“Thanks,” she said flatly. And fuck Val very much for slipping in “trying.”
The older woman touched the ostentatious strand of pearls around her neck as she peered at the caricature Josie was tweaking on-screen, as close a re-creation as she could make of the napkin sketch that had disappeared under Erik’s big paw Friday night.
“This isn’t bad, actually. Are you drafting something for a new client?”
The woman’s tiny, grudging compliment scraped along Josie’s nerves like coarse sand. “He’s not officially a client yet, but I’m trying to convince him to use me.”
Use me.Heat flooded her cheeks at her choice of words. Erik had spent his time at Jed’s, watching her with the horrified fascination of someone who’d discovered a snake coiled in his bathtub, yet all she’d been able to think about was how his big would mesh with her small. How he’d be able touse her. And then he’d gone and unleashed all that thick, wavy hair, and she’d almost melted into her stool from the sheer Nordic hotness of him. She squirmed in her seat and thanked her maker that Vile Val was engrossed in the face she’d sketched on the screen.
“Handsome.” The older woman leaned closer to the caricature, which Josie had to admit was as flattering as it was accurate, capturing the strength of Erik’s nose and cheekbones, the swoop of his hair, the jut of his jaw. “It’s so hard to believe you’re not formally trained.”
Aaaaand there it was.With anyone else, Josie’s instinct would be to lash back, but something about Val’s brittle haughtiness shut down her fight instinct and left her meek as an amoeba every time. She hated it, but then again, avoiding open warfare with a coworker might be the only reason she was still employed at Dynamic Marketing.
Lowering the temperature in her voice by a few dozen degrees, she asked, “Did you need something, Val?” She might not be able to snap at the woman, but she could call her by the nickname she hated.
Valerie straightened, her fake friendliness dropping away. “Yes. Just making sure there are no hard feelings that I’m heading up the Streeterville boutique project. Between you and me, I think Gil wanted someone with a college degree to go along with the years of experience. But I am grateful for all your little suggestions.”
Josie rolled her lips inward and said nothing. Her lack of a degree was a sore spot, which Val knew and used to her advantage. “I’m sure you’ll find all mylittlesuggestions extremely helpful,” she finally managed.
Valerie’s lips pinched together. “Anyway, I also wanted to ask you about Fielder Shoe. They’re opening a second location in North Chicago, and they want us to host an open house next Saturday.”
“Next Saturday? Yikes. That’s soon.” She reached for her phone, already plotting event strategies that would fit the family-owned business’s vibe in the high-end comfort-shoe market. “I’ll give them a call right now to set up—”
“No need. They’re already here.”
“What?”
Valerie’s voice turned impatient. “Yes, they’re waiting in the conference room right now, so I want to have a few ideas to present to them.”
Blood pounded in Josie’s temples. “Why am I not part of this meeting?”
“Why would you be?”
She clenched and unclenched her jaw. “Because they’re my account. Remember that promotion I got last year? I have a caseload I manage now, and it’s my job to lead these meetings.” Her temper threatened to spike, so she dug her nails into her palm and held herself in check. Work wasn’t the place to lose her shit, particularly at a woman who’d gladly see her out on her ass with unemployment paperwork stapled to her lapel. But someday she and Val were going to have words, and it wasnotgoing to be pretty.
Valerie gave a forced laugh. “Oh, but the Fielders are such good friends of mine. I wanted to put our best team together to meet them. And you’re so busy with… whateverthisis.” She glanced pointedly at Erik’s caricature on Josie’s screen.
She surged to her feet and put her body between Val and the computer, silently counting to three before speaking through gritted teeth. “When Gil chose me to handle the Fielder account, he said he wanted me to be involved in these conversations from the beginning.” She hated using the big boss’s name to fight this battle, but she was out of options. Gil hadn’t cared about Josie’s one semester of college when she’d applied for the lowest-level assistant job six years ago, and he’d come to value the creative, high-concept events she put together for their clients, both big and small.Too bad, so sad, Val.
“Give me five minutes to jot down some ideas, and I’ll join you in the conference room.”
She took Valerie’s glare to mean “Yes of course, Josie, I would appreciate that.” As the woman flounced away, Josie’s eyes fell on her nemesis’s sensible pair of flesh-colored comfort shoes, which she’d no doubt only worn to suck up to the Fielders. Then she looked down in dismay at the expanse of skin visible above the neckline of her grasshopper-green sheath dress. If she’d known she was meeting with the stuffy shoe people today, she would’ve dressed a tad more conservatively.
With a grumble, she tugged her hem down as close as possible to her knees and tip-tapped down the hallway in her decidedlycomfortlessshoes to join a meeting she was spectacularly unprepared for.
* * *
Four hours later,Josie was thoroughly frazzled. The Fielder meeting could’ve been worse, but she loathed presenting anything less than a polished plan, and she would’ve felt more in command of the situation in one of her power suits. Damn Val forever.
And now she was late to meet Erik at the florist he’d suggested. The shop had seemed like a reasonable distance from her office when they’d agreed on the time via text that morning, but the Fielder assignment had ballooned to fill her afternoon, leaving her to all but sprint down the sidewalk in her heels for fear of making him wait.
Rounding the corner at seven minutes after their agreed five o’clock meeting time, she spotted a black awning over the sidewalk, displaying the wordsLove in Bloom Flowersin an elegant script. She paused at the entryway to catch her breath just as Erik strolled up the sidewalk. His hair was down again, which really ought to be illegal. Honestly, that messy mix of waves and curls was a public nuisance, tempting women to grab onto it and not let go.
Woof.She fanned herself and hoped he’d chalk her heated cheeks up to the Chicago humidity, then cocked her hip and gave her best impression of a responsible person who was always on time. “Running a little late, huh?”
He joined her at the door, looking unruffled as usual. “Sorry.”
That was it. No flurry of apologetic words, no attempt at an explanation. She could learn a thing or two from his reserved “take me or leave me” demeanor. He held open the door, and when she stepped inside, she was enveloped by an explosion of colors and fragrances courtesy of the cascade of flowers packed into coolers and arranged in vases and baskets and sprays.
