2. Rome
The imageof Nikki Jordan unconscious on the table stayed with me all day. Her mouth had fallen open slightly, her pillowy lips painted a dark, vampy red. Her hair had been arranged in careful waves that had become mussed in the chaos. She wore dramatic eyeliner that had survived without smudging.
She had the face of a difficult, high-maintenance woman, which was no surprise. It had taken me about ten seconds to figure out she was a difficult, high-maintenance woman before I’d ever laid eyes on her.
I hadn’t expected her to look the way she did, though. Taller than I’d expected. Curvier, with dramatic features. More striking. Just…more. She’d been wearing a dress that could only be called modest, with a square neckline that didn’t show much more than her collarbones and hit well below her knee. But there was something about the way it traced her curves that made it look indecent.
And her shoes. Her shoes had been entirely impractical. No one needed to wear those types of heels to work as a runner in a studio. No wonder she’d been injured. What a ridiculous, difficult, irritating woman. I was glad I didn’t need to interact with her any longer. Once had been enough.
Gritting my teeth, I tore off my glasses and tossed them on the desk before rubbing the bridge of my nose. Leaning back in my chair, I cast my gaze over the multitude of lights in the Manhattan skyline. My domain. Today had been chaotic. The past six months had been chaotic, actually. Sales were down and companies were cutting their advertising budgets. People were outsourcing to smaller companies and freelancers. I’d had to halve my copywriting division, and I knew the remaining few were overworked. I was having to work harder to secure new clients, and a lot of our long-term relationships were beginning to feel strained.
“How did the call with Garcia go?” asked my chief operating officer, Cole Christianson, naming the designer behind the perfume bottle that had been destroyed earlier today. He reclined in the seating area across from my desk, one arm thrown across the back of the black leather couch.
I grimaced. “He wasn’t happy. It’ll take two months to get a replacement bottle of that size. We’ll try to use CGI to get the campaign over the line, but he’s old school. I think he’ll want us to reshoot it, which will push back the launch.”
“Old school,” Cole repeated with a snort. “I’m guessing that’s why they filled the thing with actual perfume instead of dyed water?”
A sigh slipped through my lips. “We talked about water when we initially pitched the idea, but he said the light refracts through perfume differently. He insisted on the real thing.”
“So CGI is definitely not going to work, but we’re going to have to spend the money to try.”
“Basically, yeah.”
“I’m guessing the chick who caused this has been fired?”
I’d met Cole about a decade earlier. He’d been working on Wall Street making more money than he knew what to do with, but he was bored. My company, at the time, was going through its first big growth spurt. I considered it a coup to convince him to work for me at the time, and that sentiment hadn’t changed. He was detail-oriented in work and in his personal life, all the way down to the way he matched his socks to his outfit and made sure his beard and hair were trimmed twice a week.
As I watched him lean back, crossing his legs at the ankle, I wondered how long it would take for him to move on from this company. He wasn’t a sentimental man, and I was sure he could see the sharks circling around us.
“She’s been let go,” I confirmed. “Ophelia made it happen this afternoon.”
“At least you were able to tell Garcia that.”
“He doesn’t care,” I answered, shaking my head. “All he cares about is art.”
“Is that what we’re calling the giant glass dick we’ve been advertising?”
I huffed, unable to stop myself from thinking of the dark-haired beauty we’d just fired—the only other person who’d called a spade a spade—and done it to my face.
Well. She’d been behind the protection of a steel door at the time, but she still said what no one else had.
But she was gone now, and I couldn’t afford to give her one more moment of my time, even in my thoughts.
This perfume campaign was crucial. I couldn’t afford to mess up. Making sure Garcia was happy with our performance would help us get one step nearer to closing the deal with the other whale in the cosmetics industry: Wilbur Monk. The billionaire owner had been flirting with us for eighteen months about taking over their advertising work for half a dozen of his subsidiary companies. The contract would be worth nine figures. It would lift us out of shark-infested waters and see us through the next few years. I needed that contract—badly.
Which meant I needed the distraction of a woman with red-painted lips and ebony hair like a hole in the head. But she was gone now. Away from this building and away from me. I wouldn’t have to worry about feeling her weight in my arms again or having any more of my shirts ruined with bleeding gashes caused by stray shards of glass.
That was a good thing. Everything would be okay.
After a deep breath, I felt calmer.
