Billionaire With a Twist (4 page)

Harry sauntered up to the front of the
room like confidence was a market and he had cornered it. He brought
images up onscreen; last year’s ads for Knox whiskey, and those
of its three biggest competitors. The Knox one featured a rugged
prospector knocking back a shot, while the other two featured
variations on the theme of ‘whiskey droplets trickling down the
photoshopped cleavage of a model in a bikini, licking her lips.’

“Why do people drink?”
Harry declared more than asked.

“Great taste?” Hunter said
dryly.

Harry scoffed. “Puh-lease. People
drink to get drunk, and because of the image they can achieve with
the right bottle in their hand, and bro? That grizzly frontiersman
image you have going for Knox—well, it’s not the image
people fantasize about anymore.”

“Please, enlighten me on your
fantasies then,” Hunter said, completely deadpan.

Oh my God, had he cut a look at me when
he said that? He had, he totally had.

Heat bloomed across my cheeks and down
my chest, settling between my legs. Was it possible to be
simultaneously this embarrassed and this turned on? Was I even going
to be able to form words when it was my turn to present?

Dead, dead, dead, I was so dead.

I forced myself to focus on Harry’s
words to distract myself from my rampaging libido, though they made
me so sick I soon wished I hadn’t.

“It’ll be a total rebrand:
‘Girls Gone Wild’ but with a wilder, hotter, more
in-your-face vibe! You drink Knox, you get a party—complete
with all the whiskey-loving babes you can dream of. We’ll get a
hot naked chick on the label, with strategically placed lettering, of
course—” he brought up several potential photos on the
screen, and I tried not to gag, “and here’s what we’re
thinking for TV spots.”

He hit another button, and moans filled
the room as women writhed in ecstasy across the screen. For a moment
I felt intensely embarrassed for him, accidentally playing us his
porn collection like that during an important meeting.

Then I saw the whiskey splashing over
their breasts, and I realized that this was actually the ad he wanted
Knox whiskey to go with.

Was he insane?

“Sure, there’ll be
controversy,” Harry was saying dismissively, “but any
publicity is good publicity, and that’s how you get the college
crowd. The ones that won’t follow their dicks to us will be
following us based on our stand on free speech. There’s nothing
more like catnip to a college freshman than a banner-waving contest
about—”

“I hope you’re not implying
we’ll be marketing to underage drinkers,” Hunter cut in.

Harry blinked, derailed. “What?”

“College freshmen are eighteen
years old,” Hunter Knox said patiently. “Marketing to
them would not only be illegal, but downright immoral.”

“Well, obviously we wouldn’t
be selling to them,” Harry said in his
‘I-have-to-say-this-for-the-lawyers’ voice. “But if
we can get in there as early as possible, establish brand
recognition, then we can create a desire in the marketplace for—”

“I’m afraid I’m not
terribly interested in customers who—how did you so poetically
put it—are led to us by their dicks. For one thing, it’s
a terrible mental image that I may never be able to fully scrub from
my mind.” Hunter’s voice had been dryly amused, but now
it hardened, heated steel underlying his words. “For another,
it pisses on everything I hold sacred about this company, which I’ll
remind you is a family business, and the trust it has put in me.”

Harry gaped, as if he couldn’t
comprehend a universe in which a man hadn’t decided to put a
naked woman on his product. Around the table, the rest of the
Douchebros sagged, deflating like balloons with day-old helium.

“Now hold up just a minute,”
Chuck argued, leaning over to his boss. “We haven’t heard
them out yet. Maybe they’re a little gung-ho, but new
directions are why we approached this company. No sacred cows,
remember? Not if we want the share price to go anywhere anytime soon.
What else do you boys have in mind?”

The Douchebros immediately perked up,
like Rottweilers who’d heard a dog whistle in the distance.

“
You’re
the one who
said we needed new directions,” Hunter said with a dark look at
Chuck. “I agreed because you’ve had good ideas in the
past, but I’m the CEO here, and if I think something pisses all
over the good work this company has done, then that’s the final
word.”

Chuck looked like he wanted to argue,
but Hunter didn’t give him a chance, turning to me instead.
“What about you?” he asked, a slight smile quirking his
lips, bringing a touch of playfulness to his stern face. “I’m
guessing you have plenty of opinions.”

