She looked around again, stalling just a little bit longer. For a media-biz company, it definitely seemed to be prospering. The corridor—unlike those at the Visionary—did not bear the sneaker marks of postgrad dudes playing foam-football and colliding bodily with the walls. There was no eviction notice posted on a dartboard, either. No, this space was spectacular in an austere way. Every surface was pure white or brushed aluminum; every piece of furniture was high-end modern design.
She put her hand on the recessed latch to turn it, letting it stay there for a second or two. The latch was pleasantly warm and Beth didn’t want to give Justin Watts a chilly-fingered handshake.
“C’mon in,” a friendly voice said. A nice, deep, male voice.
Beth took a deep breath. She wanted to make a favorable impression from the second she walked in. Confidence was key. Her ex-boyfriends had always told her she was pretty and the reflection in the mirror this morning hadn’t been too scary. Eyeliner and lipgloss and a touch of blush had done the trick today. Her skin had cooperated, for once, not presenting her with an evil little surprise on her nose the way it sometimes did when she was stressed. So she looked okay. There was nothing to distract him from her creative genius and her portfolio. And then there were…she searched her mind for irresistible physical attributes and drew a blank.
She did have nice knees, she thought desperately and a little irrationally, and the skirt she had on showed them. Above the knees things got a little plump, below the knees were legs that were okay but not great. Work the knees, she told herself. Beth felt like she was picking up a mysterious charge from this place. Her skirt clung to her thighs, even edged up slightly. She tugged it down. In the store the skirt had been just right. Not demure and not too revealing, either. It didn’t wrinkle. That was why she’d worn it. But material that didn’t wrinkle had a slithery side, betraying its origin in Satan’s Little Tailor Shop, she thought.
“Anyone out there?” The voice from inside sounded even deeper and more male.
Rah rah rah. He was waiting for her. She turned the latch and went in.
“Hello.” Beth took a look at the man working away on one of two monitors and her poor, unemployed heart beat faster.
“Hey…be right with you. Hold on a sec,” he murmured.
The glow from the screen made his face look faintly luminous, which was an interesting effect. His features were on the rugged side, and there was a dimple involved on the left side of his mouth. Melt me fucking down, she thought. Justin Watts was hot.
“Sorry,” he said without looking up just yet. “I don’t want to lose this thought and I don’t mean to be rude but—”
“You’re not,” she said. “I understand.” How many seconds had she dawdled on the other side of the closed door? Way to go on making a good first impression, she scolded herself. He continued to study the screen, and she continued to study him.
“Thanks. Okay. That’ll do it. Let me just input these changes—” he tapped at the keyboard—“and I’ll be right with you.”
“No problem. Take your time.”
She took the opportunity to flat-out stare at what she could see of him while he concentrated on finishing what he was doing. Justin Watts had thick, dark hair that was the opposite of styled. It stuck up every which way and looked like he had been running his hands through it while he pondered layouts on the drafting table he sat at.
“Done.” He tapped another couple of keys and glanced up at her at last. The glance turned into a look that turned into a stare. His gaze was intense, but for some reason Beth didn’t feel intimidated. Probably because he had nice, really nice, eyes. Supersexy. And beach-glass blue, shadowed by lashes that were as thick and dark as his hair. His smile made his eyes crinkle at the corners.
Save me, she thought weakly. He rose from the drafting table and walked around it to meet her, giving her a warm, strong, almost electrifying handshake that chased away her nervousness. Mmm. On second thought, she didn’t want to be saved.
“Okay,” he said. “So you’re Beth. I’m Justin.” He laughed a little self-consciously. “That’s obvious, I guess.”
She was charmed. Justin Watts might be a big deal, but he didn’t act like one. For one thing, he wasn’t sitting behind a typical, CEO-style fortress of a desk made of bleached titanium or whatever, but at a real, old-style, honey-pine drafting table with a state-of-the-art double monitor setup, plus scrap paper and layouts and art stuff all over it. He was clearly a hands-on kind of guy.
