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“IS STACY PREGNANT?”
Jamie leaned back in surprise at the bluntness of my question. I was perched on his desk—avoiding my own office due to my massive hangover—and had brought the wedding invitation with me to be used as evidence in my interrogation. The date was set for about six weeks from now. Not enough time to plan a wedding. Not nearly enough time to plan a destination wedding in the Bahamas. Which left me with only one conclusion.
“She is, isn’t she? That’s what this is? A shot-gun wedding?”
His eyes sparkled as he surveyed me for a moment or two before he finally nodded his head. “Actually...yes, she is.”
AH! Hangover or not, I’d been raised to be crazy about the idea of babies, and I leapt to my feet, grabbing him in a huge hug.
“Oh my gosh! Jamie! That’s so exciting—congratulations!”
“Thanks,” he said a little breathlessly, sitting down as I perched back on the desk. “In our defense, it wasn’t a shotgun wedding when I proposed. We found out a week after, and decided, well—why not bump up the wedding?”
“Very reasonable,” I nodded, fully approving the plan.
He grinned. “According to Stacy, she’d been waiting for six years, so she already had most of it planned out.”
I laughed. “So you guys don’t even know if it’s going to be a boy or girl yet?”
“Nope, just that the baby’s due in about eight months. I have to admit, though,” he lowered his voice conspiratorially, “I hope it’s a girl.”
I melted. “You do?”
His eyes grew thoughtful. “Something about the idea of a daughter...I don’t know.” He smiled. “But don’t tell anyone, Harks. Not a soul, okay? Stacy’s freaked out enough as it is.”
“Wild horses couldn’t drag it from me.”
“That’s good—because that’s actually our litmus test.”
I chuckled, then glanced up at the clock with a groan. “I can’t believe it’s already eight. Where did the last of my staff-free hours go?”
He tapped my nose as he helped me to my feet. “Maybe it wouldn’t be hitting you so hard if you weren’t so ridiculously hungover. You and Eric both—you know he fell asleep on my porch last night? I found him this morning.”
“What? No! I sent him home—I even gave the cabbie his address.”
Jamie chuckled as we started down the hall. “He gave the cabbie his old address by mistake. He used to live with me before Stacy. Well—hey—speak of the devil.”
Eric looked just about as defeated as Jamie said I did when I first walked in. He was impeccably dressed as ever, still gorgeous—but in an unslept, red-eyes sort of way. Actually, now that I thought about it, we could probably use this joint sleep deprivation thing to our advantage. We certainly looked as though we’d been up all night...
“Could you not speak so loud?” He winced and held up a hand to his temple. “That last round of sours might have been a bad idea.”
“Well stay sharp, lover,” I said, slipping my hand into his with a grin. “It’s show time.”
Jamie stared at the two of us with a completely blank expression.
“What?” I shrugged defensively. “It’s his first staff meeting. I walk in all the newbies like this.”
“That’s right,” Eric clapped his shoulder as we walked by, “I’m going straight for a few weeks, bro—don’t overthink it.”
“Don’t overthink it.” Jamie raised his eyebrows but let it go. “I should have known the two of you would be bad influences on each other.”
“Not bad,” Eric gave me a wink, “the best. Now come on, darlin’, let’s sit down.”
The first thing I noticed when we walked into the staff meeting was that Tom was there even though he didn’t have to be. The second thing I noticed was that he looked just as sleep-deprived as I did. His clothes were slightly disheveled as if he’d sat at his desk all night. His gorgeous blue eyes were bruised and rimmed with dark crimson. Nevertheless, they perked up when Eric and I walked into the room, and fixed on our joint hands with the intensity of a thousand angry suns.
While I was thoroughly unnerved by the effect my little scheme was having (despite having schemed it myself); Eric stayed cool as a cucumber—squeezing my fingers and guiding me gently through the rows of seats until we found two together near the back—both directly in Tom’s line of sight. We settled ourselves down and stared politely toward the front, waiting for the meeting to begin. Rather—Eric did that...I was a different, fidgeting story.
“Stop freaking out and breathe,” he whispered, leaning back in his chair like he didn’t have a care in the world. “This is just a little payback—payback’s supposed to be fun.”
