IT TAKES A REBEL

by Stephanie Bond

  “Mr. Stillman is here.”

  Alex blinked, wondering why Tess had announced Stillman’s arrival before introducing the salesman. Her gaze darted to the man, and one side of his mouth curved upward. Confusion flooded her.

  “Good morning, Ms. Tremont,” the man said in a hauntingly familiar voice.

  *

  Chapter 5

  « ^ »

  A full fifteen seconds passed before Alex made the connection that this … paragon … was the same wild-eyed, bushy-headed, scruffy-faced irreverent vagrant she’d spoken to yesterday. Her jaw loosened a bit, and her mind raced, trying to reconcile the two images.

  Meanwhile, Jack Stillman seemed to be enjoying every minute of her discomfort. His dark eyes—brown? green?—alight with the barest hint of amusement, never left her face. Her heart pumped wildly, sending hot apprehension to her limbs while alarms sounded in her ears. His full-fledged grin catapulted his unnerving energy across the space between them to wrap around her. Alex resisted the pull, leaning into the conference room table until the hard edge bit into the front of her thighs. This man was dangerous, and she would do well to keep her distance, and to keep her wits about her.

  “Good morning, Mr. Stillman,” she replied coolly, then gestured toward the opposite end of the table. “Won’t you have a seat?” Getting the man off his feet would give her the slightest advantage.

  Instead of answering, he strode toward Heath and extended his hand. “Jack Stillman of the Stillman & Sons Agency.”

  Heath introduced himself, and Alex could have kicked herself for her gaffe. The men shook hands, although the set of Heath’s chin emanated a certain wariness. Bobby Warner, a fellow sales director and her prime competition for the vice presidency walked in with his signature swagger, then gaped at Jack.

  “You’re not the Jack Stillman who played for UK in the early eighties?”

  Jack dimpled. “Guilty.”

  Behind them, Alex rolled her eyes.

  “I’ll never forget that sixty-six-yard touchdown against Tennessee in eighty-four,” Bobby said, stepping back to feign a catch while Alex stared. She could count on her colleagues to overlook Jack Stillman’s exaggerated celebrity and do what was best for the company … couldn’t she?

  To her relief, several other associates entered the room—the public relations director, another sales director, two vice presidents and a couple of marketing assistants—chatting among themselves. She left the introductions to Bobby, who seemed disturbingly chummy with Jack Stillman after only three and a half minutes. The group body language concerned her. The men leaned toward him, hands in pockets, athletically wide-legged—even Rudy Claven, who hadn’t missed being a woman by much, and was teased mercifully by the company softball team for “throwing like a girl.” And the four women in the room seemed to hang on to every detail as Bobby ingratiatingly expanded on Jack’s scoffing I’m-not-a-legend preamble.

  Ugh.

  Alex pretended to mingle as they waited for her father, but instead studied Jack from beneath her lashes, part of her marveling over his physical transformation, all of her wary to the point of nervous tension. He panned his audience to include everyone in a glory-days anecdote he’d probably recounted a thousand times, and his gaze seemed to linger on her longer than necessary.

  Men were like cats, she observed, pretending to study her watch. The more you ignored them, the more they wanted your attention. She forced herself not to listen to Jack Stillman’s words, although his baritone was impossible to shut out. Someone had found a photo of the ‘85 UK football team among the cluttered bookshelves, and there he was, Jack pointed out as everyone crowded around, then launched into a story about the fellow who sat next to him. Within seconds, everyone was laughing.

  Oh, brother. Alex took a deep gulp of coffee and scalded her tongue. “Dammit!”

  Her expletive coincided with a lull in the laughter and seemed to reverberate from the dark walls. Everyone turned to stare, including Jack, whose eyes danced with amusement as she ran her tender tongue against the roof of her mouth. She had the strongest urge to stick it out at him.

  “Problem, my dear?” her father asked, strolling into the room with all the casual ease of a man who owned the floors, walls and ceilings. At last everyone fell away from Jack Stillman end headed toward the table, scrupulously avoiding the chair opposite Alex, reserved for her father, of course.

