4. Piper
4
PIPER
T he black and white laboratory was so pristine I was afraid to touch anything. Vincent had invited the whole creative department to the Summit fragrance lab for what he called an “immersive experience,” so we could get a better understanding of the third fragrance in the Trio of Time collection as they finalized the campaign’s direction. The print campaigns for the two previous scents were on easels at the front of the room.
I’d been with Summit for a week now, and I’d done my homework, so I didn’t feel completely lost. But still. This was my first time in the lab, and it was all so…official. And serious. Here I thought bridezillas were as bad as it could get, but that was before I’d met Vincent Forde.
The rest of the team looked nonchalant, but I realized they’d all been with Summit for ages, and meetings in the science fiction-looking lab were no big deal to them anymore. I was in awe of the scales and machines and floor-to-ceiling shelves filled with identical brown bottles. Who knew there were so many fragrance options? They probably had every flower in the world bottled up!
Well, every flower but pure heliotrope, which was why I was here under the ruthless glare of our bosshole-in-chief.
No surprise, he was in all black, but this time it was a fitted cashmere sweater, slim black trousers, and loafers with gold horse bits on top that had to be Gucci. He eyed us as we filed into our chairs, and when I glanced at him, he gave me a nod. He held my gaze, and I stared right back at him until his focus made me a little lightheaded.
Was it a glare just for me, or did he do it to everyone?
It felt like he was always watching me, but at least now, I knew why—it was because I held the future of Evermore in my hands. When his eyes rested on me, it was only because he was trying to psychically force me to reach out to the Sullivans. I’d told him they needed a cooling off period before I called them, that it would look too obvious if I followed up with them a few days after the party. He’d begrudgingly agreed, but I could tell he wasn’t a fan of waiting.
“Focus, people,” Vincent said as he clapped his hands to get our attention. “Celine, take it away.”
According to my research, Celine Nagel was Summit’s master perfumer and a legend in the industry. My new colleague Russell told me that Vincent stole her from Chateau de Parfum ten years ago, and ever since, the two perfume houses have been locked in battle.
“Bonjour,” Celine said. She was a handsome woman with a chic pixie cut who wore a blazer and scarf in that effortlessly French way, like she’d just tossed them both on as she ran out the door. Though I doubted Celine ran anywhere—ever. “As you know, Vincent is getting closer to securing our heliotrope.”
His eyes landed on me again. The man made me feel like I was a shoplifting teenager and he was mall security. He never stopped watching me!
I refocused on Celine, since meeting Vincent’s gaze was dangerous.
“Once we have the blooms in house, we begin the arduous task of distilling the impossible. But we will succeed!”
Everyone broke into applause, and Vincent finally cracked what looked like a genuine smile.
Was it the first one I’d seen? He’d bared his teeth at me a few times since I met him, but I couldn’t imagine being on the receiving end of an actual smile.
“We wanted you to experience a version of Evermore , albeit the synthetic version, as you work through the final phases of the campaign, so you have an understanding of the essence of the scent,” Celine said. “We’ll have sample bottles for everyone once we’ve distilled our heliotrope top notes, but we don’t want to run the risk of this synthetic version of the fragrance leaving this lab. Each one of you will have a numbered sample stick that we’ll collect before you leave. Understood?”
Everyone nodded. I was astounded at the level of secrecy. I couldn’t let on, but I felt a little over my head. I was an excellent photographer with years of experience, but I’d never worked on anything so high end. Being immersed in this new and foreign world had me overwhelmed.
Vincent stood off to the side with his arms crossed and his lips pursed. I barely knew the man, but it was obvious he was feeling the pressure of trying to achieve the impossible. I could almost excuse his grumpy, bossy attitude given how much he was dealing with, but he was the one who decided to deal with his stress by acting like an asshole. Vincent Forde didn’t have to back into my car and blame me for it, or bully senior citizens, he just chose to do it.
Celine’s silent assistant put gloves on and started dipping the little cardboard strips in the vial on the table in front of her then passing them out.
“Remember, our scent story for this trio is temporal ,” Vincent said. “The passage of time. How do we put a scent to something that defies an olfactory description? Well, for our final member of the trio, we combine the heat of cedarwood to remind you of cozy days curled up with a book by the fire, the sunshine scent of orange blossom to conjure up summer days, sugary vanilla to bring you back to homemade holiday cookies, and our standout fragrance heliotrope to add a warm almond top note. Mixed together, it’s the scent of forever.”
It sounded like a traffic jam of mismatched odors. How could it possibly smell good?
