“He’s hot,” Mitzi said as Tess came out of the stall.
“Who’s hot?” Tess straightened her jeans and cashmere turtleneck as she walked to the counter, wondering if the sweater’s oatmeal color was washing her out a bit. She used to be a blue-eyed blonde. In this light everything looked dishwatery, even her eyes.
She glanced over at Mitzi, startled to see the washroom attendant holding up a glossy of one of the male models from the stack Tess had left on the counter.
“That’s my work you’re going through,” Tess said.
“Of course.” Mitzi seemed confused. “That’s why you left it out, isn’t it? A lot of the creatives consult me on their ideas, and I assumed—What? You didn’t want me to look at the pictures?”
Tess felt as if she should be angry, but she didn’t have the energy. “I was in a hurry. I left it on the counter because it was awkward taking it into the stall.”
“I see. Well, if you don’t want my input, that’s strictly up to you.”
Mitzi was quiet for exactly two seconds. Tess counted. One one-thousand, two one-thousand.
“But if I were you—” Mitzi flapped the picture, a young stud in a black biker’s jacket and low-slung jeans, “I’d give this cutie a Faustini briefcase with fake dials and have him turn it on like it was a boom box. He could be walking down the street with it, bopping along, and suddenly there are a bunch of tall sexy women coming his way, and they surround him and make him dance with them.”
Tess cocked her head. The idea had some originality at least. “How did you know who the client was? Did you read my notes, too?”
“Well, sure, I thought that’s why you left the envelope. The slogan could go something like ‘Faustini makes you feel like dancing.’ You know, from the song? But, it’s up to you. If you don’t want my opinion, I’ll keep it to myself.”
The slogan wasn’t too bad, either, Tess allowed. Of course, she couldn’t steal Mitzi’s ideas. It wouldn’t be ethical, and she really couldn’t blame Mitzi for looking at the pictures. If Tess didn’t want people messing with her stuff, she shouldn’t be giving them the opportunity, which included the information on her PDA.
Meanwhile, Mitzi looked wounded, and Tess felt guilty.
“I really should hire you,” Tess said. “Your ideas make more sense than a photo shoot in an S&M club, which seems to be the way my team wants to go.”
“S&M? For Faustini?”
The voice came from one of the stalls. It was followed by the music of a flushing toilet, and then the door opened, and Danny Gabriel appeared.
The man had amazing timing. If eavesdropping were an Olympic event, he’d take the gold.
His hands lifted away from his fly, and the graceful movement drew Tess’s gaze directly there. Fortunately, he was already busy tucking his tuxedo-front white dress shirt into his pants and didn’t notice her gawking. He wore old-fashioned blue jeans, but the fit was killer. The waist was low and the legs were high, stovepipes that shot all the way to his crotch, creating a cupping effect.
She could almost imagine placing her hand there…and squeezing.
Good grief. She would need a lobotomy to remove the image from her brain.
Mitzi slipped off her stool, scurrying to turn on a faucet for him and get a towel ready. Tess moved away from the counter, making way for Mr. Hot Pants. It was clear who got the royal treatment around here.
Tess would have to be very sure not to bow and scrape. “Why didn’t you let somebody know you were in there?” she asked him.
He shook water droplets from his hands and took the paper towel Mitzi offered. “Is that a new rule?”
He glanced over his shoulder, as if expecting an answer. She’d forgotten what she said. The jeans worked from this angle too. The back pockets cupped the part of him that seemed to be the birthright of the male gender. A great tight smackable butt.
“I wasn’t serious about the S&M,” she told him quickly. She didn’t want that getting back to the client.
“I was. It’s a great idea.” He caught her reflection in the mirror.
She didn’t look away, but she wanted to. He was so fucking confrontational. She debated telling him it wasn’t his campaign to be serious about, but her covert mission was to teach Mr. Gabriel to play nice, so she held her fire. There would be plenty of opportunities to enlighten him.
In a calm, neutral voice, she said, “In my first meeting with Faustini’s head of North American operations, he told me that he didn’t want sex, drugs and rock and roll. He was very clear about Faustini’s parameters. No nudity, profanity, silver studs or whips.”
“Then you have to give them nudity, profanity, silver studs and whips because that’s exactly what they do want. They’ve just given you a glimpse of their libidinal desires. They’re telling you what’s forbidden to them—and down deep everybody wants what’s forbidden, including Faustini’s customers.”
“You’re telling me to try and convince Faustini that an S&M club should be their new image? Who should I suggest as their spokesmodel? Satan?”
His expression brightened. “Can you think of anybody better? However, I’d call him the Prince of Darkness. It’s more romantic.”
“Now we’re romanticizing Satan? Pratt-Summers already has a reputation of not being sensitive to the client’s needs,” she reminded him pointedly, “and it’s losing the agency business. Clients know they can go elsewhere and be heard. And given the cost of advertising these days, they want to be heard. Faustini has hired us to do a job. They’re our employer.”
“Exactly, they hired us to do our job. We don’t make leather goods. That’s their job, and we don’t try to tell them how to do it. They shouldn’t tell us how to do advertising.”
Tess was momentarily stymied. “Okay…but there’s a significant difference. We’re not buying their leather goods. They’re buying our ads, and they should get what they want.”
“What they need, yes. What they want? Never.”
Tess sighed. It was axiomatic that you couldn’t succeed in advertising by ignoring the client, and yet Danny Gabriel had been doing it very successfully for years. He probably would have gone on doing it had Erica Summers not decided to change the game plan. These days Erica was more interested in expansion than in awards and prestige. She wanted Pratt-Summers to have a global presence, and that meant they needed to attract more traditional clients, like financial institutions and insurance companies, the type who would be terrified of putting their image in the hands of Danny Gabriel.
The hands of Danny Gabriel.
He touched her ankle, innocently positioning it, and streamers of light shot up her thighs, straight to her—
Tess tried to block the image, but she’d had far too much personal experience with his hands. They’d burned sensory impressions into her brain that replayed at the slightest provocation, like now. She felt like a post-trau-matic stress victim.
She looked up to see him looking at her too, but not her hands. Her eyes. He was gazing into her washed-out eyes with abject interest.
“Did you know that women can have orgasms that last up to an hour?” he said, his voice dropping to an intimate whisper. “And they stop breathing for minutes at a time, like a deep-sea diver.”
Jesus, no wonder he reminded her of Wiley. That could have been straight out of her professor’s mouth.
“Well, thank you for sharing,” she said, trying to keep her