STEP BY STEP

by Black, Clarissa

  STEP BY STEP

  CLARISSA BLACK

  COPYRIGHT 2014 CLARISSA BLACK

  ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form without written permission from the publisher or author. If you are reading this book and you have not purchased it or received an advanced copy directly from the author, this book has been pirated.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or, if an actual place, are used fictitiously and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. The publisher does not have any control and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.

  DEDICATION

  For strong women everywhere who always thought they knew what they wanted until a certain someone came along…

  -CB

  OTHER BOOKS BY CLARISSA BLACK

  MORE TO COME SOON!

  DESCRIPTION

  They shouldn’t... They couldn’t… They must...

  Preston Woodfield is a self-made man with a scar-tissue heart and a relentless obsession with perfection. When intern Mirabelle Baker walks into his advertising agency and outshines even his most seasoned executives, he’s instantly pulled to her and takes her on as his personal protégé. Never mind the fact that he can think of nothing else besides screwing her brains out every time he’s within two feet of her.

  But there’s a catch. Mirabelle isn’t just some college intern. Once upon a time, only a mere decade ago, she used to be his kid stepsister. Gone are the braces, chubby cheeks, and pimpled skin. Standing before him is a woman, a undeniably beautiful woman, with whip smart drive and fearless ambition that could drive a man like Preston wild and turn his entire world upside down. And that’s exactly what Mirabelle intends to do.

  TABLE OF CONTENTS

  ONE

  TWO

  THREE

  FOUR

  FIVE

  SIX

  SEVEN

  EIGHT

  NINE

  TEN

  ELEVEN

  TWELVE

  THIRTEEN

  FOURTEEN

  FIFTEEN

  SIXTEEN

  SEVENTEEN

  EIGHTTEEN

  NINETEEN

  TWENTY

  TWENTY-ONE

  TWENTY-TWO

  TWENTY-THREE

  TWENTY-FOUR

  TWENTY-FIVE

  TWENTY-SIX

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  TWENTY-EIGHT

  TWENTY-NINE

  THIRTY

  THIRTY-ONE

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  THANK YOU

  ONE

  MIRABELLE

  Seven credits. That was all that was standing between me and hanging that marketing degree on my wall. For four years I worked my ass off. While all my friends were going to frat parties and concerts and bar hopping in campus town, I was holed up in my dorm room doing final edits on term papers and studying for my next exam.

  My hard work and determination had paid off the second I found out I’d landed the internship at the prestigious Woodfield and Halston advertising agency in Manhattan. Not only was it THEE place to intern if you wanted a chance at landing a job in this career field after graduation, but it was owned by my former stepbrother, Preston Woodfield, and I hadn’t seen him in over ten years.

  For weeks I agonized over what I was going to wear that first day. I wanted to make a great impression. I wanted to blow them all out of the water and show them what a ball busting protégé I was, especially Preston. He was a good seven years older than me, and all I remembered was what a jerk he used to be to me. The thirteen year old me secretly thought he was a dreamboat. I wanted him to like me. To pay attention to me. To tell me I was cool or pretty or whatever. But the twenty-year old know-it-all who only came home during college breaks had no time for me. He never did. My mom’s marriage to his dad only lasted but a year or two, but I never forgot him or the way he made me notice boys for the first time. Something about him stirred an awakening deep inside me, and I was never the same after him.

  One semester at Woodfield and Halston, sixteen weeks, and I’d be walking across the stage at Southern Georgia State University at the top of my class.

  “Mirabelle Baker,” I said in my sweet, southern drawl as I approached the desk of the firm. The clock on the wall read 7:45, and I quietly reveled in the fact that I was early. Mirabelle Baker was nothing if not punctual. “I’m reporting for my internship.”

  My lips parted into a polite smile as the lady at the desk looked me up and down before picking up her phone. I stood with my hands folded and my black, leather satchel hanging off my shoulder as I patiently waited for her to direct me.

  “You’re going to be shadowing Monica today,” she said. “Fourth floor. Turn left off the elevator. Her office is the fifth one on the right.”

  “Thanks so much,” I said before heading off towards the bay of elevators. Excitement coursed through my veins in the form of nervous butterflies and sweaty palms. Full of adrenaline and ambition, I couldn’t wait to jump in and get my hands dirty. I’d learned so much at Southern Georgia State and applying those things in the real world was just moments away.

  “Knock, knock,” I said in a sing-song voice as I rapped on Monica’s office door a short time later.

  The chair spun around to reveal an aging blonde with lips the color of ripe cherries and thick-rimmed glasses covering her crystal blue, crows feet-flanked eyes. At first glance, she seemed nice and approachable. And then she spoke.

