Mr. Not Your Savior! (The Seattle Svenssons #2)

1. Jenna

JENNA

“ I know it’s upsetting to have someone in your space, but let’s look at the bright side! I think that working together, we can—”

I scream as a huge fist shoots out and punches a hole though the wall beside my head.

My client is really freakin’ hot and super freakin’ pissed.

Well, he’s hot to other people.

Me? I don’t do blonds.

“I don’t know who sent you, and I don’t fucking care, but get the fuck out of my house,” he says.

I scrabble backward, tripping over my dachshund, who is burrowing under the expensive carpet, and bang my hip on the cold slate floor.

In one fluid motion, he reaches down and drags the rug back, the muscles under the charcoal-gray suit rippling .

My wiener dog barks at him, shocked and offended that his makeshift den has been destroyed.

Wrong move, Truman.

My client makes a disgusted noise. “Take your rodent dog and your crap and all your plans”—he throws the papers at me—“and get out ,” he yells as I scramble upright.

“There is no need for name-calling or tantrums. I understand this is going to be a big adjustment for you, and change is scary.”

He takes two steps, then he’s on me, backing me up against the wet bar in the massive living room.

I have my professional, bubbly, public-relations face on, sure, but let’s be honest—it’s hard to smile when you have six feet, five inches, and 230 pounds of angry male bearing down on you.

“I am not letting some little PR princess tell me how to run my business.”

“I’m here as a friend and an ally. People are concerned.”

Recognition flashes in his gray eyes. “People? My brothers aren’t concerned about me,” he snarls.

“They’re concerned about the money you’re costing shareholders. Think of me as a spiritual guide to help you navigate these trying times. You’re clearly an industry titan. I want to be here to support you and help you be the best CEO that you can be!”

He closes the inches between us. “Your little techniques don’t work on me.

You girls are all the same. You think you can manipulate men, manage them, make them feel like they’re in charge and like all your senseless whims are their idea.

I bet you told my brothers that you were good with handling difficult men, didn’t you? ”

My too-bright smile stays firmly on my face. Even though that was exactly what I’d assured the Relentis Defense Corp board when we met yesterday.

“Guess what?” His deep voice drops an octave. “I’m not difficult. I’m dangerous . And I will fuck you up. So I suggest that you quit and go back to your bosses and whatever traitors are on my board and tell them that it’s not going to work out after all.”

McCarthy Svensson might be the god of war, but I am a woman with student loan debt and a shopping addiction. I will not be quitting. Not today.

“If you could just take a look at the ten-step plan I’ve created. It’s color coded…”

The deep voice lowers to a growl, and he leans over to whisper in my ear. “If you don’t get the fuck out, I’m adding you and your stupid little dog to my trophy case.”

I gulp, my smile wilting, and look over his shoulder.

There on the wall hangs the faded sign of the former Haven Foundation that I tried to save and couldn’t, no matter how many late nights I put in, how many protests I organized, how many social media campaigns I created, or how many petition signatures I collected.

Like one of the four horsemen of the apocalypse, McCarthy rode in, scorched the earth, then built a sea of glass and steel towers in the wreckage with his name on the tallest one.

Two fingers rest on my chin, tipping my head up. “What’s she going to choose?” His smile promises pain.

Swallowing another gulp, I duck around him, feeling the cold gray eyes on me as I snatch my bags and my binders off the island in the kitchen and walk quickly but with purpose—instead of sprinting like I want to—toward the door, wiener dog at my heels, barking behind himself at McCarthy.

“We’ll table the discussion for now. You have a press conference at three. Your briefing is on the table. Call me to discuss!”

I let out another scream as something heavy and expensive is hurled at me and shatters over my head. Then I’m safely on the other side of the door while my dog barks his head off.

“Well.” I straighten my clothes and take a sip of my ice coffee in my oversize pink Stanley cup. “This job is going to be harder than I originally planned.”

The manager from hell folds her hands over her pregnant belly and wrinkles her nose like she smells something horrible.

“You want… staff…”

“I just think it might be more helpful in managing McCarthy if I can tag-team it, you know?” I mime dodging punches.

“It sounds like,” she says, reaching for a bottle of lotion on her desk, “this job is too much for you.” A puddle of lotion globs in Bethany’s hand with a squelch.

I keep smiling as the smell of rose water and coconut wafts through the room.

“In your Personal Improvement Plan,” she says as she rubs her belly under her shirt—no stretch marks for Bethany—“we agreed that you were going to be solution-focused and not blame others for your failures.”

Said PIP sits on her desk, taunting me .

“Like I told HR, I really don’t think the failure of the Rex Montague account was a hundred percent on me.

If I’d had a little more support from the company when the client was trying to pressure me to spend some quality time in his unlicensed sex dungeon—and, might I add, I was never given any accolades for covering that shit show up in the press—”

Bethany’s nostrils flare. “Or maybe you did actually sleep with him and you are lying and trying to make yourself look like some sort of victim so that you aren’t publicly dragged through the mud for stealing a married man.”

“I feel like we’re not talking about the Rex account anymore. And your husband came on to me at the Christmas party.”

“You were wearing that dress .” She reaches for the lotion bottle, her greasy pregnant belly prominent between us.

“That dress was too small, and if you’d given me a raise—which, again, points us back to the fact that there isn’t a sex-dungeon section on Rex’s Wikipedia page, I feel like I actually did a bonus-worthy job on that.

