Chapter 1

Life Lessons According to Camryn:

Some people are like Slinkies. They’re only good for a smile when you push them down the stairs.

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The first sign that Karma was now in cahoots with the Devil Incarnate to ruin her existence should have been before sunrise and pre-coffee. Well, okay, Camryn Covic didn’t believe in Karma. Like Fate, she believed people made their own destiny. Any inclinations otherwise were for those too idealistic to accept reality. Though, now she was beginning to wonder if there was any merit to the naive notions.

When she opened her apartment door to get the Chicago Tribune, she instead found a note from her landlord. They were not renewing her lease. Anyone’s lease for that matter. The building had been sold and the new owners wanted to convert it into high-end condos. Oh, please. Chicago needed more high-end condos like they needed another baseball franchise. She had thirty days to find another apartment.

The second sign should have been spilling the last of her lukewarm full-caff, half-fat freshly ground beverage over her crisp beige suit shirt while driving through the concrete jungle of downtown and brake-checking because of the Neanderthal in front of her, who, according to his bumper sticker, brakes for nature. Someone should tell him there was no nature in Chicago. Unless you counted the gangs. She had to resort to her emergency back-up shirt in the trunk—a hideous, orange garment her sister bought her for Hristo se Rodi last year—or risk being late into the office. Seriously, could her sister, just once, get her a useful Christmas gift? Was that too much to ask?

The third sign should have been when, after arriving at the office, her secretary announced that Alicia St. John, Vice President, wanted to see Camryn in her office at nine fifteen, sharp. The pointed pain-in-the-ass woman never summoned someone as low as a marketing director like herself unless things were about to get ugly.

At first, she thought these nothing more than nuisances. A crappy start to what was proving a bad day. But, as she stood in the doorway to her boyfriend-slash-boss’s office, she had a niggling feeling this was not a bad day at all but, rather, a screeching halt preceding a twelve car pile-up.

And she was at the bottom of the wreckage.

Maxwell Orton, the Third, blinked at her from across his mahogany desk in his quasi-spacious, unremarkably decorated office. Eggshell-colored walls and pictures of a golf course served as personality. Camryn blinked back from just inside the doorway. She waited for him to give her a heads-up on what Alicia wanted. He worked a lot more closely with her on their projects than Camryn did. He’d know what the succubus wanted. Instead, he fidgeted with a stack of papers on his desk, arranging and rearranging them into a clusterfuck.

Camryn sat down in a brown leather chair across from him and folded her hands in her lap, illustrating the calm she didn’t feel. Her chest grew tight and her belly cramped. “What’s going on, Maxwell?”

He stood, popped a Tums from his candy dish into his mouth, and walked behind her to close the door while he chewed. When he returned to his desk and sat, he sighed so heavily she could smell the cherry antacid. He took several seconds straightening his blue striped tie into obedience, which was interesting because it wasn’t askew to begin with.

“Camryn,” he said in that tone reserved for a street urchin. Not that he knew any street urchins. “I don’t think this is going to work out between us.”

Though her gut sank like Baba’s three-day-old slavski kolac bread, she didn’t flinch. By “this,” she assumed he meant their fifteen-month relationship. The entire department knew about them dating, and though it was against policy at Davis, Davis, & St. John Advertising to fraternize within the company, no one had said anything. Could this be what Alicia wanted to see her for?

“Is this about Alicia?”

His middling brown eyes popped from his head like he’d accidently swallowed a tamale. “You know about that? About the two of us, I mean? I wanted to talk to you privately before you heard about the relationship from someone else. I regret not calling you last night, then.”

The relationship? Her intestines churned to the point she should’ve heard “Auntie Em!” blaring from her belly button. He was boinking the bitch. Behind her back. Rejection and hurt cut a path from her stomach to her esophagus while early tendrils of anger tapped her temples. Worst of all, embarrassment threatened to swallow her whole.

Maxwell was good looking in a corporate, never-saw-the-light-of-day kind of way. He seemed suited for Camryn, both of them being the kind of people one would pass on the street and hardly take notice of. Average. Ordinary. Not like Alicia. Alicia was…

“I see,” she said, ordering her voice neutral, her hands trembling. “Can I at least have the decency to know why?”

His lips curled, an obvious tell of disgust. When had she started disgusting him? She was no Alicia, but she wasn’t disgusting. Was she?

