STEP BY STEP (15 page)

“Roan and Berry,” I said.

“You’ve got to be fucking
kidding me,” he seethed through his clenched teeth.

“What?” I asked, wondering
why he was so upset by that.

“Fucking Carter Berry,” he
said with an incredulous laugh. “Well played, Carter.”

“I’m confused. I don’t get
it,” I said.

“We went to school together,”
he said. “Duke. We were roommates. Same major. Went our separate ways after
college and he set up shop the same year I bought
Halston’s
firm.”

“Okay, there are lots of
advertising agencies in the city,” I said with a shrug. “What’s the big deal?”

“He’s made it his personal
mission to take me and my firm down,” he said. “He’ll do whatever it takes.”

“Listen, listen,” I said,
trying to calm him down as I placed my hand over his. “I won’t let that happen.
You need to trust me, Preston.”

He nodded, knowing he wasn’t
going to win that battle with me.

“No one can take you down,” I
said, squeezing his hand. “You’re Preston freaking
Woodfield
.
Do you even know who you are?”

He laughed.

“Seriously, you’re worrying
about nothing,” I assured him. “My loyalty will always be to you. This is just
a job. Nothing more.”

I strutted into the lower
Manhattan skyscraper that housed Roan and Berry’s advertising firm bright and
early that first Monday in June. My heart raced and my palms moistened, but I
knew I had this. I’d proven myself at
Woodfield
and
Halston
, and I was dead set on proving myself at Roan and
Berry.

“Hello,” I said with a smile
to the raven-haired receptionist on the main floor. “Mirabelle Baker. Reporting
for my first day of work.”

Her eyes scanned a sheet of
paper on her desk until they landed on my name. “You’re to report to Mr. Berry.
Fifteenth floor, office three seventeen.”

I clutched onto my Burberry
bag and trekked towards the elevator bay, heels clicking lightly on the marble
tiles. I rode to the fifteenth floor and found Mr. Berry’s office within
seconds.

“Mirabelle!” he said,
excitedly. We’d only met once before, when I’d interviewed before I left town
back in May. The interview went well and he’d offered me the job the very next
day, which I chalked up to the fact that I’d successfully interned for Preston
Woodfield
. “How are you? Come in. Have a seat.”

I took a seat across from Mr.
Berry and gracefully crossed my legs.

“So you ready to hit the
ground running?” he asked, enthusiastic smile across his face. His teeth were
big and white and almost horse-like. “I know we’re all excited to have you on
board.”

“I am,” I said. “Very
excited. And ready.”

My nerves were starting to
show a bit, so I took a deep breath and tried to regroup mentally.

“We’ve got a staff meeting
here in about fifteen minutes,” he said, standing up from his seat and
motioning towards the door. He was a rather tall man, slender. He dressed much
more casually than Preston usually did, opting to wear khaki pants, boat shoes,
and a navy blazer. He already seemed like a breath of fresh air compared to Preston,
at least as a boss. “Why don’t you come along with
me.
Do you need anything? Water? Coffee? Pastries?”

“I’m good, thank you,” I said
as I walked with him down the hall.

“Here we are,” he said a
short minute later as he pointed towards a conference room door. “I’m going to
let you get situated, but I’ll be in here in a while. The meeting doesn’t start
for a bit, but feel free to get comfortable. You can sit anywhere you want.”

“Thank you,” I said with a
nod as I headed inside.

The conference room was vast,
and every noise was magnified as I sat my things down and got comfortable.
There must have been at least thirty or forty chairs at the mile-long table,
but the floor to ceiling windows provided gorgeous city views. If I looked hard
enough, I could see Preston’s building from there.

I smiled as I thought of Preston.
He’d picked me up from the airport the previous Friday and helped me get
settled in my apartment. I’d opted to rent a furnished studio, since moving to
Manhattan was
super
expensive. Preston offered to buy
me some furniture, but I refused. I never wanted to feel like I owed him
anything.

The sound of two men chatting
outside the conference room began to echo and trail my way, and I couldn’t help
but listen in.

“Yeah, that new girl is
starting today,” one guy said. “Mirabelle something?”

“Never heard of her,” the
other man said.

“Rumor has it she was poached
from
Woodfield
,” the first guy said. “He was grooming
her to be his #2 and Berry swooped in and offered her a gig here.”

“That’s freaking awesome,”
the second man said. “Serves
Woodfield
right.”

“Yeah,
Woodfield’s
a fucking dick,” the first man said.

“But, shit, you’d work for
him in a heartbeat if he asked you,” the second man said with a laugh.

“True.”

They both laughed.

“If this girl’s as good as
they say, we could easily pass up
Woodfield’s
firm in
rank by the end of the year,” he said. “Maybe steal a few clients of theirs?
That Johnston account was pretty lucrative I heard, and she did all the
footwork.”

I’d heard enough. Preston was
right. Carter Berry knew exactly what he was doing when he hired me. I wanted
to throw up. I wanted to quit and run out
of
there and
go straight to Preston, but before I could react, the room began to fill with
my new colleagues.

Their faces were foreign and
cold and not one single person offered me a smile or even so much as said
hello.

“Hurry up everyone,” Carter
said as he entered in through a different door. “Settle in. We’ve got work to
do.”

As various men and women took
their seats and whipped out their pens and notebooks, Carter flashed a kind
smile my ways. Out of everyone, he was the nicest to me, and yet he was nothing
more than a traitor with ulterior motives.

“Everyone, this is Mirabelle Baker,”
he said. “Our new senior account manager.”