“It’s really nice to meet you,” he was saying. She returned her gaze to his face. “I checked out some of your work on your website—I was impressed.”
“Oh. Ah, thanks.” Now that he had let go of her hand, her nervousness returned. She clutched the handles of her laptop case like it was her third-grade lunchbox and she was guarding the cupcakes in it from the Table Five death squad, then told herself not to be so twitchy. “Which ones?”
“You can set the laptop right here,” Justin said, pointing to the drafting table. “Um, the lamp ads were great. And that animated campaign you did with the dancing beets? Even better—genius, in fact.”
She gave him what she hoped was a cool, totally professional nod of acknowledgment. “Thanks,” she said, thrilled inside that he’d looked at more than just her resume. “I worked really hard on those.”
The lamp assignment had involved nothing more than a good layout using the company’s photos, but the stop-motion process of putting tap shoes on pickled beets and making them shuffle off to Buffalo had been a bitch. But she wasn’t going to say that. Let him chalk it up to pure genius if he wanted to. And she wasn’t going to mention the kitty litter gig at all. He hadn’t. Anyway, it didn’t count, since she hadn’t been paid, the way guys said a date didn’t count if they hadn’t been laid.
She suspected Justin Watts would never say anything so crude. But no doubt there were women waiting in line just to do him.
She imagined him beckoning and her going to the head of that line and smiled inwardly. No, no, no. She needed this job more than she needed sex right now.
Justin leaned over the drafting table and pushed the layouts to one side. She couldn’t help looking. One atmospheric, faux Depression-era photo showed a half-naked guy in faded jeans leaning on a 1930s pickup truck out in a field somewhere. Waving wheat. Hay fork propped on the truck. And the faux farmboy was to die for—it was classic prairie porn, all the way.
The model had quite a manly bulge, she noted. Almost as big as the bale of hay his battered workboot was resting on. Then she looked at the model’s face. Oh, yeah. He was famous, even if she couldn’t remember his name at the moment. Who he was didn’t matter, because a well-known logo was splashed across the bottom of the photo. Blue Blaze Jeans. That was a huge company. She breathed an inward sigh of relief. So SpectraSign had at least one major client to pay their bills. Her paycheck wouldn’t bounce.
You’re not hired yet, she told herself, setting down her laptop case. Quit ogling manly bulges and get back to convincing Justin Watts that he needs you and only you, on staff, with benefits, as a designer.
Beth unzipped the case and took out the laptop, bending down a little to raise the screen and angle it up while she went through the beep-and-boop ritual of starting it.
“Sorry. You need something to sit down in.” He brought over a chair that matched his own—gleaming curves of aluminum formed the legs and seat and back.
Beth settled herself into it and put on her best interview smile as she looked up at him. It made her face feel stretched.
“Did you bring a portfolio?”
She shook her head. “Everything’s on my laptop. It just seemed like an easier way of giving you a comprehensive overview.”
True and not true. Her ancient cat, who did not take kindly to sudden awakenings, had been sleeping on her actual portfolio. Moving him meant a revenge hairball on the bathmat sooner or later. Usually sooner. She hadn’t been willing to risk it when she’d been rushi
ng to get here as it was. Besides that, the contents of the portfolio were disorganized and she had a lot of personal stuff—letters and photos and old comic books—mixed in with her project layouts. It needed winnowing and she hadn’t had time.
“Fine.” He sat back down and scooted his chair over to the end of the table. “Let’s see what you’ve got.”
“Okay.” Fumbling a little, Beth pulled up the files she wanted. His being so near was a little disconcerting. Justin wasn’t trying to lean in or lech or anything remotely like that, and his long legs were tucked back under his aluminum chair, but even so. He radiated warm sexuality. He couldn’t help it, she decided.
