“Why’s he coming here?”

Elena perched on the edge of the bed. “Because this is where Style Sydney has gathered this morning. Again, and I will not stress this enough, nothing can come between me and this story. That includes traffic jams, car accidents, random hazards, bad weather, or anything else. So, today, downstairs, for all intents and purposes, is Style HQ.”

Elena’s phone rang, and she answered it.

“No.” Her eyes narrowed. “Twelve plus the cover, not including. Why would we have an eleven-page story? Who in the history of publishing has an uneven-numbered spread? When was the last time you saw a feature article ending on a left-hand page?”

She glared at nothing in particular, gaze sweeping the room. Maddie sipped her coffee and watched her formidable boss, back to her old self. Well, her mask, at least, was welded back on to within an inch of its stubborn, proud life.

“Send over the other art designer, then.” Elena snapped her fingers. “What’s his name? Jonas? At least he knows how to lay out a feature.” She huffed out a breath, as she ended the call. “I am dealing with idiots.”

Maddie nodded and slid her now finished coffee onto the bedside chest of drawers, not willing to encourage a new diatribe. She scoured her room, suddenly aware she was only in her underwear under the sheet. “Where are my clothes?”

“You won’t need them.”

“I…what?”

“Comfort matters, Madeleine. I wouldn’t want to write in yesterday’s unclean clothes. It might impact performance. I have Rosetta laundering your clothing. Felicity should be downstairs with a new outfit I asked her to pick up on the way into work.”

Maddie blinked. She knew Elena was a type-A personality with control-freak leanings, but this was absurd. “Poor Felicity.”

“Yes, well, for some reason I find myself without an assistant.” Elena gave her an intense look and tapped her foot impatiently.

“You know…” Maddie paused and stared at the tip of that percussive Manolo Blahnik that matched an equally blood-red skirt, swallowing a crisp white blouse, “I can’t very well wander around your home in my underwear to find whatever clothes Felicity has brought for me.”

Awareness crossed Elena’s face, as though she finally understood the cause of the delay. She pushed a button on her phone. “Felicity? Bring those clothes I asked for upstairs. Second floor. Third door on the left.” She ended the call without another word. “All right? And don’t dawdle. We’re down to eleven hours, twenty-five minutes.”

With that, she was gone.

A minute later, the door burst open, and Felicity huffed in with her arms full of bags. “You!” She gave a dramatic gasp and dumped them on the bed. “I might have known!”

“Known what?” Maddie hauled the bags closer for an inspection and rummaged through them.

“That wherever there’s chaos, you’re somehow in the middle of it, making my life more difficult. It’s been total mayhem since you left.”

“Right. Everything’s all about you.” Maddie rolled her eyes. She found a pair of new designer jeans in one bag. Ooh. Nice.

“And what on earth are you doing in her guest room? She fired you yesterday!”

“It’s a long story.”

“Well, I don’t have time to hear it. She’s scrapped the Valentino cover story. Can you believe it? On deadline day! I have fifty things to do, all annoying, and for some reason we’re doing it from here today. I am going insane! It took me ages to get all the contracts and releases to go with the spread to start with, and now, pfft, no reason at all, it’s out at the eleventh hour.”

Maddie pulled out a pretty Sass & Bide shirt and held it up. That’d work. “Underwear?” she asked hopefully.

Felicity tossed her a small bag. “Elle Macpherson Intimates range. God help me, if I’d known they were for you, I’d have picked up the Hanes Collection.”

“Ha-ha.” Maddie grabbed the clothes and padded over to the en suite, trying to ignore that she was wearing little more than her underwear in front of her bitchiest frenemy. Out of the corner of her eye, she caught Felicity’s confused look.

“Seriously, Maddie, what are you doing here?” she asked. “And why is she being so nice to you all of a sudden, that I have to fetch you clothes? This is too weird—even for Elena.”

Maddie gave her a mysterious grin. “You’ll find out soon enough. Try not to mess up her walls, though.”

“What do you mean?”

“When your head explodes.” She closed the bathroom door with a snick and laughed hard.

* * *

Showered, dressed, and humming with nervous excitement, Maddie grabbed her phone and headed downstairs. She’d half expected Elena to have kidnapped that in the night too, but the editor had restrained herself.

Five minutes later, she was in the kitchen, munching on breakfast and chatting to Perry. The art director was fawning over her photos he’d copied over to his laptop and making awed gasping noises when Felicity tore in as if a bear were on her tail.

“You!” She pointed at her with a waggling finger as though exorcising a demon. “You got us a world exclusive with Véronique Duchamp? And photos? Of the new collection?”

“Surprise.” Maddie shot her an amused look and took another sip of juice.

Perry snorted, swivelled his laptop around, and selected a photo. “Not just any photos. Check out our cover.”

He enlarged the photo of Natalii on the floor, boots sticking out from under taffeta, and Véronique with pins in her mouth, as she adjusted her daughter’s outfit. The faintest hint of smile dusted her lips, and her eyes glowed with warmth. Véronique Duchamp as no one had ever seen her.

There was a ragged intake of breath. Felicity’s jaw dropped. “Oh my God,” she whispered. “Are there more? Show me!”

Perry flicked through the photos, and Maddie laughed, as Felicity’s eyes grew wider and wider.

“How?” She snapped her head around. “Hell, did you sleep with that Duchamp daughter for a story? Is that it? You cheeky, little slu…”

“Felicity!”

The sharp whip of fury short-circuited whatever crude suggestion Felicity was about to make, and all heads whirled to face Elena stalking into the room.

Maddie, who’d been seconds away from lashing Felicity for implying she’d slept with someone to get a story, couldn’t have been more stunned at the anger on the media mogul’s face.

“Felicity,” Elena repeated, her voice low. “Do you know what is the only thing more foolish than deliberately insulting the writer who has an exclusive that the entire publishing world is desperate to run?”

Felicity shook her head mutely.

“Deliberately insulting the writer of an exclusive that I want to run,” Elena snapped.

A red hue crept up Felicity’s neck to her cheeks.

“You will apologise for your baseless, gutter insinuations,” Elena said, tone icy. “Now.”

“I’m very sorry,” Felicity said, her words a contrite mumble. “I didn’t mean it. Of course I don’t think you… I mean…ah…I just got such a shock.”

Elena gave a disbelieving sneer. “And every time someone gives you a shock, do you accuse them of prostituting themselves?”

Felicity turned scarlet.