“Exactly,” Vance said, rocking on his heels and smiling as if he’d pulled off the feat of hiding her overdose from the presshimself.
“I stopped the story before it leaked,” I said, “then, with the help of her staff, we put out one of the magazine’s best-selling issues to this day.” I scratched under my nose. “Although, Ididsign an NDA about the opioid thing, so if we could keep that in theroom. . .”
Everyone laughed. Well, almost everyone. Sebastian just tapped his pen on hisnotepad.
“George has helped turn around several media-based companies, which resulted in over a million dollars cumulativelyearned.”
I nodded at Vance as he took the seat next to me. “Thank you for that generous introduction, but you’re giving me too much credit. The real magic happens because of theteam.”
A mustached man to my left put up his hand. “What exactly is a publishing consultantand. . .”
“PR specialist,” Ifinished.
“As you all know,Modern Manhas experienced a few down quarters and more recently, it’s been in hot water with the press.” Vance spoke cautiously about what I could only assume was a sore subject. “George is here to get us out ofit.”
“How?” the manasked.
“Good question,” I said. “Youare?”
“Boris,” hesupplied.
“First, we’re going to tackle the PR side of things, Boris.MM’s brand, messaging, and image needs work, and this is the perfect time to fine-tune it considering the magazine is underattack.”
Someone from Sebastian’s section of the conference table muttered under his breath, but I did my best to ignoreit.
“Once I perform a little emergency PR magic,” I continued, “then comes the part I love most about my job—getting to the bottom of why things have stalled when you should be thriving. I’ll sit down with each of you to see how you feel the publication is doing and what improvements can be made. Entirely confidential, of course. We’ll collaborate to refineModern Man’s image and identify and remove the reasons we’re losing our readership. But change begins with all ofyou.”
Justin grimaced. “Change?”
“Justin doesn’t do well with change,” Boris said. “He likes the statusquo.”
“I’m the same,” I said. That was more or less true—no human being reallylovedchange, especially in the workplace—but in past assignments, I’d made the most headway commiserating with the team’s resistance rather than fighting it. “It doesn’t have to be extreme. We’ll review and tweak, review and tweak, rinse and repeat. Baby steps to figure out why you’ve lost ground to your largest competitor—and how to regainit.”
Sebastian stuck the capped end of his pen in his mouth. It was a small tell, but perhaps a clue as to what he was thinking. How did he feel that his ship had begun to sink under hiscommand?
“You can also think of me as a job therapist,” I said. “Feel free to come to me with anything. I’m here to uncover your untapped potential and exploit your strengths—andweaknesses—to the magazine’s benefit as I whip you intoshape.”
“Uncover, exploit, whip,” Sebastian listed as he made notes. “Maybe this won’t be so bad after all. It’ll be nice to be on the receiving end foronce.”
Some men chuckled. I sought out the only other woman in the room, who rolled her eyes with a shrug.Typical. If Sebastian thought this was a joke, he was about to learn a hardlesson.
“Don’t let them get to you,” Vancemurmured.
I had no intention of that, but Vance’s under-the-breath comments wouldn’t do anything except undermine me. “It’s okay,” I whispered loud enough for Sebastian to hear. “A sense of humor will help ease thesting.”
He narrowed his eyes at me, but that earned me a smile from thewoman.
“Miss Keller has my complete support,” Vance said. “For now, I request that everything go through George first, whether it’s story ideas, advice, events, web, orprint—”
“It’s a shame we don’t already have someone for that,” Sebastian said. “Say, a creativedirector.”
“This applies to you too, Quinn,” Vance said. “Georgina lays eyes oneverything.”
“You promoted me years ago to take this magazine to the next level, and that’s what I did. Now all of a sudden I have to run my ideas by someone else?” He glared. “I’m not doingthat.”
“You will. I don’t care if Miss Keller wants to know the color and consistency of your morningdump.”
“That . . . won’t be necessary,” Isaid.
