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When I see her walk into the idea room wearing a simple black pencil skirt with a white blouse, I have to turn around. I can’t look at her and think about anything else. She’s all consuming.
I try to focus on the predictions for Q2 so I can be ready for my meeting with Noah and Dante. When I go to take another sip of coffee, I realize it’s empty.
I stand up and walk out of my office to the break room and see her standing at the coffee pot all alone. For a moment, I want to run back to my office before she sees me, but then she turns and gives me a slightly embarrassed smile.
“Hey Emery,” she says as I freeze. “Rough morning?”
My heart is racing as I force myself to move to the coffee pot, cup in hand. “Didn’t get nearly enough sleep last night.”
When I look down at her, I see the faintest outline of a black lace bra under the white blouse, and it’s like a switch flips inside me. She came to work prepared to get fucked. She wants it just as bad as I do.
I glance behind me to the doorway to make sure no one came in behind me. Madison’s biting her bottom lip, and it makes it impossible for me to ignore the desires rising inside me.
She wants to have to do dirty things in public. Well, if that’s the way things are going to be, then I won’t hold back. In a whisper she can barely hear, I say, “Make your coffee and then go to your office and take off your panties. Leave them in your desk drawer.”
She hesitates for a moment and then nods her head. “Do you want me to come to your office afterward?”
“No. That’d be too easy. I might not even do anything today. It could be tomorrow or it might be on the plane to Barcelona.”
It won’t be. I can’t wait that long, but I want her nervous.
“You wouldn’t do it on the plane,” she whispers.
I give her a smile and turn to the coffee pot. “You might be right, but you might be wrong. You were wrong last night.”
She stares at me, her eyes burning into my back as I pour myself another cup of coffee. I don’t add creamer or sugar. Today I need it to be strong and bitter, anything to keep my mind off more pleasant things than work.
When I turn around, Madison is gritting her teeth. “You’re really going to make me walk around like that all day?”
I give her a sideways smile, but I don’t respond. The man who leaves first stays most interesting. It’s just too bad that I don’t want to leave this time. The only thing that lets me do what I need to do is the habit that I’ve forced on myself all these years.
When I get back to my office, I take a sip of the coffee, thankful for the burn. Anything to get my mind off Madison so I can shift my mind to something more useful.
It lasts a full three seconds. Today is going to be a hard day.
Chapter 27
Emery
Noah is sitting up straight as I show the chart of projected earnings this quarter. Dante’s flipping a half-dollar, only paying the slightest bit of attention to what I’m saying.
“How is our growth only projected at a quarter percent?” Noah asks. “The number of clients I’m bringing in isn’t slowing down.”
I shake my head. “We’re maintaining the clients, but they’re cutting back their spending on traditional advertising. They want social media marketing. Everyone’s talking about how big of a difference it makes for a quarter of the price.”
Noah jumps to his feet and paces. “That’s not fucking acceptable, Em. Why haven’t we moved into that space?”
How am I the only one who saw this happening? I mean, Dante’s barely even a part of the company at this point, just waiting for paperwork to go through to separate him from the two of us, but I’ve been telling Noah that we needed to make this expansion for months.
“I’ve been trying and failing miserably, Noah. No one gets it. A few companies have stumbled on successful campaigns, but none of it has any rhyme or reason to it. We haven’t been able to pin down exactly what made them successful over others. But I think that our newest intern might have cracked the code. This quarter, our earnings are going to be low, but next quarter may be explosive.”
He cocks his head toward me. “The intern who lost her skirt before her interview?”
I nod. “The very same. We’re shooting the campaign for Bronze Goddess on Saturday, and the ads will start airing on ChitChat the next week. We’ll know then if she’s a genius. I’d bet she’s right, though. She gets it in a way that no one else in the industry does.”
Noah runs his hand over his cheek. This is the first time we’ve ever been nearly stagnant, and I know how he feels. I’ve been stressed about this issue for months. “How sure are you? Should we be hiring more people? Throw more spaghetti at the wall?”
I shake my head. It’s something I’ve considered too many times to count. “Our reputation is that we over-deliver. If someone gives us a campaign to run, we have to give them the results they’ve come to expect, so just throwing some new idea at it is going to end up with us losing customers even if everyone knows that it’s a brand new world we’re dealing with. It’s not their problem that we don’t have suitable solutions yet.”
