Macarons at Midnight (4 page)

H
E
’
D
ONLY
been at his desk a few minutes when his extension rang. Tristan picked it up, ready to grit his teeth and be polite despite how little whomever was on the other end deserved it.

“Tristan Green,” he said briskly into the receiver.
Happy bloody Monday
,
he thought to himself.
Wait for it….

“Tristan, this is Shatara Lewis, I’m the head of women’s fragrance and cosmetics.”

“Yes.” Tristan wracked his brain trying to remember a Shatara. He hadn’t had much contact with her department. So far most of his work had been on athletic wear accounts.

“I requested you for my new team. I’ve seen some of your layouts. I think your aesthetic is perfect for this account. I need to land this and I think you can help me.”

New team?
Tristan had been dying for something new to do. He couldn’t say yes fast enough. “That sounds great. What do you need me to do?”

“Aren’t you going to ask what the account is?”

“Fragrance or cosmetics, I’d imagine? I’m really quite up for a change, no matter what.”

Shatara chuckled. “I like listening to you talk,” she said. “Be in the third floor conference room at ten.”

Tristan grinned. “I’ll be there.”

T
RISTAN
COULDN
’
T
lie; he was a little nervous when he walked into that conference room at ten, and he didn’t know why. Maybe it was the new department, or maybe it was because he’d been handpicked because Shatara liked his work, and that hadn’t turned out so well for him socially in the past, at least in the New York office. Still, he had a notebook and a pencil, his laptop, and a head full of already-forming ideas.

Until he saw Jordan, who sat like a right posh twat, prim, entitled smile in place as always. There was another woman there whom Tristan had never seen before. She seemed nice enough, but so did everyone in his department until he found out they all hated him for “stealing” the position that should’ve gone to one of them. Still, he smiled. Hopefully, if she was picking allies, she’d pick him over Jordan.
Fucking hell
. Jordan. Every time Tristan so much as thought the name “Jordan,” he threw up a little in his mouth.

“Jolly!”

Tristan gritted his teeth. “Jordan,” he answered. Puke. In his mouth. Tristan forced a smile past his irritation, and he put his hand out to the other woman at the table. “Hi. I’m Tristan.”

“I’m Wendy,” she said. Her returning smile looked at least somewhat genuine. Tristan was getting much better at figuring out who was out for his blood. It was always best to assume the answer was “everybody.”

They sat there in the clean, modern conference room with framed prints of the department’s biggest coups, ad wise, and not much else in the way of distractions. After Tristan had looked at some Nike warm-ups, a wristwatch, and some really posh shoes for about thirty seconds each, there wasn’t any excuse not to turn his eyes back to Wendy and Jordan. Wendy smiled nervously again. Tristan started to think she might be all right. Jordan smiled his smarmy grin as well. And they sat. And sat.

Until ten minutes later, Shatara bustled in. She was tall and elegant, with very dark skin, a very pretty face, and very,
very
expensively dressed. She was one of the ones to impress. Tristan knew it was not a good idea to make a cock-up of things in front of her.

“Morning. I assume you’ve all made introductions? I’m Shatara,” she added, as though any of them needed to be reminded of that fact. “I wanted to bring each of you into this team for specific reasons. Jordan, your ad copy has been on point lately. I’ve been enjoying it, and I think it’ll work for our target. Wendy, I liked your creative vision on the Guess campaign. We’re going for a similar market here. Tristan, I want your layouts.”

She passed out thick folders to everyone at the table. “I think, between the four of us, we can land this account.” Shatara clicked a slide to open on the slide projector. A young girl’s face filled up the screen. “Charity Parker. She’s developed a new fragrance called Shooting Star to be sold worldwide in boutiques, department stores, Sephora, Ulta, and even drug stores. Everywhere you can buy a fragrance, Charity Parker’s face will be all over the shelves. Our job is to sell it. Or at least sell her team on the fact that we
can
sell it.”

Tristan was vaguely aware of Charity Parker. She was an American pop star, might have had a show on the telly before she blew up everywhere. It wasn’t really his cup of tea, the kind of music she sang, but he knew her face: blonde, sweet, generically pretty, a little bratty.
Well, there’s the model done already.
At least, if they got the campaign, they wouldn’t have the massive problem of finding a suitable recognizable celebrity to endorse the stuff and paying out the nose for them.

Shatara passed out bottles of the fragrance. It was pink, which seemed par for the course as far as youth fragrances went, and the bottle was suitably blinged up and shimmery for the same teen market. He opened it up to take a whiff, and managed to spray a big squirt of it right in his mouth straight away. Blooming shocker, that was. Tristan tried to get rid of it discreetly. He noticed Wendy smiling, but her smile looked more commiserating. Like she was laughing with him, not at him. Jordan, of course, was a different story.

“You like the pretty perfume, Jolly?” Jordan chuckled. “Seems like it would be right up your alley, you know, with your….” Jordan flapped at his wrist. Tristan was so shocked, he couldn’t even speak. In front of a
boss
?

“Excuse me?” Shatara said sharply.

Jordan looked up, eyes wide with surprise. Apparently, he’d momentarily forgotten Shatara was in the room when he’d opened his mouth and acted like a complete cock, as per usual.

Shatara, whom Tristan had already come to like quite a bit over the course of the morning so far, gave Jordan a pensive look. “I thought you were going to work well on this team, but I believe I was wrong,” she murmured. Shatara never raised her voice; Tristan already knew that wasn’t her style. She didn’t have to. “Team members of mine don’t demean each other, in public or otherwise. For
any
reason.” Which, of course, was completely unrealistic for her to believe, but if she wanted to enforce that ruse in her presence, at least, Tristan was all for it.

Jordan looked taken aback for another moment, then schooled his face into a pleasant smile. “I apologize. Maybe it was just a rough start to the first meeting.” It was the nicest Tristan had ever heard him sound.

