So, maybe he should stick around a bit longer. Win the partnership and then decide what to do. Brightwater was an interesting account; he already had a few ideas in his head. He’d be coming from behind, after those wisecracks he’d made today, but that didn’t faze him. And beating Rachel after that stunt she’d pulled… There was nothing more satisfying than beating a worthy adversary.
Stephanie had cupped one hand beneath her stomach; she was rubbing it gently, as if to soothe the occupant.
I don’t want her here.
Dealing with his family invariably left him feeling isolated and resentful. He was over that, and he wanted to stay that way.
But Stephanie had nowhere else to go. Casting a pregnant woman out on the street would be low, even for Garrett. Especially when the baby was his half sibling. He didn’t like the idea of it hearing that story one day. And, much as he hated talking about personal stuff at work, he could drop the fact that she was staying into a conversation with Tony…that ought to help negate Rachel’s suggestions he had trouble dealing with women. Plus, it would tick his dad off to know his wife had sought refuge with Garrett. That thought brought a smile, admittedly a grim one, to his face.
“Fine,” he said. “You can stay. One week.”
She took a step toward him. For an alarming moment, he thought she was going to hug him—something she’d given up trying after the first year of her marriage to Dwight.
“You must have more stuff than that,” Garrett said quickly, gesturing to her backpack.
“My case is in a locker at Grand Central,” she said. “I didn’t want to lug it here if you were going to throw me out.”
At least she’d been realistic. But now she was looking at him expectantly.
Garrett picked up the car keys he’d tossed on the island. “Let’s go.”
As he stepped aside to let her past, her stomach brushed against him. There would be no avoiding her.
He turned his mind to a more enjoyable image: the sexy-legged Rachel Frye, and her horrified expression when she learned he was sticking around.
CHAPTER SEVEN
R
ACHEL
SLIPPED
INTO
the meeting room where Garrett’s team had set up Pitch Central. Ignoring the boardroom-style table, where his team of account execs, artists, copywriters and media specialists sat, she slid into a chair against the wall at the back of the room. She ignored the curious looks that came her way, and didn’t make eye contact with anyone, not even those she considered her friends. Her aim was invisibility.
“What are you doing here?” Garrett demanded.
So much for invisibility.
“I’m here for…you know. That coaching we discussed with Tony.”
She struggled to say it without cringing. It was never supposed to come to this. Garrett should have taken umbrage and left for a high-paying job with one of their competitors by now.
He was still here.
Unfortunately, Tony had shared details of Rachel’s “generous offer” to coach Garrett with the other partners. She’d received a flood of emails commending her on her team spirit, which admittedly helped make up for the substandard impression she’d left at breakfast the other day. She’d been thrilled…until she realized she would actually have to deliver on her offer, and the people who would make the decision on the promotion would be watching.
Garrett had rounded the table while she spoke. Now he was close to her…but not too close. She was reminded of that night at the oyster bar—not one of her most cherished memories, but one she had difficulty shaking—when she’d stumbled into his space and he’d drawn away.
Garrett had numerous ways of putting distance between himself and other people, she realized. Not just physical withdrawal, but the aloofness in his dark eyes, the carefully bland expression he adopted in meetings. The smart-ass remarks.
“We both know you never meant things to go this far,” he said, quiet enough that his team wouldn’t hear. “How about you walk out now and we forget all about it.”
Oh, she was tempted. “Tony’s asked me to report back to him, so I’ll need to stay.”
She figured the best way to handle this was to give Garrett some so-generic-as-to-be-useless feedback on his leadership abilities, since it would be stupid for her to actually help him. No point rolling up her pants to give The Shark a better bite.
He scowled. “In that case, you sit up there.” He jerked his thumb in the direction of the head of the table. “Next to me, where I can keep an eye on you. If I hear so much as a peep out of you, you’re out. Bring your chair.”
No surprise that he didn’t offer to carry it for her. Rachel squeezed down the side of the room, her chair alternately clanking against someone else’s or banging into the wall. Adam, one of the account execs, offered to help. She gave Garrett a pointed look intended to compare his own manners unfavorably with his junior’s, but refused Adam’s assistance.
Halfway down the table, Natasha murmured, “Hi, Rachel.”
“Hey.” Rachel set the chair down and took a breather. “How’s Kevin doing?” She sensed Garrett’s impatience, and deliberately relaxed her stance.
