IT TAKES A REBEL

by Stephanie Bond

  Jack moved toward the door, but Al Tremont held up his hand. “Stay, son. I just need to know how much all this is going to cost.”

  “Father,” Alex said, rising, her eyes wide. “This matter is far too important to be decided unilaterally in mere minutes. Remember, we have other agencies to interview, and besides, the entire marketing team should convene and discuss—”

  “Alex,” her father said abruptly, his mouth set in a frown, his double chin shaking, “I’ve made up my mind, and it’s the Stillman agency I want!”

  Although the words were music to his ears, Jack was aware of awkwardness vibrating between the walls, and for a moment, he felt a pang of sympathy for Alexandria. The man did seem to be a bit overbearing, and Jack was curious to see how she would respond.

  “Father, a word with you outside?” To her credit, her tone was sweet, but he detected a slight tremor. She marched toward the door and exited, head high, leaving the door ajar. Jack and everyone else shifted their glance toward Al Tremont, who sighed heavily, then pushed himself to his feet and followed her, muttering under his breath.

  *

  Alex paced in the hallway, shaking with a level of anger she hadn’t experienced since discovering her father was going to marry Gloria the Gold Digger scarcely a year after her precious mother’s death. How dare he undermine the authority he’d given her mere weeks ago! And in front of colleagues and other vice presidents, no less—not to mention that abominable Jack Stillman. Clothes do make the man. How lame. Thoughts of what she would do if her father didn’t follow her were cut short by his appearance.

  “Alex, what is the meaning of this?”

  She crossed her arms. “I was going to ask you the same thing. The last time I looked, choosing an advertising agency fell under my area of responsibility.” Gesturing toward the conference room, she said, “I can’t believe you would just hand over our account to that inept man!”

  “Imagine,” her father murmured, a nostalgic smile on his broad face. “Jack the Attack working for me.”

  Incredulous, Alex’s mouth worked up and down in alarm. He was dismissing her opinion on this critical matter? “Dad, surely you’re not willing to jeopardize our advertising campaign, possibly our entire holiday sales season, simply to hire that has-been jock?”

  He clasped her hand between his two. “Alex, dear, the man is talented, and he has a catchy idea that the rest of the staff likes.”

  “They’re just humoring you.”

  “Then I wish you would, too,” he said, adopting a heart-melting smile.

  “Dad—”

  “Alex, do this one thing for me. Work with Jack Stillman to get this campaign off the ground and let’s see where it goes.”

  “But the timing … it’s so risky—”

  “And sometimes it takes a rebel to shake things up,” he said, then looked contrite. “Sweetheart, I’m sorry I raised my voice in there, but I think you had your mind made up before the man even walked in.”

  “Dad, if you could have seen him yesterday—”

  “And now we know why he looked the way he did, to make a point.”

  Alex scoffed. “That’s impossible—he had no idea I was dropping by. On top of everything else, the man’s a pathological liar.”

  “I like the boy, and my gut tells me this is the right thing to do, but it won’t work unless you get on board.”

  “Oh, you need me now?” She hated the hurt she couldn’t seem to keep out of her voice.

  His smile was indulgent. “Of course, sweetheart. I won’t offer Stillman the contract unless you agree to monitor the campaign.”

  A warm, fuzzy feeling lodged beneath her heart, and she smiled in spite of their disagreement. How she loved this man—her mentor, her hero. She couldn’t dispute the fact that his business judgment was usually sound, although she had an ominous feeling about this particular decision.

  “In fact—” he winked “—taking on this kind of project will prove what a team player you are, my dear.”

  The vice presidency—was he dangling his endorsement in front of her? Alex sank her teeth into her lower lip.

  “What do you say?” he asked, squeezing her hand. “Help me keep my promise to Jack’s father. I have a feeling their business could use a life preserver.”

  “More like a crash cart,” she observed dryly.

  “So you’ll do it? For me?”

  The last vestiges of her anger dissolved and she nodded, amenable to a compromise. “But only for two weeks. If the focus group doesn’t like what Jack Stillman comes up with, then we cut ties with him and interview the St. Louis firm.”