Had I been given a bonus, I could have bought a new dress, one that fit and covered my boobs. ”

A tentative knock on the door snaps me back to reality before I can futilely argue my case. Again.

Bethany’s eyes snap up. “I’m talking to Jenna about the Svensson account.”

The eyes of the brown-haired man who knocked bug out. “McCarthy? He’s here? Oh my god.” Arty clutches at his throat and slumps in the doorway, fanning himself. “I need to take sick leave. I can’t handle this. Maybe short-term disability?”

Bethany’s lip curls up. “Yes, it was clear when you started crying in my office that you couldn’t handle the job. ”

Arty continues to fan himself. “I thought we were dropping the account.”

“We are?” I turn in my chair.

“The CEO said…” Arty wilts under Bethany’s glare.

“It was decided that Jenna should have a shot at it.”

…In other words, Jenna was given an impossible task so that she could fail and be fired.

Cool.

Bethany taps the folder containing my PIP with her pen. “I hope you are able to save this contract.”

“That’s not fair!” Arty yells in protest. Thank God for non-backstabby coworkers.

“Jenna can’t do anything with that monster,” Arty argues. “You can’t hold that against her. No one can bring McCarthy under any type of PR plan. It’s not possible! That’s not fair to Jenna. She can come on the Crosby account. We need another person. She’s good at graphics.”

I make a mental note to bake Arty cookies.

“Jenna promised the Relentis Defense Corp board of directors that she is good with challenging men.” Bethany is not amused that Arty is defending me. “Let’s give her a chance to prove herself. See if she succeeds where both you and Alex failed.”

“Hey now, it wasn’t just us! He chewed through the best teams at Sequoia and Goodman-Palisade.”

“And now it’s Jenna’s time to shine.” Bethany taps her perfectly manicured nails on the desk.

Translation, now it is Jenna’s time to be thrown into the Colosseum for the McCarthy-sized gladiator to rip to pieces .

Arty mumbles something like “Good luck.”

“We’ve already been through an HR review. I am in no mood to rehash it. It’s bad for the baby. ”

Having a mother like Bethany is bad for the baby.

“Go prepare for the RDC press conference.”

I am dismissed.

Hannah is waiting at my desk with two doughnuts.

“I grabbed them before Cameron could steal them all. I know he hides them in his backpack to take home.”

I take the chocolate-frosted one and shove half of it in my mouth.

Truman hops up onto my desk then up onto the shelf I use to hold errant papers.

“So, I’m assuming Berthy didn’t call you in there because she finally let hubby the cheater talk her into naming their baby Jenna?”

The rest of the doughnut disappears.

“At least she was too busy getting off thinking about how she’ll get to fire me soon and thus didn’t complete the tirade about how I seduced her husband and bewitched him and now all he talks about is how he hopes the baby has boobs like mine.”

“’Tis a seven-layer dip of awful.”

“I’m going to be fired.”

“Right now? Call an employment lawyer.”

“No. Bethany’s too sneaky. You know the big project that I was so excited about? Yeah, McCarthy is a freaking psycho. He punched a hole through the wall.”

“He what? Call the police. It’s a pattern of toxic behavior,” Hannah says, railing against the unfairness of it. “The only reason Prism PR was hired was because he literally body-slammed that HopeWorks director guy into a fountain and he got a concussion. ”

“I don’t care about the punching. But he won’t listen to my ten-step plan, and I seriously doubt he read the briefing for the press conference. Bethany knows I’m going to fail. They didn’t give me this project because they thought I could do a good job. They did it to have an excuse to fire me.”

“Ain’t that just the way.” Hannah offers me the other doughnut, and I take it gratefully.

“Give a sure-to-fail project to a woman so they can point and say, ‘See? We know she couldn’t do it. After all, she has a period.’”

The sugar and fried carbs are kicking in. Things are looking up. Everything is possible with donuts.

“I’m going to prove them wrong. I’m going to do it. I’m going to bring McCarthy to heel!” I pump my fist.

Hannah grabs one of the icing-covered napkins from Truman before he can eat it.

“Throw me off of that glass cliff and I will fly! McCarthy is not going to cost me this job. I need this job. I’m not fully vested in my 401K, plus the transit pass discount is a critical component of my budget.”

“And health and pet insurance…”

“Yeah, that too. But the free food.” I pick icing out of my cleavage.

“Let’s still look for new jobs anyway—you know, just in case the universe and, I don’t know, gravity have other plans.”

“I assume you didn’t bring my brother?” Salinger Svensson asks when I trot up .

“I—I can’t find him.”

The billionaire’s lips thin. “Prism assured me that you were the one for this job.”

Didn’t know the job was babysitting an adult toddler, buuut…

“He’s not at home, he’s not in his office—” I’m flailing, and in three minutes I’ll be crying to boot.

“The judge stripped him of his driver’s license. He cannot have gone that far.”

“I’m making calls, sir,” I say, assuring Salinger. “I am on it.”

I am so not on it.

My frantic calls yield zilch.

My deodorant is failing from the stress and the angry glares from McCarthy’s older brother.

And I realize belatedly, as a headache sets in, that I should have eaten more than two doughnuts for lunch.

Ten minutes after the press conference is supposed to start, McCarthy swaggers up to the microphones, one of my sparkly folders in hand. He does not look like a man who has read my carefully prepared press briefing.

McCarthy smirks at the reporters and slips off his sunglasses. His eyes narrow when he sees me in the crowd. He pins me with his gaze, blows me a kiss… and drops an F-bomb.

I am so getting fired.