by Tessa Bailey
Nick Grafton is giving me his full attention. I like it. I could get used to it.
“In inner cities, classes in self-care and stress management can be offered to high school seniors, or new mothers. Mini spa services could be provided for a reduced fee, or even on a complimentary basis in areas of need.”
I’ve been keeping one eye on Andrew McCormick, but I can’t read his face.
“And we have already implemented a pilot project in Cambridge with homeless teens. I have personally gone on weekly ventures for the past five months. The PR coverage has been extraordinary.” I nod at the report I’ve handed each of them. “Metrics are are laid out in there.”
Silence around the table. Although I imagine I hear gears shifting in fourteen brains.
“Metrics aside,” I add, “This outreach project changes lives. I’ve seen it.” My voice grows passionate. “The women and girls who show up at gO have dreams and aspirations of a better life. They know it’s out there, but they have no idea how to get to it. O can show them. It’s O’s mission to empower women. I take that mission very, very seriously.”
I don’t mention meeting Li on my first gO Spa homeless trip. I don’t mention how she cried in my arms after her shower, hair cut, facial and mani-pedi. I don’t mention how on my second trip she told me she was pregnant, and how our on-site social worker helped her get medical care and government assistance.
I definitely don’t mention how she asked me to adopt her baby.
None of those details matter in a conference room.
This is all about money. Not mercy.
But money allows for more merciful acts.
Reaching down, I pull out a soft grey t-shirt with orange letters that read “you gO girl.”
“Every visitor to gO Spa receives one of these.”
A bald man at the end of the table clears his throat. “This is a big investment,” he begins, but Amanda jumps in.
“The PR from this would be worth a fortune,” she says excitedly. “It would pay for itself.”
Already has, I think to myself.
And gO Spa has already helped one special young girl find a way out of trouble.
Already helped a new baby find a secure life.
And helped my greatest dream come true.
Nick nods slowly, brow knit in concentration. Those arctic eyes meet mine and he asks, “How does this mobile RV spa fit in with brand expansion? Seems risky. Doing well by doing good is a great concept, but I want to know how this ties in with deeper corporate identity issues.”
And suddenly, Nick Grafton just flipped every switch inside me.
He’s a handsome guy. I wonder if he ever smiles.
Chapter Five
Nick
It takes everything in me not to smile at her.
Everything.
She’s a pro. Sophisticated and smooth, gracious and composed, well-versed and well-informed. Chloe Browne moves with a confidence that gives the air in this stuffy conference room an erotic charge. Her dark hair, so smooth it must be soft. A body that doesn’t quit. Those brown eyes—tilted slightly, yet paradoxically round. Alert and intelligent, they take in the room.
I’m watching her. It’s my job to watch her.
And she’s watching me.
Days like this make me love my job.
Her mouth stretches with a delighted precision, as if she were waiting for someone to ask my question. Electricity shoots through me. She’s four steps ahead of the rest of us, a chess player who thinks in dimensions, not boards.
One corner of my mouth rebels and rises.
“A great question, Nick.” Her lips part slightly. The tip of her tongue slowly touches the edge of her top teeth. Then she gives me a sultry half-grin and says, “Integrating new positions into our body has been so exciting.”
I did not imagine that.
Chloe’s flushes. “I mean, integrating new locations into our body of work has been exciting.” She clears her throat, squares her shoulders, and continues. “New Orleans is the prototype. O’s brand ties in to Anterdec’s brand as a luxury option for insiders. People in the know.”
“Your maiden voyage.” Not smiling is impossible.
Her lip curls up, a mirror image of my own. “This is virgin territory, yes.”
Andrew McCormick’s eyebrow shoots up as Amanda Warrick’s face goes deceptively blank.
“Love the innuendo. Fits nicely with the sensual branding that O cultivates,” Andrew says, his words snapping like the sound of buttons on a tailored woman’s shirt popping off, as I tear it open in the throes of passion.
