I hated these kinds of meetings.
This whole face-to-face brainstorming thing was bullshit. How the hell was I supposed to know what designer should dress our models for a fall office fashion shoot? Or what makeup products were at the center of a social media maelstrom?
Photo shoots and everything leading up to them were more politically fraught than a UN meeting. Designers that clashed with models. Photographers that wouldn’t shoot certain designers. Inventory miscommunication. Too many editorial opinions. Sales reps who made promises they shouldn’t. Last-minute location disasters.
And I was expected to make the most diplomatic decisions. Ha. Some fucking joke.
“You ready?” Linus, the snarky production manager, asked joining me in the hallway. He adjusted his glasses
“I’m ready.”
I hated not being good at something. At the age of twelve, I’d been tossed out of a baseball game for hurling my bat over the fence when I’d struck out yet again. Baseball hadn’t been my game.
My dad—a high school baseball star of his own time who, for some inexplicable reason, actually made it to the game that day—told me I should focus on something I was good at… like watching TV or whining.
We’d had a similar conversation when I’d told him I was taking his position here. He’d given me the same sneer of disdain and wished me luck filling his shoes. I’d told him I’d rather burn his shoes and everything that was in this office to the damn ground.
It wasn’t a healthy sense of competition that drove me in this position. No, it was a pulsing need to prove to myself that I was better than the man who’d never earned the loyalty I’d once so freely given.
That’s what I’d done with baseball. I practiced every damn night. Spent hours in batting cages and running drills. In the end, I’d gotten good enough to earn a scholarship offer to play in college. Something my father hadn’t managed in his own life.
That was a good enough measure of success for me. Challenge conquered, point proven, I’d quit and never picked up a glove again.
I’d do the same here. Force myself to rise above an innate inability, do my fucking best, and when it was all over, never ever look back.
“Remember what we talked about,” Linus said, pausing outside the conference room door.
“Yeah,” I said. Then for some stupid reason remembered Ally’s passionate exit speech at the restaurant. About people deserving better treatment and all that garbage. “Thanks,” I said.
Linus’s eyes widened a fraction behind his tortoiseshell glasses. “You’re welcome?” he said after a beat.
I called it Proof of Asshole. It was something I tallied up on occasion. When someone looks at you cross-eyed for saying thank you because apparently you’d never said it before? Definite Proof of Asshole.
I stopped abruptly inside the door.
She was there.
Arranging coffees and pastries—that no one was going to eat because carbs were evil—like it was her job and not some cosmic joke.
Everyone else was already settled around the table and conversations came to a halt. I had that kind of effect on a room.
Ally looked up and didn’t bother hiding the eye-roll. “Oh, great,” she muttered under her breath.
Yeah, well, I wasn’t happy about seeing her either.
I ignored her and took my seat at the head of the table. “Thanks for being here,” I said gruffly. “Let’s get started.”
From the looks I got around the table, none of these people were used to the “t” word coming out of my mouth either. I bit back a sigh.
Ally planted herself at the foot of the table behind some ancient dinosaur of a laptop. She was wearing a cropped mock neck sweater in cheery fuchsia over black pants. She wore bracelets made out of some sort of fabric—maybe denim—wrapped up her right wrist.
“We’re interested in your input on the fall makeup tutorials, Mr. Russo.” Beauty editor Shayla was baiting me again.
Ally lifted a questioning eyebrow as she typed. Our gazes met, and I knew she’d noted the tone too. The last thing I needed was two of them.
“Let’s take a look,” I announced.
Everyone scrambled through their handouts to the spread that was up for discussion. I didn’t bother flipping to it. I’d been coached.
“I think the bones are good, but you’re missing the mark not including some kind of bronzer. It’s a transition season, and all women aren’t necessarily ready to let go of the sun-kissed look.”
Both of my evil little notetaker’s eyebrows winged up in surprise.
Shayla played it cooler. “Do you have any suggestions?”
“That’s not my area of expertise,” I reminded her. “I’m sure whatever you choose will be fine.”
Fine. Not “good.” These subtle little digs back and forth were boring, annoying. In my old job, we’d lock ourselves in an office, yell for twenty minutes, and move forward with a solution. Here things just festered. The bottom line was it didn’t really matter if Shayla wanted me here or not because I was here, I was in charge, and we all had to deal with it.
“Moving on,” Linus said, smoothly steering the meeting back to the agenda.
I found myself watching Ally throughout the meeting. She seemed to find it impossible to hold still, typing while swaying side to side ever so slightly to a beat only she could hear.
Our eyes met and held over the gigantic laptop screen several times.
No messages passed between us. No “fuck you”s. No thinly veiled insults. Just long, shared looks. Her eyes looked more brown than gold in this lighting. Her hair, even though it was tied back in a short tail, still had that just tousled by a man’s hands look with the waves escaping around her face. And those lips seemed to be permanently quirked as if always ready to smirk or smile.
I didn’t trust smilers.
She stuck her tongue out at me.