  Her father beamed. “That’s my girl.” With his hand on her waist, he steered her back in the direction of the boardroom. Alex felt buoyed, willing to accept full credit for his good cheer.

  Resigned to the unpalatable task before her, Alex inhaled deeply and followed him back into the room, aware of the anxious glances from the table. Al walked up to stand beside Jack, pulling Alex close to him on the other side. Behind her father’s shoulders, she caught Jack Stillman’s mocking gaze and wondered how she’d keep from socking him over the next fourteen days.

  “I’m happy to report,” her father said, his eyes shining, “that Alex and I have reached a compromise to give Mr. Stillman the opportunity to impress us, and I’m sure that, just like on the football field, Jack won’t let us down.”

  Jack inclined his head to acknowledge the smattering of polite applause. “I’ll do my best, sir.”

  Two weeks, Alex told herself, forcing a smile to her lips. She could walk on hot coals for two weeks if she had to. And it wasn’t like they’d have to be together every minute—after all, Jack wouldn’t be involved in every aspect of the project. He would simply hand off his ideas to the photographer and the producer of the commercials, for instance. She could take it from there. Yes … things weren’t so bad.

  “In fact,” her father continued, his face animated. “I just had an inspiration! Who needs to look for a male model when we have Jack the Attack?”

  Alex’s stomach vaulted. “What?”

  “What?” Jack asked at the same time.

  “Why, it’s perfect,” Al continued, gesturing to Jack with both hands as if he were presenting a refrigerator to a studio audience. “Jack will be the spokesman for Tremont’s. He’ll be the star of our commercials!”

  He clapped Jack hard on the back, but Alex was the one who felt as if her heartbeat needed a jump start. Jack Stillman, the Tremont’s spokesman? She opened her mouth to scream no, but her voice had fled—apparently to join her father’s good sense.

  And her father had eyes only for Jack. Puffed up with pride, he beamed at his new recruit. “How about it, son?”

  Al turned and gestured to some invisible horizon, his thumb and forefinger indicating a name in lights. “Just imagine, when people see ‘Tremont’s,’ they’ll think of ‘Jack the Attack.’”

  Alex’s vision blurred. She mumbled something about an important conference call and walked out of the room as calmly as her knocking knees would allow. Her father was so preoccupied with his find, he’d never miss her. On the way to her office, mind reeling, she somehow managed to snag her panty hose on a rattan wastebasket.

  Great. On top of everything else, now she had to buy new panty hose.

  *

  Chapter 6

  « ^ »

  Tuesday laughed, her eyes wide. “You went over there flying by the seat of borrowed pants, and came back with the account and the starring role?”

  Jack shrugged and loosened his tie. “The old man was so excited, I had no choice but to say yes.”

  “What’s your brother going to say about you modeling?”

  He frowned. “It’s not modeling.”

  She quirked an eyebrow. “You going to put on their clothes and let people point a camera at you?”

  He jammed his hands on his hips, ready to argue, then sighed and nodded.

  “Sounds like modeling to
me. You must have impressed them with the new you. How did Ms. Tremont react?”

  “Not well,” he admitted. In fact, the one dim spot of the day had been when he’d looked up from shaking Al Tremont’s hand to find that Alex had disappeared. She had a prior appointment, her father had explained unconvincingly, then assured Jack he’d be seeing a lot of Alex in the next few days since she would serve as his liaison to the company. The news had stirred his stomach oddly. He’d wanted to speak to her, to extend an olive branch before he left, but Al had dismissed his daughter’s reaction.

  “She had her heart set on a fancy shmancy advertising outfit in St. Louis,” he’d said. “Give her a few hours for the news to sink in, then call her to set up a time when the two of you can get together. I won’t lie to you, son—she’s a handful, but she’s as smart as a whip. You’re going to have to suck up a little to win her over, but I’m sure you can handle it.” With that, Al, Heath Reddinger and Bobby Warner had whisked him off to an early and extended lunch.