Our eyes met, and just like magic, the nervous fluttering in my stomach subsided.
He was right, I realized with a sudden grin. Tom thought he could summon me up to sit in his office while he whispered sweet nothings about how much he missed me and how much he liked my hair? After he was the one who ended things?!
Not a chance!
My lips curled up in an impish smile, and I leaned casually back against Eric. He draped his arm loosely over my shoulders, stroking his thumb absentmindedly against my skin, as we waited for Trask to get on with the presentation. There was nothing outrageous about our behavior, nothing overt that would raise the slightest bit of alarm—but Tom knew.
Tom was the one who was watching. Tom was the one who saw us leave for drinks yesterday. And Tom knew that I’d never be so casual with a co-worker.
In the end, that’s all that mattered.
As I leaned up to whisper something in Eric’s ear, I saw him jerk reflexively toward us in his chair. The muscles in his face tightened, and when I giggled loudly at Eric’s soft response, it looked as though he might actually explode.
Whether or not that was scientifically possible, we’d never know because Mr. Trask chose that moment to start the meeting.
“Alright everyone, let’s settle down. A few things I want to cover before we—” His eyes shot up in surprise as Tom got suddenly to his feet. “Um...yes, Mr. Larchwood? Was there something you wanted to say before we begin?”
Every person in the room swiveled around in their chair to look as Tom towered down on them like an angry god. The air around him almost seemed to shimmer with the force of his rage, and for a moment, I thought I might be having a mild heart attack. I tried to scoot my chair automatically away from Eric, but my fake-new-boyfriend, held it casually to his side.
He alone seemed unaffected by the display going on in the corner. In fact, he almost seemed to relish it. Though he turned around like everyone else did, his eyes held no fear. I personally didn’t see how that was possible, being as Tom was looking at him like he could rip his arms off, but he stayed as cool and collected as ever.
“Mr. Larchwood?” Trask tried again, clearly baffled as to what was happening.
For a split second, I was petrified Tom was going to fire everyone on the spot. But instead, he simply flashed Trask a polite smile before fixing his eyes again on Eric.
“I don’t believe I know everyone at this meeting.” His words were soft, but they had the entire room on edge. “Who might you be?”
Everyone’s heads whipped back to Eric like they were at a ping-pong tournament. My throat seized up, and I made a quiet, strangled-sounding noise, but Eric got calmly to his feet.
“Eric Street. PR sent me over for the next few weeks to help with the merger.”
He extended his hand.
There was a long moment as it hung in the air between them before Tom finally shook it. Both men’s jaws tightened at the grip, and I wondered how hard they were squeezing.
“PR,” Tom repeated with a slightly bemused look on his face. I thought we already had one representative from PR.”
Rose fidgeted nervously in her seat and shot me a death look I took to mean: ‘this is what happens when you make an awesome new friend and trick them into pretending to be your lover.’
Eric smiled widely, flashing his perfect teeth. “I guess there’s enough dirt on you boys that they felt the need to send over a second,” he joked lightly.
The room laughed along for a second, before looking at Tom and clamming up. He was staring straight into Eric’s eyes with an expression like the one I imagined a lion had before it ripped an unsuspecting gazelle in half.
“Well, please, Mr. Street,” he continued in that quiet, terrifying voice, “I’d be thrilled to know what you and your little media pals have put together so far. Enlighten me.”
At this point, Trask tried to cut in. “Mr. Larchwood, Mr. Street’s only been on the merger for a short time—this is his second day. If you’d like a summary thus far, I’m sure that Miss Bell would be a better candidate—”
“Nonsense,” Tom replied shortly. “You say he’s had a day already to familiarize himself with the information? Then never fear, Trask. I know you keep your people working hard.”
He flashed Eric a lethal grin, and I thought of the seven whiskey sours still churning around in his system. This was a sick game. One designed to hurt me. Although on what possible grounds Tom thought he was justified when I was the one dumped—I couldn’t imagine.
I glanced up at Eric—hungover to the point where he was almost swaying slightly on his feet—and wondered how in the hell he was going to get through this. But Eric returned Tom’s smile with a remarkably steady on of his own.
