I’m making my way to his office now to tell him. He’s been in meetings all day so I haven’t seen him and I’m not supposed to see him until tomorrow for a wild night at The Dark Odyssey.
His door is slightly ajar but I knock anyway and go in when he tells me to.
His face brightens when he sees me, although he looks tired.
“Come here,” he says beckoning me to come to him.
I close the door and rush into his arms. His arms around me feel better than anything and as I lift my head he kisses me.
He kisses me like it wasn’t just this morning we saw each other. It’s moments like this when I wish we could be this way forever.
He picks me up and sets me on top on his desk so he can get better access to my lips.
“You’re a sight for sore eyes, Princesa.”
“Am I?” I giggle touching his cheek.
“Yes, you know you are. Happy to see you. You look happy.”
“I’m happy with you. You opened the door for me to finally shine.”
“What happened baby?” he asks.
I start telling him everything and he listens, hanging on to every word. When I’m done he sits next to me on the desk.
“Rachel you know you didn’t do all that much to get that campaign to work magic. That’s natural abilities and talent.” He muses looking even prouder. “It’s stuff nobody has to tell you to do, you just kn
ow how to do it for yourself.”
“Thank you. I guess I just tend to fall in line here and do what I’m doing. All I did was tweak the images for the ad campaign and use models actually wearing the sportswear, rather than just having pictures of the clothes on mannequins.”
That was how Activate wanted it in the beginning so we followed. After there weeks of launching the online store I knew straightaway the we could do better so I insisted that we did.
“My thoughts exactly, which was why I allowed you to contact them,” he answers with his trademark sexy grin.
“Thank you. Dad would never allow me to do that.”
“Baby… you know you don’t have to stay here. It feels to me like this is your comfort zone. Bradleys Inc is fantastic but why do good when you could be great?”
I chuckle. “Sometimes I ask myself the same thing, but I like it here.”
“Do you just want to work projects? Baby you’ve been here for years. I’m not telling you to leave or anything like that. I just want to make sure you know your worth. Marketing is about passion and understanding what people want. Its psychology. You appeal to their desires and their needs, their wants, sometimes their fantasies. Someone with your skill can do that without being taught. That means you could go anywhere.”
It’s the first time I’ve ever really thought about it. “You think so?”
“I know so. I don’t want you to think that this is the only option for you. The world’s your oyster, Princesa.”
“Thank you. That means a lot. I’m going to think about it.” He’s planted the seed in my mind and made me realize that hope to do more here may not actually happen. Matt and Jeff were already doing heaps in their first and second years of working with Dad. I’ve been here fulltime for nearly five years and every year I hope things will be different. “I’d certainly like to stop being blamed for the loss of the last contract.”
“What happened with that?”
I never told him. It was embarrassing enough telling Dad then not having him believe me.
“It’s okay. I’m over it.”
He straightens up and narrows his eyes. “Rachel you do that a lot you know. You don’t have to brush stuff your worried about under the rug with me, talk to me. It’s not the first time you mentioned your Dad being pissed about the last project you worked on. Funnily enough he didn’t exactly share the reasons why it didn’t work out either.”
I bring my hands together and my shoulders slump. “The client wanted me to sleep with him and I said no,” I answer and Dante’s mouth falls open. “ I told him no, so he pulled the contract and made up a load of bull shit to tell dad. He said I was unprofessional with his brand. Dad believed him over me.”