She Sins at Midnight Read Online Free Page A

The kids fresh out of college, with an eye on the agent training program, shifted to new departments every three months so they could learn about all the areas of entertainment the agency covered. Assistants were moved around on a daily basis and Joyce was like God on the second floor, deciding who she was going to be nice to and who she was going to mess with.
    The year before, she didn’t receive her holiday bonus due to a “clerical oversight,” so she assigned the president of the agency an alarmingly tall and beautiful new right-hand named Chris. Everyone later found out that Chris was short for Christopher and while he looked like a gorgeous and exotic female from the waist up, from the waist down he was very much a Christopher. The president of the agency found that out after two weeks, the hard way. Christopher was somehow reassigned to the mailroom and Joyce received the biggest (belated) holiday bonus in the history of the agency.
    Charlotte, of the microscopic skirt, arrived at Lila’s desk not five minutes after being summoned. She had a very excited bounce to her step and immediately stuck out her hand and introduced, “Hi there. I’m Charlotte. I met you once in the dining room? Oh my gosh, I’m so excited to be assisting a partner! You know I’ve only been here three weeks.”
    Lila nodded her head as she did indeed know that Charlotte had only been there three weeks. She also knew that it had taken her a month to learn how to be Josh’s assistant and she had already had three years of training. Lila was looking more and more forward to this vacation. The way she figured it, she could demand another raise when she got back in order to sort out the huge mess that was about to be made on her bosses behalf. She didn’t feel the least bit sorry for Josh either. It was almost biblical. He asked and he was about to receive. For once in her life, Lila finally felt like she had the upper hand and it was a delicious sensation.
    So Lila smiled at her replacement and greeted, “Hi Charlotte. Grab that chair and come sit next to me. I’ll start showing you the ropes.”

Chapter 2
    J illy Sparks sat at her dining room table looking like she had barely survived a war against domesticity. She was still in her pajamas at 11:30 a.m., which were covered with baby vomit and dried orange juice. Her hair hadn’t been brushed in at least twenty-four hours and the dark circles under her eyes were threatening to take over her entire face. Overall, she knew she looked like an escapee from Bedlam.
    What she couldn’t figure out was how this had become her life. While growing up, she and Lila had always dreamt that they would marry royalty and have servants at their beck and call. By the time they reached high school, Jilly amended her dream to becoming the head of a Fortune 500 company. She had every intention of being the most feared and respected female executive who ever lived. Sadly, the only people that feared her now did so because she looked mentally unhinged. This was due to the fact that she was raising three children under the age of six.
    Jilly had finally gotten Titty back to sleep. The baby had been up all night with an upset stomach. Bill had taken Trevor to pre-school on his way to the train station and Jack, thank God, was spending the day with her mother. Even though she secretly thought that her mom used her time with her youngest grandson to teach him new ways to terrorize her, Jilly was delighted to be free of him for a whole day.
    On the outside, Jack appeared to be the perfect child. He was adorable, funny, exuberant and all those lovely adjectives. The problem was that at three, he was already smarter than she was. One afternoon she left him quietly playing in his bedroom while she lay down for fifteen minutes. She knew this was the designated amount of time for a rest as Jack had never been conscious and quiet for more than fifteen minutes at a go, until that morning.
    Her first uninterrupted