“What would you like to know Mr. Larchwood?”
And the game was away...
Tom leaned casually against the wall, crossing his arms over his chest. “What are the top three media news outlets you’ll be designing platforms for in China?”
Eric frowned. “For this kind of promotion, the outlets are designed to run as basic mirror subsidiaries of the ones we’ll be utilizing right here. Google, Forbes, CNN—”
Tom held up a hand to cut him off. “You misunderstand me. I mean, what hard copy outlets will you be using?”
“Hard copy,” Eric repeated, his eyes never leaving Tom’s face.
I resisted throwing my shoe at Tom right then and there. Hard copy. He meant newspapers. The kind of thing this level of digital PR had neither the time nor patience for. For that matter, no one used old school paper advertising anymore. He was honestly asking Eric for the top three newspapers in—
“The Beijing Daily Newspaper Group, the Wenhui Xinmin Associated Newspaper Group, and the Guangzhou Daily Newspaper Group.”
An awed hush came over the room. Trask started nodding approvingly, and even the brilliant Rose glanced down at her notes as she struggled to place the minor corporations on the map. I stared up at Eric in wonder. How had he possibly known?
“But as you know, Mr. Larchwood, only about two percent of our advertising is brokered on platforms such as those. I’m not sure about finance, but in PR, we live in the digital age.”
There was another group tittering at the joke, one that fell just as quickly silent as the room’s eyes shot back to Tom.
Tom blinked. Clearly his first attack had fallen short, so he would try another. “And you’re aiming for a maximum saturation of—”
“No more than fourteen percent. We want to get the word out, but not flood the market at the same time. Not to mention, with the specificity of the demographic, a little exclusivity is almost desirable past a certain point.”
“And what exactly will your message be?”
This time, it was Eric who paused. Tom was walking him out onto dangerous ground, and he knew it. “Pardon?”
“Your message,” Tom repeated. The sound of his voice sent chills up and down my arms. “Miss Bell has been developing profiles on my brother and myself for the last two weeks now. I want to know what you’ve all come up with.”
“It’s an ongoing process,” Eric stalled, glancing at Trask for assistance.
Trask stepped forward at once. “Yes, Mr. Larchwood. At this point, they’ve just been sorting through stories and gathering the information they’ll need. When it comes to the final crafted profile, nothing’s been sorted yet—”
Tom’s eyes never left Eric, sizing him up and down. “But you’re a smart man, Mr. Street. You’ve just proven that. You’ve clearly looked at the data—so tell me. Gut instinct. What are the profiles going to say?”
Don’t answer the question! Every fiber of my body screamed it. Absolutely DO NOT answer that question!
But I sensed that Eric had never been one to shy away from a fight.
“They’re going to say that one of you is a playboy, and the other is a bore.”
My eyes snapped shut as a cold chill radiated through my body. There wasn’t a sound in the room. Not even Trask’s usual wheezy breathing. It was silent as a grave.
Tom didn’t move a muscle. He was still staring at Eric with his piercing blue eyes, eyes that now simmered with a lethal fire. “Is that so?”
Eric’s face had paled, but he held his ground. “Between Michael’s past, and your...lack of one, it’s difficult to know yet how we’re going to balance it out to make either one of you appear to be a presentable candidate.” His eyes flickered around the room, and he hurried to clarify. “Of course, those are just the cosmetic concerns. Both you and your brother are brilliantly educated and experienced, so the business side of things is set. The only issue is the social perception.”
“The social perception.” If Tom pulled a gun out of his jacket and shot Eric clear through the throat, I would not have been surprised. “And how am I socially perceived, Mr. Street?”
Again, Trask tried to intervene. “Perhaps it’s best if we—”
“You’re a workaholic,” Eric said bluntly. “You expect too much from people. Even if people wanted to impress you, Mr. Larchwood, they wouldn’t know where to begin. You expect nothing less than perfection.”
“How do you think I’ve gotten this company to where it is today?”
“Ego, pride, and arrogance are not positive leadership traits. And because you expect so much, you can be perceived as intimidating, cold, and unapproachable.”