  “Can I help you?” she said in a monotone voice, as she looked me up and down. A long strand of pearls dangled from her neck and pooled on the desk beneath her.

  I tugged on my white button-down blouse. I was sure I’d ironed out each and every wrinkle the night before, but she was suddenly making me doubt myself for a second. I smoothed my hands along my navy pencil skirt before returning them to my sides.

  “I’m Mirabelle Baker,” I said with wide eyes. “Your new intern, ma’am.”

  She squinted her eyes and looked down at her calendar, which was hidden under a mess of paperwork. “Oh, yeah. That’s today.”

  I lingered in the doorway until she finally motioned for me to come in. I pulled a chair out from the front of her desk and took a seat.

  “So,” she said. “Tell me where you’re from again?”

  She pulled her glasses off and rubbed her eyes. It wasn’t even eight in the morning, and she was already exhausted. By the looks of the bags hanging under her eyes, she’d likely pulled an all-nighter.

  “Southern Georgia State,” I said with a proud wink. “Majoring in Advertising with dual minors in Marketing and Psychology. Should graduate this spring. I just have to say, I’m so exited to be here. This was my dream internship and -”

  “Yeah, good, okay,” she said as she interrupted me. “You can just, um, shadow me and get a feel for what I do for the first few weeks. We can play it by ear from there.”

  I sunk back a little in my chair, disappointed. “I kind of hoped I could dive in head first. I have a lot of great ideas, and -”

  “Ha,” she chuckled. “You and every other intern here this semester. You know there are fifteen of you?”

  “Oh, I had no idea,” I replied. “No one told me that.”

  “Actually,” she said as she glanced down at her watch. “I think there’s some sort of intern orientation going on right now that you’re required to attend.”

  Panic seared through me. “No one told me that either.”

  I’d always prided myself in never missing a thing, never bein
g late, and never being out of the loop. I quietly chided myself for missing out on the orientation memo. I slipped my purse around my shoulder and stood up to leave.

  “Where are you going?” Monica asked with one raised eyebrow.

  “To see where the orientation is,” I replied. I tugged one strand of my flat ironed, ashy blonde hair behind my ear. “I shouldn’t miss it.”

  Monica pinched her face, seeming almost frustrated that I couldn’t read her mind. “Nah, sit back down. Those things are stupid anyway. You’re with me. You’ll be fine.”

  I slowly retreated back to my seat and waited for her to make the next move. As she rifled through mountains of paperwork that surrounded her, I couldn’t help but notice the pictures lining the console behind her desk. Family portraits revealing a younger Monica with small children filled the space, and judging by her teased bangs and shoulder pads, those pictures were woefully outdated. I imagined her children were grown, and judging by the lack of a ring on her left hand, her husband was probably long gone too. She was clearly married to her job and that was something no man could ever compete with.

  Monica pursed her lips, revealing tiny wrinkles that suggested she might have been a smoker at one point in time. “I just remembered I have a meeting this morning.”

  “Oh, okay,” I said. “Do you want me to go or should I stay here?”

  “Come,” she said as she stood up. She fished around in one of her desk drawers and pulled out a legal pad and handed me a shiny silver pen. “You can take notes for me.”

  The desk on her phone rang and she sighed audibly, as if it were an inconvenience to answer it.

  “I know, Tiffany,” she groaned. “I’m on my way. Tell Mr. Woodfield, we’ll be there in a minute.”

  Monica motioned towards the door as she slammed the phone down and ushered us out.

  “Is Tiffany your assistant?” I asked. I hated to be that annoying new person with the fifty million questions about every tiny thing, but if I was going to blow them all out of the water, I wanted to know who everyone was, what they did, and how the firm operated.

  “Yes,” Monica replied.

  “So we’re going to a meeting with Mr. Woodfield?” I asked as we arrived at the elevator bay down the hallway. My heart thumped hard in my ears. I hadn’t seen him in ten years. Would he even recognize me?

  “Yes,” Monica replied, only this time I sensed a slight annoyance in her tone. “And Mr. Halston.”

  The elevator dinged as the doors parted and we stepped in with a group of at least seven other employees. Monica slammed her hand against the button for the sixth floor and pressed the door-close button. She clearly had no Mirabelle.

  “Hurry up,” she said as we practically ran down the hallway and towards a conference room. It wasn’t my fault we were late, but she was acting like I was holding her up.

  She flung the glass doors open and we took a seat in the only two remaining vacant chairs as twenty sets of eyes watched our every move.

