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Her eyes cast toward the floor, avoiding him. Quentin’s lips parted in pause. What kind of relationship was this going to be? Would they perpetually dance around each other, trying to forget, while continually making the other remember?
“Come along,” Quentin finally said, leading his crew of interns, plus Maggie, into the conference room. He watched as each of them took a seat, with Charlotte sitting as far away from him as possible. The advertisers from a famous Brooklyn clothing and street wear shop entered the room next, having been let in by his secretary. They wore tight-fitting business suits with expensive, bright tennis shoes, and they spent the better part of a minute shoving their thousand-dollar sunglasses into sunglasses cases before removing their advertising proposals.
As they took their time, Quentin’s eyes drew across the table, making penetrative, intense eye contact with Charlotte. As she’d walked to the conference room, she’d unbuttoned a single top button, revealing the darkness between her breasts. She looked at him bleary-eyed, as if she peered out from beneath his bed sheets.
The men from the street wear store spoke the language of stoners, making a meeting that should have lasted just twenty minutes into over an hour. Randy, Pamela, and the other girl—Emily?—took notes evenly on a notebook, while Charlotte watched on, her chin centered upon her fist and her elbow on the table.
Finally, after a long pause, just before wrapping up the deal, Charlotte banged her fist upon the table. The other interns turned toward her, panic-stricken. But her lips parted, proving her brain had been whirling all along.
“I just don’t think the copy’s good enough,” she said then, her voice still timid, but holding truth.
Quentin peered at the street wear design, with its slogan: Street whore.
“It’s a play on words,” one of the owners told Charlotte, his thick eyebrow rising high. “Don’t you get it, or you need me to explain it to you?”
Charlotte’s cheeks grew hot. After a moment of panic, she righted herself, glaring at him. “I have a better one. Want to hear it?”
“Knock yourself out.”
“We’ll wear you out,” she said. “It’s sexy. And it’s not name-calling, like yours is. I think it would look better with the photo you chose, as well.”
There was a long pause, with the two owners of the street wear company pulsing their heads together and whispering. One of them was hear saying, gruffly, “Man, she’s right. We could get flack for that name-calling.”
“Let’s just take it. I want this to be over with.”
They parted and looked at her as if she were a marketing angel, a guru. One shrugged, beginning to roll up his advertisement mock-up. “I think we can agree on that.”
“Sure. Fuck it,” the other one said. “And we’ll pay what you asked, since you threw in some creative.”
They turned toward the door, both of them shaking Quentin’s hand before they sped out. As they shifted at the elevator, the team watched as they slid sunglasses over their eyes with a dramatic, swishing motion, bowing their heads at the ding of the arriving elevator.
“Jesus, those guys were a piece of work,” Quentin said, rising from his chair and leaning heavily against the table, his fingers spread out. His eyes ticked from Randy, to Charlotte, to Pamela, to Emily, and then to Maggie, before drawing back to Charlotte. He assessed her, recognizing that she was even more than he’d bargained for.
“Charlotte, honey, what you did back there,” Maggie began. “It was out of line. It wasn’t approved by any kind of committee on our end. And what if it didn’t align with our brand?”
“But it did,” Quentin stated. “She saw how shitty their design was, and she offered a solution. That’s what you have to do in this business. Quick thinking. I appreciate a mind like that.” His nostrils flared. “If you wouldn’t mind, I’d like to see you in my office.”
“All of us?” Pamela piped up, lifting her notebook from the table. Her knees creaked.
“Perhaps later, Pamela. But just now, only Charlotte. Thanks,” Quentin said, taking swift steps toward the door. He listened as Charlotte lifted her thin frame from the chair, allowing her heels to clatter onto the floor. She followed him slowly, almost as if she were walking to her death.
In some ways, Quentin thought then, any new beginning was a small death of all that came before. They couldn’t have planned for this intense attraction. But perhaps they could make the best of it.
10
Quentin clipped the door to his office closed, behind Charlotte, giving them the first moment of privacy since he’d left her alone the night before. Casually, he closed the blinds of his office with a swift flick of his wrist, eliminating all prying eyes.
“Why did you do that?” Charlotte asked, her voice now a whisper.
Quentin crossed his firm forearms over his chest and stood, feet wide apart. He still towered over her. “Why do you think I did it?”