“No. I think I’m going to find someone else who will be a better fit with this account and this team. You can go, Jordan. Thank you. Perhaps another time.”

Holy shit, that was fast.
Tristan looked down at the table. He didn’t want to make eye contact with Jordan and sure as bleeding hell didn’t want to smile. It wouldn’t do him any good to look smug, and smug was exactly the way he felt at the moment. He trained his face to be still until the swish of the conference room’s glass door signaled Jordan’s departure. He was sure to catch hell for it later, but at the moment, the victory felt sound.

“I’ll work on finding him a replacement, but for now, why don’t you take the dossiers home with you tonight and look through them. We’ll try this again tomorrow.”

Tristan and Wendy stood, took their thick files from Shatara, and made hasty exits.

J
ORDAN
WAS
sat at Tristan’s desk when he returned to his floor of the building. He had his feet propped up, crossed at the ankle, and he was munching on… wait. What the hell? He was eating Tristan’s lunch.

“That’s mine. Are you insane? Like an actual crazy person?” Tristan swatted at Jordan’s shiny loafers. It was the first time he’d really lost his cool in front of the others. He felt their stares.

“It looked tasty, and I was hungry. Seeing as though you got me kicked off of the Venus Glow team, I figured you owe me.”

“I—” Tristan sputtered, unsure of how to even defend himself. He couldn’t very well say Jordan had gotten himself kicked off the team for acting like a jackass in front of Shatara. He gritted his teeth. At the rate he was going, he was going to need new ones by the time he moved back home. “Please get out of my chair. I have work to do, and you’ve no reason to stay here.”

“Yes, Princess Jolly.”

Tristan sighed.
It just keeps getting better, doesn’t it?

“H
ENRY
, I’
M
going to need that batch of black-and-white cookies. Are they done?” Millie called from the front. Henry had just finished them, the final batch of cookies for the day. He jogged out front with the tray and slid them into his display case.

“It’s only eight in the morning. How can the cookies already be gone?” he asked breathlessly.

Millie shrugged. “I guess word got around that they were the best in the neighborhood. It’s mostly been kids coming on their way to school.”

Just as she spoke, another gaggle of girls spilled in through the front door of Henry’s shop. “I can’t believe school started already,” he muttered. “Here. I’ll help these guys if you want to finish arranging the tray.” They gave each other breaks from the front room on days when it was busy. Sometimes it got a little intense.

“Okay, I will. You need to hire someone, H. We’ve talked about this.”

“I know.” Henry sighed. He really did need to hire someone. Millie was right. He’d just gotten so lucky with her and didn’t know where else he was going to find someone that amazing again.

The girls had all crowded around his display cases, plaid skirts, blazers and ridiculously expensive handbags all squished together in a giggly, long-haired, scented, high-end pile.

“How can I help you ladies?” He put on his best smile, the one that got customers to buy more than they’d come in for.

“Four black-and-white cookies,” one of them said. She was tall, with long blonde hair and a huge smile.

“I recognize those uniforms,” Henry said. “Hunter Academy, right? You’re a long way from school.”

“We heard your cookies are the best. How did you know that’s where we go?”

“I went there too. My family lives… uptown.” He didn’t want to give more details than necessary. Turned out he shouldn’t have bothered.

“You’re Henry Livingston, aren’t you?” the blonde asked. “My older sister used to date your sister Trixie’s ex-boyfriend Chet.”

Henry decided he was never talking to anyone ever again. Chet was not his favorite person. It had been a few years since he’d seen or heard of him. Not long enough.

“He’s a douche,” one of the other girls added.

Henry sputtered out a laugh. “Here are your black-and-whites. How ’bout four sugar cookies on the house for having great taste.”

Blondie gave him a wink. Clearly she hadn’t heard
everything
about him. “Thanks. We’ll be back. And I’ll be sure to spread the word about the best cookies in Manhattan.”

F
IVE
HOURS
later, Henry’s shelves were nearly empty—a big change from when he’d first opened a year before and had had nearly a shop’s worth of leftovers every day for a month. He was sweaty and tired, but happy tired, the kind where he’d worked hard and everything had gone well. Millie had been bustling back and forth, filling the display for their afternoon customers. Their crowds usually came in waves, one in the morning, then lunch, and a last little surge around four before they closed at five. Millie usually handled that one on her own, and closed the shop down since Henry usually got there somewhere around four in the morning to start baking.

“How are you doing on the dough?” Millie asked.

“Great. I have most of it mixed up and ready to bake off in the morning. I can’t believe I’m actually ahead of things for once.” He hadn’t been ready for how much
work
it would be. Baking was very different in pastry class than when he was running his own shop, small as it was.

“Sweet. Why don’t you take off a little early? It’s going to be quiet in here for the rest of the afternoon, anyway. I think the lunch crowd is pretty much over.”

“You okay with that?”

“It’s why you’re paying me the big bucks.” Millie smiled at him. Tease or not, they both knew she didn’t want to work anywhere else. She just wanted some help. Henry vowed to get on that as soon as possible.

Henry trudged to the back room and grabbed his messenger bag. Leaving early. That was something completely new for him. He’d just made it out to the front of the shop and was about to say good-bye to Millie, when the door flew open and his sister blew in on her usual burst of perfume, scarves, and the clip of expensive shoes. This time, she wasn’t alone.

“Hey, Trix.” Henry glanced warily at the heavily coiffed, expensive-looking woman behind her. She had dark hair and pale eyes, plastered-on jeans that looked like they were tailored exclusively for her, riding boots even Henry had to admit were beautiful, a flowered blouse, tweed jacket, and a handbag worth more than all his baking equipment combined. This  was definitely Trixie’s kind of friend.