Someone passed me a scent stick, and I closed my eyes as I inhaled.
Okay, I was wrong. Perfection .
I had flashes of warm nights, love, and hope , of all things. It was impossible to sum up the fragrance, but I could understand the feelings it evoked. I felt embraced and happy. I didn’t want to stop inhaling, which was a relief because my biggest secret was that I didn’t like the prior two fragrances. I’d hauled my butt to Macy’s on 34 th Street to experience them right from the bottle, expecting to be bewitched. Then , meant to evoke first love, was too sweet and powdery for me, and Now —a heavy, musky scent to conjure up raw animal attraction—had smelled overpowering. But Evermore took elements from both to make them better.
All I could hear around me were sniffs and sighs of pleasure. Evermore was going to be a hit.
“Eileen is going to walk us through the proposed direction for the final leg of the campaign,” Vincent said as she joined him at the front of the room. I did my best not to grimace.
My role at Summit fell in Eileen’s department, and from the moment I’d been introduced to her, she’d made it obvious she wanted nothing to do with me. Maybe it was because Vincent had hired me without getting her input, or because my heels weren’t from this season’s Prada collection. In any case, she’d made me feel unwelcome from minute one. I hoped I could kill her with kindness, and if that didn’t work, I’d just try to fade into the background and do my job. After all, I was on a mission that didn’t hinge on whether or not she liked me. The faster I completed it, the better it would be for all parties involved.
“We’ve had phenomenal feedback from our prior two campaigns, so clearly this one will follow suit with a black-and-white image of a model shot in profile, with a backlit spray of perfume hitting her neck.” She pulled another large photograph from behind one of the others. It was a mock-up of the same basic shot, with the only difference being the bottle.
I grumbled to myself. The campaign had started five years ago with the launch of Then , and the images were beautiful, sure, but they felt boring now. If Evermore was the ultimate fragrance of the trio, the campaign should be bigger and better as well—not just the same old same old.
“Do we love or what?” Eileen purred.
Immediately, nods rippled across the room, followed by a chorus of eager affirmations.
“Absolutely!”
“Brilliant as always, Eileen!”
“It’s perfection!”
It was too much. Overly enthusiastic, rehearsed. A room full of people, each one chasing Eileen’s approval like little kids clamoring for a gold star from their kindergarten teacher. The smiles were a little too wide, the nods a little too fast. Even Vincent had a small, approving smirk on his face, though he didn’t add anything to the heap of flattery piling up around her.
I wasn’t buying it.
I looked down at my feet, hoping to go unnoticed. Did they really believe it, or were they just terrified of Eileen? Or, maybe, they were terrified of Vincent.
“Piper?” Vincent’s voice cut through my inner monologue like the devil’s whisper in Sunday’s mass. “You’re awfully quiet.”
I straightened up, suddenly aware that every eye in the room had turned toward me.
“I—” The word caught in my throat. I hadn’t expected to be singled out—not on my first week—and I sure as hell wasn’t prepared to give my opinion in front of everyone, particularly Eileen. Her sharp gaze landed on me, expectant. She was enjoying this, I could tell. Waiting for me to bow down like the rest of them.
Vincent raised an eyebrow. “Well?”
I swallowed hard. “I’m just thinking.”
“Thinking about what?” His voice was low, cutting. The challenge was clear: I wasn’t going to escape this without saying something definitive.
The tension in the room ratcheted up another notch. I glanced around, hoping for some sort of out, but all I got were blank stares and raised eyebrows. Everyone was waiting.
And Vincent wasn’t letting this go.
Neither was Eileen. “Any issues with the campaign, Piper?” Eileen asked me, her voice dipping lower. Meaner. “Don’t tell me you don’t love it.”
My throat tightened. It wasn’t a question, not really. It was a dare.
Oh, what the hell.
I let out a breath I didn’t realize I was holding. “Not really,” I said.
“I’m sorry, you have a problem with the campaign, Piper?” Vincent demanded.
“Yes, do tell,” Eileen added, her voice dripping with displeasure.
The heat of a dozen glares burned through me. No turning back now. “I, uh, I just think that since Evermore has been five years in the making, we should do something different. The campaign for the whole trio of fragrances has been super influential so far, which is great, but it’s also a major drawback because our images aren’t fresh anymore. They haven’t…evolved.”
No one had thrown me out of the room at the end of a pitchfork yet, so I pressed on.
