Starting from Scratch by Marie Ferrarella Page B

time?”
    â€œPaula called Sutherland a male chauvinist pig.”
    Elisha pretended to wince, not at the accusation, but at the term Paula had used. She struggled to keep the amused look off her face. She knew that at the moment Rocky wouldn’t appreciate it. “Haven’t heard that one in a long time. You would have thought that someone as modern and forward thinking as Paula would have come up with a more up-to-date term.”
    Rocky shrugged. “Sometimes the old standards work best.” The comment was said more into his shirt than to her.
    Elisha was instantly on her guard. “You’re mumbling, Rocky. Does that mean you’re going to ask me to do something I won’t like?”
    He sighed and shook his head. “You know me too well.”
    Elisha frowned. “And apparently you don’t know me at all. Hello.” Moving forward on her seat, she put her hand out to him. “I’m Elisha Reed. Perhaps you’ve seen my office. It’s the one with the overflowing paper leaking out through the cracks and beneath the door.” She slid back on her seat, her eyes never leaving Rocky’s face. Surely he was kidding about what she thought he was going to ask her to do. “I already work a twenty-six-hour day.”
    â€œTwenty-four,” Rocky corrected automatically. “There are twenty-four hours in a day.”
    â€œI know.” She shot the zinger at him with the accuracy of a mischievous child with an old-fashioned slingshot. “I’ve been borrowing hours against the future. I’m up to the year 2025.”
    He did his best to sound upbeat as he tried to move forward. “Look, Elisha, I know that you’re overworked…”
    When he used her given name, she knew that the deck was stacked against her and that she’d lost before the game had ever begun. “I’ve always loved your flair for understatement, Rocky.”
    â€œI can give the newer authors to Edlestein, free you up a little.”
    â€œTo do what?”
    Rocky sighed, a man between a rock and a hard place with no promise of a pillow anywhere in sight. “Don’t make this hard, Elisha.”
    She looked at him sweetly. “Then don’t say the words, Rocky.”
    â€œWhat words?”
    She’d heard all the rumors and each time she did, she gave up a quick, silent prayer that she wasn’t the one dealing with Sutherland. Now, apparently, she would be.
    â€œThe words condemning me to dance in attendance to a man who could serve as the poster boy for anger–management classes—the ‘before’ side.”
    â€œLise, the man writes tremendous blockbusters for us. We need to keep him happy.”
    The stories about working with Sutherland were legion. None was uplifting. “From what I’d heard, I don’t think the man is capable of ‘happy.’ Unless you mean allowing him to toss vestal virgins into a volcano. That might bring a smile to his face.”
    â€œWomen find him charming.”
    Rocky was referring to cocktail parties. Sutherland had attended Sinclair’s launch party. And had been mobbed as she recalled. “Women who don’t have to be working with him.”
    Rocky tried to recall all the kind comments he’d heard leveled at the writer. “He’s a man’s man—”
    â€œFine, give him to some man.” Her eyes widened as she thought of the perfect solution. Or at least a solution that would keep her off the hook for a while. “You, for instance.”
    The thought clearly horrified Rocky. He turned ash white. “He’d break me in two—verbally. The guy’s an ex–Navy SEAL among other things. I think he was also a mercenary for a while.”
    â€œTake a bodyguard and have him frisked before you start working together.” Not that Sutherland liked or welcomed any input from anyone but himself. As far as she was concerned, that made him