Free Love, Accidentally by Sarah Pekkanen Page B

biting their nails.
    What the hell could be going on in the hallway, anyway? Had Fenstermaker made a decision yet? I twisted around and peered out Matt’s door just as he walked back in.
    “No verdict,” Matt reported. “But I heard Fenstermaker tell Mason he’d call soon.”
    “Soon?” I demanded. “In an hour? Next week? Next month? What the hell does soon mean?”
    “Lindsey, knock it off,” Matt said. “I told you, no matter what happens today, it’s in the bag.”
    “You’re just saying that because you’re my shrink,” I said, but I couldn’t help smiling.
    I stood up from my chair slowly, every bone in my body suddenly aching. It had to be postpresentation letdown; I couldn’t be getting sick. At 6:00 a.m . tomorrow I was flying to Seattle to lead focus groups for a brand of sneakers whose sales were inexplicably lagging in the West. I needed to identify the problem and restructure the campaign quickly, before we blew any more money on our old ads. From there I was flying directly to Tokyo for thirty-six hours to oversee the shooting of a cologne commercial featuring a B-list celebrity. It was going to be a nightmare; like most washed-up former sitcom actors, he gobbled Ativan like popcorn, so I’d have to babysit him during the entire shoot. In between all this, assuming I won the Gloss account, I’d need to finalize details for our TV and magazine shoots and buy ad space and oversee the production.
    “I’ve got a ton of work,” I told Matt. “I’d better get back to my office.”
    “Hey, Linds?” Matt said.
    I turned around.
    “You never answered my question.”
    “Can we talk about it later?” I said, massaging my neck again.
    By now I couldn’t even remember what Matt’s question was. There was so much to do before tonight, which was good. I needed the distraction so I didn’t go crazy worrying about the announcement. Dozens of emails were waiting for me to sift through on my computer, plus I needed to review the point-of-sale displays and store promotion samples my team had put together for a new line of wine coolers and make sure we were on the same page as the client, who made Donald Trump look calm and humble.
    I’d already proposed five different campaigns, all of which the wine cooler mogul had impatiently shaken his head at while he shouted into the cell phone that was permanently affixed to the side of his face, “I don’t give a shit how expensive it is to harvest grapes! Tell him if he raises the price again I’ll harvest his fucking nuts!”
    I needed to light a fire under my team so we’d come up with something spectacular to appease him. I also had to ask Donna to book my flights. I made a mental note to remind her not to put me on a red-eye; the flight attendants always turned off the lights, and it was impossible to get anything done. Didn’t they realize the cocoon of an airplane was the best place for uninterrupted work? Oh, plus I had to shake some sense into Oprah, stat.
    I’d wanted so much to seal up the Gloss account before tonight’s announcement, but I had to be patient. No matter what Matt and everyone else said, I wouldn’t feel confident I’d won the promotion until I heard Mason announce my name. Not knowing whether I’d won was a loose end.
    Loose ends made me nervous.

 
    Skipping a Beat

     
    What would you do if your husband suddenly wanted to rewrite the rules of your relationship?
     
    Julia and Michael meet in high school in their small, poverty-stricken West Virginia hometown. Now thirty-somethings, they are living a rarefied life in their multimillion-dollar Washington, D.C., home. But one day Michael stands up at the head of the table in his company’s boardroom—then silently crashes to the floor. Though a portable defibrillator manages to jump-start his heart, what happened to Michael during those lost minutes forever changes him. Money has become meaningless to him—and he wants to give all of theirs away to charity. Julia is