Tease

Andy arched an eyebrow: “You’re into leather, too?”

“Not leather,” she scolded. “Faustini.”

Tess and Andy grinned, high-fiveing each other. “Not a bad thirty-second shot,” she said.

“Or!” Carlotta squealed. “Picture me as a dominatrix, a bullwhip in my hand. “You’re not carrying a Faustini?” She cracks the whip. “Take that!”

The enthusiasm was contagious. Soon, they were talking over each other, but the suggestions got more and more outrageous. Tess hated to be a killjoy, but she’d already met with Alberto Faustini, the company’s rather stodgy founder, and he didn’t want anything far-out. He’d told Tess to come up with something provocative, but nothing X-rated, and that was despite strong opposition from his new partner, his twenty-two-year-old wild-child daughter, Gina, who favored vampires, sexual bondage and other gothic images. Fortunately, Gina Faustini didn’t sign the checks.

“Guys,” Tess said, “we want to seduce customers not shock them.”

“Why not shock them? Before you can seduce them you have to get their attention.”

Tess wasn’t sure who’d spoken until she noticed her team members looking over her shoulder. She whipped around, saw the source of the disembodied voice, and was glad not to be hooked up to a lie detector. Her sweaty palms would have shorted the machine out.

How long had he been standing there?

She’d never met Danny Gabriel, but even if she hadn’t seen his likeness plastered all over the agency walls in photographs with business giants and celebrity clients, she would have recognized his personal trademarks—the bare feet, the worn blue jeans and the flowing hair he’d gathered into a loose ebony braid.

Here before her was the agency’s image problem in the flesh. Not his clothes, even Gabriel donned a suit on client days. His attitude. He was Tess’s codirector—and the infamous advertising savant she’d been brought in to teach some manners. The Faustini account had been his before it was given to Tess, and rumor had it that he’d been replaced because he sided with Faustini’s daughter.

What was he doing here now? He’d been in Tokyo all week, drumming up international business, which was his new focus, according to Erica. Tess was supposed to have been formally introduced to him tonight at a dinner with Erica and the board members. She was nervous enough about that. If Carlotta was the agency’s diva, then Danny Gabriel was its rock star.

Tess sat there, thunderstruck, aware that she wasn’t racking up leadership points with her silence. Her team knew him, but they seemed to be speechless, too. Either they were intimidated or expecting a confrontation. There was a good chance that Gabriel saw her as an interloper.

She was an interloper. And this could be a test, but of what? Her worthiness to walk the same ground he did?

She rose to her feet, accomplishing it with surprising grace. “My, my,” she said, her tone both friendly and challenging. “I’ve heard so much about you. Danny Gabriel, right? I’m Tess Wakefield.”

She waited for a reaction before offering her hand. He looked almost approachable, except for those eyes. Sharp. Serrated. Like a cutting tool. They reminded her a little of someone else’s eyes, and it was just enough of a resemblance to make her thoughts heat with unwanted memories.

He nodded, his expression warming slightly. “Faustini management doesn’t know what the hell they want,” he said. “The client rarely does, so it’s our job to tell them.”

“Really? Our job?”

They shook hands, and she covered his with both of hers, pressing down firmly. His focus sharpened. Possibly he was just realizing that she might be a worthier adversary than he’d thought.

“But shock value has a way of backfiring, don’t you think?” she asked.

“For people like me, yes. Not for you, though. You can get away with anything.”

“Excuse me?”

He just smiled. “You have a free pass—in advertising and in life. Use it.”

“What free pass?”

“Your sincerity. The good-girl thing. It sells, especially when it’s used to sell something bad. People might not line up to buy bibles from you, but they would buy sex. They would buy leather, even if it came with whips and chains.”

“Really.”

He nodded. “You make the bad stuff okay. If a sweet thing like you is a little bit kinky, then maybe kinky is okay. You give people permission to do what they secretly want to do.”

“Sweet? You’re quite sure of that?” Tess had never been called that before, and it didn’t strike her as a compliment, no matter how he couched it. Her naturally curly blond hair was cut in a bob, on which she spent a fortune for frizz control, and she still had a bit of California tan and a few freckles left. But she was no angel. Her past might shock even him. As for her work, of course, she was passionate and sincere. If you didn’t believe in the client’s product, you had no business trying to sell it. That was her motto. Obviously, it wasn’t his.

“Shock them, Tess,” he continued. “It’s the only way you’re going to get their attention.”

Neurons were firing in her brain, sending out orders to tighten muscles and tendons, her jaw being the target area. She fought the desire to remind him that he was giving advice to his replacement… then arched an eyebrow and said it anyway. Indirectly.

“Shocking the client will accomplish nothing, except to lose us the account, and I don’t need your help with that.” Thwap.

“I meant shock the public, not the client,” he replied, nonplussed.

“That’s not necessary, either. People don’t appreciate being made fools of. You might get their attention once, but you’ll never get it again.”

He rubbed his jaw, seeming amused. “You have much too high an opinion of your fellow man.”

Present company excepted, she wanted to say, but held her fire. She usually kept a pretty good grip on her emotions—Meredith liked to call it a headlock—but anger wouldn’t get her anywhere with him anyway. She needed to stay grounded because this guy was a raging river. He held nothing back, and she didn’t have that luxury. She had to preserve her energy to save the account that he’d put in jeopardy.

“Are you done with the gym?” he asked. “It’s reserved on Friday mornings for murder ball. You and your team are welcome to join us. Carlotta has a mean serve.”

“Murderball?”

He grinned. “Dodgeball where you come from.”

So that’s why he was here. Dodgeball. Not because he couldn’t wait until the evening to meet her. Figured.

“They may want to play,” she said, referring to her team, “but I have some calls to make. Give us a minute to finish up our brainstorming session, and we’ll be out of your way.”

“Take your time.” Suddenly warm and friendly, he worked open the top button of his white dress shirt. “I need to hit the locker room and change first, anyway.”

She mumbled something about seeing him at dinner that night, and then turned back to her team, not surprised to find them riveted. The gym virtually hummed with tension. A corpse would have been sitting up.

“Let’s meet tomorrow morning in the Sandbox,” she told the team, referring to one of the agency’s many themed conference rooms. “I know it’s the weekend, but we have a deadline bearing down on us like a tsunami.”

Andy rose first, picking up his mat. “So, what kind of a campaign is this going to be? Shock and awe?” He grinned, apparently at the possibilities. “I’m sure I could come up with something that would put Faustini management on life support.”

Hmm. Andy may have just handed her the perfect opening. She had no idea whether Gabriel was still behind her, but she hoped so. This was her chance to make an impression on all of them, but most of all, she wanted him to hear it.

“Keep in mind,” she said formally, “that it will be difficult for Faustini to pay their advertising bill if they’re on life support. They are the client, and without them this agency wouldn’t exist. They’ve hired us to do a job. Let’s do it. Let’s give them the campaign heard around the world. But don’t forget that the client has to like it first or no one else will ever see it.”

Tess couldn’t tell whether they were with her or not, but she wasn’t finished. “It’s not us versus Faustini,” she said. “It’s us and them. We’re a team, and they’re part of it.”

Her team gave her a smattering of applause, and she curtsied. Tess waited for Gabriel to say something, and the silence became awkward. She glanced over her shoulder and saw that he’d already left. So much for the crusading speech.

As she knelt to pick up her mat, she had the feeling the murderball game had already started, and there were only two players. This was a one-on-one with Danny Gabriel, and she was the rookie, fighting for a piece of the star player’s turf. And maybe for her career.

Chapter Two