Oh, he definitely remembered every word
I’d said. Shit. Shit, shit, shit.

Still, it didn’t seem like he
resented it or anything. Maybe…

I stood, trying to project a confidence
I didn’t feel.

“You don’t throw the baby
out with the bathwater,” I said. “And you don’t
throw away a proud history just because today’s market has
become disconnected from it.” I clicked the remote, pulling up
graphics and statistics. “And today’s market wants to
connect with history, any history. Hipsters and millennials, they’re
disenfranchised and dying to feel like they’re a part of
something bigger. And when these corporations—” I
gestured behind me—“played that angle, they saw a
thirty-five to fifty-five percent rise in sales to the 21-34
demographic.”

Both Chuck and Hunter sat up visibly
higher in their seats, intrigued, but Harry just sneered. “So
your big idea is just to copy what other people have done? Guess this
is what you get when you ask a woman for something original.”

Next to him, the other Douchebros
shifted, clearly uncomfortable. It was one thing to insult me when I
was on my own, with no way for me to back up any allegations I might
want to make. It was apparently another thing entirely to do it in
front of a potential client, who might decide not to go with our
company at all if Harry kept this up. Poor Douchebros—they
wanted to back up their alpha male, but they also wanted to keep
their jobs. It must be so difficult being an asshole.

Meanwhile, Hunter’s glare could
have frozen lava. “You’ve had your turn.” He
directed his gaze back to me, dismissing Harry completely. “How
would you suggest we implement your plan, Miss Bartlett?”

I smiled sweetly, forcing myself not to
dwell on my nemeses. “Well, obviously we’d need to do
in-depth research of your company, get a look at all the first-hand
documentation we can find,” I explained. “This won’t
work with just the info we can pull off Wikipedia. Of course, we will
need to use the internet—basically, I’m thinking we begin
to establish an online presence, reaching out to fans with fun
messages while also creating a historical archive that we’ll be
updating. Are you familiar with George Takei’s online presence?
A good sense of humor mixed with some real feeling, plus a talented
PR team that took him from ‘obscure original Star Trek actor’
to ‘Internet celebrity’ overnight. I really think we
could take a page from his book.”

“I’m sorry,” Chuck
interrupted, “but a historical archive? That’s just not
sexy. That’s not going to sell.” The Douchebros murmured
in agreement, but I refused to back down.

“With all due respect,” I
said, setting my jaw. “If you go with the sex angle, you’ll
only be drowning yourself in a sea of identical alcohol ads. You need
something that stands out from the pack, something that’s at
once both culturally relevant and timeless, something classic,
something that says…” I paused, grasping for exactly the
right word, every set of eyes in the room glued to me. And then, what
Hunter mentioned earlier about Knox being a ‘family business’
came rushing back. “That says
legacy
,” I finished.
The room went silent.

“Legacy. You’re absolutely
right,” Hunter said, standing abruptly and holding out his
hand. A warm smile spread itself across his face. “I love it.
You’ve got the job.”

For a second I could only stare at his
hand in shock, as if I expected it to disappear. I had put together
the strongest case I could, and I’d hoped I could succeed, but
this was so sudden—my heart was suddenly going a million miles
a minute, a buzzing filled my ears—

I had the job.

I had the job.

I had the job!

I realized his hand was still hanging
there, and I grabbed it. A tingle of electricity shot through me at
his firm grasp, and the warmth of his skin. His honey eyes were so
warm, so inviting…his thumb brushed lightly over my palm…Oh
God, was I blushing?

I pumped his hand heartily to try to
distract from my rapidly reddening cheeks. “Thank you, Mr.
Knox! I won’t let you down!”

Now all I had to do was keep that
promise.

#

“Miss Bartlett!”

I was brought up short by Hunter’s
deep, honeyed voice. For a second my mind flashed to an alternate
reality where we’d spent the entire evening in bed; there was
something incredibly seductive about the idea of him staying entirely
formal even as our naked bodies intertwined, whispering ‘Miss
Bartlett’ even as his fingers trailed down my back, slid
between my—

“Miss Bartlett.”

