by Nicola Marsh
Zoe gaped. “But you’re the marketing whiz. You do the presentations—”
“Not anymore.” Allegra brought the phone closer to her face and spoke extra clearly. “You’re just as much the brains behind this company as I am. You refused a partnership initially. I’m not taking no for an answer this time.”
“But I don’t want—”
“Irrelevant what you want. AW will go under if we don’t land this account, and you’ve done more research on it than I have.” Allegra waved her hand high. “My head’s up here at the moment after all the wedding crap and I need you.”
“This is crazy—”
“No, it’s not. You scored equal top grades with me in that marketing degree at college. Time you stopped hiding behind whatever is making you refuse to step up to save AW for us both to continue as CEOs. Got it?”
Allegra had never seen Zoe anything but über-confident, so to see a wobbly smile made her feel a tad guilty for being tyrannical.
“Do I get a raise?”
Allegra snorted. “Babe, unless we score this account, you’ll be lucky to get enough of a severance package to buy Thai takeout to commiserate.”
“Okay, I’ll get on it and see you first thing in the morning.”
“And I’ll get up to speed once you e-mail me what you’ve got so far.”
Zoe saluted. “See you then.”
Unable to stave off a nasty foreboding, Allegra wrapped her towel tighter and fired up her iPad, ready to do some serious work.
Not only did she have to organize a meeting with Kai Kaluna on short notice, she had to fine-tune her concept. The ideas she’d brainstormed during what should’ve been her wedding night had been simple: focus on the island’s strengths. Sun, surf, sand. Glamorous models. Perfect families. High-end clientele.
It had been the best she could come up with on short notice, but with a little fleshing out and embellishing, she knew she had the flair to land the lucrative campaign.
Winning this campaign wouldn’t be easy; she had no illusions about that. Kai Kaluna would’ve handpicked a select few agencies to hear pitches from. Which made her quest to land a meeting first, then a chance to pitch, and win, all the harder.
She’d do it, though. After the latest batch of bad news, she had no choice.
Losing AW Advertising wasn’t an option.
…
Jett had called in a lot of favors to get a meeting with Kai Kaluna.
It was the reason he’d visited LA, to personally call on guys in the hotel business he’d done work for in the past. Guys only too happy to help him out once they’d learned the extent of Reeve’s deceit and what that meant for Jett’s business.
In the advertising world, loyalty and dollars were king. If he produced stellar marketing ideas and the client raked in the big bucks, those clients kept knocking on his door.
Sadly, no one would be knocking on the door of his hip Bondi office any longer. Thanks to Reeve, the conniving bastard.
There weren’t too many people in this world Jett could rely on. He’d thought Reeve Lingford was one of them. They’d been best mates at the posh private school they’d attended in Sydney’s inner suburbs, and had bonded over a love of Aussie-rules football, cricket, pranks, and a mutual disregard for their overbearing fathers.
Jett’s mom had died when he was a toddler; Reeve’s had divorced his dad and moved to South America. Resulting in both of them being raised by wealthy, iron-fisted fathers who expected their sons to be model, upstanding citizens who carried on the family name with honor and decency.
Yeah, his dad actually said that. Not that Jett took much notice of what top Sydney barrister Clive Halcott said once he’d learned the truth: that as long as Jett did things Clive’s way, he was in the good books. Otherwise, forget it.
He couldn’t wait to hear what dear old dad had to say about his company’s failure. Or more precisely, his failure in completely missing the signs of Reeve’s betrayal. His lack of character judgment would be one of the many faults Clive would undoubtedly highlight.
“Sorry to keep you waiting, Mr. Halcott.” Kai Kaluna strode into his office, a second-story suite overlooking the expansive lagoon pool wending its way through the palms. “Conference call went overtime.”
“No need to apologize.” Jett held out his hand and Kai shook it firmly. “You’re a busy man.”
“Who’s about to get busier if the number of advertising firms battering down my door for a chance to pitch for the resorts’ campaign increases.” Kai sat behind his glass-topped desk and waved to an empty seat opposite. “But that’s why you’re here, isn’t it?”
