The Thing About My Prince (The Boston Commoners #3)

Chapter 1

CHAPTER ONE

LEXI

When the taste of the stale, dusty air in my editor’s office hits my tongue, I know my mouth’s open.

But I can’t force out any words despite the fact that I’ve just been offered the job I’ve been working toward for the ten years since I graduated from journalism school.

At least, I think that’s what happened.

All the atoms in my brain are whizzing around and bouncing off each other like popcorn in a hot pan.

Julian Snarque peers at me over his half-moon glasses and clasps his hands on the ancient, coffee-stained blotter on his desk.

“Alexandra, you look like I’ve told you your puppy died, rather than offered you the Eastern European conflict correspondent’s job you’ve been harassing me about since you started here. ”

It makes me want to scream that he calls me by the full name in my byline, not Lexi, like everyone else has since I was born. But on this occasion, I’ll let it go.

“Harassing is a little harsh.” I should probably have let that go too. Rather than criticize him, I should jump up and down and hug him and scream from the rooftop that I’m finally getting out into the world to spotlight the realities of people trying to live their lives in war zones.

Hugging him would be weird though. Has anyone ever hugged him? Even his mom? I think he was born sitting in that cracked leather chair at The Current, the weekly publication long respected for its investigative reporting.

It took five years of working my way up through local and then national news to get here. All my journalism heroes passed through these esteemed, yet rundown, offices on the west side of lower Manhattan.

Once I entered these hallowed halls, I spent three years working on every crappy story handed to me on the General Assignments desk, and doing favors like devoting the most excruciating three months of my journalistic life to writing an “autobiography” of a twenty-three-year-old pop star for the publishing company that owns us, before I was finally promoted to the Nexus Desk—or The Deskus as we usually call it—The Current’s investigative journalism team.

In the two years I’ve been part of that team, we’ve broken some amazing stories that have changed people’s lives, like the one about seniors’ care homes and another about a toxic water supply.

But a war correspondent’s position, out in the field, has always been my goal.

And now, finally, I’ll get to don a flak jacket and get out there to do some good.

“Sorry, Julian. I’m a bit stunned. Guess I’ve been on the Deskus for so long that deep down maybe I never thought this would ever happen.”

“You’re an excellent journalist, Alexandra. A superb writer. You deserve the chance.” He sniffs and pushes his glasses up his nose. “And it’s a good time to give you a shot at it. Since we’re having to shuffle some personnel around anyway.”

“Shuffling people around?”

“Well, legacy news publications are hardly a stranger to cutbacks these days. So, yes, when it came down to closing the Nexus team, I figured it was time to give you a chance rather than lay you off.”

“You’re closing the Deskus? Laying off the whole team?” My eyeballs might be about to pop free from their sockets.

These people are my friends and colleagues. One recently had her third kid. Another’s mother is about to go into palliative care. And one guy’s on arthritis medication that costs a fortune without insurance. They’re all talented, brilliant people. And they need their jobs.

“Yes. Orders from above.” Julian gestures to the ceiling, above which sits Graham Regus, the owner of Parkhouse Publications, our parent company and publisher of all manner of airport paperbacks and, of course, teen-pop autobiographies.

He’s also the father of Lee Regus, the laziest and most useless reporter on the General Assignments desk. Can’t imagine how he got his job.

“Anyway,” Julian says. “HR, or whatever they call themselves these days, will be in touch with details of your new package.”

Oh gosh, yes, a raise. That part hadn’t even crossed my mind. But I want this job so badly I’d take it even if it meant a bit of a pay cut.

“Amazing. Thank you.” I jump to my feet, hands suddenly shaking. How the hell am I going to face my Deskus pals who’re being laid off while I’m being promoted?

The reality of landing the job of my dreams, the one I’ve wanted since I was in high school, is struggling to sink in.

I need to go tell Becca—my best friend, roommate, and The Current’s social media queen.

Her first suggestion will undoubtedly be to meet after work at the Dead Skunk—the pub around the corner that’s been the traditional place of celebration and commiseration for the magazine’s staff for close to a century. And on this sunny September day it will be glorious on the patio.

“Thanks, Julian.” I hold my hand toward him over his desk. “I appreciate the opportunity. And I promise I won’t let you down.”

