Trust in Advertising (13 page)

“No problem,” Lexi said sweetly to the dial tone. Jade’s eyes bugged out of her head a little more. “Sorry, Jade. Where were we?”

“We were nowhere, you little snot. Just know Jade’s watching you, and you really don’t want her as an enemy.”

“Lexi will try and remember that.” Lexi got up from her desk, picked up the presentation boards, and headed for Vincent’s door. “Have a wonderful dinner tonight.” Lexi grinned as she heard a loud huff escape from Jade before she stomped toward the elevators.

Lexi tapped on Vincent’s door and waited to be invited in.

“Yes?”

She found Vincent hunched over a file on his desk, furiously skimming over presentation notes. He had a pen tucked behind his ear, and his lips moved as he read. Lexi took a deep breath and stepped inside.

“Here are the mockups. Where do you want them?”

“On the desk.” He quickly closed the file, and Lexi bit back a smile when she saw him neatly slide it back into his bottom drawer where it belonged. At least he was trying.

She laid the boards side by side and watched Vincent take a step back to appraise the work. He said nothing for quite a while, and Lexi debated whether she should stay in his office or go back to her desk. Before she could take a step, his deep voice startled her.

“That didn’t take long.” Vincent didn’t look away from the boards.

“I’m sorry? What didn’t take long?”

“Jade’s grand exit speech. Usually she keeps my new assistant tied up for a good twenty minutes.”

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“Well, maybe she could sense that I’m a quick learner, so she didn’t have to go into as much detail.” Lexi shrugged, not daring to look at Vincent. Instead, she turned her attention to the mockup and gasped. “The date is wrong.”

“What?” Vincent’s head snapped up.

“Right here.” Lexi stepped closer and pointed to the logo that incorrectly said Maximillian’s opened in 1970. “It should say 1971, right?” she offered quietly, but when Vincent’s face turned into a scowl she immediately backtracked. “I could be wrong, though. I just thought I saw in the file that—”

Vincent cut her off. “No, you’re right.” He grabbed the phone and furiously punched in the four-digit extension. “Tony, you idiot, what date did Maximil ian’s open their doors? Correct. Then can you tell me why the mock up says 1970?

I expect this corrected by nine a.m., and I don’t care how long you need to be here tonight to fix it.” He slammed the receiver down and began scrutinizing every inch of the board.

Lexi leaned forward and quickly scanned the background information while Vincent examined the campaign philosophy. “Do you see anything else?” he asked quietly while he continued checking his side of the board. “I am so sick of Tony and his games.”

“He did this on purpose?” Lexi’s brows knit together in confusion.

Vincent never answered her question. Instead, he continued scouring the layout. “Find anything?”

“No, this part is fine. I think it was only that date. Everything else looks good.” She took a few steps toward the door to allow Vincent time to get his work done.

Vincent must have seen her out of the corner of his eye and looked up.

“Thank you again, Alexandra.” His eyes were dark but appreciative.

“Just doing my job. See you tomorrow?” The last part came out as a question, because Lexi still didn’t feel like she was on the best footing with Vincent yet.

Part of her wanted to make sure she still had a job.

“Yes. I get in at seven a.m. sharp every day.” He turned his attention back to his desk. “Don’t be late.”

“I wouldn’t dream of it.” She closed the door behind her and let out a huge sigh of relief before going home to celebrate.

73

∙ 7 ∙

Good morning, Lexi. How was your weekend?” Leigh smiled broadly as Lexi stepped out of the elevator early Monday morning.

“Not bad,” she sighed as she gathered up Vincent’s messages off the counter.

“Oh, but I did get into a rather colorful argument with the stuffed shirt at that fancy steakhouse Rio when I was trying to get a lunch reservation. He got a little testy because it was only two day’s notice.”

“Rio? Isn’t that place booked …”

“Three months in advance? Yeah.”

“So, what did you do?”

Lexi grinned. “It cost me a hundred dol ars cash, a half hour of sweet-talking, and I think I might somehow now have a date, but Vincent and the gentlemen from Max will be stuffing their faces with overpriced cuts of red meat tomorrow at noon.” She bowed her head in victory as Leigh clapped her hands and laughed.

