Trust in Advertising (30 page)

“Thanks, like I don’t feel like enough of a jerk already.” He shook his head.

“Anyway, I wasn’t going to have one, but all of my friends talked me into it.

Mom and Dad took Anna to Los Angeles for the weekend to go shopping as her graduation gift, and I stayed behind. As soon as they left for the airport, people 175

Victoria Michaels

poured out of the woods around the house, beers in hand. By Sunday morning, the house was trashed. And do you know how many people stayed to help me clean it all up before my parents got home? None of them. They all emptied my parent’s liquor cabinet, screwed each other in their beds, and ate every piece of food in the house, but no one could be bothered to stay and help me scrub the vomit out of the carpet or pick up the empties that were strewn about the yard.”

“That’s terrible.” Lexi could see his jaw tense as he wallowed in the memory.

“They did that kind of thing all the time. They’d borrow my car, then return it with no gas and junk all over the floor, or a nice dent in it that they didn’t expect me to notice. Over the summer, when my grandfather got sick, my parents came down here a lot on the weekends to check on him. It was like they had radar, and as soon as my parents left for the airport, people just appeared at my house, ready to party.”

“I bet that got old fast,” Lexi commented, and Vincent nodded his head in agreement. “How did they even know when your parents were leaving?”

“Jennifer.”

“What a bitch.”

Vincent laughed and took the empty plate from her hand, tossing it into the trash. “My thoughts exactly when I walked in on her and my roommate lathering one another in the shower my freshman year at Stanford.”

Lexi choked on her water. “Oh God, what did you do?”

“I walked out of the room and knocked on every door I passed and told them two people were screwing in my bathroom. He and Jennifer were so occupied, it took a good five minutes before they even noticed they weren’t alone.” He glanced up at the clock then sat back down behind his desk and returned his attention to the papers in front of him as he prepared to get back to work. “High school was a totally artificial environment, nothing was genuine. It made college quite an eye opening experience in many ways. For example, I quickly found out that being the big fish in the Riverdale football pond was meaningless to college football scouts. They couldn’t have cared less about the snot-nosed kid from some no-name town. Stanford was a harsh introduction to reality for Mr.

Popular here.”

Lexi watched him busy himself to avoid making eye contact with her. She knew better than anyone that appearances could be deceiving, but she never thought that applied to Vincent Drake. The guy who had everything at his fingertips was just an illusion.

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In reality, he had been more like her than she ever could have imagined.

He too had been ready to close the door on that chapter of his life as soon as the valedictorian speech ended. She thought back to their brief encounter on graduation day, and for a fleeting moment, she wondered: if she had offered him her hand, would he have taken it and left with her?

As she looked at the man sitting behind the desk ten feet from her, she knew it didn’t matter. None of it was important now. It was like she said earlier—perspective was everything. And now she realized that popular and invisible were simply labels. They didn’t do anything to really describe the people who wore them. They told nothing about their heart or soul.

“Back to work. What have we come up with that we actually like?” Vincent had asked that question five times already, and each time they axed a few more ideas. They’d whittled it down to just two or three things, but none of them were
the
idea they needed to catch Julian Stone’s attention.

Lexi examined the scraps of paper that hung on the wall and tore them all down, shaking her head. “We need to go back to the beginning. Let’s start fresh. Forget the old campaign, put it out of your mind. It’s dead to us. What do we know about him?”

“He’s young, hip, good looking?” He turned to Lexi who nodded in agreement. “His stuff is edgy, mysterious, and classically rebellious.”

Lexi stopped jotting things down and mulled that over. “Explain classically rebellious to me.” She jumped to her feet and tapped her pen on her hip as she listened to the smooth sound of Vincent’s voice.

“Well, he’s pushing the envelope. His stuff is reminiscent of James Dean with a
Rebel Without a Cause
kind of vibe, but modernized, don’t you think?

The way he weaves old elements with new.”

Lexi abruptly stopped walking. “Old and new … weaving old with new!”

She ran over to his desk and wedged herself between his chair and his computer.