Or something like that.
“The Big Easy.” Chloe lets that hang in the air, her eyes opening just slightly, then narrowing.
We’re playing a game. I don’t know the rules, but I sure do like handling the pieces.
“How easy?”
Andrew happens to be drinking from his coffee cup as Amanda asks that question, his throat spasming with the kind of hacking that provokes a sympathetic wince from the rest of us.
He glares in response.
At me.
There is a moment when you look at a woman for the first time. It’s an up or down moment. Thumbs up: yes, I’ll sleep with her. Thumbs down: she never enters my consciousness again sexually.
Chloe gets considerably more than a thumb’s-worth of up from me.
I shift uncomfortably in my chair and try to wrest control back from the strange tension that has infused the room.
This is a business meeting. Branding. My specialty is branding, and on paper, Chloe’s spa line has some serious weaknesses. Significant investment in an unproven market means that high risk needs to pay off.
You can’t put that kind of trust in just anyone.
“Very easy,” Chloe replies, reaching for a clicker and pulling up a PowerPoint spreadsheet. “Take a look at O Boston. Here’s the initial investment. Here’s the profit and loss statement.”
“Seventy-three percent growth in Year Two?” Andrew lets out a low whistle. My shoulders relax. I had no idea they were tight.
My pants are tighter.
Why am I invested in whether the CEO of Anterdec buys into the O Spa expansion? Until three minutes ago, this was just another pitch.
“Hold on,” Amanda interrupts. “That line for marketing and advertising. That figure is impossibly small. Did you forget a digit?”
Andrew gives Amanda a satisfied smirk. “A typo would explain that crazy profitability.” He leans back and reaches for his phone. When Andrew McCormick reaches for his phone in a meeting, it’s over.
“No.”
Chloe’s single word rings out like a gunshot.
Andrew’s hand freezes.
“That is not a mistake. Word of mouth is our primary form of advertisement.”
Andrew makes a grunt I know too well. It’s the sound I make when one of my college-age kids asks to borrow the car for a week. In Mexico.
“Isn’t that a little too 1990s?”
“Every customer who walks through our doors converts.”
“One hundred percent?” Andrew’s eyes telescope. “You’re certain?”
Click. A new graph appears.
“And each of those customers brings in an average of 3.8 new clients?” Amanda says, reading the slide.
“And that’s without paid advertising?” Andrew says skeptically.
Chloe remains unflappable as they read and analyze, talking about O as if she weren’t the expert. “Yes. In fact, our business model is counter-intuitive. The more we advertise, the less we sell.”
I frown. “That’s impossible.”
“No, Nick,” she says, her voice like velvet and chocolate. “That’s O.”
“You’re saying there’s some disconnect between paid ads and foot traffic?” Amanda asks.
“It’s lifestyle,” I murmur. “The advertising taints the allure. The appeal is in the secrecy. In being told by someone in the know. Women want to be part of the exc
lusivity, and it’s not special if everyone knows about it.”
Chloe studies me.
“Like an affair?” Andrew asks. Amanda glares at him.
Chloe pales. It’s the first hint of insecurity in her, and it intrigues me. This is a complicated woman.
She recovers quickly. “No. This is nothing like an affair. An affair is a secret because of shame. O is a secret because of pride.” She squares her shoulders and blinks exactly once, mouth slack and flat, devoid of emotion.
Andrew’s voice goes tight. “This is also nothing like any profit and loss statement I’ve ever read. It’s either brilliant or a giant waste of money.”
“Brilliant.” The word’s out of my mouth before I even decide to say it. Our business meeting has lost all pretense of being a corporate affair. Chloe’s chest rises and falls rapidly, yet her breath makes no sound.
“You’re telling me that Anterdec should make a significant investment in a subsector of the spa industry by trying an unproven and sweeping lifestyle niche—the fourth space—based on a blip in a spreadsheet and promises that word-of-mouth marketing is superior to data analytics we can track on paid ads?” Andrew makes a dismissive noise in the back of his throat.