  TWO

  PRESTON

  “You do realize the meeting started at eight o’clock, Ms. Murphy,” I said as Monica scurried into our boardroom. “It’s ten past.”

  “I know, Mr. Woodfield,” she apologized with averted eyes, her voice low. “I’m sorry. It won’t happen again.”

  The woman was easily twice my age and it felt weird scolding her, almost like scolding my mother. She was a decent employee most of the time. Dedicated. Loyal. Hardworking. She’d been with the firm since the beginning; long before I’d come in and bought it out five years ago. But she was aging out of the cutthroat world of advertising, and it was only a matter of time before I was going to be forced to cut her loose and bring in fresh, raw talent.

  “Okay, so getting back on track,” I said as I turned towards the rest of the group. My eyes scanned the table, nonchalantly keeping track of who was engaged and who was just bullshitting me. I liked to know who my blue ribbon employees were at all times, and I was never afraid to trim the fat if needed. “Today we’re talking about the Johnston account. Ruthie, can you pass out those packets?”

  My eyes continued scanning the room, one by one picking out the ones who looked hung over or the ones texting on the phones under the table as if no one would see them.

  My secretary, Ruthie, was a sweet, middle-aged woman who often stared at me a bit too long. She’d do anything for me, and I loved that about her. She was easy to take advantage of, but that was her own fault. The word “no” was not in that woman’s vocabulary.

  “You done yet?” I asked Ruthie as she slowly waddled around the twenty foot table, passing out packets. They seemed to stick to her thick fingers as she struggled to pass them out. We were already ten minute behind schedule thanks to Monica’s tardiness, and back-to-back conferences calls filled up the rest of my day. “Time is of the essence, Ruthie.”

  She scrambled back to her seat and cracked open her laptop until my presentation was projected on the overhead screen behind me.

  “As I was saying.” I cleared my throat. “The Johnston account. Spintz, where are we with that?”

  My number two guy, yet another happy-to-please moron, pulled out his notebook and took a look at his notes. His face turned beet red as it always did anytime he had to talk in front of a large group.

  “I just spoke with their publicity department and their vice president of marketing and advertising,” he said. “They’re starting up a line of nutritional supplements that they’d like to have sold via independent distributors. They’re thinking of going the word of mouth route first before plunking all their money into tangible advertising.”

  I palmed the table in front of me, bracing myself into a hunched over position as my head fell between my shoulders. “We know that, Spintz. We went over that last week. Tell us something we don’t already know.”

  Spintz looked confused. He always attempted to read my mind, as if he was searching for the words he thought I wanted to hear, but he never could. I prided myself in being a bit of a hard ass. Being unreadable meant that my employees tried that much harder to please me. Hardworking employees meant someday soon I’d have the number one ad agency in all of Manhattan.

  “What did you tell them, Spintz?” I asked, spelling it out for him and enunciating every last syllable. “We do hard ads. Tangible marketing. Things you can see, feel, and hear. How did you sell them on our services? That’s what I want to know.”

  I was going to need a new number two soon. Incompetence in my firm was simply unacceptable.

  “Oh,” Spintz said, his eyes focusing on the tablet in front of him. “They were pretty firm on what they wanted. I told them I’d come up with a marketing plan and they said they were open to a pitch. I thought we could brainstorm in the meeting.”

  I sucked a long breath in through my teeth. The level of incompetence and lack of professionalism in that room was impressive that day. “Does anyone here want to take over the Johnston account? I need someone here with an actual degree in marketing to pull their head out of their ass and come up with a marketing plan that will blow the Johnston people out of the water.”

  The air was silent save for a few rogue coughs and a couple clicking of pens. No one wanted to volunteer.

  “Anyone?” I asked again, my eyes scanning the room. Not one of the twenty people sitting around the conference table would even look at me. “Do I need to hand select someone?”

  “I’ll do it,” a woman’s voice tailed down from the end of the table. It carried a sort of unwavering confidence that couldn’t possibly belong to a member of my team.

  “Who said that?” I asked, my eyes scanning each face one by one until it landed on a young girl sitting next to Monica. Somehow I’d missed seeing her there.

  “I did,” she replied. She brushed her long, silky blonde hair over her shoulders and sat up straight, eyes locked into mine. She was gorgeous. Absolutely stunning. And young as fuck. Not only that, but I felt like I’d seen her before.

  �
��Who are you?” I asked as I made my way towards the end of the table.

  “Mirabelle Baker,” she replied, her lips curling into a sweet smile. Mirabelle Baker. My former kid-stepsister. Sitting in my office, in the flesh. “Intern.”