by A. E. Radley
She stood and picked up the ice cream container, worried that Olivia would soon start to lick the inside if the tempting treat was near her any longer.
“You’re gorgeous,” Emily told her. She leaned forward and kissed her forehead.
She walked out of the living room and into the kitchen. She placed the container in the recycling bin and put the spoon in the dishwasher. As she wiped down the work surface, she looked out of the window. Henry ran around the garden, chasing and then being chased by Captain McFluffypants.
He loved his new London school. They thought he might not like the school uniform he was now required to wear daily, but he thought it made him look like Harry Potter.
Olivia walked into the kitchen. “Can I help with anything?”
“No, all done,” Emily said. She turned around and opened her arms. “A big hug would be nice, though.”
Olivia smiled and walked into the embrace.
Emily loved to feel her wife’s slightly protruding stomach. Olivia was already complaining about being fat, and Emily didn’t have the heart to tell her that she had a lot of growing to do yet.
“I spoke to Henry’s teacher,” Olivia said. “He passed his last marker evaluation. They’re going to schedule one in for next year.”
“Okay.”
Henry’s tests had come back as negative, but the results showed that he was on the border of Attention Deficient Disorder. While he hadn’t been diagnosed, the school was keeping an eye on him to see how he developed.
“And Simon wants to look at offices tomorrow morning.”
“Okay,” Emily said. “I can take Henry to school, my morning catch-up was pushed back to ten.”
“Remember to leave early on Friday,” Olivia reminded her. She took a step back from the hug. “You’ll need extra time to pack if we’re getting the early flight on Saturday morning.”
Olivia edged towards the freezer.
Emily coughed.
“Some ice for a glass of water,” Olivia promised her.
It didn’t matter. Emily had hidden the rest of the ice cream stash the moment she got home.
Henry came in from the garden, panting for breath. Emily smiled and let out a long, contented sigh. Seeing Henry fit and healthy was never going to not make her happy.
“Shoes,” Olivia reminded him.
He kicked off his shoes and slammed the door behind him.
“I’m taking you to school tomorrow,” Emily told him. “So, make sure you’re ready a little early.”
“Okay.”
“And I’m picking you up on Friday afternoon,” Olivia told him. Probably for the eighth time that week.
“I know, Mom,” Henry told her with a smile. “I can’t wait to go to New York and see Tom and Lucy and Grandma. I made Grandma a birthday present.”
“What did you make her?” Emily asked.
“A dinosaur out of LEGOs.”
Emily could just imagine Irene looking for a place to put such a gift in her immaculate house.
“When we fly, can I sit by the window?” Henry asked.
“We’ll all be sitting by the window,” Olivia replied.
Emily rolled her eyes. “I thought I told you not to book first-class?”
“It’s the pregnancy, my hearing is going.” Olivia smirked.
“Uh-huh,” Emily replied, shaking her head.
“First-class is where I first met Olivia,” Henry said.
Emily looked at him dumbstruck. “Do you remember that, Henry?”
He nodded. “Yeah. I don’t remember much before that. But I remember flying for the first time. And meeting Olivia. It was like Christmas and my birthday all at the same time!”
Olivia bent down and pulled him into a hug. “It was the same for me.”
Emily could feel tears starting to form in her eyes. She knelt beside Henry and hugged him, too.
“Ick. You guys are weird,” Henry complained, with a smile on his face.
“Yep, and you’re stuck with us,” Emily told him.
“Forever,” Olivia said.
About the Author
A.E. Radley is an entrepreneur and best-selling author living and working in England.
* * *
She describes herself as a Wife. Traveller. Tea Drinker. Biscuit Eater. Animal Lover. Master Pragmatist. Annoying Procrastinator. Theme Park Fan. Movie Buff.
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When not writing or working, Radley indulges in her third passion of buying unnecessary cat accessories on a popular online store for her two ungrateful strays whom she has threatened to return for the last seven years.
Connect with A.E. Radley
www.aeradley.com
Call for ARC Reviewers
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Also by A.E. Radley
Flight SQA016 - Book One in the Flight Series
Spurred on by overwhelming and ever-increasing debts, Emily White takes a job working in the first-class cabin on the prestigious commuter route from her home of New York to London with Crown Airlines.
On board she meets Olivia Lewis, who is a literal high-flying business executive with a weekly commute, a meticulous schedule, and terrible social skills.
When a personal emergency brings them together, will Emily be able to swallow her pride and accept help from Olivia? And will Olivia be able to prevent herself from saying the wrong thing?
Also by A.E. Radley
Grounded - Book Two in the Flight Series
City professional Olivia Lewis is coming to terms with her latest romantic failure by attempting to throw herself into her work. But with clients suddenly leaving Applewood Financial in their droves it becomes clear that old enemies have decided to strike and Olivia realises that she is losing everything.