He doesn’t take my hand. Just leaves it there, hovering awkwardly over a pile of papers that should probably have been a PDF.

“You might want to sit back down for a moment.” His voice carries all the ominous weight of a true crime voiceover saying, “And then tragedy struck…” right before an ad break.

“Um. I’m fine, thanks.” The shimmy of excitement in my chest has been replaced by an icy heaviness. “Is there a problem?”

“Nope. No problem at all.” He rolls a gold pen between his fingers. He told me ages ago that it was a gift from his daughter. Before that, I’d never thought of him with a family. It’s impossible to imagine Julian playing with a child.

“There’s one little thing we need you to do before we ship you off,” he adds.

A catch. Of course there’s a fucking catch. Of course I can’t be given the job purely because I’d be good at it.

I even proved myself in the field covering maternity leave in Syria, where I earned plaudits for getting an interview with a family who’d been held captive in a two-week siege, and for finding a hidden camera that had been planted in our office by God knows who.

There was this weird old plastic tree in the corner of the room that seemed out of place and gave me the creeps, so one day I took a closer look and found a little hole in the trunk that had a tiny camera behind it.

Julian knows without a shred of doubt that I’ll make this new job my life.

The injustice of it gnaws at my guts before I even know what the catch is.

“What’s the little thing?” My fingers twist together.

His chair creaks as he leans back and looks up at me. “Remember how well-received your ghostwritten autobiography of Sabrina Summers was?”

Oh God, no. No, no, no. Not another vacuous pop star book.

My heart races with a mixture of fury, panic, and dread.

“Yes.” I do my best to keep my voice measured and even, but my one-word response comes out with all the eagerness of someone being dragged in for a root canal with no anesthetic.

“Well, the folks upstairs”—he indicates the ceiling again, this time by pointing the pen at it—“are in a bit of a pickle with a very high-profile memoir. Turns out this person is a wretched writer. So they urgently need a ghost for it.”

My racing heart plummets to my stomach so fast and hard that it drops me back into the chair. Is this the price I have to pay? Writing another life story for another singer who’s too young to have barely even had a life to write about yet?

It took every ounce of creativity I had last time to wring out something even close to readable. The thought of having to do it again makes me want to snatch Julian’s pen out of his hand and stab it in my eyeballs.

“Please, no” is the only pathetic whimper of a response I can manage.

“When I say high profile, I mean high profile,” he says, like that will sell it to me.

“Like who? The teenage star of whatever superhero franchise is currently raking in billions? The kid who won this season of America’s Pop Idol? Maybe the scruffy little dog from that new romcom movie?”

“There’s no need to be sarcastic, Alexandra.”

And there’s no need for him to be so fucking patronizing.

I straighten my back and fold my arms. “What if I say no?”

“Well, I just told you the Nexus Desk is being disbanded so…” He completes the sentence with a shrug.

“Seriously? You’re saying it’s write a bubblegum memoir to get the job I’ve always wanted, or have no job at all?”

“Pretty much.” He nods slowly. “But I don’t doubt you’d have no trouble getting your dream job elsewhere.

” His voice drips with sarcasm. “I mean, why wouldn’t The New York Times or the BBC or the like be willing to leapfrog you over all their other candidates who’ve either worked for them for forever or possess a glowing, decade-long, track record of conflict reporting, and deploy you, as a newcomer, immediately to a war zone? ”

He’s right. The Current is where I’ve put in all the groundwork, built my path toward the career I want. If I moved somewhere, without a résumé of war reporting, they’d expect me to prove myself to them all over again. That’s the way it works.

Logic says it’s quicker to suck up a few months trailing around after an insufferable celebrity, following them to parties, watching them take pouty Insta photos, and spend endless hours interviewing them to elicit tedious snippets about their life that I can puff up into something worthy of a book that will sell purely because of the face on the glossy cover.

“Why does it have to be me who writes this book? Why not someone else on the team? Or someone who, you know, actually ghostwrites memoirs for a living?”

“Sabrina’s book was such a success that the editors think you have the winning formula. They specifically requested you.” He pinches the bridge of his nose.

I sigh the heavy resigned sigh of someone who has no option other than to reluctantly accept their fate and live the cliché of short-term pain for long-term gain.

“Go on.” It’s hard not to groan. “Whose book needs to be written?”