“No,” Chloe says, before I can blurt out the opposite. “We have data analytics as well.”
Click.
“Does that column actually say ‘sex toys’?” Andrew asks, giving Amanda an arched eyebrow. “You didn’t tell me that they—”
“The average client owns 3.2 devices.”
“Only 3.2?” Amanda mumbles.
Did Andrew just kick her under the table?
I don’t care who is screwing whom at the company, but knowing who is screwing whom is strategically important. Catalogue that.
“Before they begin patronizing O, that was the figure. After two months of membership, that average increases to 7.9,” Chloe explains.
Amanda interrupts her. “Do we sell batteries and chargers on-site at the O spas? If not, we need to.”
Andrew raises an eyebrow and tents his hands, index fingers pressed against his lips. “Good point.”
What’s next? An O Spa porn channel? I almost open my mouth, but stop.
Because they might take me seriously.
“I will add batteries and chargers to our inventory. Great suggestion. All devices purchased on-site,” Chloe says to Amanda. “All via careful customer relations management that allows staff to learn their preferences and anticipate their…”
“Kinks?” I ask helpfully.
“Preferences is the term I would use,” Chloe says, her voice smooth as silk. “We optimize our device sales. Private label, all made in the USA, no BPA—”
It occurs to me that this is the first professional meeting I’ve ever attended where the casual discussion of sex toys as a profit-making venture has been a primary topic. Staying cool is key. The CEO acts like we’re discussing cars or magazines or lamps.
I wonder what Chloe’s preferences are.
All 7.9 of them.
Then again, she’s hardly average. Bet her number is higher. That mesh corset, after all.
Down, boy.
I raise my hand to a spot above my ear and run a tense hand through my hair. Across the table from me, Andrew McCormick does the same. With great concentration, I return my attention to the screen, where it should be, and not on Chloe Browne’s cleavage.
Where it wants to be.
Through the next ten slides, Chloe shows us exactly how brilliant she is, while I struggle to grasp the landscape of the meeting. She walked in here with a fringe idea and a slim chance of convincing Andrew McCormick to invest on the scale she wants.
And now they’re talking New Orleans, San Francisco, and—
“Rio would be a great target for 2018,” Chloe says, sitting down across from Andrew, tapping the end of a pen against the front of her teeth. “What about Tokyo for 2020?”
“The Olympics!” Andrew and Amanda say at the same time, then laugh.
“We’re getting ahead of ourselves,” I declare.
“You’re not convinced I’m worth taking a chance?” Chloe asks, her nose twitching with amusement, that curled lip driving me mad.
“You’ve convinced me,” Andrew says, standing and finally looking at his phone. “Nick, make it happen.”
“What?”
“Give Chloe whatever she needs.”
“Whatever she needs?” I choke out in surprise. Quickly, I recover, face showing no emotion, even if my pulse and half the blood in my body has migrated below my belt and I can’t stop wondering what’s under that corset. One peek of a nipple is like being given a single sip of Hennessy cognac.
It’s great, but you want the whole thing in your mouth eventually.
God help me, her eyes meet mine and her smile widens.
Best. Job. Ever.
“Right. Chloe, why don’t you go back to your office for an hour or so, while Nick and Amanda and I hash out some details in the conference room. We’ll call you,” Andrew says, standing and reaching for her hand. The only hint of emotion in Chloe’s face comes from the micro-movements in her eyes. She is pleased.
I want to please her. And not just with Anterdec’s money.
In this business setting, she should be pleased. Sharp and perceptive, she’s turned the meeting around. A green light from Andrew McCormick isn’t easy to obtain, and she marched right in here in secret dominatrix lingerie and she did it. I am intrigued and a little spellbound.
Maybe I’m just lightheaded from the lack of blood flow to the brain.
She unmoors me, turning back decades, making me feel like an awkward, uncoordinated teen.
