"Spoiler: if you all had used the magazine as a loss leader and concentrated on building digital traffic these last few months, you could have made tons more money. But you can’t think creatively, Trisha. Now theVanity Ragis failing, but you're not going to use the Svenssons to prop it up for one more quarter. You need to fundamentally change the structure of the business."
"That doesn't help us now," my mother stated as the security guards shooed her away. "We're going to lose the advertising money that would have paid their salaries this quarter."
Several of the magazine staffers were watching us, worried looks on their faces.
"You need to do something, Evan," Sebastian warned. "It's almost the holidays. See, this is why I never chase easy money."
Evan looked annoyed.
Sebastian scowled at him. "Who held your hair while you puked after that party?"
"Fine. We will come to some agreement with the advertisers," Evan said irritably.
"Don't worry, Penny," Sebastian said. "Evan will work it out. He can come up with good ideas every once in a while!"
78
Garrett
"What call?" I asked.
Davy picked an olive off my cheek and ate it.
"Davy, stop it," Hunter said, obviously disgusted. "You're worse than Archer."
"Hey," Archer said, wandering in with Mace. "I heard that!"
"So what does he think?" Mace said excitedly.
"What do I think about what?" I asked, sitting up. A pepperoni slice fell on the floor, and Davy pounced on it. Remy wandered in, chewing on a slice of pizza, and grabbed Davy before he could eat it.
"Evan Harrington just called me," Hunter said.
"The investor?"
"If you can call him that," Hunter scoffed. "He ownsVanity Rag, the magazine that Penny was going to write the article for. He says he had no idea it was planned and that it won't run at all. Apparently Penny was in his office earlier today. She threw a grasshopper at him and offered to wear a clown suit on a cruise and break into Buckingham Palace."
"I don’t understand," I said.
Archer rolled his eyes. "Ugh, Hunter can’t tell a good story. I heard the whole thing on speakerphone. I don’t know what Penny threatened, but Evan sounded a little nervous. There was a very definite undertone of ‘please don’t sue me,’" Archer crowed.
"But I thought Penny and her mother wanted to run the article," I said, confused. "Why was Penny trying to convince him not to do it? She was going to be paid tens of thousands of dollars—I saw it in the email."
"I mean if someone came into my office and threw bugs at me, I’d give them whatever they wanted, too," Mace said with a shudder.
"Yay!" Remy exclaimed. "Davy, isn’t this exciting?" He picked up Davy and tossed him into the air.
"What—what are you doing?"
"You were wrong about Penny!" Remy beamed. "She’s okay. You can be a couple again. She made you so happy."
"She still wrote the article," I countered.
"It’s not running," Mace argued.
"She lied," I said, crossing my arms.
"Doesn’t everyone?" Hunter shrugged.