Jett nodded. “Your former Palm Bay manager, Duke Abernathy, referred me.” He tapped on his iPad screen and brought up a presentation. “This is the layout I did for Duke’s Malibu apartment project and when he heard you were after a new advertising campaign for the resorts, he thought I should give you a call.”
Jett held his breath as Kai tilted his head, studying the iPad. Duke had come through for him big-time. Campaigns like this didn’t become available every day, and the fact Kai was ditching his old-school New York advertising firm in favor of someone new was a massive business opportunity too big to pass up.
He’d pondered the wisdom of leaving Sydney for LA a week ago, wondering if friends and colleagues would see it as running away. But he’d had no choice. Jett needed new blood to start afresh.
Hopefully, he was looking at it, as Kai Kaluna scrutinized the quick mock-ups he’d done.
After what seemed an eternity, but in reality could’ve only been a few minutes, Kai nodded, pensive. “I value Duke’s opinion, and by the quality of your work, Mr. Halcott, I’m indebted to him for referring you.”
“Thanks.” Jett mentally punched the air. “Call me Jett.”
Kai stabbed a finger at the electronic diary on his desk. “Jett, I’ll be honest with you. I have two other advertising agencies flying in tomorrow to pitch. If you can come up with something for me by Friday, I’ll hear your pitch then and make a final decision by Saturday.”
Some of Jett’s elation at being given a shot deflated. He had three days to come up with the pitch of a lifetime. Or bust.
If he screwed this up, he could say good-bye to resurrecting his career in this business any time soon. Kai Kaluna was the big time. Landing him as a client would ensure other clients would follow, and maybe some of those from the past would consider re-signing, too.
“Not a problem. Friday’s fine for me.”
“Good.” Kai tapped at the keyboard in front of a giant PC screen before turning it to face Jett. “Let’s stick to an ad campaign for the Palm Bay resort for now, but ultimately, if you’re the man for the job, you’ll be coordinating advertising for all my resorts across the globe.”
Jett stared at the snapshots of Kai’s various resorts around the world and tried not to salivate. He’d nail this campaign if it killed him.
“Thanks for the opportunity, sir, I appreciate it.” He stood and shook Kai’s hand again.
“I’m Kai around here.” The older guy, who Jett pegged to be in his midfifties, winced. “‘Sir’ reminds me of my dad, and that’s one memory I’d rather not have.”
Jett resisted the urge to blurt, “Know the feeling.”
“And just so you know, there’ll be an unlimited budget for this ad campaign. High six figures for a start, but whatever it takes to get Kaluna Resorts on the map, I’m happy to do it.”
Jett nodded and hoped the dollar signs didn’t show in his eyes like those crazy cartoons he watched as a kid. “I’ll keep that in mind when I come up with a concept.”
Unlimited budget…high six figures… As Jett exited Kai’s office and headed for his room, those words pinged around his brain.
He had to secure this deal. He had to. Failure wasn’t an option.
First task on the agenda was to check his Google bookmarks, stuff he’d already researched on the resorts before coming here. Then brainstorm. That
free-for-all with pen and paper that had served him well, when he’d devised major campaigns for a rugby club, a tennis tournament, and a department store chain.
He’d dealt with big clients before and hadn’t blinked. But as he rounded the eastern corner of the resort and spied Allegra stretched out on a sun lounge, wearing a tiny crimson string bikini and a dog-ugly straw hat while studying her iPad, he knew this campaign would be different.
Because he’d never had this kind of distraction before.
She lay down her iPad, wriggled on her towel, adjusted her hat, and rolled over, the slivers of sun peeping through the palms caressing her pert ass.
His cock immediately hardened.
Yep, Allegra was one serious distraction he couldn’t afford.
Like that would stop him.
Chapter Four
A shadow blocked the sun momentarily and raised a slight chill on Allegra’s skin.
“I hope you’ve applied sunscreen.”