“This is why,” he said like that explained anything. “You,” he muttered, pointing at her as if lesions grew over her arms. “You’re a robot. You have no emotion whatsoever. Sex with you is like sleeping with a fish…”

Okay, ouch. With double ouch on top.

Every woman’s largest insecurity right there. That she wasn’t attractive enough or satisfying in bed. The saliva in her mouth disintegrated and her eyes grew hot.

She’d assumed—mistakingly, it appeared—because they’d been dating so long, had actually talked about marriage, maybe Maxwell had seen past the cool front she showed others. She had feelings, bled red just like everybody. Sometimes she had difficulty showing that side or opening up, but she had emotions. Yeah, she could be construed as dull on occasion, but they were adults. Fun was for kids. Here she thought maturity was a good trait. They had a comfortable routine together, a mutual conformity and future outlook. The same goals. Get married in the next year, buy a condo, have one child, hire a nanny. Live happily ever after with a retirement fund and mutual stocks.

“You don’t even laugh…”

She looked at him and realized he was still talking. Rather, still listing the many ways why she was an inferior, boring person. And she wanted to die right where she sat.

He was leaving her for beautiful, thin, and exciting Alicia St. John. Everything Camryn wasn’t. Added to the mortification heap was the fact he’d somehow made her feel stupid to boot. The one thing she’d had going for her all her life was her intellect. Except, he’d been having an affair, which she’d been oblivious to, and by the sound of his diatribe, he’d never been attracted to her in the first place, which meant she’d been delusional also.

Pain rammed her from every angle. The harsh tickle of tears clogged her throat, but she cleared them. Had to. She couldn’t afford to break down and lose it. Not at work and damned if she’d give him the satisfaction.

Out of the perfect part of Maxwell Orton—the Third’s—hair, horns began to grow. White ivory with ringed indents pushed through his scalp, barely disturbing the orderly comb of his dark brown strands. The lenses on his wire-rimmed glasses cracked. Blisters and scales formed over his skin. His hands morphed into hooves.

“Alicia and I are so good together…”

She blinked away the image before her, and the normal Maxwell returned. Her creative imagination always worked well as a defense mechanism. In her head, aliens could be invading the Upper West Side, using poodles as body cavities and laced Twizzlers for mind control. But, on the outside, she was the pillar of calm. It was the only power she'd had growing up in a large, crazy Serbian family. In adulthood, it had helped her hide outward displays of emotion and mask vulnerability.

Control. It was all about control.

She wasn’t oblivious to how people viewed her. The receptionists called her The Ice Queen behind her back. Respect and conservatism had landed and kept her position within the company, but none of her bosses were chummy with her like they tended to do with other colleagues. No one invited her out for drinks or asked how her weekend went. If only they knew what lay under the surface. How insecure and normal she was trying to fit in and find her place in the world. Not so very different from them, really.

But she'd thought Maxwell was special, that he’d known she had a warmer setting to her typical defrost. If someone like him didn’t want her, she was destined to become a spinster, just like her family thought. Insert twelve cats here. She didn’t have charisma and dry humor like her married younger brother. She didn’t have good looks, charm, and a great body like her soon-to-be married younger sister.

Oh crap.

“What about my sister’s wedding next week?” she blurted, cutting off his rant about her clothes not having any color. It would probably be argumentative to point out she was wearing a shirt the color of ripe cantaloupe. “I was supposed to introduce you to my family. We leave for Colorado in four days.”

Camryn’s family lived ninety minutes north of Chicago, Illinois, in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, just across the state border, but her sister’s fiancé, Justin, was from a well-to-do Boulder family. When they'd gotten engaged, his parents had wanted the wedding on their estate. They were flying the entire nut farm to Colorado for a week-long pre-nuptials hurrah. Though Camryn didn’t live far from her childhood home, her work schedule made it difficult to visit often, and Maxwell hadn’t wanted to rush a meet-the-folks interlude. Heather and Justin’s wedding was supposed to be the big moment.

Maxwell’s mouth snapped shut. “Obviously, I won’t be attending.” He rose. “You have your meeting with Alicia now, and I think we’re done here.”

Dismissed.

Triple ouch.