  At first, retelling football stories had been amusing, but after ninety minutes of constant prodding by Tremont and Warner, the enjoyment had worn mighty thin for Jack, and, he suspected, for Reddinger. Between the jokes, he had tried to glean as much business information as possible from the trio, but the sole kernel of interesting data was an overheard comment that Alexandria was left holding a dinner reservation for two at Gerrard’s while Reddinger left town to handle a banking issue.

  Jack had studied the men throughout the meal and concluded that Al Tremont was a risk-taker with enough wisdom to attract talented people—Jack liked him—that Bobby Warner was a quick study with enough wisdom to attract debate—Jack respected him—and that Heath Reddinger was a yes-man with enough wisdom to attract the boss’s daughter—Jack disliked him.

  It was the sort of dislike one man felt for another man who had something the first man strongly thought the second man didn’t deserve. Not that the first man wanted the something he thought the second man didn’t deserve, it was just that the first man possessed an innate sense of justice.

  “She didn’t take it well at all,” he repeated, half to himself.

  Tuesday waved her hand. “She’ll get used to having you around. Might be good for the both of you.”

  Jack frowned. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “Grown folk have to learn to get along with people they don’t like.”

  “I never said I didn’t like her.”

  “I was talking about her not liking you.”

  He bristled. “Why wouldn’t she like me?”

  Tuesday harrumphed. “You think because you put on that fancy suit and got a haircut that the woman can’t see through you?”

  “You were the one who put me in this getup—under duress, I might add.”

  She wagged her finger in his direction. “You might have impressed the men, and maybe even the fickle women, but my guess is that after the way you treated Ms. Tremont when she came here, she’ll be on her guard. Smart lady, judging by the way you conduct business.”

  “I got the account, didn’t I?”

  Tuesday snorted. “Sounds like they want your face more than your advertising talent.”

  “Gee, thanks for the vote of confidence.”

  “That’s part of my job,” she said with a shrug.

  “Speaking of your job, there isn’t one. We can’t afford you.”

  “You can’t afford not to have me,” she replied, lifting both hands.

  Frowning, Jack glanced around the front office, not a bit surprised to see that Tuesday had rearranged its contents in a more pleasing manner. A fresh but pungent odor permeated the air. “What’s that smell?”

  “Paint,” she said, nodding toward the yellow walls. “I thought this room could use a pick-me-up.”

  Jack stared at the dean, bright walls. What color had they been before? “You painted?”

  Tuesday shrugged. “An apron, a gallon of paint, and a roller—no big deal. Besides, I was bored.”

  “Where did you get the supplies?” he asked suspiciously.

  “Call it a contribution,” she said. “I wanted to make this room more comfortable.”

  “Well, don’t get too comfortable,” he warned. “There is no job.”

  She sniffed, disregarding him completely.

  Jack frowned. “When is Mr. Stripling supposed to arrive?”

  She nodded toward the back office. “He’s been here for an hour—I gave him another back adjustment and sat him at Derek’s desk. He wants to talk to you a-s-a-p about missing quarterly tax payments.” Tuesday extended a hand-written note which presumably held the man’s instructions.

  Jack glared and snatched the piece of paper. “Keep your hands off our auditor! Anything else?”

  Tuesday walked around the desk she had made her own, complete with a nameplate—where had that come from?—and picked up a handful of pink phone message slips. “Donald Phillips wants you to review new pages to the company’s website.”

  “I don’t suppose he said anything about sending us a check,” Jack grumbled.

  “It arrived today.”

  “Great. We need to—”

  “Pay the phone bill, the electric bill, Lamberly Printing, the post office box rental, Beecher’s Office Supplies and three returned check charges from the bank.” She smiled and handed him a stack of papers. “Counter-sign the check for deposit, then sign all the checks I filled out.”

  “I’m not giving you this check to deposit,” he declared. “I hardly know you.”

  Without missing a beat, Tuesday picked up her purse and swung it over her shoulder. “I wasn’t offering,” she said, enunciating each word. “The rest of your phone messages are there for you to read yourself, and envelopes for the bills are already addressed and stamped.”