And suddenly that voice was a lot
closer. I almost choked, and fighting down a blush that could have
started a forest fire, turned to face him: “Yes, Mr. Knox?”

Oh good, that sounded almost normal.
Barely like I wanted to rip his shirt off at all.

He frowned slightly, and pulled me to
the side, far enough away from the rest that they couldn’t
overhear us while we talked quietly. In a low voice, he said, “I’m
really sorry that I—well, if I’d known that you were here
for this bid—”

“No, don’t apologize, I
mean, I should’ve asked your name—” I smoothed my
skirt awkwardly. “I mean, that’s not normally my style,
to just—well.”

“No, it’s certainly not
mine, either—that is, well, it has been in the past, but I have
always believed in treating women with respect, and you certainly
deserve respect and I wouldn’t want you to believe for a second
that I chose your pitch for anything other than its merit, and—”

He was starting to sound more flustered
than a preacher in a whorehouse, and I took pity on him.

“Don’t worry about it, Mr.
Knox. It was a clearly a one-time thing for both of us. I don’t
think it will be an issue. We can be professional and move on, can’t
we?”

“Of course,” he said after
a pause. “That’s exactly the right course of action.”
Yet somehow he didn’t sound as relieved as I thought he would.

I looked up at him sharply, about to
ask if professionalism was really what he wanted, but he was already
looking over my shoulder, eyes narrowing in suspicion. “Hmmm…what’s
the plural noun for a group of vultures?”

I turned, following his gaze to the
cluster of Douchebros by the elevator. Chuck was right in among them,
looking exceedingly chummy as they pounded him on the back and
laughed at something he had said.

“Now there’s some love at
first sight,” I said dryly.

A laugh startled itself out of Hunter’s
throat, but his eyes stayed worried.

“Not sure about the kids?”
I joked. “It’s true, if they get Harry’s brains
they’ll all be doomed.”

Hunter chuckled again, but this time it
seemed more out of politeness. “Chuck…has a certain
tendency to intrigue. I sometimes think he would have been happier
working in the CIA than at a liquor company.”

“So send the director his
resume,” I said with a grin.

Why did I want so badly to make this
man laugh? Was it just that I was remembering his easy smile the
night before, the way it had lit up his face and made him look half a
decade younger? Or was it something else—those faint lines at
the corners of his eyes that I hadn’t seen before now, worn by
worry and care, making me want to soothe them away?

“The truth is…Knox shares
have been falling, and this is my last chance to turn the company
around,” he said, and the way he said those words, his eyes
distant, I wasn’t sure if he knew he had spoken them or if he’d
just thought them so fervently that his lips had to move. “So
if I fail now, the vultures like Chuck move in. I can’t fail.”

My heart lodged in my throat,
fluttering, and I gripped his hand impulsively.

“I won’t fail you.”

He looked at me then, in a way that
none of my colleagues or even my family had ever looked at me before.
He looked at me like he really saw
me
.

And then he smiled, a slow grin that
called up moonlight and moonshine and soft, rumpled sheets. “I’ll
hold you to that.”

“Oh honey, are you sure you want
more of those potatoes? Your figure’s so…robust…already,
darling, and you know what they say about carbs.”

Ah, home sweet home.

I ignored my mother as she fretted with
the strand of pearls around her neck, opting instead to ladle even
more mashed potatoes onto my plate. Maybe it was a little childish,
but something about everything my mother said made me want to do the
exact opposite.

Besides, if I chewed loud enough, I
could almost drown out her constant stream of passive-aggression.

“Actually, I was just reading an
interesting article on the important role of carbohydrates,” my
older sister Paige put in. “They’re really important!
I’ll get you a copy, Mom, I’m sure you’ll have lots
of really insightful things to say about it.”

My mother sat back in her chair,
preening slightly, my deficiencies temporarily forgotten. That was
Paige, always the peacemaker. I shot her a grateful look, and she
sent me an apologetic smile.

It was always like this, going home for
family dinner: Use the right fork, talk about inoffensive topics like
the weather and diets and the resurgence of pastels in spring skirts,
and always remember to duck before Mom hurls a cannonball of hurt
you.