She looked at him a second more, battling the urge to cry and bitter words on the tip of her tongue, then she stood. Game face on. “I believe you’re right. I regret it ended this way. I…appreciated our time together.” You sack of monkey poo! “I’ll stop by your office later so we can discuss what team you want for the Fenzer account.”

He sniffed. “That won’t be necessary. Alicia and I have a team ready. You’re being put on the Wholesome Foods account. Possibly.”

Sign number five.

“I see,” she said. Good luck landing Fenzer Footwear without me. “I’m sure the campaign will be stellar.” Stellar crap. And Fenzer’s money will go to our competitor.

In shock, dejected, she opened the door to find the entire department staring at her from over their cubicles in the spacious, wide-open floor design. All fifty of the assistants, personnel, and marketing teams. Pity, remorse, and a little fear radiated in their expressions.

How she hated drama and being the focus of attention. Inner-office gossip was the worst. Especially being the target of discussion. Best she could do was act like nothing had happened. Show no weakness. Talk would cease in no time.

She raised her brows when she really felt like yakking. “Good morning, everyone,” she said politely, pulling her cell from her purse and pretending to check messages as if a giant hole hadn’t just swallowed her. She headed toward the elevator on shaking legs, texting her sister, Heather, along the way.

May come home a day early. Will explain later.

She pushed the button for the twentieth floor, where all the bigwig executive offices were. When the doors closed, shutting out the din, she leaned against the wall and exhaled for a brief moment while alone. Shutting her eyes, she focused on counting to ten for calm. Her hand fluttered to her stomach, trying to keep the contents inside. Could this morning get any worse? It was as if she was the butt of a joke with a never ending punchline.

She swallowed, sucked in a harsh breath, and straightened just as the doors opened with a ding. She’d wrap her head around everything later. Form a plan. Make charts. It’ll be okay.

The receptionist greeted her with a cool smile. “Hello, Ms. Covic. Miss St. John is expecting you. You can head straight back.”

Camryn nodded and walked down the hall, passing advertising posters for their many accounts. Pet food, breath mints and, her personal favorite, tampons. She knocked and entered the first door on the right.

Alicia St. John, bitch extraordinaire, motioned her inside with a wave of her manicured hand. “No, I want it by Friday,” she barked into the phone.

Camryn waited inside the doorway, watching Alicia pace the hardwood floor behind her mahogany desk. The click of her black heels matched time with a crystal decorative clock on a shelf to the left of the desk the company had given her last year for excellence. Or was it two years ago? Loathe as Camryn was to admit it, Alicia was good at her job. People skills? Not so much. Micromanaging her domain? Oh yeah. Her black suit resembled Fifth Avenue, but her pink camisole underneath whispered Victoria’s Secret. Her coifed blonde hair fell to her shoulders in a smooth, sleek bob.

Camryn wondered if Alicia’s perfect hair and perfect makeup had ruffled at all when she'd had her legs wrapped around Camryn’s boyfriend. She was probably a screamer, too. If Camryn were to claw Alicia’s eyes out, would Maxwell still want her?

“Fine,” Alicia said, slamming the receiver in its cradle. Hard enough, Camryn had to wonder how the wall of glass behind Alicia displaying a panoramic view of downtown Chicago hadn’t shattered from reverberations. Without missing a beat, she looked at Camryn and pointed to a chair. “Sit, Camryn.”

Do I get a treat if I do? Maybe she should wag her tail.

Alicia handed her a manila envelope before sitting herself. Camryn knew better than to open it before Alicia told her, in detail, what was inside. All hail the queen when she had something to say. Hell’s fury erupted when full attention wasn’t on her.

“We lost two big accounts this quarter. We have to make some cuts,” Alicia said before sipping from her Starbucks cup. She was probably the type to drink that chai tea crap instead of real coffee. “Your position is one of the cuts needed. The art director can do your job without us having to pay the extra salary.”

Uh, what? No, he couldn’t. The art department drew sketches, computer animations, and generated layouts based on Camryn’s ad suggestions to show the clients a visual of their options. They didn’t come up with the original material.

Besides that… “My accounts weren’t the two you lost. I also got you the Fenzer Footwear deal.”

Alicia stared at her. Just stared through ice-blue eyes like Camryn had just fallen out of the stupid tree, smacking every branch on her descent.