But with a man’s appreciation for all that goes into making her her.
“Nick?” Andrew’s clipped tone makes me realize I’m in my own head. Chloe’s standing before me, her nose twitching with amusement, the rest of her face revealing nothing.
“Great presentation,” I say, shaking her hand. My eyes float down to her rack.
“It’s an eyeful, isn’t it?” she jokes.
“Certainly impressive,” I confirm. “The graphs.” I need to dial this down. Andrew’s giving me looks that could peel paint. “You give great data.”
“I aim to be Good, Giving, and Game.”
“Isn’t that what Dan Savage says about sex?”
“It applies to business, too.”
“A universal set of tools.”
She shrugs. “Everyone can have the same tools, Nick. Tool acquisition? Anyone can do that. The real skill is in implementation.”
With that, Chloe Browne leaves me speechless, hard as a rock, and the object of my boss’s ire.
One hell of a hat trick.
“Coffee?” Andrew’s admin, Gina, appears with a smartphone in hand, an app for a local coffee shop open.
Grateful for the save, I give her my order and will myself to think about subjects that deflate. She takes Amanda and Andrew’s requests and disappears with quick, nervous steps.
“Didn’t know Anterdec added a dating service to our portfolio. Cut it out, Nick,” Andrew says with a warning tone as he settles back into his chair.
Amanda snorts.
Catalogue that, too.
I say nothing. Eyebrows up, eye contact with my boss, but no words. I don’t challenge.
But I don’t back down.
“Oh, good Lord,” Amanda finally says with a sigh, reaching for Andrew’s hand. “We’re together. Nick can flirt.”
Before I can reply, Andrew leads her into the room we’re using here at O. I follow, loving the hypocrite he’s become in the course of three sentences. We settle around the table, Amanda perched on the edge, Andrew in his chair, me in the chair with the view behind him, the Financial District spread out for us, the ocean stretching behind him as if it were there for his pleasure alone.
It’s good to be the king.
“She’s good, isn’t she?” Andrew says.
And giving
and game, apparently.
I give Amanda a look. She shrugs.
“Chloe?” I ask.
“Right. Smart, intuitive, an eye for design, and a great presenter. Gets three layers deeper than anyone in the room ever considered. She’s strategic and composed. Perfect face of O.”
Her O face sure does come to mind.
Damn it.
“You want to fund her?”
“The RV spa thing seems farfetched, but figures don’t lie.”
Chloe’s figure, bent over the edge of a bed, that sweet ass—
“Nick?” Andrew snaps his fingers. I shake myself like a wet dog.
“Right. How much should I put in her?”
Andrew’s jaw grinds, but before he can answer my garbled question, we’re interrupted.
Thank God.
“Twelve inches!” Gina exclaims from the doorway.
Timing really is everything.
“What?” Andrew sputters.
She’s holding a tray with three enormous white coffee cups in it.
“Twelve inches! The size of these coffees from downstairs. They’re so big!” As she hands out the coffee, Amanda stifles a giggle. Sunlight bounces off her ring. A wave of memory pours through me, lightning fast, like a retracting cable that snaps hard at the end, leaving marks.
Simone. Our engagement. Working nights through undergrad to pay for her little diamond chip of a ring…
The same ring she mailed back to me from France, along with her signed divorce papers.
“Jesus, Nick, what is wrong?” Andrew’s gone from anger to a furious concern, the irritated worry radiating off of him with a masculine sense that triggers my testosterone, sending me into high alert. We’re playing male hormone ping-pong, only without the paddles.
Paddles.
Chloe and a paddle….
“You’re not like this. You’re the focus man.”
“The what?”
“That’s what people call you behind your back,” Amanda explains cheerfully, her big eyes wide and friendly. They’re the color of mink, with lashes so long the bottom layer sticks to the top, making her reach up with a finger and rub.
“People talk about me behind my back? What do they talk about?”