Emily beamed at them, seemingly failing to notice that he’d withdrawn. “Well, I know that I, for one, am going to be at the edge of my seat, waiting to see the outcome of that event.”

Annika sat back against the uncomfortable chair, knowing she should feel triumphant about the way she was handling herself. And I am, she thought, as she glanced sidelong at Hudson’s profile. She felt good about how she’d represented herself and Make Up. But there was also a part of her that was … thrown by the things Hudson had said and the way he was acting. A part of her that felt bad because, oddly enough, she may have unintentionally hurt the CEO of Break Up.

Who was he really, under all that bravado and masculine rakishness?

“Megan, my friend at Time? She says Emily thinks this is going to be their most popular article next month when they publish it.” June grinned at Annika across her desk, which now featured a taped-up photograph of her and Ziggy dressed like Princess Leia and Han Solo from a recent nerdy convention—Cosmic Con—they’d been to. June had blushed furiously while taping it up, insisting they’d given her the photograph for free. That didn’t explain why she was taping it to her desk, but Annika hadn’t pushed.

“Good!” Annika clapped her hands. It had been a couple of days since the interview, and though she felt confident about how it had gone, she’d been nervous. “That makes me feel so much better.”

It was a slow day, so Annika, dressed in a T-shirt and capris because they weren’t expecting any visitors, had decided to take the day to really prepare for the EPIC pitch next month. She’d been pacing the office barefoot with her flash cards, trying out about four thousand different permutations of the pitch for June.

The pitch was to be no more than ten minutes long. In just ten minutes, Annika had to convince a panel of four extremely high-powered strangers—Lionel Wakefield being the most famous of them—that Make Up was worth investing in. That she was worth investing in. She couldn’t fall, not even a little. She couldn’t stumble, she couldn’t pause, and she definitely couldn’t show any hint of uncertainty.

From all the online reading she’d done, all the podcasts she’d listened to, and all the YouTube videos she’d watched until her eyes felt like they’d burn right out of her head, she knew that angel investors wanted to see passionate, bubbly, excited people whose energy blew them away. They wanted to see people who looked like the next Steve Jobs, Whitney Wolfe, or Mark Zuckerberg. They didn’t want to know about your insecurities or your doubts. They wanted a dream they could invest in, and that’s exactly what Annika would give them.