The doors smacked her in the face when she first arrived. It was an interesting first impression. I was on the phone but I couldn’t help looking up when she flung the doors open.

They opened so quickly, they slammed into the walls either side, the noise making everyone look up as they then immediately bounced back and hit her in the face.

The entire office laughed. They couldn’t help it. I kept a straight face, aided by the continuing whining from Marty Berghaus on the other end of the line.

For a first impression, it was certainly a unique one.

She’d not long been hired and she only had the job because of me. Had I made a mistake? Was this a sign of things to come?

I liked to get involved with the hiring interviews sometimes, get a look at the resumes of potential new employees before they began. I had a good team working for me but I had always been a hands on person. That was why I was there when she arrived, on the phone, working like the rest of them, doing my best to get us back on track.

It had been a tough year. Most company owners might walk away when sales went down, not me. I was going nowhere. They all depended on me. Not just this office but Paris and New York too.

I depended on them too. What kind of signal would it send if I left them to it and went swanning off on my yacht for six months? We needed all hands on deck to get back on track and that meant me working as hard as them in the office, not in the middle of the Pacific.

That was why I was on the phone to Marty. That was why I’d had to race to get there in time for the start of the day.

It never stopped, being the billionaire boss. Last night was spent visiting Andy, laid up in his hospital bed. Thirty-two years he’d given this company and then a heart attack out of nowhere. He was still taking notes even with the drip sticking out of his hand. I had to prise the pad off him in the end, tell him he rested for at least the next month and that was an order. Then I asked if there was anything I could get him. He had asked for the photo of his Dalmatian off his desk and I’d returned to the office to get it for him.

I gave him the photo and then I took over his scheduling, one more thing added to my already overflowing to do list.

Then Andy rang me at six this morning to mention he was supposed to be going to see Marty Berghaus. It was lucky I had my phone next to the gym equipment.

“I’m so sorry Bill, I forgot to mention it last night.”

“You’re supposed to be recovering," I replied, hitting the button to bring the treadmill to a stop.

“I know but if you don’t go, he might never get the book finished. He's not good at self-motivation.”

I knew what that meant as much as Andy did. “When and where?”

“His house at seven.”

“This morning?” I glanced at my watch. Five past six.

“Yep.”

That meant out to his place in the hills and then back to get into the office ready for the next thing on his to do list.

Only Marty wasn’t answering the door at his place in the hills. So I raced to his for no good reason.

Then I got to back to the city and into the car park and only then remembered Nina. Eight months pregnant, still working on getting The Coldest Summer ready for release, refusing to take her maternity leave until it was done.

When I’d seen her struggling across to the lift on my way home last night, I’d insisted she use my parking space, the one closest to the lift, the one reserved for the billionaire boss of Snow Day Publishing, me.

Which was fine until I raced into the car park to find her car in my spot and then I was stuck.

I made a quick decision. I needed to get upstairs and find Marty’s number. Find out where he was. Where the hell his book was.

The only free space was reserved for the new trial boss of adult fiction, Lucy Rhodes. The woman who was soon to smack her face into two doors and make an entire office laugh at her expense. The woman I’d insisted they hire.

They tried to talk me round but they didn’t know what I did. Candidate A might have been the best qualified on paper but he also had a drink problem and was loose with his hands around the secretaries, something I knew about thanks to my connections. It paid to network in business and in pleasure. Candidate B, the Harvard grad, was hiding his own little scandal, she was called Mary and he hadn’t given her mother the maintenance she was entitled to for over a year. He also had an interest in snorting half his pay packet up his nose. Candidate C, or Miss Money Launderer as I knew her was another bust. So it went on.

It was easy enough telling them to choose Lucy. They might not have known my reasons but they knew I had reasons and that was enough. The only candidate with no skeletons in the closet was Lucy.

She had talent. She’d proved that at Kidtastic, bringing them out of a slump and into profit for the first time in years. The youngest exec’ to ever get two quarters of growth despite the Snuggly Rabbit bullshit. Losing the book was bad but I could tell she’d learned from it. I had done my research, I knew about her.

So I stole her parking space. She wouldn't mind.

I pulled into the gap between two cars, switching off the engine before scrawling a note. I left it under the wiper. She’d arrive at work, find the note and it would all be fine.

I’d apologised for stealing the space and told her to put her car in no parking bay at the other side, where the catering van usually parked. It did sandwiches and hotdogs for some of the staff who didn’t like the canteen food but it didn’t come on a Monday so the space was free to use. I’d get a driver to bring me in for a while until Nina went off on maternity leave and then everyone would be happy. Apart from Marty Berghaus. He was never happy.

Everything was riding on him and he knew it. The fate of the company rested on a single book. Get a big hit in the summer and the investments would come back in, the rest of the catalogue would get a boost and up would go our stock. There were a lot of nervous suits in the accounting department. Ebooks were taking a chunk of our business and they worried paper would continue to take the hit and we’d end up out of it entirely.

There was a simple solution. Invest in the ebook side of things. That was my plan. Get interactive books, get exclusive extras with print versions, get both for a single price, do deals with the online providers, all sorts of things were planned. They all required money. Money required investment. Investors needed to see profits, big profits. Profits needed a hit release going into the summer.

Our hit was going to be Marty Berghaus. Author of the biggest seller in the last five years. Only problem was that was his only book and nothing had appeared since. He had been working on the new one forever.

