Traitor.
“Not today it’s not,” he replied.
“Ah,” Julie said. “Got a meeting with Camille?”
“I do.”
Camille Bishop was the editor in chief of Stiletto magazine, and Julie and Emma’s boss. Since Cassidy was the editor in chief of Oxford magazine, Stiletto’s brother publication, it wasn’t strange that he occasionally stopped by the twelfth floor.
Didn’t mean Emma had to like it.
“See you ladies around,” Cassidy said with a smile for Julie. Emma barely warranted a glance. “Oh, and Emma, just a friendly reminder that winter’s right around the corner. Careful you don’t catch a cold with that wet head.”
He moved away before Emma had a chance to respond. Or give him the finger. Not that she would have bothered.
“Friendly reminder, my ass,” Emma muttered, glaring briefly at his back before she and Julie headed toward the office they shared.
“I think it’s sweet. Maybe he cares,” Julie said, linking her arm in Emma’s.
Emma grunted in response. “Give me the rest of your coffee. I need it.”
Julie complied and the two of them stepped into their office. Grace and Riley were already there. Grace, texting on her phone…probably sexting with her husband, if her dirty smile was any indication.
Typical.
Riley was eating a doughnut. Also typical.
Riley paused in her chewing when she saw Emma. “Whoa. Is it prom already? Nobody told me! I didn’t even order a corsage.”
Emma dropped her purse on her desk. “Tell me one of you has a hair dryer.”
“Yeah, I totally carry one in my purse,” Riley said, even as she shook her head to indicate that she most definitely did not have a hair dryer.
“I don’t have one, either,” Grace said. “But we can hit up the girls in the Beauty department. One of them might.”
“Emma had an incident,” Julie said, plopping in her chair.
“What, like a Noah-wouldn’t-let-her-on-the-ark-because-she-was-overdressed kind of incident?” Riley asked.
Emma smiled, despite her bad mood.
“Oh my gosh, Emma!” Grace leaned forward. “Did you go out to that gala at the Guggenheim last night? Ooooh, did you go home with someone? Is this your version of the walk of shame?”
“If it is, I’m impressed,” Julie mused. “My walks of shame involved a lot more sweat pants with USC written across the butt and a dude’s oversized T-shirt and flip-flops.”
“You should totally write a story about this, Em,” Riley said, resuming her dedication to her doughnut. “?‘The Walk of Shame for Grown-ups.’?”
“Okay, you guys are making this situation way more interesting than it actually is,” Emma said, holding up her hand with a plea to stop.
“Well, of course,” Grace said, tilting her head. “That’s what we do. We sex things up.”
Emma had to grant her that. It was what they did.
Stiletto was the top-selling women’s magazine in the country, and Julie, Grace, Riley, and now Emma were its darlings as the Love & Romance gurus.
Between the four of them, they covered everything from “Ten Things He Secretly Hates” to “Outside-the-Box Anniversary Plans” to “A Beginner’s Guide to Kinky Foreplay.”
The range in stories varied from month to month based on whatever inspiration each woman had, or whatever whim Camille threw at them, but for the most part, they all had their niche.
Julie was all about fun, flirting, and dating: “First Kisses,” “How to Make Him Pant at First Glance,” and so forth.
Grace’s stories were mainly geared toward women already in relationships: “Making It Last,” “Couples Therapy for Newbies,” “Keeping the Romance Alive.”
Riley was sex. All sex, all the time.
And as for Emma? Emma was the resident heartbreak expert—the one who helped women figure out how to cut him loose, or how to survive the aftermath when you were the one set loose.