  Jack felt a little contrite as she walked toward the door, her hips swaying with attitude. “Where are you going?”

  “Home,” she tossed over her shoulder. “I’m taking the rest of the afternoon off.”

  “You don’t have a job to take time off from,” he reminded her grumpily.

  “See you tomorrow, model man.”

  Jack massaged the bridge of his nose, then carried the handful of papers with him to the back office. Mr. Stripling sat at Derek’s desk surrounded by files and folders, with a boardlike device strapped to his back, his face arranged in an unpleasant expression.

  “Good day, Mr. Stripling.”

  The man scowled in his direction. “Is it? I hadn’t noticed, having been assaulted once again by your office manager and left to sit here all afternoon wracked with unbearable pain.”

  Jack swallowed a smile at the image of Tuesday pinning the slight man down long enough to crack his neck—again. Hadn’t the man seen it coming this time? “I apologize, Mr. Stripling, but that unstable woman does not work for us.”

  “So you’ve said, and I find the entire situation quite suspect.”

  Jack flung his arm toward the files the man was delving into. “You’ll see—there’s no record of having a Tuesday Humphrey on our payroll.”

  “Which means you’ve been paying her under the table,” Stripling chirped. “A crime in and of itself.”

  “No—” Jack held up his hand, then stopped. “Forget it,” he mumbled, crossing to his own desk where he tossed the stack of bills. “I’ve got more important things to worry about.”

  If possible, the man stiffened even more, and his bow tie practically twitched. “More important than the IRS?”

  “Yeah,” Jack said, falling into his seat. “An irate woman.”

  “Your office manager?”

  “No,” he said, picking up the phone to dial Derek. “A different irate woman. I seem to be collecting them.”

  As the phone rang on the other end, his spirits lifted in anticipation of telling his brother the news about the account, but he debated telling Derek that he had also been asked to be the Tremont’s spokesman. He didn’t want to give Derek
the impression that he might sacrifice the work of the agency to satisfy this spokesman gig. Besides, Tuesday had pricked a concern he’d been harboring since leaving Tremont’s—perhaps Al Tremont was more intrigued by the thought of Jack the Attack doing commercials for the department store than the thought of Jack Stillman doing advertising work for the department store.

  “Hello, this is Derek.”

  “Hi, bro. Did I catch you at a bad time?”

  “Jack, thank goodness! I’ve been going crazy waiting to hear from you. How’d the meeting go with Tremont?”

  “We got the account.”

  “That’s great!” Derek whooped and lowered the mouthpiece to yell the news to someone else—presumably his wife Janine—then returned. “How long is the contract for?”

  “Two weeks.”

  “Two weeks?” Disappointment filtered his brother’s voice. “Is that all?”

  Rankled, Jack said, “It was the best I could do under the circumstances.”

  “What circumstances?”

  “The decision to go with our agency wasn’t unanimous.”

  “Did Mr. Tremont like the presentation?”

  “Yeah, he liked it fine. It was his daughter who had a problem with it, and she’s the director of sales and marketing.”

  “Daughter? What’s she like?”

  Jack’s pulse spiked. “Young and hostile.”

  Derek emitted a thoughtful sound. “Pretty?”

  His shrug was for himself, he supposed. “If you like the white-and-uptight type. I have two weeks to impress her, and if I do, we go back to the negotiating table.”

  “I’m coming home right away.”

  Panic gripped him—the last thing he wanted was for Derek to come home and find him making commercials. Two weeks would give him time to get a handle on the details. “Derek, man, don’t do that,” he said, laughing and forcing a casual tone. “Trust me, I’ll have this thing well on its way by the time you get home. Enjoy the rest of your honeymoon.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Absolutely.” He spent the next few minutes describing the concept of the ad campaign, then assured him—ignoring the unfriendly look that Stripling shot his way—that the audit was going smoothly and that the crazy lady who had made herself their office manager was gone. He didn’t add “for the day.”