“We’ve seen Then and Now , and yes, they were elegant, iconic even. But Evermore …it’s different. This isn’t just another chapter; it’s the final. It has to be bolder. Something that sticks, that makes people rethink everything they thought they knew about the brand. We need to make people stop and feel something new.”
“This is our brand story, Piper,” Vincent said, his voice neutral. “Branding is everything.”
“Yes, but at a certain point a brand can get oversaturated, and then it’s time for a pivot. I’m not saying we scrap everything. But Evermore should feel like the culmination of something timeless—yet daring. We need to update the visuals in a way that still ties into the existing theme but breathes life into it. Like…” I scanned the room for inspiration. “Taking if off the pedestal and making it more human.”
“How … interesting. And unnecessary.” Vincent was trying to dismiss me, and his condescending tone flipped a switch in my brain.
I glared at him despite the audience. “ Excuse me?”
“You’re our photographer, but you need to leave the creative direction to the rest of your team. They’re the experts—not you.”
“Maybe it’s time for you to remember just how significant my contribution is going to be?” I gave him a pointed look. No Piper, no perfume, it was as simple as that, and he knew it.
Vincent’s jaw twitched. If we’d been alone, I’m sure he would’ve loved to unsheathe his sword and spar with me, but since we were surrounded by his employees, he thought better of it.
“There’s a lot more to a campaign than a bunch of abstract ideas.” Vincent’s voice sharpened. “A campaign has to hit metrics. You need to consider demographics, psychographics, market trends?—”
“And that’s exactly why I’m suggesting this shift. According to the last quarter’s market analysis, Millennials and Gen Z make up over seventy percent of the luxury fragrance market, and they buy products that evoke an emotional connection. They want products that grab their attention and make them feel something real and authentic. You know what isn’t attention-grabbing? Doing the same thing over and over again. We’ve had this image out in the market for years now.”
“And everyone loves it,” Vincent shot back.
“Everyone loved it,” I corrected. “You know what that means, right? That it’s just a matter of time before the competition copies it. Then not only will it not be fresh, but it won’t even be solely ours anymore. We’ll be defining ourselves by images that have become generic.”
Vincent tried to suppress his irritation. Eileen blinked, her expression unreadable. I had them.
He narrowed his eyes at me. His voice came out tight.
“Let’s focus on the campaign, shall we?”
Eileen had clearly expected me to get raked over the coals, and this non-reaction made her smile falter for just a moment, a flicker of annoyance crossing her features before she masked it with a crafted expression of approval. It was as if she was trying to play the role of supportive cohost while simultaneously assessing who would win this round.
When the meeting was finally over, I gathered my things and headed for the door, only to get chastised by the assistant for forgetting my fragrance sample stick at my chair. When I went back to grab it, Eileen was holding it and frowning at me.
“You’re new, so we’ll overlook all of these mistakes, Piper,” she scolded as she handed the stick over. “But from now on, remember your place. Don’t speak out of turn.”
It was as if she’d taken a page from the Prentiss Mercer playbook. Talking down to me, trying to box me into a specific role…I’d managed to leave home and get out from under his thumb, but I never expected I’d have to face the same sort of bullshit at work.
Maybe taking the job had been a mistake. The money was fabulous, but there was no way I was going to put up with someone treating me like an unruly child every day. Freelance life was rough, but at least I was my own boss.
But then I thought of Darcy’s hopeful face when I’d revealed my new role at Summit and the money it would bring in. This job would hold us over as we waited for an influx of support from Mercedes, and it would allow us to place our first major order that would carry us through our first year, if all went according to projections. I was taking hits for the greater good.
I could deal with it, at least for a little while.
I trudged back to my desk with my head down, feeling defeated because both the woman I reported to and the man in charge had it out for me.
My phone buzzed with a text. I assumed it was Darcy since it was her usual midday check-in time, and I needed a shot of her positivity to make it through the rest of the day, so I immediately checked the screen. When I saw who the text was from, I let out a groan.
Matthew, the person I’d considered a boyfriend but who had actually laughed while telling me I was nothing more than a booty call to him. Our breakup had been humiliating, and when I walked away from him, I’d told him to delete my number.
Clearly, he hadn’t listened. What the hell did he want?
“ Hey you ,” the text read. “ Been thinking about you a ton lately and that has to mean something. Let’s grab coffee and catch up .”
I snorted and rolled my eyes. Yeah, right.