  “No,” she said somewhat thickly, walking around the table. “Allow me to introduce Mr. St

  .—”

  “Jack Stillman,” her father cut in, pumping the visitor’s hand, his broad face creasing in a grin reserved only for the most privileged. “Jack the Attack.”

  Alex wanted to heave.

  “It’s a pleasure to meet you, Mr. Tremont,” Jack said, looking duly humbled.

  “Aren’t you in top form,” her father said. “Nice suit, son. One of ours, I do believe.”

  Jack nodded and smoothed the sleeve of his charcoal-gray suit. “Your private label.”

  She’d been so distracted by the change in his appearance, she hadn’t noticed he was wearing one of the most expensive suits they carried. Brownnoser.

  “Nice tie, too,” her father continued with an appraising nod.

  Over his crisply starched white shirt, Jack was sporting a tie identical to the gray and navy barber-poke striped one she’d fingered earlier this morning, one in the line her father had scoffed at, but suddenly thought was “nice.”

  Her father turned to the assembled group and beamed while clapping Jack on the back. “He wears our clothes. The man is talented and smart.”

  They obliged with a round of laughter while Alex fumed. As far as she was concerned, the man was a fraud, and his presentation would undoubtedly reflect his ineptitude. After all, clothes did not make the man.

  “Shall we start the meeting?” she asked over the din, irritated when Jack sat next to her father. Darn it, she should have separated them, she realized too late. Luckily Tess arrived with the presentation easel, so Alex directed her to set it up on her end of the room. Her secretary loitered, casting sideways glances at Jack Stillman until Alex cleared her throat meaningfully.

  Once the door closed, Alex took a deep breath. “Okay, everyone, let’s get this over wi—” She stopped abruptly, feeling a flush creep up her neck as surprised looks darted her way. Alex hesitated, half afraid her father would jump to his feet and assume control of the meeting. But his face was remarkably placid.

  “I mean, let’s begin,” she amended smoothly. “As you know, Tremont Enterprises is looking for a new advertising agency to take the company into the millennium.” Pausing for effect, she tried to inject just the right amount of doubt into her tone. “Mr. Jack Stillman of the Stillman & Sons Agency is here today to convince us that his small, family-owned business can handle an account the size of Tremont’s.”

  At the tightening of his jaw, she saw her veiled barb had hit home. “Mr. Stillman, perhaps you can tell us more about yourself and your company.” As she took her seat, Alex gave him a tight smile that said she would reveal him at the earliest convenience for the con man he was. “After all,” she added, “not everyone was treated to the, um, enlightening reception I received yesterday.”

  His smile was sublime as he stood and launched into a brief background of his family business, including his and his brother’s degrees from UK, and the recent addition of a large regional natural food manufacturer to their client list. Distinctly unimpressed, Alex was hiding a yawn behind her hand when he looked her way. “But I’m glad you brought up your visit to my office, Ms. Tremont, because it dovetails perfectly into my presentation for today.”

  She realized he was waiting for a response, so she obliged with as little interest as possible. “Oh?”

  Jack’s mouth twitched as his gaze bore into her. “You see … my plan worked perfectly.”

  As his words sunk in, Alex sobered with a sense of impending doom. “What plan would that be?”

/>   He stroked his chin thoughtfully as he walked around her father’s chair. She caught a glint of silver in his hair when he stepped through a shaft of sunlight. “What was your impression of me yesterday, Ms. Tremont?”

  The dark walls of the room suddenly seemed closer, and the hairs at the nape of her exposed neck tingled. “The truth?”

  His eyes glittered. “Absolutely.”

  Alex pursed her lips. How could she best put into words that she found him to be a very base individual who might be more at home digging a ditch and ogling female pedestrians than playing at running a business? Studying his smooth, too-confident face, she decided that Jack Stillman needed to be taken down a notch. Or three. “Frankly, I found you to be rather odious.”

  Eyebrows shot high around the table, accompanied by sharp gasps and a titter or two. “Alex!” her father admonished, but she didn’t break eye contact with Jack. This was personal.

  Her opponent’s smile was patient. “Why?”

