A Kept Woman (37 page)

He was pleased he’d taken out the trash. The star author drive was part of that. Their blaze of posters, radio ads, in-store dump bins, pro-PR campaigns and talk-show appearances had produced six new bestsellers that had taken turns at the top of the New York Times list for the last six months.

‘What are you talking about?’ He lectured Datson like

she was a particularly stupid child. ‘Lawrence’s book is number fucking one. The rest are doing good too. No?’

‘They are,’ Emma agreed nervously, ‘in terms of chart positions. But since we stopped the advertising, sales have taken a bit of a dip.’

‘A dip? What kind of a fucking dip?’

‘Twenty-eight per cent on Shoshanna, thirty-nine per

cent on Richards, forty-one on Redde—’

He held up a hand. ‘I get the picture. Why the hell has

happened? Why did we stop the advertising?’

that

‘We have spent heavily,’ Davits said.

‘You gotta spend it to make it,’ Ernie snapped.

‘Yes. But if we spend at the same rate, the profit from

the bestsellers cancels out. We must let them try to carry their own weight. And other sales have fallen heavily too.’ Davits ploughed on. Nobody else would dare to tell Ernie the way things actually were but if they lost ground

at this rate he thought maybe the company would be in trouble, and that would be bad for his career. ‘The midlevel writers, the genre romances, the ones the agents brought on board.., that list is selling very badly. Two of the literary authors we axed, who have advances of no more than a hundred thou, have just had bestsellers for St Martin’s Press and Simon and Schuster …’

‘Who cares what they’ve done? You’re a bunch of incompetents.’ Ernie blustered at them furiously. ‘If it’s not selling, it’s your fault. I don’t want to hear can’t. There’s no such word as can’t. This strategy worked perfect in England and it’ll work perfectly here too. Six fucking bestsellers. You make sure they keep selling.’

‘But—’ Davits started, and Ernie was forced to cut him off.

‘But what? Don’t talk to me about but. OK? Just get out. Come back when the figures are right.’

They got up and hurried out of the conference room. Ernie glared after the retreating backs, noting with grim satisfaction that none of them was dumb enough to look back his way. Peter Davits was last out. He closed the door quietly behind him.

That showed them, Ernie thought. He wasn’t having that bullshit. He was the boss.

Michael sighed, pressed the hold button, and switched to another call. He had an ache in his neck from having had the phone glued to his ear all day. The calls from the lawyers, the distributors, the investment bankers didn’t stop coming, but the result was the same. An IPO would be madness right now. They had to Watch the Education Station range. Yada, yada, yada …

Already he had talked it through with Diana. She was almost as mad as he was. The thought occurred to him that he’d gone almost a whole day without thinking about that Brad Bailey guy she was meant to be seeing. She had rallied the troops. He was going to call a

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company meeting tomorrow. Michael sighed. Some guys would walk, others he’d have to fire. Right after hiring them, too. Goldman Sachs didn’t come cheap, and now he had to find a way to pay them without market capitalisation.

He hated Ernie Foxton.

Tina Armis, their receptionist, walked into the room

with a cup of coffee and a muffin. It smelled real good, like it had just come out of the oven. Wordlessly, she set it down before him. Michael talked to his distributors and reached out to touch the muffin. Yeah, it was actually warm.

‘Thank you,’ he mouthed at her.

Tina gave him a slow smile. ‘No problem,’ she said. He finished the call and jumped back to the first, vaguely aware that Tina was hovering in the background still. Michael let his eyes drift back towards her. She was young, maybe twenty-two or three. She had long blond hair and large blue-violet eyes, as well as a small, pert pair of tits and coltish legs that rose up towards a skirt that hovered on the knee. Tina was an all-American

‘beauty. Where was she from? He thought maybe the Bronx, Williamsbridge perhaps. Michael’s eye roved to her skirt. It was pencil-line tight on her slender form. He didn’t see any panty line. He thought she might be wearing a thong. A cute babe, for sure.

He hung up. ‘You want somet, hing, Tina? It’s been a

busy day.’

‘Oh, I know.’ She twisted her hands nervously. Michael smiled to put her at her ease. ‘I’m sorry to bother you, Mr Cicero.’

