Chapter Five
SPENCER
"Spencer, I know you like to have it your way, but we won't be able to pull this off.”
“I call the shots," I said in a measured voice, “and I say we will.” Ever since I took over Whitley Publishing, I’d worked tirelessly not only to live up to the legacy but also to improve it. I'd never given up, no matter how difficult the task, but right now, I was pissed at my own team.
“Publishing is changing, and we have to adapt.”
"Don't patronize me, Steven," I said. He was the chief sales officer and was starting to annoy me to no end.
"That's not what I was doing. You’re simply not willing to listen to reason when it comes to the biography section."
My jaw ticked. He was right. I wasn't. It was personal. But that didn't mean I was wrong.
"There is a market for it," I said.
"Yes, it's just not a terribly big market," he went on. "Certainly not enough to warrant us wasting our time talking about it during a general meeting when we have other issues on the agenda."
"We have spoken about all the other points."
I'd combed through the agenda personally, leaving this at the end. "I’m going to do everything it takes to get the biography section back up and running."
He shook his head. "We really don’t have time—"
“It's my company. I decide what's a waste of time and what's a priority or not."
He paled.
Good. I was usually laid-back, but I wanted people to know that I meant business.
I could be ruthless too. "This meeting's over, then," I determined, standing up from the chair.
There was a shuffle of papers around the room.
I headed straight to my office, closing the door so no one bothered me.
I massaged my temples. I could feel a migraine coming.
I went straight to the window, looking up and down Pearl Street.
Whitley Publishing had been housed here for decades.
It had survived the transition from print to online. And that was mostly because of me.
We had plenty of divisions that made money.
Whitley Publishing had several branches: some in book publishing but most in magazines and newspapers.
The biography section of The Vulture, our flagship magazine, wasn't generating the interest it used to.
Not in the age of Wikipedia where you could find out the highlights of everyone's life with one click.
But that was what was different about us.
We didn't just touch the surface, spouting general facts.
Our writers dug deep. At least the writers we had.
Our last writer in the biography section had just quit.
The competition stole him from us for a completely different area in publishing. I was pissed off.
My team insisted we could just let the biography section die.
I said otherwise. My mother had spearheaded the biography section right up until she passed away.
I remembered even as a kid asking her once why she didn't do something else, choose another genre.
Back then, I thought it was totally boring.
"We can learn so many things from other people's lives, Spencer, from their triumphs and mistakes, from their joys and regrets. And how will we ever know about them if no one wrote it down?" That wasn't something you found on Wikipedia.
Then again, not many writers had my mother's gift to tell a story.
No one on the team had ever matched her abilities.
She'd been passionate about the subject.
I remember her staying up late in the office she had at the house.
She was raising five boys and continued to write in the evening.
She'd given a lot of sweat and effort to this section, and I refused to let it die.
There was a knock at my door.
"Come in."
Jonathan, my VP of Marketing, stepped in. "Do you have a few minutes?"
"Yes."
"Look, about the biographies…"
“If that’s what this is about, I don't have any seconds to spare." He’d been in the meeting too. “I refuse to drop the biography section, and that’s that."
"Have you spoken to Diane?" Diane was our head of Human Resources.
"No, not yet. But I’ll instruct her to put out feelers for new writers."
"If you're sure."
"I am."
Jonathan hesitated in the doorway. He only did that when he didn't have the courage to tell me something up front.
"You agree with everyone else, I’m guessing?"
He cleared his throat. "I think you want to keep it running for the wrong reasons. It's been in your family for a long time. But things are different now. People's interests have changed."
"Good journalism will always sell."
"Tell that to the dozen or so publishing companies that have closed in the past few years alone."
"Jonathan, I won't waste one more minute discussing this with you. We're marching ahead with hiring new writers, and that's it."
"Fine. Are you coming into the office tomorrow?"
"Yes." I'd finally managed to find a nanny.
Agatha was a sixty-year-old woman who insisted that she needed something to do now that she was retired, and her grandchildren were already grown.
For now, she seemed a good fit, and it meant I could come to the office more often.
I didn't like being an absentee CEO. The team rallied around me.
If I wasn't around, motivation sank, as proven by the fact that two writers had left this month. If I’d been here, I could've convinced them to stay on.