  In her peripheral vision, she saw heads pivot back and forth between them, but as far as Alex was concerned, she and Jack were the only two people in the room. An invisible tunnel connected them across the table. She felt an alarming draw to her energy, as if the space wasn’t big enough for the both of them. With effort, she matched his smile. “You mean other than the fact that you were rude and boorish?”

  Bodies shifted.

  He spread his large hands. “My apologies if you were offended, but I believe you were reacting to something other than my words.”

  “Such as?” she asked dryly.

  “My appearance?”

  Alex blinked, but didn’t reply.

  “In fact,” Jack said, walking around the table toward her. “You didn’t recognize me when I arrived today, did you, Ms. Tremont?”

  Irritated, she crossed her arms. “You do look quite different, Mr. Stillman.”

  He turned to address everyone else. “Just so you’ll know, when Ms. Tremont came by yesterday, I was wearing cutoff shorts, a Hawaiian shirt and a tool belt.”

  What was he up to? “You forgot the bad tie and the fact that you were barefoot,” she supplied, shoving her shoulders back into the stiff chair. Chuckles circled the table, but she remained stoic.

  “Ah, you are observant.” He graced her with a charming smile, then gestured to himself, sweeping his hand down his torso as he walked closer still. “Would you say my appearance today is an improvement?”

  Hot anger shot through her, and her eyes traveled the length of him as if they had a mind of their own. Standing almost within touching distance, Jack Stillman was one gorgeously put together man, but she wasn’t about to give him undue credit for lucking into a favorable gene pool. “Anything would be an improvement.”

  His answer was a devilish grin of concession, which drew more light laughter from the table.

  Alex didn’t appreciate being put in the hot seat—especially when she’d planned to be wasting Jack Stillman right about now. “Mr. Stillman, I assume you have a point?”

  “Ah,” he said, raising a finger and lifting the portfolio he’d leaned against the wall, then placing it on the easel. “My point is that a certain old saying has credence.” With a flick of his wrist, he unsnapped the little strap that held together the worn leather portfolio, and Alex stifled a scoff. A large hand-painted color poster showed a man in a football uniform throwing a pass, cheering fans behind him.

  Jack lowered the panel to reveal another poster showing the same man wearing chinos and a casual shirt flipping burgers on a grill, a couple of admiring women standing nearby with umbrella’d drinks. The next poster showed the man in a suit carrying a briefcase and checking his watch as he hurried somewhere, again with a couple of female on-lookers. The fourth poster showed the now shirtless man reclining in bed, wearing boxer shorts, a woman’s hand resting on his shoulder. Her midsection stirred at the intimacy of the moment translated by the simplicity of the picture. She guessed he’d shown great restraint in not depicting two women’s hands.

  Her eyes strayed to Jack, unnerved that he seemed to be gauging her reaction. She kept her expression passive, and glanced away, not about to reveal that the picture conjured up images of Jack Stillman himself reclining in bed with a lover. She banished the disturbing thought and forbade herself from making such appalling slips in the future.

  “My point, one that Ms. Tremont can attest to, is—” he encompassed the room with a tantalizing smile and flipped down the poster to reveal a slogan in neat black block letters “—Tremont’s. Because clothes do make the man.”

  Alex thought her head might explode on the spot.

  *

  Jack hoped no one could hear his heart thrashing in his chest—the scheme of putting a creative spin on yesterday’s fiasco was risky, but he had nothing to lose. It was fourth down with long yardage, and he’d been scrambling to find a seam in the end zone. The deadly look Alexandria Tremont gave him, however, was akin to taking the pigskin right between the eyes. Now his only hope was to escape the game without further injury. He eyed the distance between her and him, versus him and the door—could he make it?

  The room crackled with expectant silence, then Al Tremont suddenly burst out laughing, clapping his fleshy hands. “I like it.”

  Jack exhaled the breath he’d been holding as the others, as if awaiting their boss’s cue, began to hum and nod their approval. Heath Reddinger seemed noncommittal, but from what he had observed when he’d followed the secretary into the room, Reddinger and the fetching Alexandria were involved romantically. The thought stirred a different kind of competitive urge in Jack’s stomach. Now Reddinger darted looks toward his ladylove, waiting for a glance of … permission? Poor sap.