The chill turned into a shiver of delight at the sound of Jett’s deep voice, and she turned onto her side, propping on an elbow.
“Why? You volunteering?”
“Babe, if it means getting my hands all over you, abso-friggin-lutely.” He squatted next to her sun lounge and ran his hand over the curve of her butt. “Though I won’t be held responsible if my fingers accidentally snag the strings holding this thing together and it comes undone.”
Heat zinged her bits at the thought. “Maybe you should offer your services in the privacy of the honeymoon suite?” She lowered her voice. “It has a private plunge pool.”
His delicious mouth eased into a wicked smile that snatched her breath. “We’re talking about my sunscreen application services, right?” His palm slid off her butt and onto her thigh, skimming her leg all the way down to her toes. “Because I’m also available to service you in other ways, plunge or otherwise…”
She gasped as he leaned down to place a hot, openmouthed kiss in the small of her back.
“Don’t you have work to do?”
“Don’t remind me.” He sat on the lounger and rested his hand on her hip like it was the most natural thing in the world, oblivious to her haywire hormones from his simple touch. “Apparently I have a few days to come up with a whiz-bang campaign to score the biggest client I’ve ever had, or my career is down the crapper.”
An uneasy feeling insinuated its way into her hormone haze. “Tell me more about your work.”
“You want to be bored?”
“It interests me.” She wriggled into a sitting position and hugged her knees to her chest, hoping her intuition was way off. Because the moment he’d said campaign and biggest client ever, Allegra had an awful sinking feeling she knew who Jett was referring to. And that would make him the enemy. “Considering we skipped the getting-to-know-each-other thing and jumped straight into bed, I’d like to hear a bit more about you.”
“You sure?” He dropped a kiss onto her knee and damn if the skin there wasn’t as responsive to his touch as the rest of her body. “Because I’m going to have limited downtime the next few days and I’d rather spend it doing more of that jumping into bed than talking business.”
She would, too, but if his big client happened to be Kai Kaluna…damn, they were one major conflict of interest waiting to happen.
“Trade you.” She held up her hand, fingers spread. “Five minutes of talk for thirty minutes in bed.”
“Who needs a bed?” He nuzzled the tender skin beneath her ear and her head fell back as she reveled in his constant urge to touch her.
She wanted his hands and mouth all over her, but that wouldn’t foster the information she needed before they took this thing between them further.
She gently swatted him away. “Start talking, mister.”
He slipped an arm around her waist and held her close. “At the risk of boring you to tears, here’s the abbreviated version. I’m in advertising. Had a great business in Sydney co-run by my oldest buddy from high school. He scammed cash, made some foolish investments, lost the lot, and absconded to some Caribbean hideaway to avoid criminal prosecution and me busting his ass. So in order to regain respect of clients, not have my career ruined completely, and start a new company from scratch, I need to win the ad campaign for this island’s resort. It’s the only thing that will save me.”
Allegra’s earlier unease blossomed into full-blown dread.
Jett was pitching to Kai Kaluna, the same client she had to land to save AW Advertising. The same client he needed to save his career.
Shit.
“That’s awful, what your best friend did.”
“Tell me about it.” He shook his head. “I still can’t believe he screwed me over. Reeve was the math brain at school so it seemed natural for him to deal with our financials. I checked the spreadsheets at regular intervals, kept abreast of our business.”
His audible devastation made her want to hug him tight.
“Want to know the pathetic part? I constantly wonder if I was too pumped up on success, that I missed any inconsistencies.”
Allegra rubbed his back in small circles, comforting. “He sounds like a conniving con man who thought nothing of robbing his best friend blind. Nothing you could’ve done would stop scum like that.”
His rueful smile warmed her heart. “The cops said the same. Reeve had spent years siphoning off funds, doctoring the books, and ensuring he covered his tracks so not even our accountant had a clue.” He swore. “What pisses me off the most is how we celebrated every new client, toasting our success, when Reeve must’ve been laughing at my gullibility.”