“You, my friend, are good.”

“And out a hundred bucks,” Lexi yelled over her shoulder as she headed down the hall.

She set her laptop on her desk and quickly began brewing a large pot of coffee. It was a few minutes before seven, which meant Vincent would be walking past her desk in less than ten minutes, and she still needed to double-check his schedule for the day.

Trust in Advertising

With the precision of a fine Swiss watch, at exactly seven, a perfectly put together Vincent breezed past her desk, wordlessly grabbing his schedule and his coffee, both of which Lexi had placed on the edge of her desk, and then disappeared into his office. Lexi looked at the closed door and smile. She was quickly learning that the man was nothing if not a creature of habit. Over the last week, she had watched him and learned a great deal about the way he operated. She discovered that if she was able to anticipate his moves, she could always be one step ahead of him, thus avoiding disasters and keeping everything running smoothly.

Anticipation was a valuable skill that Lexi had learned when dealing with her father. He too was a proud man who hated asking anyone for help, especially when his Alzheimer’s started getting worse and he became more for-getful. Lexi could see that Harry was struggling, and she’d had to get creative in the way she helped him so he wouldn’t realize she was doing it. The lessons she learned in dealing with him helped her understand her boss much better.

Vincent arrived at the same time every day without fail. His suit, shirt, and tie were always a dark shade and perfectly put together. He would spend half an hour in his office, come out to bark a few orders at Lexi, then either stay holed up in his office until it was time to leave for a lunch appointment or storm down to the production department and get into it with Tony and company. Wednesdays, however, he blocked out for meetings with clients either at Hunter or at their offices, and for whatever reason, on his busiest day of the week Jade routinely stopped by to visit, causing him to fall behind schedule.

Whenever Jade called, Lexi tried to explain how busy his day was, but that meant absolutely nothing to her. If she wanted to see him, she showed up regardless of whether it was a convenient time or not. Leigh told Lexi that it wasn’t unheard of for Jade to stroll into board meetings and simply plop herself into a chair like she owned the place. Some people were so star struck by seeing her in person that she often got away with murder. Lexi, however, remained thoroughly unimpressed by the self-centered woman, who broadcast to everyone within hearing distance that she was Vincent’s girlfriend every chance she got.

As she learned more about Vincent, Lexi found that his lunch order was as predictable as his behavior. Some days however, it also depended on whether or not he had company. Whenever his rabbit-food-loving girlfriend was staked 75

Victoria Michaels

out beside his desk, he would get a small Calypso salad, minus the bacon, with fat-free dressing and bottled water—just like Jade’s lunch.

A few days later when Lexi went out to pick up their lunch at the deli, she swung by Frank’s Diner to grab herself a bacon cheeseburger and made an interesting discovery in Jade’s absence: Vincent Drake was a burger junkie.

She chuckled as she remembered how God had smiled upon her that day.

Jade’s agent had called with a last minute “go see” for her, so she had to leave her perpetual post at Vincent’s side earlier than expected and decided to take her lunch to go. She grabbed the food from Lexi’s hand as soon as she stepped off the elevator, bitched her out for taking too long, and then disappeared in a swirl of smoke and evil.

When Lexi made it back to her desk, she noticed that Vincent was on the phone, so she set his salad at the corner of her desk and began eating her burger and fries and returning E-mails that had unexpectedly piled up. She found something that needed to go down to Sean’s office, so she ran it over to him before he stepped out for the day. When she returned, she found Vincent leaning over her desk and greedily swiping French fries.

“What? The extra sprouts on that mini salad didn’t fill you up?” Lexi snickered as Vincent jumped away from her desk like he had been electrocuted.

His cheeks turned pink with embarrassment over being caught red handed.

“Have
you
been the one stealing my fries? I thought I was going crazy or that maybe I had a tapeworm.”

“Guilty.” He smirked like a boy caught with his hand in the cookie jar, giving her a glimpse, even if it was just for a second, of the person she had known back in high school.

“You know I can always get you your own burger and fries if you like. All you have to do is ask.”