A chime sounded. Cole checked his phone and let out a soft grunt. “Monk confirmed he’s attending the children’s hospital fundraiser next week.”
I groaned, and Cole laughed.
“Guess I have to go now,” I said, grimacing as I jiggled my mouse to wake my computer up. I checked my calendar, only to see that my assistant, Clara, had already scheduled the event in. I scanned the screen and saw more events—dinners, galas, garden parties—sprinkled into every available slot. Monk would be at most of them, and winning his business would mean my attendance would be mandatory.
Sometimes I really hated my job.
“Got a plus-one?” Cole asked with a broad grin.
I gave him a dark look. “You know I haven’t.”
Cole hummed. “Monk won’t like that.”
“What I do in my personal life has nothing to do with him. We’ll win the contract because we’re the best advertising agency in the city. Not because I have a hot date to every social event he attends with his wife.”
Cole put his palms up, backing off. “Fine. I was just saying.”
Gritting my teeth, I glared at the calendar. The worst of it was, Cole was right. Wilbur Monk had just celebrated his fiftieth wedding anniversary. His wife was his muse and had been since before he’d started working in cosmetics. He credited Roseanne with all his success.
Being single was a mark against me, and I knew it.
“I’m not bringing a plus-one,” I repeated in the silence of my office, a little petulantly. “I can’t do a relationship, and a revolving door of casual dates to all these events we’ve got coming up will play worse than if I went alone.”
“Heard,” Cole replied, but his eyes were on me. “Although…”
I narrowed my eyes. “Although what?”
“I heard through the grapevine that your being on your own is one of the main hang-ups he has about signing on with us.”
“That’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard.”
“He thinks you’re untrustworthy.”
“Because I’m not married?” I clenched my fists. “I’ve built this company—this empire—and not having a ring on my finger hasn’t stopped me once.”
“Monk is old school, Rome. We’ve known this since we first pitched him.”
A deep sigh left my lips. One of the things that made Cole so valuable as a COO wasn’t just his attention to detail and his ability to know exactly what was happening in every corner of the company, it was the fact that he could read people like an open book. Once, I’d watched him conduct an interview and walk out of the room saying that we could hire the candidate, but we’d regret it. The candidate had been perfect on paper for our accounts department and had interviewed beautifully. Cole hadn’t been able to explain his intuition, but he was certain we were making the wrong choice. That employee ended up trying to steal from us within a year and had to be let go. Despite the warning, the employee’s attempted theft had blindsided me.
If Cole told me that Wilbur Monk wouldn’t hire me if went to these social events on my own, I had to believe him. Pinching the bridge of my nose, I racked my brain to think of something.
“I could call Heather.”
“Heather is married to European royalty.”
My head snapped up. “What? Since when?”
“A year or so ago.”
“A year…” I did a bit of mental math, then leaned back in my chair. “It’s been four years since I had a girlfriend. That’s longer than I thought.”
“Girlfriend is a little generous for what you and Heather had, don’t you think?”
At the look I gave him, Cole began to laugh. The worst of it was, he was right. But how could I have a girlfriend when I’d learned a long time ago that when you needed people, they abandoned you? I hated being reliant on anyone. I hated feeling like they could pull the rug out from under me. I hated being vulnerable.
So most of the time, I was alone. Just the way I liked it.
Cole slipped his phone into his pocket as he stood, then said, “What if you hired someone?”
“What, like an escort?” I arched my brows. “That’ll go over well with the most famous monogamist in the city.”
“Not an escort,” Cole mused, his eyes on the city skyline. “A…companion.”
“A companion,” I deadpanned. “What does that even mean?”
“She would be hired and paid to accompany you to social events as needed.”
“And the minute anyone caught wind of it, my reputation would be trashed.”
“We’d get her to sign an NDA.”
“And how would I introduce her? I don’t think my clients would respond well to me lying to their faces at every social event I attend.”
“You could just introduce her by her name. Don’t give her a title. If someone asks where you met, you say you interviewed her for the position and laugh like it’s a joke.”
“Monk would go for that?” I was skeptical. It didn’t seem like a man who cherished his marriage would approve of a hired companion. If I went for it and Monk found out, I could kiss those nine figures goodbye.
Cole stood by the windows with his arms folded. He glanced at me over his shoulders, tilting his head. “I think Monk believes that we, as men, need a partner’s influence to reach our full potential. He might think you’re hiding something, but he’d be glad there was someone at your side.”