Tom’s eyes flickered briefly to me, and then back to him. “That’s what you think?”
“That’s what the polling data suggests, yes,” Eric said a bit pointedly, shifting, so I was out of sight.
Tom’s lips thinned into a hard line. “And how would you propose we solve that?”
Eric shrugged. “Public appearances at audience-specific events, speeches at openings of libraries and things like that...pictures of you and a suitable girlfriend—”
“And that’s all the time we have for today.” Trask stood up and abruptly ended the meeting. Whatever it was he had planned to talk about, we would never know. The lights flashed on and everyone stared around at each other in shock, no one more so than Jamie, who was looking between Eric and Tom in complete bewilderment.
I was the first one out the door, followed quickly by Rose, with Jamie right on her heels.
“What was that about?” he hissed, staring worriedly inside to where Eric and Tom were still casually sizing each other up as they gathered their things. “Is he still drunk?!”
“He answered Tom’s questions,” I muttered with a sigh. “He was just being honest.”
“He’s just going to get himself fired,” Jamie countered. “Honestly, I have no idea what got into—hey!” He grabbed Eric’s arm as he tried to slip past us down the hall. “What is wrong with you—what was that about?!”
Eric smiled weakly and tried to shrug it off. “In PR, they teach us to speak our minds.”
Jamie wasn’t having it. “Eric, I’m serious. He’s Abe’s son—you can’t just go talking to him like—”
“Hey, you want to have dinner tonight?” Eric turned his back on his friend and was looking intently at me instead. I glanced over his shoulder to see that Tom had just walked out of the room and was watching us in a way he clearly meant to be covert.
I shook off the dark cloud from the staff meeting rather quickly and flashed Eric an enthusiastic smile. “That sounds great. Meet you at my place at seven?”
“I’ll be there.” He gave me a quick kiss on the cheek and hurried off down the hall. I suspected he was going to his office to throw up—either from the booze or from the traumatizing experience of being put on the spot by Tom Larchwood. I knew it firsthand.
Before either Jamie or Rose could turn their interrogation onto me, I quickly dismissed myself as well. I went to my office, then headed down the hall to the copy room. There was no one inside, thank goodness, and I braced myself against the wall as my breathing slowly returned to normal.
That was a bit more explosive than I had planned. I thought we’d just flirt a little, get him jealous, remind him what he was missing. I didn’t think it would trigger that kind of reaction—
I whirled around in shock just in time to see Tom walk into the room. His eyes were wild with the same kind of frantic rage I’d seen in the staff room.
“What was that about in there?!” he asked.
My temper rose, and I took a step toward him. “I could ask you the same thing! You know he’s only been on the job for a day—what were you going on about?” I gestured around me with a sarcastic glare. “Have you come back to reminisce in our favorite spot?”
Tom’s jaw clenched and he hissed through his teeth. “Well, maybe if he wasn’t so busy getting you drunk his first day on the job, he wouldn’t have been so shaken. I’m only letting it go because you were with him. And I don’t want you getting in trouble too. You don’t think I remember what you look like hungover, Jenna? We were together for over—”
“We weren’t together,” I hissed back, glancing anxiously at the door as a pair of footsteps walked past. “Apparently, we weren’t anything. We were just something to pass the time until the stakes got too high for you to be interested.”
For a second, Tom’s face fell. He moved as if he was going to reach out for me, but when I flinched away, his eyes grew hard once more. “So you decide to have a rebound with Malibu Barbie over there and flaunt it in my face?”
I sniffed in what I thought to be a rather superior sort of way. “Eric and I work in the same building. I can’t help it if you see us together. And to be perfectly honest, I don’t see why you’d care. You broke up with me, Tom. You were the one who said it was over.”
“I had no choice, Jenna. It was—”
“YOU HAD EVERY CHOICE!”
I didn’t plan to yell. I didn’t even plan to answer. I didn’t mean to feel anything, but all at once, I was. I was feeling every little bit of heartache all over again, and it left me shaking.
“You made your choice, Tom.” I pushed past him out the door. “Now I’m making mine.”