She quickly Googled James Dean and pulled up a few classic pictures of him from the fifties. “Keep talking.” Lexi turned the screen so he would have a clear view.

“I don’t know. I’m not a fashion guy.”

Lexi rolled her eyes. Her fingers flew over the keyboard, and she continued to surf the net until a coy smile danced across her face. Music began pouring out of the computer speakers.

“What the hell is that?” Vincent asked.

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Lexi pressed her slender finger to her lips, which curved up into a triumphant smile. Impatiently, Vincent listened to the song. He had never heard it before, but could pick up a familiar melody running behind the lyrics. He furrowed his brow and asked, “Is that the melody to …”

“It’s a classic song, with a new edge to it.” Lexi nodded her head. “This was all over the radio eighteen months ago.” She quickly pulled up four more songs in which the artists took the hook or the melody from a classic song and put their own twist on it. A light bulb went off in Vincent’s head.

“Weaving old and new.” Vincent was on his feet, running his hand through his hair as he stared out his window at the illuminated San Francisco skyline. “I can see the campaign. We use classic songs—Beatles and the Rolling Stones, of course,” he turned and winked at Lexi, “in the background for the music. We can even do album covers plastered all over the backdrop of the photo shoot.”

Vincent’s voice was excited, confident as he came to stand beside Lexi, who had moved into his desk chair and curled her legs underneath her as she listened, quickly taking notes.

“What if we took it further?” Lexi suggested. Vincent stopped walking and waited for her to continue. “Somehow spin the line and say that it’s so classically modern that his pieces can be mixed and matched with those timeless pieces from your wardrobe—like the white T-shirt, the jeans, the leather jackets, the little black dresses—to make something old new again, just like these songs.”

Vincent ran his palm along his stubbled jaw, thinking. Lexi watched as his head slowly started to bob up and down until he was nodding in agreement.

“It’s a risk, though, having us suggest that the public doesn’t need to buy a whole Julian Stone outfit. His people might not like it.”

“How many people do we see walking the streets looking like they are a head-to-toe ad for Chanel or Gucci? It looks lame, like they’re trying too hard. One piece of Julian Stone clothing mixed with something from your own wardrobe says knowledge of fashion. Wear the clothes; don’t let the clothes wear you.”

“I know what you’re saying, but I think we’ll still catch flack from his reps.”

Lexi stood up and stretched her arms over her head, trying to unknot the muscles of her back and shoulders. “Then we just have to make it so damn good that Julian falls in love with it and tells his people to go take a hike if they don’t like it.” As she extended her arms, her shirt crept up, and she felt a cool breeze as a tiny sliver of her abdomen was exposed.

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She glanced over at Vincent to see him with a dazed, far away expression.

“Vincent? Did you hear what I said?”

“No, sorry. I was thinking about something else.”

Lexi’s face dropped. “I was just trying to help. If my idea was off base, I apologize. You’re the VP, I’ll be quiet.”

Vincent went over to the desk and placed his palms in the center of it, leaning across the surface until his face was inches from hers. “You know that you’re utterly ridiculous, right? Your idea was great. I love the spin. Yes, it will be a little bit tougher to sell, but I can do it.” He paused, his eyes darkening and becoming more intense as he stared at her. “You are an amazing woman, Alexandra White. Don’t ever let anyone tell you differently. Not even me.” His lips slowly curled up into a teasing smile.

They spent the next three hours outlining the proposal and framing the mockup of the ads. Shortly after midnight, they moved down to the productions room to construct the layouts for the large presentation boards. Vincent blasted classic Beatles and Rolling Stones tunes through the workstation for inspiration, but Lexi knew it was also to keep them awake as the night drew on.

A few hours later, Lexi salvaged what she could of the original PowerPoint presentation and made the necessary changes while Vincent worked on the presentation boards and materials at the drafting table. He was also sending E-mails in an effort to get permission to use the album covers, not only in the presentation, but also for the potential campaign. He meticulously organized the graphics packet, making sure it portrayed the same classically rebellious vibe they were going for with the presentation. He glanced over at Lexi when he heard her singing along to the song that was playing. Her head bobbed in beat with the music, her ponytail whipping from side to side in a playful way. As he waited for the packet to be finished, he strode over to the computer to check on her.