I sighed. “I don’t know. I’ll see how the children’s hospital dinner goes first.”
There was a pause, and I knew my second-in-command was considering pressing the issue. Finally, Cole nodded. “All right.” He inhaled like he was about to say something but was interrupted by a soft knock on the glass door leading out of my office.
I arched my brows at my assistant, Clara. “Yes?”
“Arthur Knox is here,” she told me. “He wants to go over what happened this morning.”
I nodded. “Send him in.” Glancing at Cole, I asked, “You want to stick around for a few minutes?”
He pursed his lips. “It’s never good when Arthur stops by after hours.”
I grunted in assent and moved to the small fridge concealed behind wood paneling in the corner of my office. I tossed Cole a bottle of water and grabbed one for myself.
Hearing the shuffling footsteps of my chief legal counsel entering my office, I turned and lifted a bottle to offer it to him.
He waved it away, then tossed his leather-bound portfolio on the coffee table in the office’s seating area. “Gentlemen,” he greeted. “We have a problem.”
Of course we did. I sipped the water, letting it ease my parched throat. “Oh?”
Arthur, having a flair for the dramatic, paused for several long seconds. His face was beginning to show the signs of age, with a network of lines around his mouth and eyes, but he looked younger than his sixty-two years. Dark eyes rested on me, then on Cole, who bore the theatrical pause with the patience of a man who knew that interrupting it would only prolong the pain.
Arthur turned and watched me from beneath thick brows and said, “The production assistant.”
I frowned. “The production assistant?”
“The production assistant,” Arthur intoned, “is a problem.”
“What production assistant?” Cole asked.
“Nikita Jordan,” Arthur told him. “Goes by Nikki. Total employment at Blakely was six and a half days.”
I blinked. “What about her?”
My lawyer grimaced. “I’ve spoken to all the witnesses, and it’s my professional opinion that she might have a case against the company.”
Condensation beaded on my bottle and wetted the tips of my fingers as I tried to make sense of the lawyer’s words.
Cole was the first to speak, leaning his hands on the back of the sofa across from where Arthur sat. His gaze was intent. “A case for what? Her injuries? We’ll handle the workers’ comp claim. She survived, yes?”
Arthur waved a hand. “She’s in the hospital as we speak. A few stitches and a broken finger. She’s fine.”
I set my bottle down and wiped my hands on a towel hanging on the rail of my bar cart. “So what’s the problem?”
“She was hired as an independent contractor. This injury won’t be covered under workers’ comp.”
A gust of breath left me. I scrubbed my face with both hands. “Fine. We’ll pay her off. What’s the damage?”
“I’m not sure it’ll be that simple,” Arthur said darkly.
There was another long silence. I watched Cole’s fingers curl into the back of the sofa until his knuckles turned white as he physically stopped himself from leaping over and shaking the older man until he explained himself.
Arthur finally inhaled, straightened his tie, his cufflinks, and his hair. Then he said, “Between the injury, the hours of confinement, not to mention the dismissal that could be constituted as retaliation for the shattering of the perfume bottle…” Arthur pinched his lips. When he spoke, there was nothing theatrical in his face. That’s how I knew Arthur wasn’t just being dramatic. “It’s not good, Rome. And if she were to go to the press about her experience, the optics would be very, very bad.”
Cole met my gaze, grimacing. “A lawsuit right now will lose us the Monk contract. And probably half a dozen others. We’re on thin ice as it is.”
My bottle crunched in my hand. That woman. That woman would ruin me, and she’d probably laugh the whole time.
I couldn’t let it happen. This company was all I had. Sure, I’d had casual relationships. I had friends and acquaintances and people like Cole, who were somewhere between trusted friends and loyal employees. But the company was the one thing I could point to in my life and say, “I did this.”
I wasn’t going to let some lipstick-wearing, black-haired viper take it away from me.
I grabbed my suit jacket from the coat hanger where it hung in the corner of my office. “I’ll handle it,” I told the two other men, then threw open my office door. “Clara!” I called out. “Bring the car around to the front and find out which hospital is treating Nikita Jordan. I have to have a conversation with her.”
“Sure thing,” she said, pressing a button on her phone to organize things while I headed for the elevator.
This woman had wormed her way into my business and my brain, but I wasn’t going to let her destroy everything I’d built. If she was feeling litigious, I’d make sure she knew exactly who she was going up against.
And I wasn’t going to go easy on her.