Deadlines had come and gone. He’d missed them all. I had given him one final chance. Have something ready to show us this morning and I’d keep his contract alive. Otherwise we’d have to dump him and find another book to lead our summer promotional campaign. I had no idea what book but hopefully the threat would be enough for him to get the thing finished. Or if not finished, at least fleshed out enough to get teasers out to the press, get some buzz building up.

We needed a hit. I had to get this done. Otherwise, I might have to lay off staff and I hated the thought of doing that. I had billions on paper and they’d think I could bail them out with my own money. But it was all tied up in keeping people working. People like them.

Things weren’t helped by Lucy’s predecessor and the ridiculously favourable terms she’d given Marty in his contract. I was thinking about that again as I left the note on the wiper. I headed upstairs and then got on the phone. Marty picked up after six rings. That was something.

“Where were you?” I asked, trying to keep my voice neutral. “We had a meeting this morning, remember?”

“I was busy gathering spiritual inspiration in the woods."

“Couldn’t have gathered it yesterday?”

He laughed, a relaxed happy laugh that made me grip the phone so tightly it creaked in my hand. “The muse is fickle, Bill. You should know that. I have to tempt her out. I can’t force her.”

“Couldn’t tempt her a bit quicker? Have you got a manuscript ready for me, Marty?”

“Bill, Bill, Bill.” More laughter. “You should learn to relax. You’ll have a heart attack.”

I thought about Andy, lying in his hospital bed. I said nothing.

“Creativity isn’t beholden to deadlines and schedules,” Marty continued. “It can’t be pigeon holed. You have to work with it, not against it. The pressure of a deadline is the pressure to fail. I want to succeed, Bill. I want my book, my baby, to succeed. I want its birth to be natural, not forced. Don’t you?”

“It’s a book, Marty,” I said. “Not a child. You agreed to this deadline.”

That was when she walked in. I glanced up when the doors hit the walls, seeing a flash of a sparkling bright face that held my attention. Then the face was gone, smacked by the two returning doors.

“You want the best,” Marty was still talking. “You have to let the best come organically, not spray it with chemicals. It’ll wither and die if you do that. Toxic for the soul.”

It was hard to hear him. Lucy was shouting at the room, telling everyone to pay attention. I ignored her. I needed Marty to realise how serious this was. “You missed the deadline, Marty. If I don’t have a manuscript by the end of today, I’m going with another book. Do you understand? I want the book. Tell me you have it ready.”

“In a way.”

“Be honest with me. Just tell me the truth one time. Is it ready?”

“Well, I have-”

A shadow fell over me and the line went dead in the same moment. I looked up. Lucy was standing there, her finger on the bright red disconnect button. “I said everyone needs to pay attention,” she said at the top of her voice. “That includes you.”

I looked at the phone and then up at her. She had hung up the phone when I was in the middle of getting the most important author to admit what was going on with the most important book of the summer release schedule. Not only that but she had hung up the phone of the man in charge of Snow Day Publishing. Her boss.

“I’m in charge around here,” she continued, spinning around and prowling across the floor, glancing from one person to the next. “If I say do something, you do it. If I say listen, you listen. I don’t care how it was around here before. We’re going to turn this entire company around and that starts right here in adult fiction. It’s all change and I’m going to get us back in profit and you’re going to help. To do that, we all need to work harder than we’ve ever worked before. That means paying attention when I tell you to listen. It means hanging up the phone when I tell you to. I wasn’t hired to be your friend, I was hired to be in charge. And, by the way, whoever parked in my parking space will soon find out what it means to mess with the woman in charge.”

“I parked in your space,” I said, bringing her attention back to me.

“You again,” she said, eyes narrowing as she glared at me. “I’ll deal with you later.”

She stormed over to her office, closing the door and dumping her bag on the desk. I had to resist smiling. She looked good. She’d look even better bent over that desk with me spanking that sass out of her.

I shook my head. Keep work and personal life separate. Don't think of her that way.

I got back on the phone.

“Hi, Marty. Sorry about that. No, don’t talk. Listen. You have until the end of this week to get a complete manuscript to me. No first draft, no treatment for a film. No synopsis. A complete manuscript. If it is not on my desk by next Monday with the words The End on the final page, the contract is dead and we’ll be clawing the advance back from you.”

He said something but I didn’t hear it. I had glanced up and seen Lucy standing in her office, facing the front of the glass window, her arms folded. She was looking directly at me. I couldn’t look away. It was her eyes. I was caught in them.

She blinked, as if coming to. Then she tapped on the glass, pointing directly at me. “Get back to work,” she mouthed.

I turned away, tuning back into Marty preaching about the need for his muse to have the right musical and visual aura for him to produce his best work, how the suits could never understand true creative genius.

None of that mattered. The deadline was set. The end of the week. That gave me time to talk to the lawyers and work out how to end the contract without it costing more than letting him keep the obscenely large advance Sandra had given him. There would also be the small task of finding another book for the summer push. But that was for later.

For now I needed to not look at Lucy in her office. Because when I did, I wanted to tell her who was really in charge. I wanted to punish her for hanging up my phone, for talking to me like that. I wanted to yank that skirt of hers up and…

I smiled as I wondered how she’d react when she found out who I really was, who she's spoken to so fiercely.

“The end of the week,” I said to Marty, hanging up the phone before getting to my feet and walking out of the office. I needed to have a meeting with the lawyers. Find out exactly what had gone into Marty’s contract, how we could get out of it. I didn’t look back. I knew if I did, I might get stuck in her gaze again. Then I wouldn’t be able to think about anything else but her and how much I wanted to discipline her.