Meanwhile the world of flight attendant Emily White comes crashing down around her when she loses her job. With no income, enormous debts and a broken-hearted five-year-old son she thinks that things can’t get any worse. That is until a blast from the past threatens it all.
Also by A.E. Radley
Mergers & Acquisitions
Kate Kennedy prides herself on running the very best advertising agency in Europe.
One day her top client asks her to work on a lucrative project with the notoriously fastidious Georgina Masters, of the American agency Mastery.
The temporary merger causes a fiery clash of cultures and personalities. Especially when Georgina sets her romantic sights on Kate’s young intern, Sophie.
Mergers & Acquisitions
By A.E. Radley
CHAPTER ONE
“A sports car?” Kate repeated. She furrowed her brow at the idea.
“Yes, silver and red and really, really fast,” Yannis said.
He stood up and paced excitedly around the meeting room. Yannis was tall, over six feet. His lanky frame seemed at odds with his constant need to bound around.
Kate suppressed a chuckle as she watched him pace. She appreciated his enthusiasm, no one wanted to work with a miserable client. But Yannis was almost too enthusiastic. He switched from one major project to another without stopping to catch his breath.
“Why a sports car?” Kate queried.
“We build engines, sports cars need engines. This is fantastic,” he announced.
Kate suspected that Yannis felt his high-intensity enthusiasm would wear off on those around him. Bouncing around meeting rooms with excitement and informing people that things were fantastic were his way of injecting passion into a project.
&n
bsp; Yannis was certainly a successful businessman, but he also was primarily an ideas man. Leaving the details to others. Like her.
“It’s… different,” Kate allowed.
“Different is good. Exciting.” Yannis paused in front of the windows that overlooked the sprawling City of London. “We need to be different. We need to move, grow, change, adapt.” He leaned closer to the glass and peered out of the window. “You can see my house from here.”
Kate rolled her eyes good-naturedly. She stood up and walked around the meeting table to join him by the window. This wasn’t the first meeting she had spent chasing after the excitable man, and it probably wouldn’t be the last.
“This is east, yes?” He pointed out of the window. Before she could reply, he was staring intently into the distance, looking for landmarks.
“Yes,” she replied. “Yannis, let me just get this straight in my mind. Atrom are going to build a sports car—”
“Ten,” he corrected, still gazing over the city to get his bearings.
She felt her eyebrow raise. “Ten?”
“Ten,” he repeated. “Selling for a million pounds. We’ll only sell ten. I’m having one, of course.”
Kate looked skywards. “Right, okay. Atrom are going to build ten sports cars, each priced at one million pounds, and you will buy one for yourself?”
Yannis looked at her. He smiled and nodded his head. “Yes, that’s it. And this is big news, so I need my favourite marketing guru to tell the world for me.”
“And we’ll be more than happy to help,” Kate assured. “I assume you want the works? Press releases, websites, viral campaigns, video campaigns, news slots?”
“Everything. International,” Yannis said. He looked at her seriously. “It is very important to me that this is international news.”
“That’s definitely something we can do.” Kate mentally put together a quick marketing brief. While she considered Yannis an idiot for investing in a project that was a glorified toy for himself, she welcomed the money the project would bring.
“It’s a big job,” he said.
“It is,” Kate agreed. Huge, in fact. Atrom Engineering was by far their biggest client, in terms of size and profitability. The introduction of a new product, and all that went with it, meant a huge amount of income for Kate’s agency, Red Door.
Yannis Papadakis was the kind of CEO that Kate adored. He was rich, eccentric, and didn’t think twice about spending a small fortune marketing his already successful engineering company.
“I had lunch in New York last week,” Yannis continued. “With Georgina Masters, you know her?”
Kate tried to control her grimace. “I’ve met her a couple of times. Award ceremonies, conferences. That kind of thing.”
“Mastery is considered to be the best advertising agency in America.” Yannis walked back to the meeting table. He sat down and opened his MacBook. He hunched over the small machine and typed in his password. “Georgina really knows her stuff.”
Kate hummed noncommittally at his mention of the woman. If life were a cartoon, Georgina Masters would be her arch nemesis. The two women were constantly compared within the industry and by the media. They were both businesswomen in their forties, give or take, who had set up successful marketing companies in a male-dominated sector. Of course they were often compared. But comparisons are rarely kind; they certainly hadn’t been between Kate and Georgina.
Kate had come to loathe the very mention of Georgina Masters. She was sure Georgina felt the same way about her.
“She is very interested in the sports car industry,” Yannis was saying. He turned his MacBook around so Kate could see the screen.
She stepped away from the window and walked towards the table. She wasn’t particularly interested in whatever Yannis was about to show her, but she knew she had to make an effort.
“This car was built by some guys in California, they are trying to go for the world land speed record. Georgina is representing them.”
