Derek Mason finished typing the last words of his feature article and leaned back in his leather chair with satisfaction.
Perfect!
he thought.
He sent the document to the printer, made his way to the printer in the middle of the office with a cheerful smile on his face and a cocky swagger in his walk. The paper still warm and the ink still wet, Derek started for his boss Roger's corner office, overlooking downtown LA.
The sun was setting outside of Roger's office as Derek stepped in, and he felt the smile drop from his face as he discovered Nicole Avery was in the room as well. When she turned away from Roger's desk and saw him, she glared.
"Derek," Roger said looking over a document Nicole had just handed him. "Something I can help you with?"
Derek took his salty glare away from Nicole and brightened up a little as he faced his boss.
"Just that Platinum Blondes feature you asked for, sir," he said, sliding the paper right in his boss' line of view.
"What!" Nicole said suddenly, and Derek looked at her, surprised. "
I
was writing the Platinum Blondes feature."
Roger paused for a minute, and then thumbed through some old papers in his desk.
"Ah," Roger said, slapping his forehead gently. "My mistake. I assigned you both."
"Well," Derek said, frustrated. "What are we going to do?"
"Tell you what," Roger said, ruffling his thinning gray hair. "You guys will compete for the feature. Anybody want to take there's back and rewrite?"
Both Derek and Nicole snatched their reviews from Roger's desk, who let out a little chuckle.
"You have until nine o'clock tomorrow," he said, picking up the phone and dialing a number. "Now scoot!"
* * *
It was 11 o'clock, and everyone except Derek and Nicole, who was across the way in another office, were long gone. Derek was still miffed that his boss had turned it into a competition, especially with Nicole.
I spent so much time on that feature!
he thought.
I deserve it more.
Despite all the time spent on it, Derek still felt like he needed to revise it now that he knew Nicole would bring out her big guns to try and beat him for the review. In the five or so hours that he had started rewriting, all he had left was the last sentence he had typed. He couldn't focus on the Platinum Blondes when all he could think of was Nicole.
Since they had both arrived at
Spiral
Magazine, they had been instant rivals. Both were in their mid-20's, both graduated from good communications schools (he from USC, she from UCLA; go figure) and both were trying to work their way up to a senior editor position.
Nicole was a good writer, he couldn't deny it. That's part of what made him hate her so much. And she was also breath-takingly good-looking. She had long, wavy brown hair with blonde highlights that accentuated her true color perfectly. Her lips were in a constant state of pouting, and her eyes seemed to flash whenever she looked at you. Her body was incredible: big, perfectly round breasts, a slim waist, thick thighs, a nice ass that was on the big side, but not too big, and long stems of legs that usually plunged into heels or Manolo boots.
If she wasn't such a bitch
, Derek though,
she's the exact type of girl I'd go for.
As if she read his mind and decided to show up right when she'd be most annoying, Nicole popped into Derek's office with a smirk on her face.
"How goes it?" she asked. Her tone told him she hoped he was at a loss.
"Great," he lied, making a point to stare at his computer screen. In his peripheral, he could see her roll her eyes. She fanned herself with a small stack of papers she had been holding.
"It's so hot in here, how do you even work?" she asked. He looked up at her momentarily and saw that she was unbuttoning her blouse a little. Then he turned back to the computer screen.
"Fine, be like that," she said exaggeratedly and turned to leave as Derek swiveled in his chair to face her back.
"
Me?
" he said, incredulous. "You've been terrible to me since I first met you."
She turned slowly to face him.
"Oh, come on, I'm not
that
bad," she said, sitting down in one of the other chairs in the office.
Derek stared at her with dull eyes, as if to say "
you
come on."
Sighing and rolling her eyes, she murmured, "OK, OK, so I've been kind of a bitch."
Derek laughed coldly. Nicole shifted uncomfortably in her seat.