The breakup with Matthew put me off dating to the point where I didn’t even want to consider it. I’d trusted him, and really started to fall hard, only to find out I’d misread our whole relationship. The signs had all been there; I’d just been too wrapped up in the fantasy I’d built up in my head to read them. In retrospect, I felt stupid. Why did I think his late night “you up?” texts meant he actually cared about me? Was I that desperate? It had taken running into him on the street on a Friday night, in a suit with a gorgeous woman on his arm, for it to dawn on me. They were on their way to a play, and I was in sweats carrying takeout for one. Mortifying.
I didn’t even allow myself to consider that maybe he’d realized he’d lost a good thing and was reaching out to try again. Thinking like that—believing lies because they made me feel better about myself—was what had gotten me into that mess with him in the first place. I wasn’t getting back on that ride again. Definitely not with him, and maybe not with anyone until I was ready to see a relationship for what it was, not what I wanted it to be.
It was Friday, and the only thing on my calendar was a mercy-hang with Darcy. She had no shortage of dates, but she’d canceled her plans to try to cheer me up, knowing that my new job wasn’t off to a great start. Based on how the last meeting just went, I hoped she had a gallon of tequila waiting for me.
I shot Darcy a quick text, then got to work editing some of the test product shots I’d taken for the Summit website. I was so focused on my work I didn’t notice our internal messaging system blowing up until hours later. The internal lingo was hard to decode, but thanks to a link someone had included, I realized people were freaking out over the latest Chateau de Parfum campaign. I clicked on it and gasped.
Not only had they ripped off our entire Trio of Time collection campaign vibe, they’d even hired the same two models we’d used in our prior shoots.
Damn it. Shots fired in a big way.
My desk phone buzzed.
“Piper, Vincent would like to see you in his office,” his assistant Linda said in a strained voice.
I rubbed my forehead and heaved a sigh. What now?
It was my first time in his office, and I wasn’t surprised to discover that it was as darkly minimalistic as his clothing choices. I craned my neck to see if he had a roaring fire, candles, and altar in it, because it felt like the type of space where human sacrifices were made.
“Why didn’t you just come out and say Parfum was going to rip us off?” Vincent demanded as my eyes adjusted to the darkness. “You obviously had insider information. How dare you hold it back from the team?”
“ What ?”
Was this handsome demon accusing me of corporate espionage? I straightened my back to prepare for battle with my brand-new boss, seeing as it appeared to be our only means of communication.
“You knew what they were planning, and you didn’t warn us.” He rose from his chair and stalked toward me.
I sucked in a breath as he crossed the room, because of the whole “scary hot” scenario. His brows were pulled down and his eyes scalded me, like he was ready to take me over his knee and paddle me.
I forced myself to focus on the fight to come and not the mental image of his palm coming down on my naked ass.
“Hold on!” I threw my hands up at him, both nervous and furious. “I had no idea what they had planned. I don’t have any insider information. I just assumed something like this would happen. I mean, it’s not that big of a leap of logic to think a competitor would copy a successful campaign. I’m sort of in shock that no one on the team considered they’d do it to steal attention away from the release of Evermore .”
He froze a few feet away from me and crossed his arms. “How exactly do you know all this, Piper? How do you know how our competitors think? You’re just a?—”
“Photographer?” I met his gaze, my anger giving me strength. “I have my own plans in life. You think I’m just snapping pictures? I’m more than a pair of eyes behind a camera, Vincent. I know how to play the game.” Maybe I was overselling myself, but what the hell—I’d be damned if I was going to let anyone at Summit treat me like the help.
“Why didn’t you bring your concerns to Eileen?”
I shrugged. “We talked about it during my orientation meeting, and I mentioned it again after the meeting, and she scolded me like I was a naughty kindergartener. So much for being a team player.”
He watched me for a moment, cool and calculating. “But you’re not a team player.”
That was it.
I had had it with this suit-wearing overlord.
I stomped a few steps closer to him, so hot with anger my vision went blurry. “How dare you? How dare you, Vincent? I’m doing you a huge favor by being here! I agreed to make nice with the Sullivans to get you the damn flowers you’re so desperate for, remember? Without me, Evermore won’t happen! I’ve been here for a week, and I’ve already gone above and beyond for this stupid company!”
“Exactly what I meant.” He pursed his lips and studied me for a beat. “You’re not a team player, you’re a leader .”
He turned abruptly and walked back to his desk, then picked up his phone. “Linda? Could you prep an exit package for Eileen Murphy? I’m letting her go today.”
He was watching me like I knew what was going on, which I didn’t, because…was he firing Eileen?
Vincent hung up, still staring at me.
“Congratulations, Piper. As of right now, you’re Summit’s new creative director.”