Played (Elite PR) (7 page)

“Yeah.” He answered on the third ring, but Mel grabbed the phone, put Rita on speaker, and set it back on the table.

“Jesus, Aaron,” Rita said. “Is it so difficult to keep that phone next to you?”

Mel jotted one last note on the paper and pushed it in front of him. His brows furrowed as he read the words she wrote on the top of the page: “How to Build Your Brand.”

“Earth to Aaron,” Rita called out. “What is with you lately?”

“Yeah, yeah, I’m here,” he said, looking up at Mel in question.

“Trust me,” she mouthed to him, pointing to the diagram on the page, which was all about branding yourself for success. She’d done this with dozens of clients. Well, she’d watched her colleagues do it, anyway. By the time she got ahold of clients, they were already branded and ready to go, but it
was
her job to ensure the events that she coordinated were always in sync with the client’s unique identity. And Aaron needed his in place before she made one call to plan the launch of his single.

“Look, I need to run something by you,” he began.

Before he could finish, Mel rushed in and took over. “Hello, Rita,” she began her introduction. “I’m Aaron’s new publicist…”

“His
what
?” Rita said with a bite.

“I’m Melody Sharp with Elite Public Relations.” Mel kept her voice clear and steady. She worked with the NFL, dammit. She managed events for actors and billionaires. Surely she could handle one music manager.

“Elite?” The bark had a little less bite. “As in, Miranda Well’s Elite?”

There we go.
“That’s the one.” Mel winked at Aaron.

“Oh, well, hello,” she said, clearly shocked by the recent development. “I had no idea you were really on top of this, Aaron. But nice work. I approve of your choice, and the label will be thrilled.”

Strangely, Aaron didn’t seem that relieved and Rita… well, she couldn’t get a read on her yet. But Mel paid them no mind. She was too busy figuring out what she’d have to do to convince Miranda to take Aaron on.

“I have a kickoff meeting with the rest of the team this morning,” she lied. “So I’ll get all of our paperwork and our plan for the launch to you just as soon as I can.”

Funny, in all the time she’d been working at Elite, she’d never come close to lassoing a new client on her own. The staff was going to flip. And the way she planned to position her new find, there was no way Miranda would turn her down. She would make sure of it.

So this was what it felt like to take charge? Hmmm, she liked it. She liked it a lot.

Mel returned the phone to Aaron, gave him an enthusiastic smile, and stood up from the table. Then she walked over to the counter and plucked a piece of bacon from the plate Aaron had prepared, turning around to find him staring at her, mouth open and catching flies.

She took a bite of the salty delicacy, scooped up her purse and computer bag, and headed off to work. There was no time to waste. She had a visit with the Ice Queen to prepare for.

Chapter Eight

M
el walked into Elite early and paused at the fork in the office hallway, just as she had for the past month. Her feet stuttered every morning, ready to veer left to her old office. That’s when her brain would kick in, remind her of all her past wrongdoings, and guide her to the right. She’d go, reluctantly, dragging her lifeless body the entire way.

Not this morning.

She practically skipped to Intern’s Row—which, she discovered, was a ghost town at this time of day. Except for Tiffany the Intern. Dang, what was her last name?

“You’re here early.” She stopped at her cube and smiled, figuring it was time she stopped acting like the office bitch. That was Miranda’s job.

“Mmm.” The girl checked the clock on her laptop. “Same time as usual.”

Mel leaned over her desk, finding her full name on one of the folders: Tiffany Williams. That was it. How rude she’d been sitting over here for the better part of a month and not once introduced herself. She couldn’t do it now, it’d just be awkward, but she could change the way she treated her going forward.

“What are you working on?” Mel asked, watching as Tiffany fast-forwarded something that looked like news coverage on her computer.

“Sorry.” Tiffany’s cheeks turned pink as she quickly shut down the site. “My shift doesn’t officially start until nine, so I was putting together my newsreel for school. Sorry, that was stupid. I won’t do it again.”

“Stop apologizing,” Mel told her. “I was just curious. So you’re good with video, huh?” Her mind started turning.

“I guess,” Tiffany said, her tense expression fading.

Mel knew that meant she was very good. Girls like Tiffany didn’t do things half-assed. They also underestimated themselves—she knew that first hand.

“Would you be interested in working with me on a project?” Mel asked.

The request had Tiffany up on her feet. “Sure.” She said the words before Mel had explained what she needed. “Anything. What’s the project?”

“Oh…” She studied her fingernails for effect. “Just the launch of the next Luke Bryan.”

“Are you serious?” Tiffany picked up her iPad and began typing furiously. “What’s his name? Where is he from? What do you want me to do first?”

“Well,
first
we have to sell the idea to the Ice—to Miranda,” she corrected. “Got time to help me before the meeting?”

“Heck yes,” she squealed, unable to control her excitement. “What do you need?”

“A complete audit on Aaron Major,” she said. “We don’t have a lot of time, but we have to jump on it now and I know very little about this man. I just found out about the project this morning, so I need all the extra hands I can get. Let’s meet in the conference room in an hour to regroup.”

