Like, seeing-red-rage snapped. I refused to watch the footage of what went down on the courthouse steps, but I recalled using the words “silly little girls” and “spoiled-rotten princesses.”
In my defense, anyone with average intelligence could see that Ashford Jets wasn’t actually at fault for Scarlet missing the fan event in Colorado. Her assistant had given her driver the wrong hangar number, and when she no-showed her departure time without even giving us a courtesy call, we’d released the jet to one of our frequent fliers who had a last-minute emergency.
Scarlet had shown up an hour late, and while my employees said she was charming, her attack-dog handlers went ballistic when they realized that there was no way for her to make the event. She’d done a live from our hangar with the Ashford logo displayed prominently behind her and made a joke about changing the company name to Lose-slow. The fans who’d shelled out for the canceled event had been more than happy to aim their anger at my company, but it hadn’t beenthatbig of a deal.
Until my courthouse steps rant was released. Then it became…a very big deal.
Who knew teenage girls could be sodangerous? My company’s reputation was now in the toilet, and it was leading to some real, uncomfortable consequences for our stock prices and business partnerships.
“So what do we need to do?” I asked Denise as I massaged my temples.
“There’s nothing morewecan do. We need outside help, yesterday. I’m thinking we need to hire in a PR firm with a crisis-management focus.”
“Fine, okay. Whatever it takes,” I said quickly. “Please vet some options and pull together a list of the top three for me to interview. I want the best of the best. We need to stop the bleeding.”
“I’m glad you agree,” Denise said.
She wisely refrained from reminding me it had been my idea to ride it out.
“I’ll have options for you by COB tomorrow,” Denise said, already flicking through her phone on the way out of my office.
I took a deep breath after she left and wished I had a million small, procedural problems to solve. A million things I could fix that didn’t require me to understand PR or make nice with people I didn’t even know.
Things to remind me I was good at my job when this whole mess had me thinking about everyone I was letting down. My employees, who I wanted to feel pride in their work. My dad, CEO of our parent company, Ashford Corporation, who trusted me enough to start Ashford Jets and put me in charge of it in the first place. My brothers, who run their own divisions of the business and have gotten caught in the backsplash of the stink I’ve dumped all over our brand.
Mom, because even though she was gone now, I could still picture the way she’d sigh and say, “Honey, I love you to the moon and back, but love isnotblind, and we can both see that you screwed up, right?”
Yes, Mom. I know I screwed up. But this isn’t the kind of problem I know how to fix. Usually, I keep my emotions in check, to the point where I’ve been called out for being cold. Fine with me.
My focus was my company, which left me little bandwidth for anything else. Ironic, then, that this whole scandal happened because I lost my temper and didn’t have the sense to keep my mouth shut.
A series of Slack notifications went off, bringing me back into the present moment and reminding me that I had a business to run in addition to handling the PR nightmare in front of us. My phone rang right as I was about to dive in. My middle brother, Drew. We didn’t speak often, but we’d been connecting more than usual as plans came together for our father’s surprise sixtieth birthday celebration at the Ashford Resorts Carmel location.
“Hey Drew,” I answered. “Let me guess; he figured out we’re planning a party for him.”
“Thankfully, he still has no idea,” Drew laughed. “But I’m banking on him getting it out of one of us. Who’s the weakest link?”
“Logan,” we both said in unison. Our younger brother was as ruthless as the rest of us, but in our family, he’d always be the wild child.
“What’s up, then?” I asked. “I can’t talk long. I’ve got a lot on my plate.”
“Yeah, anyone with social media knows that,” Drew said dryly. “What’s your plan? Because the hemorrhaging is starting to make folks nervous.”
I spun my chair to face the painting of ocean waves I have hanging on my wall—a tiny moment of meditation.
“I’m on it,” I replied. “Denise is looking into outside PR firms.”
“Good. It needs to go away.”
“Drew,” I sighed. “I already know that.Stop. Now, what do you want?”
“Okay, okay,” he replied. “So, we need to come up with a solid reason for getting Dad to the resort for the party. He’s in one of his dark moods, and he’s really resistant to being out and about.”
We both went quiet at the admission.
“I can’t blame him,” I said. “It’s a milestone birthday. And he’s probably remembering his fiftieth birthday party…”
“Yeah, that was a perfect night,” Drew said softly. “Mom did such a good job planning it.”
