“Whenever I get the chance, which means that when I’m trapped back here, I’m miserable.”
I craned my neck to catch a glimpse of the pilot. “Do you not trust the guy at the wheel? Do I need to worry?”
“No, Dan is a fine pilot. Bumpy landings, but nothing too bad.” He gestured toward the cockpit again. “I’d rather it be me, though. I love flying, but only if I’m the one in control. Otherwise, it’s just stressful.”
It was new intel on Harrison that I could file away. I still hadn’t figured him out, but the control-freak leanings tracked with what I did know about the man. I was more interested in what he said about loving flying. I wanted to dig for more details, find out what it was about being in the air that spoke to him…but that wasn’t really my place, was it?
“Don’t worry, I plan to keep you so busy during this flight you won’t have time to think about Bumpy Dan.”
I could’ve sworn I saw the corner of his mouth turn up, which I took as a win.
Dominic popped his head in. “We’re wheels up in three. Seat belts please.”
We both buckled up. The jet started moving down the runway, and I fought off a wave of nerves when I finally acknowledged that we were in a tiny aircraft compared to my regular travel. Maybe I wasn’t such a stoic flier after all?
I glanced out the window as we picked up speed.
“Stop worrying,” Harrison said. “The plane is perfectly safe.”
I spun to face him. “Who says I’m worrying?”
He jutted his chin to my hands, which I didn’t realize were death-gripping the arm rests so tightly my knuckles were white.
“I’m fine,” I fibbed.
“Your safety is assured when you fly Ashford,” he said, then picked up his phone and went back to pretending I wasn’t sitting one seat away.
I snorted at him. “You sound like a well-rehearsed sound bite.”
“According to my team, that’s the only form of communication I’m allowed going forward,” he said wryly. “I’m sure you’ll have more polished and perfected lines for me to recite like a ventriloquist’s dummy.”
He was right, Ididhave some lines I’d prepped for him to try to contextualize his courthouse debacle. Granted, I wanted his input to make them sound as natural and authentic as possible.
But when Harrison flipped open his laptop, I realized my plans to interrogate him about what actually happened that day needed to wait. It was fine; I had plenty to do as we kicked off the first leg of his apology tour.
I started off by reaching out to my contact atAfter Darkto confirm the details of the next few days, then moved on to scheduling the interviews forVarietyandPeople. The marketing team forwarded some additional ideas about possible press, and I took a call with their social media crew to talk about how we wanted to frame everything that was about to go down.
The challenge we were facing with our messaging was that Ashford Jets had a select, high-profile client base. Many of them probably couldn’t name a single Scarlet Rush song and didn’t give a shit about the drama going down, so we needed to present the issue in a way that acknowledged it without making it the headline for folks who would otherwise be clueless. Their current social media accounts focused on the luxury and dependability of Ashford Jets and never mentioned Harrison as a key player.
They didn’t have to, really, because he’d always been a bold-faced name thanks to his wealthy, socially prominent family. I appreciated his desire to stay in the background and let theproduct do the talking. But to deal with the current situation, things had to change.
The conference call with Bailey and Jace took longer than anticipated, and I noticed Harrison peering over at me as I discussed protecting his persona without sidestepping the issue that had gotten him into the mess in the first place. It was a delicate balance, and while his social media gurus understood me in theory, they were having a hard time coming up with a way forward that would work for all parties.
I wound up doing what I’d always done; I took on the responsibility myself.
“I think our best approach is for me to come up with a few posts that straddle the line,” I finally said, eager to be done with the call. “I’ll get some BTS footage while we’re in New York, come up with the captions, and send it to you to review. We won’t dwell on it, but we won’t ignore it either.”
It wasn’t my job, but then again, Ashford Jets’s team wasn’t exactly prepared to deal with a scandal of this size. And like Harrison had told me on my first day, everyone was expected to step up. For the salary he was paying me, I was more than willing to take a few strides.
I disconnected the call and took notes about my next steps.
“You’re nonstop,” Harrison said, and I swore I detected admiration in his voice.
“It’s crunch time,” I answered with a shrug. “We need to make sure we’re all on the same page.”
I silently debated if I needed to throw out more corporate jargon clients seemed to expect, like putting a pin in things and circling back.
“What’s your deal?” Harrison asked. “How did you get into all of this?”
