Trust in Advertising (40 page)

“I have no idea. He never left a message. I’ll find out when I get there.” Lexi pushed herself up from the table and slipped the strap of her purse up and over her arm. “Wish me luck.”

“Good luck.” Hope fol owed her to the door and walked across the hal to her place. “Oh, and no making out in the elevator over there at Hunter. Tell Vincent to keep his lips to himself.” She snickered as she disappeared into her apartment.

“It’s not funny, Hope!” Lexi yelled at the closed door. She had to smile when she heard her friend’s muffled voice from behind the door.

“Yes it is!” The door opened a crack, revealing a smiling Hope. “You can either laugh or cry. You did all your crying yesterday. It’s time to move on to laughing. Go to work and call me when you get home.”

Lexi took a deep breath as she stepped into the elevator at the Barrington Building. The muffin she had eaten on her way into work was not sitting well.

When the door opened and she finally saw Leigh’s smiling face, she felt better.

“Lexi! How are you feeling?” Leigh came around her desk to give her a hug.

“Was it the flu or something? We missed you yesterday.”

“Thanks, I’m fine,” Lexi said softly as she avoided Leigh’s question and glanced over at the desk. “Does he have any messages this morning?”

Leigh made a face and shook her head. “Actually, he already got them. He came in early today, and I should warn you, he’s on the war path.”

“Fantastic.” Lexi’s shoulders slumped. “I better go see what crawled up his behind today.”

“Oh, that’s easy. Jade’s with him.”

Lexi froze in middle of the hall, now really wishing he had either left her a message or that she had picked up the phone when he had called. For all she 240

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knew, she could be walking into a hornet’s nest. “Jade’s back?” She tried to sound casual, but her pale complexion gave away her shock.

“Yeah, her broomstick landed early this morning. He must have picked her up at the airport and brought her here.”

“Wonderful. Well, off to my execution. It was nice knowing you, Leigh.”

“Wait. Something’s up. What’s going on with you and Jade?” Leigh eyed her suspiciously and waited, but when Lexi didn’t answer, she continued. “Well, whatever it is, I got my money on you.” She winked at Lexi, making her smile.

“I suggest a long flight of stairs with alligators waiting at the bottom. Just give her a little push. Oh, and make sure you get a good shot in for me, preferably in the face.”

“You’re so bad,” Lexi laughed as she walked down the hall, feeling much better than she had a few minutes ago.

“If you need your fists wrapped, I’m your corner girl!” Leigh called after her.

“I’m surrounded by crazy women.” Lexi laughed to herself as she rounded the corner, but what she found at her desk made her hiss. “Speaking of which …”

“Well, well, well, look who it is. Come here to moon over my boyfriend some more?”

Jade’s feet were propped up on the desk as she flipped through a stack of folders. She didn’t even flinch when Lexi stalked over and tugged the file out of her hand.

“Good morning, Jade. How was your trip?” Lexi tried to be polite, but was unable to unclench her jaw to speak to the woman.

“You didn’t answer my question. Here to ogle Vincent?” Jade sneered.

Screw polite
, Lexi thought. She just wanted her to go away. “Actually, I came here to work, Jade. That’s what most people do. We can’t all be jet-setting supermodels.” She waved her hand at the desk. “Do you mind?”

Jade rolled her eyes and swung her legs off the desk, but stayed in Lexi’s chair, her arms folded tightly across her surgically-enhanced chest. “As a matter of fact, I do.” She placed her hands flat on Lexi’s desk, her posture letting Lexi know things were about to get ugly. Her voice had a steel edge to it. “Let me tell you something. Vincent will never want you, so give it up. You can chase him all you want. I don’t even care. Just remember, I’m the one he comes home to, it’s my body he touches at night, and it’s my name he calls out when we’re making love, so don’t think for one single second that he’s even going to notice you exist, Lexi. You’re insignificant, at best.”

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Remaining stoic, Lexi took Jade’s insults in stride, feeling in a way that she deserved them. She
did
harbor romantic feelings for Vincent when he was already in a relationship, and she did kiss another woman’s boyfriend, even if that woman was the wretched Jade. Both of those sins alone made her deserving of this tongue lashing and more. She stood by and let Jade seethe in the chair a moment longer before attempting to respond.