Pens and paper flew off of Alicia’s desk and spiraled around the room. Folders swirled out of the filing cabinet, slicing paper cuts into Alicia’s face. When the stapler took flight, Camryn envisioned it landing solidly on Alicia’s forehead.

“Am I being fired?” she asked, trying to hide the tremor in her voice with the clipped question.

“I prefer to say ‘let go.’ In that envelope is a letter of recommendation and a small severance package. It should get you through a few months.”

Sign number six.

Outside the massive twentieth floor window, the skyline of downtown Chicago lit up like a Roman candle. Helicopters buzzed between the skyscrapers and plummeted. Fire and ash rained like confetti. The office window shattered, blowing shards of glass inside and imbedding in the walls.

Not her job, too. What would she have left? Who had she pissed off to have this kind of disastrous luck? The shock alone froze her limbs.

Anger, fear, rejection, and shame filled her abdomen, splintered in every direction like a barbed cobweb piercing a path throughout her whole cavity.

“I see,” Camryn said, berating herself for the brilliant reply. It was beginning to sound like a mantra. She needed to maintain professionalism to use this position as a reference for applications, though, no matter how much she wanted to scream. Hurl insults. Cry. But, dang, it took effort on her part. “I’ll collect my things, then.”

“Security will have to escort you out…”

Lovely. Why didn’t she just stab Camryn through the eye with a hot poker while she was at it?

Camryn stopped hearing anything but the steady hum of her heartbeat drumming her ears. Autopilot kicked in. She stood, walked out of the office, and straight to the elevator. She rode down in silence, exiting when the ding told her to. She headed directly to her office, collected her purse, and strode back to the elevator again.

Only then, while waiting for it to return to take her to the bottom, did she notice Bill standing next to her. The middle-aged security guard, sporting a dark brown comb-over and gray-infused mustache, crossed his arms over his paunch as if daring her to be difficult. Did they think she’d steal a laser jet copier on her way out by stashing it in her purse? No, no. Never mind the huge bulge. That’s just my day planner, Officer.

Alarmed, she turned to find the whole department staring at her again. Her heart thumped once and then gave up.

Everyone knew. About Maxwell. About Alicia firing her. About her life swirling the drain.

Her stomach sank to her ankles.

Several seconds ticked by. Staring, staring. Some had the courtesy to look away, pretending to read a file or talk on the phone, others didn’t bother to divert their attention from the train wreck.

Camryn wanted to die. Right where she stood, just perish on the spot.

Chelsea, her secretary—make that her ex-secretary—hurried over with a box in her arms. “These are the things from your office, Ms. Covic. I’m so sorry.”

Yep, the whole department knew. Dang it.

Chelsea wasn’t sorry. None of them were. They probably had a “ding dong, the witch is gone” party planned in five minutes by the water cooler. Camryn had done her job and had done it well, but not a solitary co-worker had mingled, sat with her at lunch, or cracked jokes with her in the eight years she’d been at the company.

Camryn nodded, taking the box with numb fingers just as the elevator opened. Such a small box for the almost decade she’d been employed.

Bill stepped onto the elevator with her and rode down. Down, down. She bit her tongue hard enough to draw blood. She’d be damned if anyone would see her cry. If she had nothing left—and that would appear to be the case—she at least had her pride.

Chin up. Act like you don’t care.

Walking across the lobby, she kept her head high as she exited the front door, still high as she crossed the parking structure, and right up until she got to her car. Only when she got behind the wheel and slammed the door did she drop her chin in defeat.

Her eyes pinched closed as she sucked air through her nose. Hot tears swam behind her lids and coated her lashes. The giant ball in her throat threatened to cut off her airway.

A failure. She was an utter failure. In her career, her dating life. Heck, even her family thought she was a lost cause. Lord, how she wanted to lose it.

Not here. Not here. Just get home.

Starting the car, she pulled out of the structure and headed toward her soon-to-be nonexistent apartment. There, she’d bawl like a darn baby in private until none of it mattered.

Please. Who was she kidding? Of course, it mattered.

Her life was over. Apartment? Gone. Job? Gone. Boyfriend? Double gone.

The banana and rye toast she’d had for breakfast started battling to the death on who’d escape her stomach first. She concentrated on the bustle of traffic and street lights just to survive the trip and focus.

Heck, she hated Chicago anyway.