The glass door clicked open, and she turned, steeling herself.
She clutched the edge of the dark oak table, her knuckles turning white at her grip. Her heartbeat notched up, sick fear lodging into her throat.
The man who walked in was not Vincent Gray. She mustered a smile as he introduced himself as Daniel Adams.
Her jaw slackened, a rush of gratitude and something else, something she didn’t even want to acknowledge rose up inside her. For a few interminable seconds, she just stood there, as he settled into the last chair in the center of the group.
“I thought we would be pitching to Mr. Gray.”
The newcomer spoke up. “Mr. Gray resigned recently. Do you want to begin, Ms. Stanton?”
Nodding absently, Olivia turned sideways and looked at her presentation. For a horrifying minute, the screen looked jumbled. She took a deep breath and focused on how much she had overcome to be here.
Shutting out everything else, she began highlighting their campaign. Within minutes, she found her stride, excitement a huge ball in her stomach. She was halfway through when she was interrupted.
“We’re launching a sportswear line, products to be used by men and women interested in outdoor activities, and your primary campaign tool is Twitter. Does anyone else see the problem here?”
Olivia could feel the color flushing into her face. “Yes, but—”
“We’re not just launching a new sportswear line,” Daniel said. “We want people to think of our clothes, our gear, as synonymous of a new lifestyle. So the campaign for it should spur people into action, into living their life instead of talking about it on their computers.”
Olivia smiled, excitement thrumming in her veins. It was exactly what her campaign was designed to do. “And to do that you have to use social media,” she piped in, clicking through to the next slide. “What our agency is proposing is a twenty-first century treasure hunt, sort of a Twitter driven Amazing Race. We’ll have the usual advertising through television and billboards, but you’ll lose a big chunk of your audience if you neglect social media. We start in a city like New York, feed clues online for a treasure hunt in a National park, for the prizes—the new gear you’re selling, hidden all over the city. Soon LifeStyle Inc. will be on the mouth of every teenager, every woman or man who has ever been on a social media site.”
She didn’t give them a break. She continued talking through the campaign, gaining more and more confidence with the intelligent questions thrown her way. By the end of the allotted two hours, she felt as though she had run a marathon herself. She handed the folders that detailed the campaign to all the members. A couple of the men congratulated her on their way out on the innovativeness of the campaign. Her mouth dry, she shook Daniel’s hand and answered some more questions.
“You’re the last agency on our shortlist, Ms. Stanton. I’m confident enough in my board to say your campaign provides exactly the kind of exposure we want. Congratulations. We will contact your agency with our final decision in a few days.”
Olivia held her tears back through sheer will until the room emptied. She had done it. She had found something she was good at, achieved something through her own talent.
She tugged her laptop bag onto her shoulder, dying to get back to the office and give Nate all the details. She was going to celebrate her achievement tonight, she wasn’t going to let one man ruin it.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
ALEX BROUGHT HIS BMW to a smooth halt and killed the engine. The neighborhood had started giving into grunge a few blocks back. A slow burn of anger rose through him with each graffitied house and run-down apartment complex he passed.
He’d known Olivia was broke, he’d read Carlos’s report that she lived in a run-down neighborhood along the outer fringes of Manhattan. But it hadn’t prepared him for the sight of it. Her little studio was on the fourth floor of an apartment building whose best feature was that it looked clean.
It felt as if a hammer was pounding incessantly behind his eyes. He had just flown back from Abu Dhabi after a week of nonstop meetings.
His eyes felt like sand was coated into them, he hadn’t had a decent night’s sleep in he didn’t know how long. If he thought about this using his head, as he was known to do, he shouldn’t be here. The increased frequency of Isabella’s phone calls, Emily’s incessant questions and his decision to get Emily’s custody sorted soon rather than later—his personal life was in the worst shape for the first time in twelve years. Yet, all he could think of, all he could see in his mind’s eye was Olivia’s pale face, the hurt shimmering in her huge eyes.