“Beth, since I’ve already seen the final versions of the lamps and the beets, could you give me an idea of how you got there? Second thoughts, mistakes, and all.”
“Sure.” She tapped the touchpad to open a file.
“I’m interested in your creative process.”
Beth laughed. “If you could call it that. Sometimes I think what I do is like trying to catch light in midair. Sometimes I can hold on to it. Not often, though.”
His face grew thoughtful. “Funny you should say that.”
She looked up at him before she turned the laptop his way. “What do you mean?”
“Ah—geez, it’s hard to explain.” He searched for the right words while she waited politely. “Basically, I guess I feel that way sometimes myself.”
“Oh.”
“I just bought SpectraSign,” he explained. “I have a lot of ideas to grow the company, but I’m not sure where to start. That’s why I decided to bring in a really original designer. And by that I mean someone who hasn’t hit the big time yet.”
That would be her. But not from want of trying. “Interesting. I didn’t know that.” She made a vague gesture at the door she’d come through. “I understood the company’s been around for several years. I just assumed you were the founder.”
He shook his head. “The new owner.”
“I see.”
“And the CEO, of course. SpectraSign seemed like a worthwhile investment and a good fit for my area of expertise.”
“And what’s that? If you don’t mind my asking,” she added hastily.
“Electrical engineering. Quantum mechanics and physics.”
Mega-smart and super-sexy. Beth sighed inwardly. She was not remotely in his league. With her luck, he’d turn out to have a spandex suit and the ability to fly.
“I won’t bore you with the technical details,” he was saying. “Because they don’t have much to do with SpectraSign. Long story short, I specialized in the study of photons, angstroms, wave energy, things like that.”
Spacey things. Even though she’d been tagged as a space cadet for her comic-book habit, Beth wouldn’t know what a photon was if one bit her, and she suspected one had in Science 101 back in high school.
“Anyway, I was curious to see what would happen if I could combine that knowledge with a creative approach,” he went on, “and right now I want to build the most dazzling sign Times Square has ever seen.”
“Is there a contest going on or something?” Beth searched her brain. He must have just made half a billion by selling a tech company she’d never heard of and was looking for something else to do. Maybe he had money to burn. Hmmm. She couldn’t very well ask if he did in so many words.
“No.”
“Then why—”
“I have a lot of energy, Beth. Running a world-class sign company ought to be fun, don’t you think?”
“World-class? Really? I didn’t know SpectraSign was at that level.” She flinched the second the words were out of her mouth. “Gah. Sorry. I guess I should have known, huh?” Good going, you bigmouth bass, she told herself bitterly. And after he did his homework on you.
Justin only shrugged. “They started out in Las Vegas, made a fortune on the strip. Then the company founder moved to Japan for some reason. They did most of the Ginza signs in Tokyo, you know.”
“Awesome place. That’s very cool.”
“Anyway, he retired, and I bought the company just for the hell of it. First I hired the best software programmers in the business, and then got them started developing multiscreen vid displays, light-emitting diode designs, and other new signage concepts.”
“Aha. That explains the humming in the air—the worker bees are busy.”
“What humming?” he asked blandly. “I’m not following you.”
“I felt it when I touched the door.”
He rested his big hands, fingers splayed out, on the drafting table. “You know, I think you’re right. The IT department is below my office. I stay out of there, but you pegged the hum. Not surprising. It’s a rat’s nest of cables and computers and guardian geeks.”
“I know the type,” Beth said, grinning. She had just noticed, with joy, that he wore no wedding ring, and, furthermore, that there was no telltale trace of a former wedding ring indenting his fourth finger, left hand.
He was single. He radiated sexual energy. He was brilliant. A girl couldn’t ask for anything more, besides a job offer.
“Let’s get back to Beth Danforth. Tell me more,” he was saying. “I want to know everything about you.”
