Suzanne Forster - Tease

At least she’d had some experience with bonding and leading. She was more concerned about the other task Erica Summers had given her. Pratt-Summers had built a reputation for brilliant innovation. They’d won nearly every industry award for their avant-garde designs, but they were also becoming known for their arrogance and lack of communication with clients—and it was costing them business. Tess had been brought in to do what spin doctors were supposed to do—create a new image for the agency’s clients, but she’d also been tasked with creating a new image for Pratt-Summers itself.

Now, there was a challenge.

And worse, Erica had asked her to keep quiet about it. She didn’t want to ruffle feathers. Creative types were sensitive about being handled, she’d cautioned, as though Tess weren’t a creative type herself. It was Tess’s ability to successfully straddle the two disciplines—account management and creative—that made her the perfect covert agent for change within the creative division.

“Let’s talk about the Faustini account and don’t be shy.” Tess coaxed the team with her hands, like a traffic cop beckoning cars to advance. Too bad she didn’t have a whistle. “Any new ideas since our last session on Faustini? Somebody toss something out. Anybody. I don’t care how wild it is. How do we make Faustini’s new leather boots a must-have item?”

Andy had arranged himself cross-legged on his mat, continuing to tempt the ladies. “We don’t,” he said. “We start with the briefcases, their signature product. First, make the cases sexy, then introduce the boots.”

“Good luck making a briefcase sexy.” Carlotta shook back her claret-red waves and played with the zipper pull of her Lycra warm-up suit, as if to say now this is sexy.

Tess would have guessed Carlotta to be in her late thirties, but thanks to the wonders of cosmetic surgery, she was, and probably always would be, ageless. It was tempting to think she’d been hired to boost male morale, and maybe their testosterone. But, to date, Carlotta had racked up more awards for her ads than any other Pratt-Summers creative. She was kick-butt in more ways than one.

Andy sprang up and went to get a sleek black leather case he’d left under the basketball backboard. Tess recognized it as a Faustini. She watched with interest as Andy dropped to his knees on his mat, took a pair of sheer red panties from the case and glanced up, a wicked gleam in his eye.

“A man can’t spend every weekend working,” he said, letting a beat pass. “Faustini. Work hard, play hard.”

He’d given Tess an idea. She reached over and touched the lid of the case seductively, swirling her fingertips over the silky leather. “It’s so soft,” she cooed in a kittenish Marilyn Monroe voice, “and you’re so successful.”

Andy arched an eyebrow: “You’re into leather, too?”

“Not leather,” she scolded. “Faustini.”

Tess and Andy grinned, high-fiveing each other. “Not a bad thirty-second shot,” she said.

“Or!” Carlotta squealed. “Picture me as a dominatrix, a bullwhip in my hand. “You’re not carrying a Faustini?” She cracks the whip. “Take that!”

The enthusiasm was contagious. Soon, they were talking over each other, but the suggestions got more and more outrageous. Tess hated to be a killjoy, but she’d already met with Alberto Faustini, the company’s rather stodgy founder, and he didn’t want anything far-out. He’d told Tess to come up with something provocative, but nothing X-rated, and that was despite strong opposition from his new partner, his twenty-two-year-old wild-child daughter, Gina, who favored vampires, sexual bondage and other gothic images. Fortunately, Gina Faustini didn’t sign the checks.

“Guys,” Tess said, “we want to seduce customers not shock them.”

“Why not shock them? Before you can seduce them you have to get their attention.”

Tess wasn’t sure who’d spoken until she noticed her team members looking over her shoulder. She whipped around, saw the source of the disembodied voice, and was glad not to be hooked up to a lie detector. Her sweaty palms would have shorted the machine out.

How long had he been standing there?

She’d never met Danny Gabriel, but even if she hadn’t seen his likeness plastered all over the agency walls in photographs with business giants and celebrity clients, she would have recognized his personal trademarks—the bare feet, the worn blue jeans and the flowing hair he’d gathered into a loose ebony braid.

Here before her was the agency’s image problem in the flesh. Not his clothes, even Gabriel donned a suit on client days. His attitude. He was Tess’s codirector—and the infamous advertising savant she’d been brought in to teach some manners. The Faustini account had been his before it was given to Tess, and rumor had it that he’d been replaced because he sided with Faustini’s daughter.

What was he doing here now? He’d been in Tokyo all week, drumming up international business, which was his new focus, according to Erica. Tess was supposed to have been formally introduced to him tonight at a dinner with Erica and the board members. She was nervous enough about that. If Carlotta was the agency’s diva, then Danny Gabriel was its rock star.

Tess sat there, thunderstruck, aware that she wasn’t racking up leadership points with her silence. Her team knew him, but they seemed to be speechless, too. Either they were intimidated or expecting a confrontation. There was a good chance that Gabriel saw her as an interloper.

She was an interloper. And this could be a test, but of what? Her worthiness to walk the same ground he did?

She rose to her feet, accomplishing it with surprising grace. “My, my,” she said, her tone both friendly and challenging. “I’ve heard so much about you. Danny Gabriel, right? I’m Tess Wakefield.”

She waited for a reaction before offering her hand. He looked almost approachable, except for those eyes. Sharp. Serrated. Like a cutting tool. They reminded her a little of someone else’s eyes, and it was just enough of a resemblance to make her thoughts heat with unwanted memories.

He nodded, his expression warming slightly. “Faustini management doesn’t know what the hell they want,” he said. “The client rarely does, so it’s our job to tell them.”

“Really? Our job?”

They shook hands, and she covered his with both of hers, pressing down firmly. His focus sharpened. Possibly he was just realizing that she might be a worthier adversary than he’d thought.

“But shock value has a way of backfiring, don’t you think?” she asked.

“For people like me, yes. Not for you, though. You can get away with anything.”

“Excuse me?”

He just smiled. “You have a free pass—in advertising and in life. Use it.”

“What free pass?”

“Your sincerity. The good-girl thing. It sells, especially when it’s used to sell something bad. People might not line up to buy bibles from you, but they would buy sex. They would buy leather, even if it came with whips and chains.”

“Really.”

He nodded. “You make the bad stuff okay. If a sweet thing like you is a little bit kinky, then maybe kinky is okay. You give people permission to do what they secretly want to do.”

“Sweet? You’re quite sure of that?” Tess had never been called that before, and it didn’t strike her as a compliment, no matter how he couched it. Her naturally curly blond hair was cut in a bob, on which she spent a fortune for frizz control, and she still had a bit of California tan and a few freckles left. But she was no angel. Her past might shock even him. As for her work, of course, she was passionate and sincere. If you didn’t believe in the client’s product, you had no business trying to sell it. That was her motto. Obviously, it wasn’t his.