“Great. His physical therapist says he’ll be back playing basketball next month.”
“Make sure he rubs liniment on that ankle before and after,” Rachel said. She knew how important basketball was to Natasha’s boyfriend.
“Will do, Rachel. Thanks.”
“Any chance we might resume our meeting soon?” Garrett asked.
Rachel hefted her chair with an exaggerated grunt of exertion and clanked her way forward.
“Okay,” Garrett said when she was in her designated position, “I’m going to brief you guys about Brightwater, then I’ll take questions. We won’t be discussing any creative ideas while Rachel’s here as an observer.”
Ready agreement from the team, though there were some apologetic glances toward her. The idea of three teams pitching for the same account had generated a buzz of excitement around the office.
Rachel had run the same kind of briefing for her own team yesterday, basically reporting what they’d learned at the client meeting. She didn’t expect any surprises from Garrett.
But she got one. Yes, Garrett did say much the same as she had…but his disinterested manner fell away and he delivered a briefing that made Brightwater sound like the most exciting opportunity since…well, since that Lexus campaign the world loved so much.
Was he genuinely that excited about Brightwater? Because although she’d given her own team a comprehensive briefing, she wasn’t sure if she’d left them with the kind of fervor she saw on his people’s faces.
“Questions?” Garrett asked when he’d finished. “Anyone got any research areas they’d particularly like to cover? I want something from each of you.”
He folded his arms and waited. Having said his piece, that wall of impatient aloofness was back in place.
It was as though he’d switched off a light.
The discussion limped along. A team member would present a decent suggestion for a research area, clearly wanting the approval of the man who’d just inspired them all, and Garrett would barely nod his head before moving on. Other, less-smart ideas, he simply shot down.
Rachel had never seen such a glaring lack of engagement. How could he have got so far in his career without paying the least attention to the emotional needs of others?
Rachel believed people gave more when they were encouraged, rather than intimidated. Paul Crane, the partner responsible for HR at KBC, had mentioned in an email supporting her plan to mentor Garret that Garrett’s team had the highest staff turnover. And yet…Garrett was the one with the reputation for pulling together brilliant pitches, while she was stuck on “tame.”
How did he ever get a girlfriend? Maybe getting the girl wouldn’t be a problem, Rachel conceded—he probably charmed them with the kind of meaningless garbage he’d spouted with their client at the Brightwater meeting.
If you were a fruit, what fruit would you be, Cindy/Tammy/Jodie?
But
keeping
the girl might be more— She pulled her thoughts up smartly. What did she care about Garrett’s seduction techniques?
“Any thoughts, Alice?” Garrett asked one of the artists, midway through a discussion of field trips to various Brightwater colleges. Rachel was a step ahead of him there—two of her team members were out at Brightwater campuses today. By lunchtime they would be emailing photos.
Alice made an inarticulate sound, then managed a faint, “No.” She was a bright young thing—and Jonathan Key’s goddaughter, which had got her the job here—but painfully shy.
“You can’t keep doing this,” Garrett told her. “The rest of the team can’t be expected to carry you. You have two minutes to come up with an idea.”
Rachel could practically see Alice’s mind going blank. Poor girl.
“Garrett,” she warned.
“Not a peep,” he reminded her.
As if she would sit by and let Alice get shredded. She leaned in to him so the staff wouldn’t hear, garnering a whiff of that pine-and-citrus scent of his. “If you start displaying some people skills, I promise I’ll shut up.”
He made an exasperated sound. “Alice,” he said in a playing-nice voice, “you need to contribute more if you want to keep working at KBC.”
Oh, boy.
This
was his idea of people skills? Threatening Alice with the boot? Rachel should be delighted—his incompetence was her best chance at winning the partnership—but Alice had turned white and looked as if she might faint or burst into tears. Or both. She would probably be the next casualty on Garrett’s staff turnover list. A fate she didn’t deserve, since she was a nice person and a talented artist.
Garrett wasn’t done yet. “I’d like to hear your ideas as to what you can offer this firm,” he added.
“Is that part of the two minutes?” Alice squeaked.
“No,” he said with exaggerated patience that was every bit as intimidating as his ultimatum. “Forget the two minutes. Right now I want some halfway decent suggestions about other research areas.” He glanced around the table. “Anyone? Anything?”
The entire team busied themselves flicking through Brightwater brochures, scribbling notes, or staring at their fingernails. If it hadn’t been so tragic, Rachel would have laughed.