“Welcome, Mirabelle,” the
group said in a collective, forced drone.

I smiled and gave a small
wave as I looked around. I didn’t know what was getting into me. Normally I was
headstrong, confident, and self-assured, but all of a sudden, I felt like I
didn’t know a damn thing about anything anymore.

I locked up my desk at
exactly five o’clock and bolted out the door. I had to see Preston, and I knew
exactly where he was. As I headed towards his building and rode the elevator to
the sixth floor, my feet couldn’t carry me fast enough.

“Preston,” I said as I
knocked on his door and barged in.

He spun around in his chair,
pleasantly surprised to see me. “Hey, there.”

He stood up, walking over to
meet me halfway and wrapped his hands around my curvy waist, leaning down to
kiss me.

“How was your first day?” he
asked. His face was winced as if he didn’t really want to hear the truth.

“I owe you an apology,” I
said, drawing in a slow breath. “You were right.”

“Right about…?”

“Carter Berry,” I said,
shaking my head. “I overheard some guys talking at work today about how he poached
me from you. They were saying how they want to steal some of your clients and
outrank you and…”

I stopped there. He didn’t
need to hear the rest.

Preston sat back on the edge
of his desk and raked his fingers through his dark hair, saying nothing.

“Talk to me,” I begged.
“You’re going to be okay right? We’re going to be okay?”

He stayed mum, and I reached
over to grab his hair. “I’m going to quit. I’m going to march straight into
Berry’s office first thing tomorrow morning and quit.”

He pursed his lips together
and nodded, as if my plan had his stamp of approval, but he still seemed too
shocked to say anything.

“I’m sorry I didn’t believe
you,” I said, half-whispering as I closed in on his face and kissed his lips.
“I should’ve listened to you. I thought you were just being insecure or
paranoid or something.”

I kissed him some more and
buried my face in the crook of his neck, breathing him in.
I
could bathe in his cologne
,
he was so delicious
.

“I always had a hunch,” he
said. “And I always sort of knew. But I never had any definitive proof.”

“Well, know you know for
sure,” I said. “Carter Berry’s an evil douche, and there’s no way in hell I’m
going to work for someone like that.”

***

Bright and early the
following morning, I did exactly what I’d promised Preston. I marched straight
into Carter Berry’s office, slammed the door behind me, and approached his
desk.

“Mirabelle,” he said,
startled with a half-smile. “Not having a good morning?”

“Nope,” I said, one hand on
my hip. “Not at all. I quit.”

I expected some sort of
reaction from him. I expected him to beg me not to quit, to offer me more
money, or talk me out of it. I didn’t expect him to laugh as if it were the
funniest thing he’d ever seen in his entire life.

“Oh, Mirabelle,” he said,
chuckling. “You’re cute. You’re really cute.”

I wrinkled my nose.

“You signed a contract,
darling,” he said. “One year with a non-compete clause. I’m afraid I can’t let
you out of it.”

My mouth turned
dry
as sand and I wanted to punch his smug little face. Then
I wanted to kick myself for not reading the HR paperwork more carefully. I knew
they’d mentioned a contract, but I just thought it was a standard thing that
everyone signed. I didn’t know I was signing my life away…or at least the next
year of it.

“Now,” he said. “Your boss is
waiting for you.”

“My boss?” I asked. “I
thought I reported to you?”

He smiled. “No, you report to
the VP of Acquisitions, Sapphire Hart.”

“Sapphire Hart,” I said,
feeling like I’d just been sucker punched in the gut.

“Yes,” he said. “She highly
recommended you for this position. Actually you should thank her for getting
you on here. It was her recommendations that sealed your fate.”

Again, I wanted to punch him.
I wanted to scream and yell nothing but a slew of horrible profanities at him.
But instead I smiled, graciously, and composed myself. “And where might I find
this Sapphire Hart’s office?”

“Straight down the hall,” he
said. “Last door on the right.”

I marched out of his office,
head held high, and headed towards Sapphire’s office. I knew exactly what this
was about. That envious bitch wanted not only to destroy my happiness, but he
wanted to destroy Preston’s career. And she could do it in one fell swoop, or
at least that was her plan. I promised myself right then and there to do whatever
it took to see to it her master plan failed miserably.

“What’s this about,” I said
as I stood in her doorway, one hand on my hip.

“Mirabelle,” she said with a
fakest smile I’d ever seen on a human being before. “So nice to see you. Sorry
I missed your first day yesterday. I was traveling for work.”

“I’m onto you,” I said, my
tone sharp and callous at the same time. “Don’t think I don’t know what you’re
up to.”

She smiled and leaned back,
her short hair coifed perfectly and her brows arching as she looked me over.
“Don’t try to outsmart me. You’ll never win.”

“So what’s your plan, Sapphire,”
I said. “You want to drive a wedge between me and Preston? You want to destroy
his career? What?”

“What’s it to you?” she said
with an evil laugh.

“You had a chance to be with
him,” I said, keeping my voice down. “It’s not his fault or my fault that you
did what you did.”

“He could’ve taken me back,”
she said, twirling the pencil in her hand as she locked eyes with me. “He can
still have me anytime he wants. He knows that.”

“That’ll be a cold day in
hell,” I said, spinning on my heel to walk out.

“Where do you think you’re
going?” she called after me as she stood up at her desk. “Get back here.”

“Please speak to me in a
professional tone,” I said to her as I turned around. “I’m your colleague. Not
your ex boyfriend’s girlfriend.”

“I’m your boss,” she said,
countering me. “Watch the way you speak to me,
please
.”