The Romance Reader's Guide to Life

“Yes, sir! I see him!”


Basil Le Cherche turned to his first lieutenant, his expression satisfied and disgusted at once. “Set a course to pursue. I hardly needed the confirmation. No other man would order a ship away while his men drowned and burned in the wreckage behind him. Two points to the east,” he bellowed. “Man the pumps and douse the mainstay sail and the foresail!” This old trick caught every whisper of wind and the crew knew their captain well enough to jump to the task. There was blood in the air, every man jack eager to board and take the escaping schooner. “We will have him by sunset if this breeze stays with us!” he cried, and a cheer from the sweating crew answered him.

“This time, my love,” Electra whispered in his ear, for she had come up behind him and stood so close he could smell the salt on her warm skin. “This time I will board with you—for that is the schooner that carries his slaves—the women who have been taken into bondage, and they will trust and follow me before they trust any man. I am necessary to you!”

He looked at her and smiled. “My warrior witch, you are indeed necessary to me, but in this battle you will serve from the decks below. The surgeon needs steady hands and a hard head, and I hereby make you his assistant for you have both. There will be bloody work in his sick bay before we are done.”

“Below the water line in that dank little corner? But I shall see nothing of the battle!”

“You will see it through its most eloquent annotations, my love—the bodies that are carried below. You are not being banished to an insignificant backwater. You may find yourself in the bloodiest corner of the battle before we are done. I remind you that I am your captain, and I command your service there.”

He pulled her to him and pressed his lips to her throat. “Perhaps one day we will face an enemy side by side, my love. Be patient with me, and remember that I love you more than life itself.”





NEAVE

Mr. Boppit and Lilly Dress Me for Success

They got to work on me, Dead Lilly and Mr. Boppit, and I got used to them. More than used to them. They herded me into a hairdresser’s chair and on to the office and the meetings I’d been missing. When I walked into the offices in my newly polished form I felt the staff come more alive, stiffen like a sail that’s caught a breeze.

Boppit and Dead Lilly hovered over my shoulder, giving me orders, making suggestions, invisible to everybody but me. I stopped muttering to them under my breath because they ordered me to stop it. I discovered that I trusted them. I did what they said. Reassure your employees, they’d insisted. Return those telephone calls. Watch your tone. Smile. Don’t throw things.

Be Your Best was still in good hands: It was in Dead Lilly’s and Mr. Boppit’s hands, and more masterful guidance would be impossible to find. Two hundred and thirty-seven salesgirls were checking in to the hotel in six days. The circus troupe was negotiating with operations at the hotel to get the trapeze rigged in the main conference room. Speakers and trainers were gathering their notes and checking the schedules. Brochures on new products and colors were printed and sitting in bound cubes in the office. I was making meetings on time, answering the telephone, actually—weirdly—beginning once again to care. I did what they told me to do. “You have an empire to defend!” Bop would say, tugging me toward one task or another. I walked around speaking to people and the people I spoke to talked back, which I took to be proof that I didn’t look as deranged as I knew I really was. I got myself a new purse and this simple action seemed to clarify and lighten my entire mind. Boppit picked it out, standing invisibly by my side at Filene’s.

Lilly had always done the opening-night speech. She was the reason why every year salesgirls got in their cars and drove to this conference, often over the objections of the children and husbands left behind to turn all the laundry pink and suffer cold-cereal dinners until their mothers returned. These travelers had come to be reminded that they changed the lives of every woman they touched as a representative of Be Your Best. They wanted to see welcome notes and blue flowers in their hotel rooms. They wanted to hear tinkling crystal at dinner. They wanted to see the advertising layouts for new inky evening-wear eye colors that Lilly had talked me into, darker and sexually bolder than what we had now. She’d sat by my side and told me what to wear at the meeting with the directors when we were planning the new colors. Grapevine chatter said that half the sales directors were talking about the new Neave Terhune to their girls in the field.

The salesgirls who would be in the conference audience wanted to hear more about the new strategy to fight weak sales in December, historically the darkest month for Be Your Best because every spare dime in customers’ purses went to Christmas. Boppit and Lilly described their battle plan for that: the Christmas Collection of Special Gifts for Him and Her, with every order accompanied by the adorable Be Your Best stuffed panda. “Tell the Directors that the December strategy is brilliant, that they themselves are astounding, and everything’s going to be spectacular!”

I did. I was their superhero. More meetings with design and manufacturing, and voilà—shipping possible by November 15. We had a hundred Christmas Collection and adorable panda prototypes ordered to be ready to show off at the conference itself. By the end of that day every bit of energy had been wrung out of my body and my head lay facedown on my desk.

Boppit stepped up to me and brushed a hair from my shoulder. “It’ll be fine. New colors. New products. You’re hitting your stride, Neavie!”

“It’s you and Lilly. Not me.”

“No, kiddo,” Boppit said, tugging me upright and straightening the seam line of the sleeve at the shoulder. “It’s you.”

Boppit, Dead Lilly, and I had gone over the catering menus, the opening speech, the training-session schedules, the motivational games, the entertainment, the presentations on new products, and the final dinner and award presentation. “Now the last but not least task,” Boppit said. “Wardrobe.”

They lifted me up and escorted me into my bedroom, dropped me on the bed, and began rummaging in the closet. When they stepped out, each of them had an outfit in hand. “Here,” Mr. Boppit said. “We’ll have to plan the outfits over the course of the entire conference so they build and reinforce the effect they make.”

“I don’t plan, Boppit. I just get dressed.”

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