“Okay, I’ll be in the library if you need me,” she said, gathering her supplies. “This is so exciting. I won’t let you down, Melody. I promise.”

Mel hoped she could say the same, but she was nervous about her proposition. Mel wasn’t an initiator…not of anything, really. She was the person who took someone else’s concept and ran with it. She was the cheerleader, the encouraging sideliner, the person who had your back. She was not the idea girl. Still, Tiffany’s enthusiasm was catching.

As luck would have it, Thursdays were staff meeting days, where everyone would join together to discuss cases, issues, and opportunities. It would be the perfect time to pitch Aaron, but she had to be ready to anticipate her boss’s every thought—her questions, her doubts, her overall disgust with Mel’s past performance. Or worse? She had to consider that Miranda might like the idea, but might not trust Mel with it, and give it away to one of the other managers. If she wanted this, she’d have to make it clear that she was the logical lead for the case. She couldn’t let it go to one of her former teammates. No. Matter. What. Being exiled to Intern’s Row was tough enough. She didn’t think she’d survive if Aaron’s case went to someone else, especially The Weasel. So she’d have to be perfect, because Miranda was like an apex predator, able to sniff out the weak and always ready to move in for the kill

As she polished her pitch, an email address she didn’t recognize interrupted her, with the subject line:
Call Me
. What was it with these emails lately?

When she opened it, she was happy to find it was just Aaron’s number. And that was a little embarrassing. Jesus, he’d given her the best orgasm of her life, all before they had the chance to exchange numbers.

“Hey,” he answered on the first ring. “Rita talked to the Ice Queen.”

“What?” Of course, his manager didn’t trust her. Mel was used to that. Fine, if that’s how she wanted to play.

“Sorry, but I can’t control that woman,” Aaron said. “But look, things went okay. I just didn’t want to you be blindsided when you saw your boss.”

There went her upper hand. Okay, but it wasn’t enough to stop her. This time, her ass wasn’t the only one on the line. She had Aaron to think about. She honestly believed in his talent, and she was confident Elite was the right place for him.

“Well cowboy, if you really want to help me, there’s something I need you to do.”

“T
iffany, I need your expertise with a video component for the meeting,” Mel said as she walked into the conference room. “And graphics as well.”

Tiffany was ready and waiting. “Got it, but you need to see this latest press about Aaron’s comeback.”

His what now?

Mel couldn’t move as Tiffany delivered the news, blow by excruciating blow. Looks like Mr. Major had done this before. The bastard. Why didn’t he tell her? He warned her about Rita, but had told her nothing about his own life of debauchery. And what really got her goat? She didn’t do the checking on her own. She relied on an intern to do it for her. Still, she’d been busy researching the label, searching Elite’s archives for other country ‘launches’ and scrambling to find successful debut examples. And hey, what did Frankie say? She didn’t have to be the smartest person in the room. Just the most informed.

Okay, consider her briefed. Now she had an hour to prove it.

The next sixty minutes flew by in a blur of fact-checking and copy-writing and putting together a last ditch backup plan should it all go to hell. With ten minutes to spare, she reapplied her lipstick, tamed a few rogue curls from her updo, and took a seat next to Tiffany at the long conference table, sipping coffee while they waited until the team filtered in.

Those pitching always took a seat with the rest of the management, while everyone else stood. Just another protocol Miranda liked to use to make the staff uncomfortable. Mel didn’t have time to rework her pitch to factor in the comeback, so she was going at it as if launching a new brand. She’d talk about the ugly backstory later.

It wasn’t exactly as she planned. Still, she was ready.

But before she even had the chance to warm up her boss, Miranda came at her first thing once the meeting began.

“So, Melody.” Mel hated the way Miranda said her name, long and drawn out, turning up the last syllable so it sounded like she was addressing a kindergartener. “I had an interesting conversation with a Nashville manager today, would you like to fill in the rest of the group?”

Miranda sounded nice. Too nice, and Mel worried she’d never get the chance to pitch her idea. Still, she’d told Rita that she wouldn’t send over paperwork until the meeting. She hoped that bit of information made it into the conversation with her boss. Misrepresenting Elite was a surefire way to win her walking papers.

“Right.” Mel set her shoulders and stood up. “I’m so glad you got the chance to speak with Rita this morning.” Then she looked around the room at the rest of her colleagues. “I’m happy to announce I’ve found an opportunity for new business with an up-and-coming country artist.”

She nodded to Tiffany, who passed out the flyers. She’d doctored up a factsheet that looked like a concert flyer to get everyone pumped up about the client. And from the expressions of all the ladies in the room, she’d killed it.

“Who is he?” Frederick asked, studying the photo. Shoot. She could see The Weasel’s wheels turning. He was the office pain in the ass, and slicker than owl shit, always willing to sell someone out to get closer to Miranda.

“His name is Aaron Major and he’s with Jumpstart Records,” she said.

