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Plus, what was wrong with Gage moving his company to Dallas? Both CEOs ran large companies with lots of employees. Just because Gage was the man in the equation, why did that mean he automatically won the battle?
Trinity strode toward her office to the sounds of hoots and clapping. She took a moment to grin and wave. Obviously the footage of her kiss with Logan had made the rounds. The game show itself wouldn’t air until later in the week, but she’d charmed the producer out of a clip of the kiss, starting it on its viral journey by posting it to her own social media accounts and tagging everyone she knew to share it.
Trinity wasn’t one for leaving things to chance.
Cass had scheduled a meeting for first thing this morning, probably to get the full scoop. Humming, Trinity grabbed coffee and dug around until she found her iPad in her shoulder bag, then strolled to the conference room where Cass stood at the head of the table.
“Hey,” Trinity called and repeated her greeting to Fyra’s CFO, Alex Edgewood, and then to Dr. Harper Livingston-Gates, the chief science officer, whose faces appeared in split screen on a TV mounted on the wall. Both of them were participating in the meeting virtually since they’d abandoned Dallas the moment their husbands crooked their fingers.
Trinity sank into a seat and mentally slapped herself for being unkind.
Alex was pregnant with twins and on bed rest, so it made sense that she lived in Washington, DC, with her husband, Phillip, a United States senator. Harper’s husband worked in Zurich, and Trinity didn’t blame her for wanting to be in the same bed with a man as hot as Dr. Dante Gates, especially since they’d just figured out they were in love after being friends for over a decade.
Maybe Trinity was a little jealous that everyone else had such an easy time with normal female things like falling for a great guy and having his support during pregnancy. And none of them had suffered a horrendous miscarriage that had left them feeling defective. Well, so what? Trinity had other great stuff in her life, like more men than she could shake a stick at.
Except lately, great men had been pretty scarce. The pitfalls of turning thirty. Made you think more about the definition of “great,” and pseudo–frat boys with Peter Pan syndrome were not it. Unfortunately, that seemed to be the type she met at her usual haunts, which was fine for the short term.
She just wished she knew why that didn’t feel like enough anymore.
Cass started off with a sly smile. “You and your reality show partner got pretty chummy. Do tell.”
“All for the cameras, hon,” Trinity assured her. God, what was with that pang in her gut? The kiss had been fake. On both sides—never mind that she’d liked how real it felt. “We were both interested in getting additional coverage. It worked.”
Alex and Harper both murmured their disappointment that the story wasn’t juicier.
“I know we’ve turned dissecting our love lives into a regular boardroom agenda item, but let’s move on,” Trinity insisted smoothly. “I’m sure Cass didn’t call this meeting to talk about my partner on a reality game show.”
“Actually, I did,” Cass corrected. “We’ve got a publicity issue that’s at the top of everyone’s mind right now. After the mess with the leak and then the FDA approval fiasco, sales went into the toilet. We’ve got new problems daily as articles keep popping up in what feels to me like a smear campaign.”
Felt that way to Trinity, too. Which was why it pissed her off so much. This was her territory. Her company. And someone was after it.
“Yeah, I’m aware. That’s why I did the show, remember?”
“I’m not sure it’s enough.” Cass frowned. “I approved it since the publicist suggested it, but we need to move forward with launching Formula-47. When can you schedule time to present the marketing plan?”
“Next Monday?” Trinity suggested and started calculating exactly how screwed she was...since the campaign didn’t exist. Very would be the precise amount of screwed.
It wasn’t anyone’s fault but hers, but then she’d never had a creative dry spell like this one, and she couldn’t even commiserate with her friends. Recent personal events for all three ladies had driven a wedge between them, with Trinity on the wrong side of the married mom division.
Trinity hated it. She was happy for her friends, but sad that they’d all chosen lives so different from the ones they’d had. So different from the one she’d mapped out for herself. And she was pretty sure that was why her creativity had completely abandoned her when she needed it most.
The sketching she’d done on that pristine white pad while Logan peered over her shoulder had been a welcome flood of ingenuity. Maybe the medium was the key—she’d run out at lunch and pick up one of those easels. It could work.
