m telling you from firsthand experience that sometimes you can’t rush the work,” Ryan said evenly. “Sometimes you need to let the work breathe and develop organically. Rushing it can destroy it.”

Now Glen was becoming impatient. I could tell, because his deference towards Ryan was starting to drop away. “We hired her to be a professional, not an artist.”

“So your writers aren’t artists?”

“I’m – I didn’t say that. But we needed her to deliver a product.”

“A product. Like an assembly line.”

“NO, but – look, she had a deadline – ”

“No I didn’t,” I protested. “You

never

gave me a deadline.”

He swiveled his gaze over to me and his inner reptile came out. “I TOLD you that we needed it as

soon as possible –

”

“That’s not a deadline, Glen. A deadline is a

date.

”

He jabbed a finger in the air. “LOOK – ”

“Glen,” Ryan said in that same tone of voice he used on Riley when she was misbehaving.

Commanding. Cool. Brooking no dissent.

Glen glared at me, but bit his tongue and looked over at Ryan. “What?”

“You knew that Kaitlyn had no national-level publishing experience when you hired her. Correct?”

The question stung a little, but I thought I saw where Ryan was going with it.

Glen didn’t. He just smirked at me. “Yes.”

“In fact, she didn’t even have mid-level newspaper experience. Correct?”

“Correct.” He couldn’t resist throwing in a little jab: “As her behavior since then has demonstrated.”

I wanted to pull a Riley and throw a bottle of Jack Daniels at his head

SO

bad.