This teaser is from Chapter Two of You Are My Favorite Bad Idea. It introduces you to Elan's office and her boss you'll love to hate Polly Gorman. You may also recognize Charles, the office manager, who was one of my favorite side characters in The Bloody Prince.

My little patch of cubical-topia had a few things going for it. 

It was close to the elevators and the break room, far enough from the bathroom that I was spared all sounds and smells, and got decent natural light from a nearby bank of windows.

But it was directly outside my senior editor Polly Gorman’s office and that automatically qualified it as a circle of hell.

I set down my bag and began sorting through the mail. A few catalogues, a couple of old-school snail mail manuscript submissions, and a cream-and-black edged box with Jo Malone printed on it in understated black letters.

Oh, joy. Polly had been retail therapy-ing again. That was never a good sign.
I was just about done with the sorting when Charles swung by. He was officially the floor’s office manager and unofficially Altar Media’s head gossipmonger.

“Someone had a good weekend.” He leaned one hip against my desk and grinned down at me. “I want to hear all about it. Fess up. What happened between you and the handsome Mr Lawrence?”

Shocked, I blinked up at him. “How could you possibly know about that?” 

He patted the box.

I glanced at it and realized that the little envelope attached to it had my name on it. It was also already opened which explained Charles’s sudden insight into my weekend. And sure enough the card read, Thank you for letting me into your home. ~ Your New Roommate

A warm glow settled in my chest. How had Hunter managed to get this on my desk by this morning?

“You haven’t opened it yet?” Charles tsk-ed. “Hurry up. You know you need to get that out of sight before the Wicked Witch blows in.”

He wasn’t wrong.

“You know reading someone else’s mail is a federal crime, don’t you?” I slipped off the black ribbon that held the box closed.

“I had to make sure it was for you, didn’t I?” Charles sounded wholly unrepentant. 

I raised an eyebrow at him. “My name on the front would seem to prove that, you nosy busybody.” 

Like all other forms of criticism, it bounced off Charles with no visible effect. “Don’t give me that face. You assumed it was for Her Wickedness too. Now stop keeping me in suspense. What’s in it?”

Nestled in the black tissue paper were bath oils, glass candles with silver lids, a set of scented lotions, and a large bottle of my favorite perfume.

I touched the perfume bottle and smiled. He’d noticed.

“Wow,” Charles said. “Are you guys moving in together? Did he propose?”

“Woah.” I held up my hands. “No. Noooo. Dial whatever you’re thinking way down. We just exchanged drawers.”

Both Charles’s eyebrows went up. “Hunter Lawrence sent you who knows how many hundreds of dollars worth of bath products because you exchanged drawers? Jeez, you sure picked a winner there.”

“It’s sweet, isn’t it?” I took the perfume from the box and spritzed a little on myself.

The familiar spicy citrus smell made me smile.  

“Very,” Charles agreed. “But you still need to hide it before—”

The nearby elevator dinged, the doors whooshed open, and the click-clack of high heels on wooden flooring rang out like gunfire.

Charles was gone from my desk so fast it was like he’d evaporated.

I shoved the lid back on the box, dropped it to the floor, and slid it out of sight beneath my desk as Polly Gorman rounded the corner from the elevators. Her razor-sharp blond bob fluttered as she walked.

Polly was petite, greyhound-thin, and so modern, sleek, and chic she could have been designed by Georg Jensen. Today she wore a nude linen pantsuit, subtle bronze makeup, and a French manicure. Her usual standard of high fashion perfection.

It was only when my inspection reached her feet that I winced.

As the person with the desk closest to the lair of the beast, I was the nonfiction department's elected shoe spotter. The height of Polly’s shoes were a surprisingly accurate reflection of her mental state. Anything over three inches and I was to alert the department at large.

Given that today’s nude leather stilettos were at least five punishing inches high, I’d guess her date on Saturday night had not gone well. 

“Good morning, Polly,” I said brightly, as she closed the distance between us. “Here is a printout of the Lantern notes, I’ve also added them to the file like you asked. Emma called to remind you about the two p.m. planning session for the client schmooze on May eighteenth, and Mister…”

I squinted at the name on the screen. Wriothesley…how on earth was that pronounced?

“…Wry-oath-ehs-lee’s London agent emailed to confirm his meeting with you on Wednesday at eleven.”

“It’s pronounced Rox-lee, Elan. Which you a simple google search would have told you. Email back to confirm the appointment. And May eighteenth is a corporate event not a client schmooze.” Polly glanced over the notes I’d handed her. Technically I was her junior editor but in Polly’s head that seemed to translate to something between secretary and general servant. “And where are we on the Walters memo?”

That was snippy even by her standards. 

“You haven’t given it to me yet.” I used a foot to slide the Jo Malone box even further underneath my desk.  

“Of course,” she said with a wintery little smile. “I forgot you left before I did on Friday.”

The smile stayed on my face out of the sheer perverse desire not to give her the reaction she was looking for. “I’ll come get it now.”

I stood up and Polly looked me up and down.

My gunmetal-grey pantsuit had been bought from Nordstroms on clearance. I’d had it tailored but it was still orders of magnitude lower on the designer food chain than Polly would have considered personally acceptable. But I’d paired it with a teal silk blouse and steel-toed ballet flats and I’d thought it looked good.

And it might be petty, but there was something really satisfying that even in her heels she still had to look up at me...