“He sounds like a real piece of work. And an asshole.”
He chuckled. “Yeah, though in Oz we say arsehole.”
“Sounds cruder somehow.”
“Exactly. Fitting for an arsehole like Reeve.” His smile faded. “So now you know why I have to win this campaign. My entire career depends on it.”
Fuckity-fuck.
Allegra had no choice but to go all out to win the pitch campaign for Kaluna Resorts. And that meant beating Jett.
If she won, he lost his career.
If he won, she lost hers.
Talk about a lose-lose situation.
Not to the mention the tiny salient fact that she hadn’t told him what she did for a living, and if she blurted it now it would look like she’d withheld the truth because she’d been up to no good. He’d think she’d been spying on him or trying to get inside info or some such thing.
“You have no other options?”
He shook his head. “That’s why I was in LA, putting out feelers among old contacts. One of them came through for me with an early tip-off about the Kaluna project so here I am. ” He tapped his temple. “Have a killer concept right here, ready to go. Going for the glamour angle. Hot babes. Cute kids. Happy families. Aimed at all spectrums of the wealthy market.”
Allegra’s stomach somersaulted and landed with a sickening thud.
Jett had just verbalized her concept in a nutshell.
No freaking way.
Not only were they pitching for the same campaign, they were using the same idea. Disastrous. Unless…
The guilt at not telling him the truth about why she was on the island niggled at her. What if she could help him? Not to ease her guilt as much as do something for a guy who’d been nothing but lovely to her. Something to give him a fighting chance at resurrecting his career.
She could change her pitch.
Come at it from a different angle. Scrap her initial ideas and come up with something completely new. Leaving Jett with a clear shot at winning the campaign squarely and fairly, without Kai Kaluna having to make comparisons between two similar campaigns.
She wouldn’t take it easy on him—that wasn’t what this was about. She’d be fighting just as hard to win but this way, if he ever found out the truth, God forbid, he couldn’t accuse her of stealing his idea or committing professional sabotage.
Just the
thought of him thinking of her that way made her break into a cold sweat.
She wanted to tell him. Had to tell him they were competitors for this campaign. But the expression on Jett’s face stopped her.
She’d seen him cocky and confident and charming. She’d seen his eyes glazed in passion and fiery in foreplay. But she hadn’t seen him look so…vulnerable. And that one glimpse of defenselessness made her reevaluate the wisdom of telling him anything.
Guys didn’t take too kindly to being helped. They saw it as interfering at best, emasculating at worst. She’d seen it firsthand in the corporate world too many times, her good intentions misread by guys with massive egos and pea-sized brains.
While Jett seemed more evolved than some of the Neanderthals she’d worked with, how well did she really know him? She didn’t. She should be thinking professionally now, should be doing her usual self-talk along the lines of “you owe him nothing, he’ll be out of your life in a few days, this is business and has nothing to do with your fling.”
Sadly, her voice of reason sounded callous and cold. Because Jett wasn’t a stranger, no matter how many times she tried to couch it in those terms. She knew his body intimately, from the jagged scar high on his right thigh from a surfing accident, to the line of freckles shaped like a crooked arrow to his heart underneath his left armpit.
She could’ve dismissed theirs as a physical bond, if only he hadn’t told her about his partner fleecing him, his self-doubts, his background…
Yeah, she could lend a helping hand without him knowing and he’d be none the wiser.
If she lost the pitch to him or someone else, he wouldn’t know they’d been rivals and they could part on friendly terms, maybe even keep in touch. If she won the pitch…well, she’d tell him then, before they returned to their respective countries. It would be easier having him mad at her with an ocean between them than on the same island. On the island where they could use each other for decompressing and de-stressing.
“So basically you need to land this deal or…?”
“I’m finished.” He frowned. “Landing Kaluna will reinstate my reputation in a cutthroat industry and be a huge incentive for other clients to take a chance on my new company.” He swiped a hand over his face but it did little to erase the tension. “With the added bonus of proving to my dad I’m not a lousy waste of space.”