“I’m not after Vincent.” Her voice was strong and steady.

Jade snorted in disbelief at Lexi’s blatant lie. She stood up and perched herself on the edge of the desk, looking down her nose at Lexi. “Yes, you are. Don’t lie to me and don’t play games. Much better women than you have thrown themselves at him, and he hasn’t given them a second glance. You don’t stand a chance.”

Something inside Lexi snapped. “If I really don’t stand a chance, then why all the posturing, Jade? You must be feeling at least a little threatened to be reading me the riot act like this.” Lexi’s calmness seemed to infuriate Jade even more.

She pushed off the desk and stood toe-to-toe with Lexi. “Just to be clear, I told Vincent everything that happened with Stone, and he’s not happy with the way things were handled. Not happy at all. And don’t think I’ve forgotten a single word that you said.”

“Well, neither have I. What exactly were you doing calling Julian? Do you often call Vincent’s clients trying to get a job? I thought people were knocking down your door trying to get you to model for them.”

“You need to stop talking now.” Jade’s eyes narrowed to slits as she glared at Lexi. “Who the hell do you think you are to talk to me this way?”

Lexi glanced at Vincent’s closed door, a flicker of self-doubt washing over her. She could hear him talking in a raised voice. Jade just snickered as his voice grew louder.

“Are you insane?” Vincent shouted. “No, that’s not acceptable. She’s been here a few weeks and you think she’s ready for that? Absolutely not. I won’t allow it.”

A thud sounded, as if something had slammed onto the desk.

“That promotion is not going to happen. That’s final.”

“Aww, too bad, Lexi.”

Lexi’s heart sank with every word as she realized she was the subject of the angry conversation. Jade seemed pleased as she walked over and poured herself a cup of coffee as Vincent continued his ranting.

“I know it was unprofessional. I’m dealing with it, I assure you.”

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“See, I told you he was pissed at you for trying to mess with my career,”

Jade said with a sneer.

Lexi desperately tried to hold herself together, but the emotionless tone that was creeping into Vincent’s voice nearly brought her to tears. Jade kept a close watch on her, probably watching for anything she could use to launch into her next attack.

“This conversation’s not over,” Vincent growled.

After the distinct sound of the phone slamming down onto the cradle, an eerie silence fell over the office. Vincent’s door flew open, and Lexi simply stood there and stared at him, unable to move.

“G-good morning, Vincent,” she stammered, trying to settle her pounding heart.

Vincent looked from Lexi to Jade and back again. “What’s going on out here?”

“Nothing, baby. Just a little girl talk.” Jade slithered over to Vincent and wrapped her arms around his waist, her eyes locked on Lexi. Vincent hardly acknowledged Jade was touching him.

“Well, I have a lot to catch up on.” Lexi tucked her purse in her drawer, sat down at her desk, and began taking inventory of the folders that had piled up, ignoring the couple wrapped in an embrace only three feet away.

“Jade, I need to talk to Lexi. Will you excuse us?”

The temperature dropped a few degrees as an icy chill settled on the room.

Jade unwrapped her arms from around Vincent, furious, but remaining in control. “So sorry if I’m in the way. I didn’t mean to inconvenience you and
Lexi
.” Her name hung in the air, and Jade’s unusual calm made the hairs on Lexi’s arm stand on end.

“Jade,” Vincent finally turned away from Lexi.

Throwing her hand into his face, Jade cut him off. “Save it, Vincent. You and your dear Lexi talk about whatever it is you need to discuss. I have a phone call I need to make. I need to talk to my agent.” On her way out of the room, Jade cast a dirty look in Lexi’s direction, letting her know she wasn’t finished.

Once Jade left, Lexi tried to keep it causal. “How’d the Walker meeting go yesterday?”

“He hired that buffoon, Reid. But you would’ve known that, had you answered your phone,” Vincent snapped.

“About that, I’m sor—”

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Vincent stepped closer and took the top file off her desk and began looking through it, dismissing her comment with a wave of his hand. “You were sick, whatever.” He started walking away, and Lexi thought the conversation was over, but she was mistaken. “My office, please.” Vincent paused outside the door, ushering her in.

