A Write Time for Love
Chapter 1
MCRW Round Robin
Author: Margaret Stephens
Original Publication Date in Love Notes: November 2002

"This is an insult," Maggie grumbled, reading over her assignment for the fifth time. "To me and my profession." She shifted in the chair and resisted the urge to wad the paper into a tight ball and lob it dead center off the top of her boss' slightly balding head.

Frank Loomis folded his hands on his desk and peered over the top of his rimless glasses. "Whatever happened to ‘Please, Frank. Give me anything no matter how trivial, Frank. I'll turn it into a Pulitzer article, Frank,'" he mimicked with surprising accuracy. He shrugged. "Here's your chance."

"Some chance," she snorted. "Since when did dating become a newsworthy event?"

"Since Randall Jennings Lyonhurst decided it was," he returned pointedly. "As the owner of this paper, what he wants, he gets. Look, Mags, one of his girls is dating someone she met through a singles site on the Internet. Naturally, he's concerned. But on the business side, there's a growing popularity in Web matches. He wants a story. Five to ten dates ought to do it."

"Five to ten—" she sputtered. "Blind dates? Me? Oh, he'll get a story, alright. Just not the one he wants." She hooked her thumb inside the neck of her white tee shirt and hiked her bra strap back up on her shoulder. "You know I'm allergic to testosterone in the social arena. Either I have nothing to say, in which case the guy can't wait to ditch me, or I become a babbling fountain of idiocy, during which the guy decides that I'm hot for his body, and I end up in a wrestling match. You do remember the Christmas party, don't you?"

Frank stacked his hands behind his head, a smirk on his face. "As do many others, including C. P. MacNeil."

Maggie cringed. Cole Porter MacNeil. Son of RJL's retired partner. Rescuer of women trapped in the copy room by two-thirds of the sales department. Thank god she wouldn't have to see him again.

"Jeez Frank," she moaned. "You're the managing editor, why can't you manage to get me out of this?"

"Because I think this is just what you're looking for. You want out of recipes, horoscopes and fertilizer? Get the old man what he wants and I can just about guarantee you a byline in the Political Forum. Just in time for the up-coming election."

Folding her arms over her favorite navy sweater vest, Maggie smiled at the thought of hounding politicians on current issues. Frank was right. Pleasing RJL was a sure-fire way to move up.

After old man MacNeil's retirement, Lyonhurst Publications had gone global, into everything from music publication to medical journals. There was no telling how far she could go; she'd be a fool not to jump at the chance. 

She was no fool.

"Well?"

Maggie brushed at a mocha latte stain on her rumpled khakis and sighed. "You're a stinker, Frank."

His Cheshire grin drove her to her feet and to the door. "And Mags?"

She paused, staring out of the windows that enclosed his office. "Yeah, Frank?" One hour to deadline and the outer office was jumping. That's where she wanted to be, where she was meant to be.

"It won't kill you to wear a dress and get your hair fixed."

"No, Frank, it won't," she agreed. She turned in the open doorway and sent him a grin she didn't mean. "Because I'm sending the bill to you."

###

Maggie poked the down arrow and waited for the elevator. Story by M. B. Breedlove. How perfect was that? Maggie was an okay name for the home section, but it sounded too soft, and her full given name — well, the use of Wite Out® on her birth certificate had been considered, but common sense had prevailed. So, for the rest of her life, the preposterous concoction of Magnolia Blossom Breedlove would be the bane of her existence, the fly in her ointment — the nuts in her chocolate. (Blasphemy to a connoisseur.)

To this day, no one outside her family knew what the M.B. stood for. Except Frank. If she had any guts at all, she'd face her mother about legally changing her name. But the reigning belle of a prominent bedroom community outside Atlanta was not to be challenged.

Besides, Maggie was reasonably sure her mother was insane. At least on a part-time basis.

It was the only logical explanation. A mishap with a Georgia parade float resulting in temporary burial by thousands of magnolias shouldn't be that great a trauma to the average person. But her vacationing mother had risen from that flowery shroud, clinging to the hand of Ravenaugh Q. Breedlove, and had fallen in love with everything southern.

In moving only one time zone away, Maggie found her mother's eccentricities were less bothersome, and Nashville, Tennessee, became her home.

Maggie pressed the button again. The high gloss elevator doors sent her image back, slightly distorted. Swearing softly, she snatched the Tootsie Roll from where she had stuck it above her ear and shoved it in her pocket. A second later, she brought it out, tore the wrapper and bit into it. No sense in wasting a piece of perfectly good chocolate.

The doors slid open with a soft ping. She stepped inside only to be pressed into the corner by a fully loaded mail cart.

"Hey, Ricky," she said, holding the door back.

Ricky Tisdale smiled as he shoved the cart's wheels over the threshold. "Hey, Mags. How they hangin'?"

Maggie jabbed the lobby button. "Not at all," she muttered as the doors closed. "Thanks to Pilates and yoga."

She sent a critical glance into the mirrored walls surrounding her and took another bite. There had to be something between looking like this and looking as though she'd been dragged by the hair through Prom Date Barbie's closet. And rifling through the racks at Dora's Dress Again Consignment Shoppe wasn't going to cut it.

Job-altering assignment?

It was time for a kick-ass make-over.

***

This is the first in a series of installments in MCRW's first round robin story.  Click here for Chapter 2.

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