Kate picked her glasses up from the table and put them on. She peered at the website. It was garish. She had no doubt that many would think it was a fantastic example of modern web design. Flashing images, unclear navigation, lightboxes popping up. To Kate, it was gimmicky and crass. Just what she had come to expect from Mastery.
“It’s a bit… flashy. Don’t you think?”
Yannis grinned. “Yes,” he agreed.
Kate removed her glasses and tapped the arm on her lip. “If this is the style you like, we can definitely follow this example. Maybe tweak it a little so there’s not quite so much… visual noise.”
Yannis spun the MacBook around to face him again and started to type. “I want you and Georgina to work together on this. Red Door and Mastery working together. Hand in hand. Then, this project would have the best marketing minds in America and in Europe. Together, the three of us can make something really exciting.”
Kate blinked. She stared at Yannis, but he was again lost in his computer screen and oblivious to her reaction.
“You want us to work together?” Kate couldn’t shake the shock from her tone. “Georgina and me? Working together?”
“Yes, isn’t it perfect?” He didn’t look up.
“Perfect isn’t quite the word I’d use,” Kate confessed. The last thing she wanted was for Georgina Masters to swoop in and take all the glory. And, potentially, the entire Atrom contract. “Yannis, we’ve worked together for years. I like to think we have a good working relationship?”
Yannis was focused on his screen. “Yes, yes, of course.”
Kate knew he was only half-listening to her. “And Atrom and Red Door have always worked well together, haven’t we? We can directly attribute the twelve-percent sales growth Atrom experienced last year to Red Door’s advertising campaigns. Bringing in another voice, it could be tricky.”
Yannis patted the seat next to him, still focused on his screen. “Look at this.”
Kate rolled her eyes and shuffled around a couple of seats at the round meeting table. She put her glasses on again. Yannis gestured to a presentation chart on the screen.
“We need to get more social,” he explained to her as if she were a child.
The presentation bore the Mastery logo. Kate pursed her lips. Clearly Georgina had presented this to Yannis and convinced him to take a new direction. Upon closer examination, it was clear that Yannis had been enticed by pie charts and line graphs that showed upward trends.
Competitor agencies pitching to existing clients wasn’t a new thing. Any marketing director worth their wage would use any opportunity to speak to decision-makers. Subjectivity was not just the beauty of the marketing industry; it was also its curse.
In other businesses, a job may be a simple predefined product. The business makes widgets, a widget has set parameters. The business decides its success on widgets produced.
But marketing involves so much more. Marketing can be good or bad, or good and bad at the same time. A logo can be loved and hated within one focus group.
The individuality of marketing allowed seeds of doubt to be planted by competitors. A magic formula could be proposed, fancy charts could be distributed and buzzwords deployed. All business owners want to recreate the success of other businesses, so a marketing agency promising such success was a potent thing.
Kate looked at the presentation with interest. As she thought, it contained all the generic statistics regarding social media success rates—the standard lure marketing agencies used to hook new prospective clients.
“Engineering firms can only benefit from social media to a point,” Kate explained. It was a conversation they’d had several times before. Each time she explained it, Yannis agreed and understood. But within a few weeks, his flighty mind had forgotten and she was left to repeat herself. “The average person on the street doesn’t care that the engine on a train is made by Atrom.”
“We need to be a part of the conversation,” Yannis insisted, clearly repeating the buzz
words he’d recently heard.
“There is no conversation about your sector, Yannis,” Kate replied. She took off her glasses and let out a small sigh. Competitor interference in marketing was a common thing. One day a client would be happy, the next they would have read an article and would be explaining what they felt her agency needed to do.
Kate spent most of her days explaining to clients that she knew their market better than the competition. The difficulty was, this was Yannis. The phrase bee in his bonnet might have been created specifically with him in mind. Once he had an idea, nothing could make him let it go.
“Georgina has more information on this,” Yannis explained. He gestured to the screen. “You understand all of this better than I do, anyway. But the thing to take away here is that this is exciting! We are going to build sports cars, and I want everyone to know about them. We can work together and make this the best campaign ever. Between us, I’m positive that we can make The Bolt something that everyone is talking about.”
“The Bolt?”
“I’m thinking of calling it The Bolt.” Yannis closed the MacBook and placed his fingers on top of it, protecting the secrets within. He leaned close to Kate. “I am still working out all of the details, but I can feel this is going to be a huge success.” He smiled at her, willing her to join him in his excitement.
While his passion for the project radiated from him, Kate felt utterly unable to join in. She didn’t want to work with Mastery. The whole point of running her own agency was that she didn’t have to work with anyone.
“Yannis,” Kate said carefully, “while working with Mastery would be wonderful, I’m not sure how we can work out the logistics. They are based in New York. You and I are based in London. Trying to split the workload, coordinate the teams, that would be very difficult.”