‘No bother. Anything I can help you with.’

‘Actually it’s kind of more personal.’ She blushed,

deeply. ‘I hope you don’t think me too forward but I wanted to ask you out. To dinner tomorrow.’

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‘What?’ Michael said, sputtering. It was so artless. He was used to girls hitting on him, but

‘You’re laughing at me.’ She looked forlorn. ‘I’m sorry. I knew this was a bad idea.’

‘No. I’m not.’ He said it hastily. She was cute, and why

the hell should he sit at home pining after Diana? ‘You’ll actually consider it?’ Tina beamed. ‘I’ll do more than that.’ Michael thought about those long legs wrapped round his waist. ‘I’ll pick you up at eight.’

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‘I’m really sorry, you guys.’

Toby Roberts looked at Michael and Diana and started to shift a little on his feet, like a kid caught smoking pot by the principal.

‘I wanted to stay. I really dug it here. We had a blast.

But these guys have, like, offered me—’

Diana glanced at Michael. Toby was the latest of their

top talent to desert them for Education Station. The IPO had crashed, they had to move the company out of the West Fourth Street house to a far smaller, regular office on Eighth Avenue and Thirtieth, and there was no way they could compete with Foxton’s offers. Cars, paid vacations and huge salaries were all being dangled in

‘ front of Imperial’s best programmers.

Toby was among the last to succumb. Michael looked resigned to it. He’d told Diana this morning he was grateful Toby had stuck it out as long as he had.

‘I know what they offered you,’ Michael told him. ‘You’d be mad not to take it.’

Toby still looked embarrassed. ‘Man, my girl wants to

get married and shit—’

‘That’s great. You take the job. I would do exactly the

same thing.’

‘OK.’ Toby offered each of them a solemn, rather grubby hand. ‘I hope you guys are going to be all right.’

He looked around at the small, cramped office space,

the rented fax machines and dwindling bank of phones,

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and his tone came out more doubtful than he had intended.

‘We’ll be fine,’ Michael said, in a tone of calm certainty. Toby wondered how the guy could do that. He said it like it was just a fact, like nothing had happened. ‘You take care. Stay in touch.’

‘Definitely,’ Toby promised, blushing again and sidling out.

He felt like a fucking snake. But a hundred thousand a year and a Mercedes? What was he supposed to do? It was clearly the right way to go. Mike said so. But he hated leaving him. He was the kind of boss you’d follow into battle.

Diana Verity was sticking with him, Toby reflected as he waved for a cab. Strange, that. The lady was so high ” maintenance. Who knew how long Michael Cicero

would be able to afford her? Of course, Michael had some out-of-office consolation. That Tina Armis. Man, she was some piece of ass.

Michael closed the door on Toby and looked at Diana. ‘Come on. We’ll go to my office and review.’ ‘Sounds good,’ Diana said, determined to remain upbeat. The company was like a sinking ship, complete with rats abandoning it from every porthole, but she had decided - she wasn’t even sure when - to stick with it. It felt like her own thing. )knd if Michael was going down, she was going down with him.

Elspeth had offered to find her another job. ‘Interior decor, darling,’ she suggested. ‘Your old offices were so stylish. I know plenty of wonderful ladies who would love to take you on. You could start with Brad’s townhouse. Goodness knows what the fee on that would be.’ Elspeth’s painted, wrinkled mouth smiled emphatically. ‘He has no budget limit, you see.’

But Diana had gently refused. Maybe it was her

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encounter with Jodie Goodfriend; she wanted New York

to understand that her job, her company, was serious.

There had to be a way back.

Michael led her through the front office, where their

sales people were desperately trying to reassure distributors about packaging dates for the new line, to his small private room in the back. Tina Armis had her own little

desk

just in front of it. She stood up as Diana

approached. Diana looked her over. Since she had started dating Michael she had made a big deal of it, Diana thought, annoyed. The girl was barely out of diapers. Glossy long hair, a very unnatural shade of pure platinum, flowed down her back. She wore a business suit, Diana saw, a real short one that let her display long, lean legs in flat shoes - she was so tall she could afford to do that - and probably little else. There were no lines whatever under that suit. Diana imagined her ducking into Michael’s office and flashing him, letting him pull up her skirt and force her over the desk, just the way he used to do to her. Tina was welcome to him, Diana thought fiercely. With her brows plucked so thin she needed make-up to restore them, and her lips lined with a darker colour than her lipstick to make them look plumper, not

to mention those nails that were far too long…

‘Good morning, Mr Cicero,’ she said.