“Ah, Mel.” Fredrick smirked. “That story’s been done before. Aaron Major? Country music legacy out of West Texas makes good, heats up the charts, and then crashes and burns. End of story.”

Mel embraced her inner Scarlett and prepared to take over the show.

Fiddledee fucking dee!

Returning Fredrick’s smirk, she then turned her body in Miranda’s direction. “Sure, I guess it’d be the end of the story, if he wasn’t making music again, or hadn’t secured a label, or didn’t look like a cross between Luke Bryan and Jake Owen. Or if country music wasn’t the number one music genre in the U.S.

“He was a baby when he debuted and let me tell you, I met with him this morning, and he is coming into this thing all man. New sound, new look. It’s not a comeback story. It’s a
taking the music scene by storm
story.”

She took a sip of water and played it cool. But inside, her mind reeled. Not only about the freaking presentation, but about Aaron, too. She couldn’t help it. He had been on top and had fallen from grace? No wonder he’d been so kind to her, so understanding of her pathetic sob-story and down-on-her-luck woes. He’d
been
there. He
was
there.

She didn’t get the chance to dig into the past about his famous mama, but she did read that his daddy passed, and from the way it sounded last night, he kept close tabs on his brother. It made her want to help him. To fix this mess.

But why didn’t he tell her? In her current homeless, quasi-jobless state, she wouldn’t have been one to judge. That pang of hurt she felt because he hadn’t confided in her—she squashed that down. She was swimming with the sharks in this conference room, and thanks to Frederick, her blood was already in the water.

“I don’t think a washed up cowboy is worth our time,” The Weasel continued. He was digging in and wasn’t about to let it go. He loved watching people fail. The asshole all but helped her move her things to Intern Row after her demotion. At least he wasn’t fighting for the project. That was a positive.

“That cowboy doesn’t look washed up to me,” the director of media relations chimed in.

The hushed echoes of agreement started to fill the space.

She waited for the momentum of the room to take over.

“I don’t think so either,” Emily agreed, flashing Mel a wink. “And Jumpstart is making huge waves in Nashville right now.”

Em led the Events group and tried to help when Mel was on the chopping block. She’d had a meeting with Miranda, but said there was nothing more she could do. Trouble was, nobody would ever cross Miranda. Mel understood. Life at Elite was easier when you weren’t on the Ice Queen’s shit list. But it was the way Em treated her afterward that really hurt. She’d pulled away from Mel and hadn’t so much as looked in her direction since the demotion—which made her wary of her new found enthusiasm. Maybe
she
wanted Aaron.

God, it was painful just to think it. Then again, what if Em was the better person for the job? Could she take that away from him?

Not a chance.

Mel expelled a deep breath.

She’d make her pitch and do the best damn job she could, then she’d let the chips fall. She’d work her ass off for Aaron’s campaign, but if Miranda thought there was someone better for the project, she wouldn’t fight her. He deserved that much.

“He’s the real deal, y’all.” Mel lifted her chin and made eye contact with each person assembled around the vast conference table.

“Right.” Fredrick rolled his eyes. “I don’t care what you say. It’s a comeback. Personally, I think people are tired of giving celebrities second chances.”

She had planned to wait for this next part and do it privately with Miranda, when she told her about the tight timeline and the lack of budget. But Fredrick was pushing her into a corner—and at the moment, he had Miranda’s ear. It was time for a new strategy.

“Okay, Fredrick,” she conceded. “I understand where you’re coming from. Thing is, Aaron Major is no longer a celebrity. He’s just a guy who loves to play music.” She nodded to Tiffany, who started setting up the screen at the far end of the room. “But I wouldn’t expect you to take my word for it.”

Tiffany dimmed the lights and hit play, and soon the only sound in the room was Aaron’s sultry voice. She got Aaron to agree to a video stream from the apartment and Tiffany handled the rest. They’d recorded it and had it at the ready just in case the team gave her a hard time.

Damn, Aaron looked amazing on camera. Sure, he could stand a little polish, but all these guys were a mess coming up. Images of Blake Shelton and that unfortunate mullet flashed in her mind. But Aaron’s chiseled features and his deep soulful eyes…whew. She gnawed on her lip, taking in the reactions around the room.

Once the impromptu concert was over, everyone but Fredrick and the Ice Queen broke out in applause.

Miranda, however, didn’t say anything, or even move a muscle, for the longest time. She set her icy eyes on the screen and then on Mel and then back to the screen, her silky hair not moving an inch as she swung her head back and forth. Mel thought she’d explode.

“So he’s the real deal, Mel?” Miranda pursed her lips together and raised her brows.

The room grew eerily quiet. Everyone froze, too scared to say what they thought. But the hell with it—Mel had nothing to lose at this point.

“That’s what I think,” she said. “We go in, no apologies, no backstory. We start from scratch. Everything begins with the launch party, including the heavy hitters and key influencers in the industry. We rope them in with the music, and then Mr. Major will do the rest with his star appeal.”

“And you think he has star appeal?” she asked.

Jesus, was the woman blind?

“He will when I’m through with him. So, what do you think?”