“Yes, sir. Sorry, sir.”

“Marjorie, you’ll have to excuse me: this is my first encounter with a lose-lose situation and I can’t say I like it. As a matter of fact, as we speak, my brain is racing to find a way to distance myself from it as fast as possible. I think I’m gong to fire you, for starters.”

“Sir, I wouldn’t do that,” Marjorie said quickly. “It would leave me with no motivation to give you the solution you need.”

“Solution?” Joss perked up, eager and attentive.

“Yes, sir. As in lose-lose turning into win-win for us, whereas for the Newcombs…”

“Tell me more.”

Which is how Marjorie wound up on the Newcombs’ lawn, rubbing elbows with a mob of reporters, waiting for their hosts to appear. She’d presented her employer with a plan-a plan of simplicity, a plan of brilliance, a plan that would defang the Newcomb’s threatened lawsuit and save her commission. It was perfect.

Now, if it would only work.

While they waited, the press reviewed the briefing download Marjorie had sent to their PDAs, along with the notification of the event itself. None of them could figure out how hate speech could have anything to do with a fully automated kitchen either.

“It’s like saying your bathroom’s gender-biased!” an AP stringer declared.

“Mine was until we got one of those automated seat-lowering devices installed,” said a female colleague. “My husband is not trainable.” The other women in the crowd made sympathetic noises.

“Maybe the refrigerator made a nasty crack about the Polish sausage,” a would-be wit suggested. “Or the Italian bread, or the French dressing, or the-”

He could have gone on in the same vein at painful length, but luckily for his companions, at that moment the front door of the great mansion opened wide. Boone and Betsy Newcomb stepped out on the wide front porch, regarding the clamoring reporters like a pair of overweight asthmatic antelopes tapped to be keynote speakers at a leopard convention.