No Ordinary Day (32 page)
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Extraordinary Days
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No Ordinary Day
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The Extraordinary Days
series [set in present day]
Where has supermodel Briony, the one-named wonder of the fashion world, disappeared to? That’s what style magazine maven Katherine Bruce desperately wants to know—and she’s manipulated Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative journalist and war correspondent Erik Bryson into chasing that story down. A serious writer, he’s resentful about being stuck with the fluffy task—and utterly unprepared for what he discovers.
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Monday, February 2, 2015
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Monday’s Child: Fair of Face
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[See next section for a free sample of MONDAY’S CHILD: Fair of Face]
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Grace Fuller, the youth pastor in her father’s church, is guarding several painful secrets that threaten her future. Will she find a happily-ever-after with Steve, the confident, handsome assistant pastor with whom she’s vying for her dream job, or will the mysterious bad-boy biker who has just come to town, darkly guarding his own painful past, steal her from her chosen path?
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Full of Grace
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Life in the fast lane has never been an easy place for twitchy high-society event planner Sloane Wallace, a woman born to privilege and pristine family lineage. But when a freak snowstorm and auto mishap leaves her stranded in the freezing mountains in her designer heels, a burly mountain man, unimpressed with her pedigree, shows up in time to save her couture-covered backside—and completely mess up her world.
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Full of Woe
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Wednesday’s Child
:
Dave Thomas Foundation for Adoption
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PREVIEW
Monday’s Child:
Fair of Face
Publication Date: Monday, February 2, 2015
Polly Becks
Book 2 in the EXTRAORDINARY DAYS series
© 2015 by Polly Becks
Published by GMLT Joseph, Inc., LLC
All rights reserved
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THE AMERICAN CANCER SOCIETY
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DAY 1
Madison Avenue, New York City
T
he street traffic
was whining behind him, making Erik Bryson’s head hurt just slightly less than the sight in front of him did.
He was staring up at the Sesqui-Centurion building, a ten-story Arts-and-Crafts-style monstrosity, home of the offices of
In-2-It
magazine, the third most influential fashion periodical in the world.
Erik was looking at his personal vision of hell.
Bryson, a stringer for the
New York Times
, had been convinced when he got the text from his boss earlier that morning ordering him to come here that the message had been misdirected. Surely a man whose entire adult life had been spent doing investigative journalism in war zones and the twin cesspools of corporate corruption and international politics could not possibly have business here, the frou-frou capital of the world.
And yet here he was, being greeted by a beautiful Latina in a trim red suit who ushered him into the building of his nightmares.
“You know, I believe
you
invited
me
here,” Bryson protested at the security screening facility, where a uniformed African-American guard was silently holding out a hand, demanding to check his camera case and cell phone.
“Not me, sir,” said the guard as Bryson grudgingly handed his equipment over. “That would be Ms. Bruce, and you can take it up with her when you get upstairs. I’m just doing my job.”
“I hear ya,” Bryson muttered. “So am I.”
Another young woman, this one a winsome blonde in a stylish black suit, looked up from her desk across from the security table.
“Excuse me,” she said, rising and making her way across the lobby, “but are you Erik Bryson?”
Erik turned away from the security guard. “Who’s asking?”
The woman blushed. “My name’s Zoe. I’m a big fan of your work.”
One of Bryson’s eyebrows rose suspiciously. “Really?”
She nodded. “
Postcards from Zabul
, series one through three,” she said. “Brilliant stuff. The photos are utterly haunting.”
Erik’s second eyebrow joined the first at his hairline.
“Oh—sorry, I’m a journalism student,” she hurried to add.
“I see. Well, thanks. Glad you liked the series.”
A grumbling cough came from behind him. The security guard was holding his camera case and phone out to him, looking unimpressed. Erik quickly took them back and nodded goodbye to Zoe as the woman in the red suit escorted him past the security checkpoint into a lobby where the
In-2-It
name was boldly emblazoned on an ebony wall, the only thing in the place that wasn’t off-white. He followed her to the elevators and sighed miserably as she punched the button for the penthouse. The car arrived silently, and they stepped inside.
“Why am I here?” he asked the young woman, who stared straight ahead at the elevator door as it closed in front of them.
“Why are any of us here?” she answered, not turning her head. “Ms. Bruce wants you to be here. So you are.”
The door opened onto a lobby so full of spectacularly arched windows that Erik had to shade his eyes. Those eyes were intensely Norwegian blue, the color of glacial ice, staring out from beneath a crown of soft black curls that needed a trim. The sun blazing through the glass stung them. He mumbled an inaudible curse and followed the red suit out into the sunny penthouse lobby.
He was ushered almost immediately into the corner office.
There, sitting behind a surprisingly simple wooden desk in an opulent chair was a middle-aged woman of elegant bearing, her coal-black hair tied back in a chignon at her neck. Bryson, had he been asked, would not have had a clue what the word
chignon
meant.
But he did recognize Katherine Bruce, the world-famous fashion publishing magnate, without hesitation.
“Sit,” she commanded as he approached her desk.
“I’m sorry,” Erik mumbled. “I believe there has been a mistake—”
“You’re Erik Bryson, by way of the
Times
?”
“Yes.”
“Then there’s no mistake. Sit.”
Awkwardly, Erik sat down on the severe, high-backed swivel chair in front of the simple desk. “Next, are you going to tell me to roll over?”
The woman smiled slightly. “Wrong command. I want you to fetch.”
“Excuse me?”
Katherine Bruce picked up a crisp sheet of photographic paper and dropped it on his side of the desk in front of him.
“Briony. I want you to bring me Briony.”
For the first time since he had entered the Sesqui-Centurion, Erik did not need a fashion-speak dictionary.
The face in the color photo staring back at him was one he had known since high school, when he secretly kept a folded magazine cover with a close-up of it under his bed.
The international supermodel Briony, the one-named goddess of magazine covers.
The face of the enormously successful fragrance Doce Cherio, and of its similarly successful high-end cosmetic line.