The silence stretched to biblical proportions as people hesitated to offer up ideas that would be either damned with faint praise, or dismissed. Garrett’s face betrayed a mix of irritation and confusion, as if he couldn’t figure out why this bunch of bright people didn’t have two ideas to rub together.
At last Adam, the account exec who’d offered to carry Rachel’s chair, spoke up. “It’s going to be hard to promote the Brightwater brand—people care more about individual colleges’ track records than they do about the company that owns them.”
Rachel’s team was already grappling with that issue.
“Maybe we should talk to parents of precollege kids to see if there’s something that would make them care about the corporate brand,” Adam said.
Garrett nodded. “Or to the kids themselves.”
Since that was as close as Garrett came to wild enthusiasm, Adam carried on. “I think this is the kind of thing where kids really value their parents’ input.” Unfortunately, confidence turned him earnestly self-important, which Rachel could have told him Garrett would hate. “I know
I
did, when I was looking at colleges. It was, like, the first time in years I cared what my mom thought.” Sensing he’d lost Garrett’s interest—maybe because Garrett was folding a piece of paper into an airplane—Adam said, “You know what I mean? Didn’t you pay attention to your mom’s views on college?”
Garrett launched the paper plane. “My mom’s dead.”
Sympathy rippled around the table.
The plane crash-landed into the water jug.
Adam reddened. “Uh, sorry, Garrett. How did she, uh—”
“She picked up malaria on a missionary trip to Africa,” Garrett said. “A particularly virulent strain that the doctors here couldn’t treat. So, no, I don’t know what you mean about parents and college decisions. But I take your point—figure out who you’re going to question and how, and run it by me before the end of the day.”
He pushed back in his chair. “Let’s move on, people. Rachel, your mouth is hanging open.”
Rachel snapped her jaw shut.
Another
story about his mother’s death. Was this one true? Were any of them true?
Apparently sick of waiting, Garrett moved around the table, assigning research tasks to people who couldn’t think up their own.
“Okay, you all know where you need to be,” he concluded. “I’m visiting Brightwater’s Porchester campus tomorrow—” Rachel and Clive would be on that trip, too “—then I’ll be in the library on Friday. Call me on my cell if you need me.”
“The library” was the glorified name for KBC’s archive of former pitches and campaigns, on the fifty-fifth floor. Rachel wondered what he hoped to find there—it seemed an unlikely source of inspiration for a man who prided himself on his originality.
The meeting over, the team filed out, tension dropping by measurable degrees.
“Join us for a drink at O’Dooley’s tonight?” Adam asked Rachel as he left.
“Love to.” She noticed he didn’t invite Garrett.
“Alice, don’t forget,” Garrett said, “I want to talk to you soon about your contribution.”
Alice muttered something incoherent and fled, leaving Rachel and Garrett alone.
Rachel opened her mouth, but before she could speak, Garrett held up both hands, palms out. “Stop giving me those accusing looks. I don’t care whose goddaughter she is, she’s not pulling her weight. She doesn’t fit here.”
“So you threatened to fire her? Nice going.” Rachel turned over an unused water glass and reached for the jug. Ugh, it still had that paper plane in it, but she wasn’t about to indulge his bad behavior by fishing it out. With the soggy plane blocking the spout, the water came out in a trickle. She gave up when her glass was only half-full.
“I didn’t threaten to fire her,” he said.
“You told her that if she wanted to work at KBC, she had to contribute more.”
“That’s the truth, and Alice needs to think about it.” He picked up Rachel’s glass and took a swig. “This stuff tastes like paper.”
“Are you saying you don’t think Alice should move on?”
“How would I know?” He picked up his cold coffee, but the milky film on top deterred him from drinking it. “I guess, if this place isn’t working for her, she might like somewhere else better.”
Just the kind of grass-is-greener attitude that drove Rachel nuts. She turned her glass so she wouldn’t drink from the same spot Garrett’s mouth had just touched. “Alice is part of the KBC family. You don’t tell family to go find somewhere else. You help them find a way to stay.”
Garrett blinked. “KBC is an advertising agency, Rachel. Not a family.”
“That’s not quite true. We’re an independent agency, one of the few large firms that’s not part of a global conglomerate.”
“It’s still an advertising agency,” he said.
“Our partnership structure gives us more of a personal, family feel,” she persisted.
He snorted. “Doesn’t feel anything like my family.”