Lexi was cutting and pasting the new bullet points into the presentation when she felt him lean over her shoulder, his hand resting on the desk beside the keyboard as he peeked over her shoulder to see the screen.

“You missed the ‘s’ here.” His arm reached around her, his much larger body surrounding hers for a second. She was tired and wanted to lean her head back against his chest and settle into the warmth of his arms. Sleep deprivation only fueled her already overactive imagination. She stifled a yawn with the back of her hand and made the correction. His body shook with a deep rumble of laughter behind her.

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“Sleepy?”

Lexi scowled. “I’m fine. Did you get the approval for the covers?”

He confidently shrugged his shoulders. “Of course. I told you I knew a guy.”

Too tired to argue, Lexi held up her hand to stop him. “Good enough for me.” She pulled the flash drive out of the computer and wearily made it to her feet. “I’m going back upstairs to pull in the new demographics package. I need the projection numbers and cost analysis, but it’s on my laptop. If you need me, that’s where I’ll be.” Lexi’s eyes closed for a second as she took a few steps forward and crashed into something hard. She felt Vincent’s arms wrap around her to keep her from falling.

“I think I better go with you so you don’t end up wandering around on the wrong floor.” He laced his fingers with hers and guided her toward the elevator.

“Come on, honey, let’s get some coffee in you.”

She caught snippets of what he said, but she wasn’t really listening. There was a playful twinkle in his eyes as he held her, a look that she adored and rarely got to see anymore. Lexi knew she was half out of her mind from lack of sleep, but her body was begging to touch him, to get closer, to feel every inch of him.

She fought the urge to gently place her lips to the exposed skin of his chest and feather kisses up his neck. Delirium must have set in, because she could have sworn she heard him call her “honey.”

She followed him down the hall, her eyes remaining focused on their interlocked hands. When she felt the pad of his thumb gently brush back and forth over her hand, but her pulse soared and her temperature rose with each pass of his finger. He tugged at her hand, pulling her into the tiny elevator with him.

“What time is it?” Lexi grabbed Vincent’s wrist and wrenched his arm so she could read his watch. “Holy crap, three thirty a.m. already?” She quickly checked her reflection in the mirrored walls of the elevator. “Great, my hair looks like a shrub.”

Vincent smoothed out a few of the stray strands. “There, perfect.”

“Thanks.” Her eyes pulled away from his and lifted up to watch the illuminated floor numbers on the elevator.

The large doors slid open and the couple slowly sauntered past Leigh’s empty desk. It was odd to be in the office and have the hallways quiet and free of the normal hustle and bustle of Hunter Advertising. No ringing phones, no beeping intercoms, no laughter, just the quiet padding of their feet on the carpet.

“Why don’t you go home, Lexi. You look exhausted.”

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She shrugged. “I can’t. I don’t have my car. Hope gave me a ride here this morning and was going to pick me up.”

“I can give you a ride,” Vincent offered. “It’s the least I can do considering how much you helped me tonight.”

“When you’re ready to go home for the night, I’ll take you up on that, but I can wait.”

Vincent looked at the clock and shrugged. “Actually, I was just planning on crashing here. By the time I get home and get to bed, it’ll just be time to wake up, so why bother? I can run you home. It’s no problem.”

Lexi leaned back in her desk chair and waved a dismissive hand at him.

“Don’t worry about it. I’m fine. There’s still plenty of work to do. How about that coffee you promised?”

Grinning, Vincent went straight to the coffee machine and poured two cups, then handed the one with cream and sugar to an exhausted Lexi. “Here, drink this. It should help.”

Lexi held the mug tightly in her hands, allowing the warmth of the coffee to spread through her body. The air conditioning of the office put a chill in the air at that hour of the morning. Vincent led Lexi into his office where her laptop was still lying on his couch. While she merged the files, Vincent found his suit jacket and draped it over her shoulders to help keep her warm.