“I thought we hired you to handle social media?”
“No.” Her nose wrinkles. “You hired me – your brother hired me to help you handle your public relations efforts. We’re starting with branding. I need to get a grip on your brand and what you’re trying to do before I can fix anything.”
“Whoa, whoa, whoa.”
Fucking Dane.
“Dane said I needed help?”
“It was implied. Besides, I’m not sure why else one would hire a consultant if they weren’t in dire need of help. I’m not exactly cheap.”
“What needs fixed?”
“Several things apparently.”
I lift my receiver, speed dialing our Salt Lake City headquarters and placing the call on speaker. My brother’s assistant, Marlene, patches me through immediately.
“Dane speaking.”
“Dane, I’ve got our consultant here.” I don’t disguise my current state of displeasure. “You may know her as Sam.”
I peel my gaze from the black corporate phone and lock eyes with her, not eliciting so much as a single squirm from her.
“Hello, Dane.” There’s warmth in her voice though her face is blank. I refuse to release her gaze. “How are you this morning?”
“I’m well, Sam. Thank you. Yourself?” Dane asks.
“Lovely, thank you,” she says.
“I’m calling you today, Brother, because it seems there’s a bit of confusion as to what exactly our consultant’s going to be doing here at the New York branch.”
“What’s the confusion?” There’s an edge in his tone that tells me he doesn’t have time for this.
“Sam here says she was hired to help me fix our image,” I say. “I wasn’t aware that I needed help nor that anything was in need of fixing. I was under the impression that she was brought on to set up our social media.”
“I would’ve hired a college intern if that’s what we needed,” Dane scoffs. “Sam has a proven track-record of taking little-known start ups and growing them into superstars.”
“Little late on that aren’t we?” I release a haughty chuckle, grabbing a stress ball from next to my computer monitor. I’m not sure why I have it. Nothing about my life is remotely stressful. I toss it up in the air and catch it with a determined grip. “We haven’t been a little-known start up in quite some time.”
“True,” Dane says. “We’re big. But we can be bigger. It all starts with branding.”
“Right. Branding is my thing, and branding and public relations are two entirely different things.”
“Sam has experience with both. Didn’t you check out the link to her bio? I emailed you last week after I told you I’d hired her.”
“Anyway,” I say, my tone flat. “Just needed clarification, Dane. Appreciate it.”
I end the call.
“What now?” I ask.
Her mouth forms a smug smile and the flash in her eyes is a big, fat “told you so.”
“You need a better website, something modern and sleek yet approachable and user-friendly. What you have here is confusing.” She flips the screen of her tablet toward me. “Yellow and orange? No…just…no. Who designed this?”
A flaxen-haired Dutch exchange student a few years back who was desperate for my attention after a drunken hookup. She wanted me so bad; she did the entire thing for free.
“Yellow and orange are energetic colors. We’re an energy corporation.”
Odessa’s green eyes widen, and she blows a disapproving breath past her lips as she turns the screen back and types a million words a minute.
“What are you doing?”
“I’m emailing my web developer.” She pokes the screen with her fingertip. “There. Okay, so let’s hone and polish your brand, then once we have it where we want it, I’ll blast all media venues, put out press releases, create your social media accounts, draft up some posts for you to keep in your back pocket. My consulting fee includes one future crisis. If your company is ever under media fire, you contact me, and I’ll draft up a press release to put out the flames.”
I can see how a woman like her would be good at putting out fires. You can’t argue with her. Everything that comes out of her mouth functions like definitive proof that she’s a woman who’s rarely wrong about a thing.
Color me impressed, but I’ll never admit that to her. Or to my brother. He’s still on my shit list for not trusting me.
Odessa’s phone rings, and she slides it from her bag. “Devin, hi. How are you?”
She smiles. Ear to ear. She didn’t even smile that wide last night after a round of multiple orgasms when my tongue was buried deep inside her and my fingertips dug into the flesh of her inner thighs, pinning her to the bed.