Vincent shrugged. “The salad really is the healthier choice.” He glanced longingly at the burger and fries, and then retreated into his office, clutching the tiny plastic container of tasteless roughage.

The next day that Jade made an appearance at the office, Lexi took pity on a weary-looking Vincent and brought him his usual salad, but as soon as Jade left, she went into his office to give him the Barrington file and dropped the extra bag from Frank’s on his desk. He didn’t say a word about it until later in the day when he called her into his office. He handed her a stack of papers with a small note scribbled on the corner.

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Alexandra,

Next time, extra tomato, please.

V.D.

Progress …
Lexi smiled to herself, finally feeling like maybe she was beginning to win her war against the closed off man that Vincent Drake had become.

It was hard for her to understand this dramatic change in Vincent’s personality. Ten years ago, he had been the big man on campus, the football star, the guy every girl wanted to date, the boy who was always surrounded by a pack of friends. She remembered watching him walk down the hall, saying hello to every person who looked his direction. Lexi wished that just once she had been brave enough to talk to him.

He had been somewhat arrogant back then, but it was hard not to have an inflated ego when girls threw themselves at him and guys lined up to be his friend.

At eighteen, it was difficult to understand the complexities of popularity—the doors it opened weren’t without costs.

Even so, the boy he was did not match the man he had become, and Lexi wondered what made him close out the world and be so mistrusting of everyone around him. He didn’t have any friends in the office other than Sean as far as she could tell. As a matter of fact, Lexi often walked in on people gossiping about Vincent, talking about his temper, rumors about his wild sex life—which Jade probably started herself—or wild theories on why he’d been promoted to vice president at such a young age.

It seemed there was a lot of animosity directed at him, and Lexi found herself questioning what came first—his bad attitude or the hurtful gossip. And it seemed that the hostility was only directed at him; everyone else at Hunter seemed to get along very well. They were the happy family everyone portrayed them as. For Vincent, however, it seemed to be no better than the rumor mill of high school all over again.

Lexi eventually became used to walking into the lounge only to have conversations stop or drop to a hush. She assumed that no one wanted Vincent’s assistant to hear what they were saying about him, and this day was no different.

She had her head ducked into the refrigerator, looking for her cherry yogurt, when she heard them talking.

“Oh, please. Why is it always my fault that the guy can’t check his facts? I mean really, he’s the big shot VP. Shouldn’t he know that the owner, Richard 77

Victoria Michaels

Trumbell, wouldn’t find it funny to be referred to as Dick in the ads? I heard the guy chewed him out for a half hour on the phone and told him he would never even answer a call from Hunter again.”

Lexi recognized Tony’s voice the moment he began spewing his hate.

“And what about that new assistant of his? You know, I hear they’re already sleeping together.” Tony’s female companion giggled at his blatant lies. “I mean, who did she think she was, talking to me that way? She probably spent most of the morning on her knees under Vincent’s desk.”

Angry tears began to well up in Lexi’s eyes as she slammed the refrigerator shut and spun around to face the pair, ready to set the record straight. She opened her mouth to tell them how wrong they were when the cavalry arrived, led by the most unexpected person.

“Tony!” Vincent’s deep voice snarled as he filled the doorway and loomed over the couple. “Apologize to her immediately.”

“Oops. Did I let the cat out of the bag, Mr. Drake?” he sneered.

“If you have a problem with me, then take it up with me, but Alexandra never did anything to you other than pass on a message.” Vincent held his hand out to Lexi, ushering her toward him. She tentatively stepped to his side, praying the tears in her eyes would stay put a minute longer and not give away how hurt she was by Tony’s vicious insinuations. Vincent turned his back on Tony, ignoring him as he tried to guide Lexi safely out of the room. “Come on, I need your help with something.”

“I’ll bet you do.” Tony and his companion snickered until Vincent spun around and backed him up against the wall.

“You give her any more trouble and it won’t matter anymore who your parents are. You’ll be fired on the spot, and I’ll let
her
be the one to do it!” He placed his hand on the small of Lexi’s back and led her out the door. “Watch your step, cousin.” He gave Tony one more murderous glare and then disappeared down the hall with Lexi.