BILLIONAIRE PLAYBOY

CHAPTER 1

Three steps inside the cluttered room stacked with old magazines, ours and our competitors’, and my breakfast—coffee with two sugars, and strawberry jam on whole-wheat toast—turned into a stone inside my stomach.Without even looking up from the folder in her hand, Brenda signaled to the chair across hers.“Vicki, sit down.”I sat silently, a thousand things leaping to my tongue: I can do better; I can do more; let me do more, two articles a week rather than one. Even: I will work for free until we can find our feet.I couldn’t afford to work for free. I had to pay my rent, I was still paying off my college loan, and I had a mother I loved with a health condition and no insurance. But I also loved my job. I didn’t want to be let go. I had never wanted to be anything else other than what I was now, at this moment, as my fate rested in her hands.So it was with dread and an impending sense of loss that I sat there and waited for Brenda to finally lower that folder and look at me. And I