“Yes. It was necessary.” Angelica kept herself tense, knowing that she had to listen to Florence and be called away but also needing to make sure that Joy didn’t screw anything up while she was gone. “It’s a simple theme that we can dive deeperinto when we talk more about how exactly we’re going to brand later.”
“Simple elegance…” Joy repeated those two words as if she’d just heard them for the first time.
But Angelica knew she hadn’t. Because she’d mentioned this before. But each time they tried to talk about branding, Joy was on board until they needed to actually nail down specifics. The thought of having the conversation yet again was even more overwhelming than before.
“You sit with that. I’ll be right back.” Angelica straightened up and stepped around the reception desk and toward Florence.
“In here.” Florence put her hand on Angelica’s upper arm and guided her toward the staging room. But she shut the door with only the two of them in there.
“What’s wrong?”
“This isn’t how I wanted to tell you, I want to be very clear on that.”
“Tell me what?” Angelica tensed.
“The production team decided that they needed to do some press in order to downplay your relationship with Hope. So they set Hope up with an interview on a local network this morning. Start small and move big.” Florence shook her head and rolled her eyes.
“She bombed it, didn’t she?”
“Yes.” Florence ground out the word.
“Hope isn’t built for playing these games. I could have told you that. Hell, Rex could have told you that.” Angelica crossed her arms, the anger from yesterday resurfacing. “You shouldn’t have put her in a position where she had to lie.”
“I told her not to lie.” Florence put her hands out in front of her. “I want to repeat, this wasn’t my choice. I told them it was a bad idea, but they overruled me.”
“And didn’t talk to me.” Angelica sighed heavily and rolled her eyes. “Because I’d give them a piece of my mind.”
“Because they didn’t think you would agree to it.”
“I wouldn’t have!” Angelica’s voice rang through the room. “Because this is exactly what was going to happen, and I would have told them that! They should have put me there instead of her.”
“They thought you were too standoffish.”
“Oh, bullshit.” Angelica cut her hand across the air. “They didn’t want me to object and push back on them. They thought they could skip around me by removing me from the situation entirely.” She shook her head and crossed her arms again. “Let me see it.”
“I don’t think that’s a good idea.”
“Florence.” Angelica pursed her lips. “Let me see it.”
“I really don’t think this is a good idea, for the record.”
“You’re all about making records straight today, aren’t you?” Angelica kept her arms crossed while she watched Hope on the screen, the moment she realized she’d walked into the first trap, then the second, and then when the interview abruptly cut off and what was said afterward.
That look Hope had sent her as she’d barreled through the lobby made a whole lot more sense now. Angelica rolled her shoulders, too stunned to even know what to say. She’d stupidly thought that getting rid of Josef would ease the issues with communication and demands when it came to production and filming, but she’d been wrong. They were just different problems now than they were before.
Sighing heavily, she shook her head at Florence again.
“Where is she?”
“Kitchen.” Florence slid the phone into her pocket. “I need to know what you want me to do.”
“Next time they try to pull something like this, I need you to come to mebeforeanything happens.” Angelica stilled. “Because this could have been prevented.”
“You’re right.” Florence put her hands out to the side and shook her head. “You’re absolutely right.”
Angelica wasn’t entirely sure what to do with that. She hadn’t expected Florence to so easily tell her that or give in to her demand.
“If we want this show to go smoothly, then we need to make sure that everyone is communicating clearly, and that we don’t drop anyone into enemy territory without the skills and backup to come out unscathed.”