Lexi’s heart flew up into her throat as she stood up and followed him, and her hands trembled as she clutched a pen and pad of paper. She had grabbed them at the last second hoping the conversation was going to be about work and not about what had happened between them at Anna’s.

“Have a seat.” The air rushed out of her lungs as soon as her butt hit the plush cushion of the seat. “We need to talk.”

If Vincent spoke in one more clipped sentence, Lexi was going to scream.

Annoyed, she snapped, “Fine,
Mr
. Drake, what do you need?”

“Cut the Mr. Drake crap,
Miss
White, unless you want to have this conversation as employer and employee. Of course, you know what tends to happen when my assistants piss me off. I thought we could talk as friends.”

Friends. The word stung as it spilled from his lips. Were they even really friends? Did friends torpedo a friend’s promotions? Did friends take out their anger out on each other? Did friends accuse one another? No, they trusted each other, and Lexi seriously questioned whether Vincent was even capable of trusting her at this point. Her mind kept replaying the snippets of his phone conversation in which he’d undermined her abilities, and in that moment she realized that she didn’t know if she could trust Vincent.

Never in her life had Lexi wanted to slap someone so badly. “So talk,
friend
.

You obviously have something to say.”

“Actually, I was hoping you could explain when you were going to tell me about your little phone call with Jade?”

If she wasn’t angry before, she was now. “I tried to tell you,
Vincent
. At your sister’s house, I said I had to talk to you about something, and you said if it was going to put you in a bad mood to wait. Obviously, I was right about the bad mood part, so I did what you asked and waited.”

“And you couldn’t tell me any of this before you ran out of there that night?

Do you have any idea the shit storm I walked into with Jade because of that?”

“Wait a minute, let me get this straight—did you
know
she was going to call Julian? Did you want her talking to him minutes before we walked in there to present to him? In your expert opinion, was that actually a good idea?”

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Vincent raked his hand through his hair and sank back into his chair. “I had no idea she had any contact with Stone at all. And yes, it was a horrible idea.

You and I both know that. But when my girlfriend calls a client in the middle of a presentation and you take the call and get in the middle of everything, telling her to take a hike … it wasn’t your place to interrupt that call.”

“It might not have been my place, but it was my job. And more importantly, it was the right thing to do.” Lexi crossed her arms and jutted her chin out defiantly.

“Jade’s fit to be tied.”

A muzzle sounds good to me
, Lexi thought to herself before responding to Vincent. “Gee, I hadn’t noticed. I thought all the nasty things she said to me out there were her way of saying hello.”

“Cut her some slack.” When Lexi rose to her feet in protest, he blurted,

“She thinks you and I are having an affair.”

“Cut her some slack? You’ve got to be kidding. She was wrong to call.

I don’t care what the reason, the timing sucked. And she most definitely is wrong about us having an af-aff,” Lexi paled, her fury replaced quickly with mortification. “Why does she think that? Wait. Y-you didn’t tell her about th-the …”

“About what?”

Her eyes slammed shut, unable to look him in the face as she said the words. “Did you tell her we kissed?”

A loud cough came from Vincent, and Lexi’s eyes flew open in time to see his shocked expression. “Are you kidding? I don’t have a death wish, and I doubt you do either. Besides, why would I tell her that? It was no big deal.”

And with those five little words, Lexi was crushed. The same kiss that she had described to Hope as the best in her life, he called no big deal. She had felt sparks between them while Vincent felt … nothing. Lexi cursed herself for even daring to think in her wildest dreams that the kiss might have meant something more to him.

She had to get out of the room and far away from him, so she stood up and began walking toward the door. Vincent opened his mouth to say something, but quickly shut it.

“Is there anything else? I think I’m all talked out,” Lexi said.

With a sigh, Vincent held a file out to her. “My mother needs a copy of this, including the PowerPoint.”

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“Okay.” When she reached out to take the file from his hand, he clutched it, refusing to let go until she finally met his gaze. “What now?” she sighed, emotionally exhausted.

“I’m sorry if I upset you.” His words were soft and gentle, his eyes apologetic.