LITMIR.BIZ

       CHAPTER ONE

      IT SEEMED LIKE just another ordinary workday, but Faye would soon learn that there was a life-changing surprise in store for her. It was one o’clock on a Thursday and she was just about to close out of the document she was working on and head down for lunch. Her desk was in an open-plan maze of cubicles, with fluorescent overhead lighting and the constant buzz of her coworkers’ chitchat. Every day at this time she made a point of leaving her editing work behind and taking the elevators down to the sprawling cafeteria in the building with its coffee bar, hot entrées and salad station. She had been working at Amuse Bouche for nearly ten years. It was her first job out of graduate school and over the time she’d been there, the magazine had become one of the world’s most preeminent food and wine publications.

      That’s not to say she considered herself any kind of food expert. There had been a time when her palate had been more adventurous—when she couldn’t imagine a better plan for a Sunday then to take the subway into the outer boroughs in search of the spiciest Indian food or the most delicious Thai noodles. But ever since things had ended with David, she had left all that behind in favor of bland foods: peanut butter and banana sandwiches were her new go-to. What was the point in making an elaborate meal when it was just her dining alone? Plus, she hated that now everyone who took a picture of their sandwich considered themselves a “foodie.”

      Faye pulled on her sweater, let the screensaver take over and grabbed her purse to head downstairs. She wasn’t going so much for the food—although the selections were incredible—so much as she was just to take a walk and get a change of scenery. She’d lost almost twenty pounds since the breakup. And even though her skinny jeans were now her loose ones and stuff relegated to the back of the closet now fit, and she got second glances from men as she walked to work up Sixth Avenue, she was basically indifferent to the attention. And while part of her did imagine bumping into David and seeing him seeing her looking incredible, mostly she just felt so sad about the whole thing, even though it had been almost a year now since that fateful day.

      Just as Faye turned to leave, she heard the familiar chirp of her desk phone. She knew it could only be one of two people: her boss or her mother. They were pretty much the only people who ever dialed her work number. All of her friends and contemporaries just texted. Faye preferred it because it was easier to delay responding. Calls were so immediate, and you had to actually talk to the person, which she was constantly trying to avoid. She knew if it was her mom, she would have to answer a series of questions that were all too familiar: Who was she seeing? Anyone worth a second date? What did she have lined up for the weekend? She hated the fact that she had instilled a grain of hope in her mom by telling her she was on Match, Tinder, Bumble and Plenty of Fish. The truth was, the only apps she had on her phone were her fitness tracker and an annoyingly addictive game where you pushed blocks around a grid. That was the extent of her dating life.

      A quick glance revealed the name Beverly Rice flashing on the screen and Faye picked up the receiver, glad to delay the parent talk.

      “Hi, Bev,” Faye answered, greeting her boss by her preferred nickname. Bev was the editor in chief of Amuse Bouche and a legend in the New York publishing industry, known as much for her food and wine expertise as her iconic horn-rimmed glasses. Faye had started out as her assistant, and very quickly Bev had shepherded her into writing for the magazine. Now she considered Bev her mentor, and often stayed late nights to help her, long after the other staff members had gone on to happy hour when an issue was closing.

      “Faye, can you come see me in my office?”

      “Of course.” Faye hung up the phone and smiled. Her door was adjacent to Bev’s, within earshot, but Bev liked to keep things formal.

      Taking her bag with her just in case there would still be time for lunch, Faye rounded the corner past the cloth-covered walls of the cubicles and found the door to her boss’s office ajar. Knocking lightly, she made eye contact with Bev, who stood up from her desk chair and waved Faye inside.

      “Everything okay?” Faye asked, taking a seat in one of the two chairs facing Bev’s desk. The room was tastefully decorated in muted neutral tones and covers from the magazine’s bestselling issues adorned the walls. When Faye looked just past her boss’s head, she could see the sun streaming across the midtown skyscrapers that surrounded them.

      “Oh, yes,” Bev said, sitting down and leaning across her desk. She was about twenty years Faye’s senior, in her early fifties, with professionally blown-out long brown hair and hard-earned physique which she attributed to good genes and Pilates. “I have an exciting assignment for you.”

      Faye instinctively perked up and sat up a little straighter in her chair. Her first thought was the rumored opening of a new restaurant by a Top Chef contestant. For that, she would definitely forgo a night of peanut butter sandwiches.

      “I have two words for you,” her bespectacled boss said enticingly. “Gregor Wright.”

      Faye watched as Bev sat back in her chair and waited for her reaction. Of course she knew Gregor Wright. He was famous. In fact, she and David had spent many nights watching his cable show, Globe-Trotting with Gregor, where he visited different travel destinations, eating and drinking his way through under-the-radar hotspots. And although she never said it in front of David, Faye had a major crush on the tall and slender Gregor, always in his signature leather bomber jacket. The combination of his British accent and the facial hair that she could so easily imagine grazing against her lady parts was enough fodder for many a solo session with the handheld showerhead in her steamy bathroom.

      “Yes, I know him,” Faye said with a nervous cough.

      Bev sighed. “I know you know him. How would you like to meet him?”

      “No!” Faye said adamantly and then quickly changed to a more measured tone. “I mean, it sounds interesting…” She saw Bev raise an eyebrow at her from behind her glasses, but she didn’t care. The last thing she needed was to spend an afternoon interviewing a womanizer. An arrogant, sexy, intelligent famous person who could probably get most women to drop their panties by simply uttering their name in that crisp English voice of his.

      “None of the other magazines have it,” Bev said. “This could be major for you.”

      Faye twisted her long, platinum blond hair over her shoulder and smiled nervously at her boss. “I appreciate that, really, I do.”

      “I need you for this, Faye,” Bev said insistently. “You’re my best writer. And I know it’s not my place to say, but maybe traveling for a few days would do you good.”

      Faye opened her mouth to protest her boss’s gentle suggestion but instead her mouth hung agape. She wasn’t quite sure what to say. Of course, the assignment was incredible. And she did deserve it. But she had heard the rumors about the women who encountered Gregor. It wasn’t so much that he was persistent, but more that women were drawn to his aura. Getting caught up in a fantasy was just something she didn’t need right now.

      “Did you say days—as in, multiple days?”

      Bev returned Faye’s nonplussed expression with a knowing smirk. “A week, actually. In London.”

      Faye exhaled deeply and turned her gaze toward the windows. The sun was shining bright for what felt like the first time in weeks. It had been a long, cold New York City winter and today, for the first time, people were walking around without jackets.

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