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So she’d finally cried uncle and gone back to her old firm, despite the fact that they could only offer her an entry-level position. Good old Taylor & Mackenzie. Her former boss, who’d known her before Kevin, had promised her the next open account manager post. Only then the company had been bought by a larger New York agency (it’d become Taylor, Mackenzie, & Inglewood—TMI was NOT a good acronym for a PR firm), and they’d brought their own people in (so her boss was out).
They kept the name, though. She thought that was short-sighted.
So here she was, still an entry-level copywriter, with a new micromanaging boss who had no experience with Midwest media.
It hadnotbeen her year.
Rachel looked at the last slip of paper.Orgasms. Ha! The only love affair she’d had in the past two years was between herself and Bob, her battery-operated boyfriend. She couldn’t imagine diving into the dating pool again—not until she straightened out her life.
She mixed up the pieces of paper and selected a new one.
FOCUS
“Focus,” she muttered, testing it on her tongue. She liked it. Instead of focusing on what she didn’t have, she’d focus on what she wanted: to help people succeed in their businesses by helping them findtheirright words. She’d focus on earning her promotion.
Which was going to be tough given that Hailey didn’t trust her with anything beyond the simplest of tasks.
Rachel had gottenverygood at unjamming the copy machine.
“Hey,” a voice whispered behind her.
Startled, Rachel tried to block what she was doing with her hand and looked behind her.
Over the wall of her nondescript cubicle, her friend Alice from accounting peeked over.
Rachel wilted in relief. “Oh. It’s you.”
Alice opened her mouth but when she saw the mess on the floor she blinked, obviously forgetting whatever she’d been about to say. “Are you planning on ransoming someone?”
“I’m figuring out my life.”
“That was my second guess.” Alice came around to the opening of the cubicle. Arms crossed, her thorough auditing gaze took everything in.
Rachel sat back and looked at it like she figured Alice saw it. Her shoes kicked off and discarded to one side. The random snippets of paper covering the generic gray carpeting. Her skirt wrinkled and her hair likely already disheveled—what she usually looked like at the end of the day, not before lunch.
“It’s going well,” Rachel summarized, erring on the side of optimism.
“I can see that,” Alice said skeptically.
She grinned ruefully. “Because you’re astute.”
“Well, the smoke coming out of your ears was a dead giveaway.” Her friend tipped her head. “I came to wish you good luck on your meeting.”
“Oh crap. Is it that time already?” Rachel struggled to her feet, straightening her twisted skirt as she stood. It used to be a snug pencil skirt, but since the divorce she’d lost weight and hadn’t gained it back, so it hung on her kind of loose.
“You look fine,” Alice said in solidarity. “Besides, Hailey isn’t going to care, as long as you don’t look better than her.”
“True.” Her boss, Hailey Allen, was paranoid about her looks. Rachel was just average—shoulder-length brown hair, plain gray eyes, not tall but not short, not flat but not curvy. Just average. Plus, she was seven years older. Personally, she didn’t think she was a threat, but Hailey acted otherwise.
Still. She tucked her polka-dot blouse back into her waistband and fluffed the bow at her neck. She’d taken care to dress extra nicely for today’s meeting because their CEO had scheduled it.
Why would Robert want to talk to her? No idea. But she wasn’t going to be at a disadvantage—not if she wanted to convince them to let her move into account management.
“Five minutes,” Alice said, reaching for a Kleenex from the edge of Rachel’s desk. “Come here. You have ink on your face.”
Before she could react, Alice began scrubbing her cheek with the tissue.
Rachel rolled her eyes. “Thanks, Mom.”