Ever so casually, I raised my hand and rubbed at my eye with my middle finger.
She was definitely smirking now.
“Excuse me a minute,” I said, interrupting an editor. “Do you mind typing just a little quieter? It sounds like you’re trying to stab your way through the table.”
Everyone turned to stare open-mouthed at Ally.
She looked up. Smiled. And I suddenly couldn’t wait to see what she’d do next.
“So sorry,” she offered sweetly.
I was disappointed.
Momentarily.
As soon as the table returned to their debate whether peach or rose was a better background, Ally mashed her keyboard in an obnoxious crescendo.
Linus looked like he was about to swallow his tongue. Shayla cleared her throat and stared at the ceiling. The rest of the team around the table scooted their chairs as far away from Ally as possible as if they didn’t want to get caught in any crossfire.
“Would someone see about getting Sausage Fingers here a quieter way to take notes next time?” I said to the room in general.
There were actual audible intakes of breath.
“And if someone could see about getting Charming here a nicer personality that he could try on for meetings, that would be great,” she shot back.
Linus choked on his gum, and the rest of the room was turning blue holding their breath.
“Moving on,” I said, feeling marginally more cheerful.
Conversation began again. I wasn’t sure if it was my imagination or not, but everyone seemed a little more relaxed.
Next on the agenda was a beauty brand that was jerking us around, demanding prime product placement after backing out of an advertising deal.
I nearly fell out of my chair when a junior beauty editor asked me, “Do you have any suggestions, Mr. Russo?”
I took a breath and looked her dead in the eye. “Call me Dominic. Please.”
She blinked rapidly several times, looking stunned.
As a matter of fact, I did have a suggestion. This was my area of expertise. Risk assessment. Managing inflated egos. Applying the right pressure at the right time. I had plenty of personal experience with that.
“Tell them we’ve decided to go in another direction. Name drop Flawless,” I said, mentioning another skincare company.
“We’ve had a relationship with La Sophia for years,” Shayla reminded me. But she didn’t sound like she hated the idea.
“Maybe it’s time to break up,” I said.
That got me an honest-to-God smile out of the woman. She’d looked at me with contempt, barely controlled her eye-rolls when I made stupid suggestions, or just frowned outright when we passed in the halls.
But this was a look of approval.
“I’ve been wanting to do that for a long time,” she confessed.
“Then I’ll leave it in your hands,” I said.
“Do you want me to reach out to Flawless or just say that I am?” she asked.
“If there’s a brand you want to work with that you think would be a good fit for our readers, do it.”
Shayla’s smile got a millimeter wider, and I felt my Proof of Asshole score drop a few points. Not bad for a Tuesday.
A surprisingly spirited discussion broke out around the table about how best to illustrate the results of the magazine’s online polls rating what readers looked for in spring jackets.
“Why don’t you put them in motion?” an annoying voice from the far end of the table piped up.
“Because this is a print magazine. That means it’s on paper,” I said heavy on the sarcasm.
Ally rolled her eyes. “Your sarcasm is noted, Dom. But I was talking about linking the print graphics to an animated one online. You want more crossover traffic between your print and digital content, right? You do something cutesy like this…” She stood up and walked to the whiteboard.
I divided my attention between two things. The way those pants hugged the curves of her ass and the competence with which she drew. She sketched out a rough trench coat with arrows pointing to parts of the construction and then another version mimicking motion.
It was fucking charming. That annoyed me.
“Then down here, you put a custom smart label that your reader can scan with their phone, and it takes them to the website. Link it to a cartoon or actual videos of models wearing each of the products, and break down the construction, best ways to wear them, where to buy at different price points.”
Linus was pursing his lips and polishing his glasses, his tell that he liked an idea. “That’s…”
“Not a horrible idea,” I filled in.
“Thanks,” she said dryly.
“Can you do a mockup of the illustrations for me?” Shayla asked her. “Something in that style?”
Ally shrugged. “Yeah. Sure.”
We wrapped ten minutes late. A first. Usually my meetings ended early because everyone was in a hurry to not be in the same room as me.
I took a moment to scroll through messages on my phone and purposely walked out behind Ally.
“Sausage Fingers?” she hissed at me.
I didn’t like her. But sparring with her made an otherwise interminable meeting slightly more interesting. Plus, there was something…enticing about that fresh lemon scent.
“You type like a Clydesdale.”
“You know, you’d be a lot prettier if you smiled once in a while,” she mused, fluttering her lashes.
No wonder women hated it when men said that.
“I don’t have time to smile.”
“I don’t have time to smile,” she mimicked in an annoying voice.
“Your maturity peaked in preschool.”
“Aww, did Pouty Man Face get his feelings hurt?”
“You’re fired, Maleficent.”
“Good luck with that, Charming.” She headed off in the direction of the stairs.
“Don’t bother getting comfortable here,” I called after her.
I didn’t realize until a makeup artist gaped up at me and then walked straight into a glass door when I passed her that I was actually smiling.