An executive who didn’t just brag about himself and his company? Now that was unusual. She looked down at her skirt. The knees must be working. She looked back up. All he seemed fixated on was her face, as if he thought she was really pretty. Good going. It was almost time to trot out her talent, but if he wanted her life story, he could have it, judiciously edited to podcast length.
“Oh, I grew up on Long Island,” Beth began. “Wait a minute. You don’t want to hear that.”
“Yes, I do.”
“You do? Really?”
“Yeah.” He looked totally enthusiastic. In fact, he had a born-yesterday quality that she really liked and his interest in her seemed totally unfaked.
Ahh. She felt even warmer all over. Attention, the ultimate aphrodisiac.
She took a deep breath. “I’ll make it mercifully short. My father was a comic book artist. He raised me on his own after my mother died of cancer.”
“I’m sorry.”
“I was really little,” she said matter-of-factly. “I didn’t know her, but I wish I had. No, it was just me and the Ink Man.”
She was not going to tell Justin Watts that she was Graphic Design Girl.
“Anyway, my aunt—his sister—made sure I ate my vegetables and brushed my hair and did my homework and applied to college.”
“In that order?”
“Pretty much. Eventually I majored in marketing, but I always cherished the hope that I could make a living doing what I loved.”
Justin looked at her thoughtfully. “You can do better than make a living.”
“Huh?”
Out of the blue, he named a salary for the job she was interviewing for that made tears come into her eyes. One rogue tear even trickled into her ear. Great. Her ears were crying. But she had heard him correctly.
“Are you kidding? That much?”
He only nodded. “I have a feeling you’re exactly what this company needs.”
“But I didn’t even finish my presentation. You’re not offering me the job, are you?”
“Not if you don’t want me to.” Justin grinned as he leaned back in his chair and crossed his arms in back of his head. “Go ahead and finish.”
“Ah—okay.” Beth shook her head, a little nonplussed, and got back to her laptop, opening file after file before he could change his mind. She lost track of time as they brainstormed ideas for a sign to end all signs, she was having so much fun. They eventually agreed to disagree on what he called the dazzle factor.
Justin was for it, she was against.
“It doesn’t matter how dazzling an ad is,” she informed him, “The second it goes up in Times Square, another company will try to out-dazzle you.”
Justin grinned. “Bring ’em on. We’ll make another one that’s b
righter and bigger.”
Beth shook her head. “Good marketing doesn’t work like that. You have to reach people on an emotional level, not just blow their minds with special effects.”
“Really. Tell me more.” He sat back up, propped his chin on his hand and gave her an encouraging look.
She reached down to pick up the photo of the male model in jeans, which had slipped out of the paper clip holding it to the layout. “All right. Take him, for example—”
“Why?” Justin gave the faux farmboy a bored look. “He has better abs than I do. So I wouldn’t buy the jeans,” he said.
Beth waved the photo at him. “You’re missing the point. He’s designed to appeal to a female customer in a subtle way.”
“I wouldn’t call that pose subtle.”
“But he’s not all lit up. This looks like an old photograph of the bad boy she, meaning our hypothetical customer, used to love. Who she still wants.”
“Whoa.” Justin held up both hands. “Isn’t he selling men’s jeans?”
“Women buy jeans for their guys. Or they make their guys buy the right jeans. You know, the nuances of how jeans should hang on a male body and what jeans should do for a male butt are lost on most straight guys, who will go out and buy the cheapest pair they can find unless—”
He was smiling. Beth realized she had gotten off-topic. Way off-topic. And this was a job interview.
“Um, I talk too much. Sorry.”
“Not at all,” he laughed. “This is great. You just lay it out there. And I obviously have a lot to learn.”
“Really.” She covered her flustered feeling by talking fast. “About what? I mean, you have a major client already—Blue Blazes Jeans is huge—” She stopped, telling herself not to babble.
He looked…eager. If that was the right word. At least his face still had that luminous glow she’d noticed when she came into his office, even though both monitors on the drafting table were off and he wasn’t looking at her laptop at the moment.
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