"I'm available over email for the rest of the day," I said. “I’m going home.”
We headed to the elevators, squeezing in with six others.
Everyone was on their phone as it rushed down.
Most people got off in the lobby. We had a good location for public transportation.
It was one of the perks of being on Pearl Street.
We didn’t need to have the office here. The rent was exorbitant.
But Whitley Publishing made history at this address. We belonged in this building.
My grandfather founded Whitley Industries decades ago ago.
It had several branches: advertising, publishing, coffee, distillery, and biotech.
After my father was in charge, he added a few more.
Once the scandal about his double life surfaced, he moved to Australia.
My grandfather was left to pick up the pieces.
My brothers and half brothers gradually each took over a section of the company.
Right now, Colton ran the biotech branch, Gabe the distillery, and Cade ran The Boston Coffee Expert.
We were all doing well even though Dad had brought many of the companies to ruin.
We’d succeeded despite the Whitley name not because of it.
I drove straight home. Agatha was there until six o'clock.
I still hadn't managed to perfect my schedule. Ben slept sporadically, so I never knew if he’d be awake when I came home.
But once he was old enough and developed more of a routine, I planned to organize my workday to be at the house for his post-afternoon nap and dinner.
It was important to me to spend time with my son.
I pulled up in front of the house. Getting out of the car, I heard a dog barking like his life depended on it.
"Becky." That was Penny's voice. I instantly zeroed in on her. "That's a squirrel. You've seen five squirrels today. Please calm down. You're upsetting the neighbors."
Fuck, she was cute, talking like that with a dog. She was gorgeous—her blonde hair was pulled over one shoulder, falling almost to her elbow.
She was wearing a short skirt, and it looked far too good on her. Then she bent at the waist. I bet I could see her… Spencer, get your shit together. You will not glance up your neighbor's skirt. You've got enough to deal with. But I couldn't look away from her.
"Need any help?" I called.
Several things happened at the same time.
Becky reacted to my voice. The good part was that it seemed to take her attention away from the squirrel.
The bad part was that she started sprinting toward me, and Penny clearly wasn't prepared for it.
Next thing I knew, she was on the ground.
Her skirt flew up, and I had a glimpse of her ass. It was fucking perfect.
"Ahh," she yelled. Becky pulled her forward on the concrete a foot or two before Penny let go of the leash.
I bent down and immediately gripped it when Becky reached me and then yelled, "Sit," or whatever the fuck she was supposed to do now.
"Behave." I gripped the leash strongly and walked over to Penny.
"Let me help you out," I said.
"Ouch."
Her knees, thighs, and elbows were red, and when I glanced at her eyes, I noticed they were watery and a beautiful shade of brown.
"Do you have a first aid kit?" I asked her. She was tall, but I still towered over her.
"There could be one somewhere, I just don't know where. I’ll look for it.”
"Let’s go to my place. It’s going to be faster. I'll set you up right away." She glanced up at me, shaking her head.
"No, that's fine. I can take care of myself."
"I feel guilty. If I hadn't called out, she’d still be barking at the squirrel."
"I'm not sure what got into Becky today."
"Come to my house."
She nodded. "Let me just bring Becky inside. I don't want her anywhere near the baby with the way she's been behaving."
"Sure, that sounds legit. I’ll wait for you in the house. Just knock on the door."
"Okay." She was clearly in pain by the way she walked. I was tempted to convince her to come in straightaway, but she had a good point about the dog. I headed inside.
"Spencer, you're just in time. He's had a short nap, and I think now he's going to have a bout of energy for one or two hours before he's ready to sleep again," Agatha said.
"Hey, baby boy," I said, holding him with my right arm.
"What was that ruckus I heard outside?"
"My neighbor's coming over. She had an incident with her dog, and I'm going to need the first aid kit from the kitchen."
"Want me to help you?"
"No, I'll do it."
"Okay, then I'm going to leave.”
“See you tomorrow.”
I took out the first aid kit right after she left. I opened it to check the contents. It had everything I needed for Penny.
I couldn't get out of my mind the image of her skirt flying up and that brief peek I had of her ass. Stop it, Spencer. You’re going to tend to her wounds. That's all you're going to do.