  Apparently Alexandria wasn’t influenced by her father’s favorable opinion. “Excuse me,” she said in a crisp tone as she swept her gaze over her colleagues. “Excuse me!”

  Jack suspected if she’d had a gavel within reach, she would have banged the table top, but everyone fell silent and gave her their attention.

  She pressed her lips together, as if gathering her composure, then spoke, her voice rich and controlled. “Frankly, I think the ad is a bit sexist. After all, our typical shopper is female, and we can’t afford to alienate her.”

  “We wouldn’t be alienating her,” Jack said, speaking as if he were already part of the Tremont’s team. He withdrew a television commercial storyboard of a woman shopping in the men’s department. “Instead we’d be saying, ‘Come into Tremont’s and outfit your man in style.’”

  Outfit your man? She narrowed her eyes at him. “I repeat for the benefit of the hard-of-hearing, I think the idea is sexist, and if I were the customer, I would be offended.”

  Jack felt perversely compelled to provoke her, although he wasn’t sure why. “But you, Ms. Tremont, are not the typical female customer.” Reciting from memory the demographics hastily gathered from Reggie over the taxi driver’s cell phone, he said, “Correct me if I’m wrong, but I believe the typical customer is both younger and married.”

  He had hit a nerve—maybe two.

  While Alexandria turned a becoming shade of crimson, Al Tremont laughed again, slapping his knee. “He’s got you there, Alex.”

  Alex. The name suited her, Jack decided, then he plunged ahead. “She is also less educated and less successful,” he added, hoping to placate her, although from the set of her mouth, he hadn’t. “But she spends a disproportionate amount of her disposable income on clothing. I think we can entice her to spend even more of her own money—” he grinned “—or someone else’s—”

  More laughter sounded, accompanied by nods.

  “—buying clothes for her man.”

  “Clothes for her man?” Alex’s tone was heavy with disdain. “Mr. Stillman, that thinking smacks of chauvinism.”

  “Maybe,” he conceded. “But how are menswear sales?”

  “We don’t divulge sakes figures to outsiders.”

  “Menswear sales are lou
sy,” Al Tremont offered.

  “But improving,” Alex insisted, gripping the edge of the table and shooting her father a withering glance.

  “I assume profit margins are higher for men’s clothing to compensate for the lower volume,” Jack continued, trying to smooth the brewing disagreement between father and daughter. “So it makes sense to target an underselling, high-margin department. Present a campaign specifically designed to bring women into the store to shop for the men in their lives, and they’re sure to wander into other departments.”

  “We could put cross-promotional materials for women’s wear, children’s and housewares in the men’s department,” one of the young women offered.

  Jack remembered she was an assistant in marketing. “Great idea,” he said, and was rewarded with a blushing, shy grin. “Coax them into other departments after they’ve finished shopping in menswear.”

  Side conversations erupted around the table. Jack could see the idea catching and spreading. Alex sat rigidly in her chair, eyeing her associates.

  “Mr. Stillman, do you have any experience in producing television commercials?” Heath Reddinger asked, restoring the room to relative quiet.

  Good old Heath—offering a bit of disguised resistance for Alex’s sake. “No,” he admitted. “But I do have a relationship with a local producer, who does top-notch work.” A chance glance at Alexandria revealed her too-blue eyes had rolled upward, so he directed the rest of his remarks to her father.

  “I recommend that you contract a male model exclusively for Tremont’s, then flood the media with his image.”

  Tremont was nodding. “I like it—simple, straightforward, smart.”

  Alexandria cleared her throat noisily. “It’s not the level of sophistication I had in mind for the store. I wanted to spotlight our women’s designer clothing, our fine jewelry, cosmetics—”

  “Alex,” her father cut in, his face stern. “I think we should take Jack’s proposal under serious consideration.”

  “Perhaps,” she returned across the table, her own expression firm, “we should ask Jack to leave the room so we can discuss the pros and cons among ourselves.”