Good morning, Mr Cicero, Diana mocked in her head.

She was just like Marilyn .Monroe addressing JFK, all breathy and thrusting forwards those unimpressive tits. Tina was thin, too. Far thinner than Diana would ever be. Diana reminded herself that she liked her body. She wasn’t going to get caught up in the skinny blonde thing, which Michael had evidently had the bad taste to do.

‘And good morning, Miss Verity,’ She added, resentfully.

Diana gave her a brisk smile. The younger woman was

eyeing her like she was some kind of threat. Why she

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thought every woman in the world would be after Michael Cicero was beyond Diana. Don’t you read the gossip columns? Diana thought, nodding at Miss Pert Tits. Don’t you know I’m dating the last single millionaire in Manhattan?

‘Good morning, Tina,’ she replied. ‘Could you fetch me a coffee? Decaffeinated. You want anything, Michael?’

‘Not right now.’ Michael opened his office door and went in, oblivious to the undercurrent of hostility outside. Diana noted that Tina flounced off to get her coffee. She was one of those women who loved to dance attendance on men but hated having to fetch anything for another female. Diana knew the type; the air hostess who takes twenty minutes to respond to a woman’s buzzer and five seconds to reach the man who calls her.

She also thought Tina was a gossip. Decal coffee had to be brewed from scratch. If Michael and she were going to talk about the dire state of Imperial, Diana would rather it wasn’t all round what programmers they had left in the next five minutes.

‘Shut the door,’ Michael said.

Diana slid herself into one of the simple, functional chairs they had bought from Staples. Nothing fancy here any more. In fact the fanciest thing in the place was probably his director, Michael thought, trying not to look at her legs. Thankfu!ly he had Tina. He let his mind drift back over their session this morning.., she loved to wake him up by giving him head, sliding her thin but eager lips over his cock, her fingertips trailing across his balls. Michael loved to luck in the mornings and Tina could do unbelievable things with those long legs. He liked to put her on her back on the bed and stand in front of her, her slim ankles locked around his neck while he fucked her, letting his cock slide in deep enough just to stroke the G-spot and give her a shuddering orgasm. Tina was undemanding. Not smart, but adoring. She didn’t’

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give him any lip, she liked sex, and then to sit around watching TV. Michael was grateful she’d been there. His stress was instantly relieved, in the bedroom. He told himself he hardly ever thought about Diana any more. If he chanced to come across a picture of that rich-ass boy scout in the papers, he simply flipped the page and didn’t let it bother him.

‘Things aren’t good.’ He pulled his mind back from the subject of Brad before he got really enraged. ‘We’ve lost Toby, Sarah, Jack and Felix, to that fucker your ex husband.’

‘And your ex-partner,’ Diana shot back. ‘We were

both guilty of a misjudgment.’

He held up his hands. ‘Agreed. In my view this is deliberate. Not just that they happened to get into the education software business, but that he has a vendetta. He wants to crush me. Maybe you, as well.’

‘With what they’re paying our people … on our old

profit margins, it would eat up most of them,’ Diana said slowly.

‘Right. It’s not profit that’s his motive. It’s revenge.’ Diana felt a flash of anger. ‘He wants to ruin us?’ ‘Looks that way. Let’s consider where we are. We have the new range, the Gecko Math and Science games. All completed before our guys got tempted away. We have some marketing men left. Harry Venture for one. And we

also

have

key talent who refused to walk out. Ernie

offered Opie the moon, but he refused to leave.’ Michael gave her a rueful grin. ‘He’s pretty loyal, for an ex-. slacker. Our best code-writers are still here. We can build on that.’

‘Yeah, but the fact is,’ Diana said, that our distributors are worried and word on the street is we might close

down. That means less racking-out in the stores …’

‘And that’s what we need to counter. The fact is, right

now we don’t need our programmers. Not right away.’