Suzanne Forster - Tease

Mitzi handed her the credit card. “You forgot this.”

“Oh, thank you.” Tess took hold of the card, but Mitzi didn’t let go of it. Instead, she frowned, her dark eyes boring into Tess’s, as if she was searching for something.

“You don’t know anything about this place, do you?” she said.

“New York?”

“Pratt-Summers.”

“I know it’s one of the best ad agencies in the country.”

A sniff of derision. “And you came here with the highest hopes, thinking this was your big chance. But it could just as easily be your downfall. Not everyone is your friend.”

Tess tugged the credit card free. “What are you talking about?”

Mitzi shrugged, as if to say she’d done all she could. She reached up to pat Tess’s face, and it was all Tess could do not to shrink away.

“Why is it that we always want what we can’t have?” Mitzi asked, lowering her voice. “Use your senses, all five of them.”

Tess wanted to make light of the woman’s intensity, but she couldn’t quite break the spell Mitzi had woven. “I will,” she said.

“He has a secret.”

Tess blinked. “He? Who?”

“Danny Gabriel. You only think you know him.”

“I don’t know him at all.”

“Good, you understand.” Mitzi nodded. “Don’t take the people you work with for granted, especially if they have power over your career. I just don’t want you to be blindsided.” She started back to her stool. “It could happen.”

Tess was becoming exasperated. “Are you going to tell me what you’re talking about?”

Mitzi shook her head. She tsked. “My problem is I talk too much. Ask anyone. Pay no attention to me. You’re busy. Go back to work. You’re a good girl, solid. You’ll do fine.”

Tess had been blown off before, but Mitzi was a maestro. Tess didn’t much appreciate the good-girl remark, either. It was the second time today she’d been called that, and it was making her feel like a virgin being groomed as a sacrifice to the advertising gods.

The gallows humor was meant to loosen the knots in Tess’s stomach, but it didn’t work. Was that why she’d been brought here? To be someone’s scapegoat? To draw fire? Every office had internal politics, and she already knew something about this company’s problems, but Mitzi seemed to be suggesting there was more going on. And Mitzi might actually be in a position to know. Her bathroom was the equivalent of a locker room/spa where people came to hang out and gossip.

Tess debated the wisdom of trying to pry more information out of the washroom attendant. Maybe it was a sign that the three women reappeared from the lounge, saying they wanted to look over Mitzi’s wares. Tess noticed how chatty and personal they were with her. One of them asked her about her acting job. Apparently she had a bit part in an off-off-Broadway play. Another kidded her about her sexy new haircut.

Tess made it a point to say hello to the women before she left, and to thank Mitzi again for the tea. A woman with enemies couldn’t be too careful.

Relief washed over her once she was out the door and heading back to her office. Maybe from now on she’d go to the downstairs bathroom. Better for the hypertension, which she probably had by now.

It was mid-afternoon on a Friday, and the twenty-eighth floor seemed quiet as she traveled hallways that curved and meandered to evoke the tributaries of a river. You could get seasick trying to get around quickly. The walls were covered with murals painted by some of the agency’s artists. One was a whimsical underwater motif with sea creatures who’d been given the faces of various staff members. Tess hadn’t figured out what the deeper meaning might be, but she hadn’t failed to notice that Gabriel was a dolphin. Better than a shark, she supposed.

Tess passed the art and production studio on the way to her corner office, but avoided looking inside. She didn’t want to be tempted. She loved seeing the ideas become reality, and this studio was spectacular, large and magnificently equipped. But she couldn’t dawdle any longer. It felt as if the entire day had slipped away from her, and tonight’s dinner was going to be another time-suck. Worse, she would be spending it with a bunch of people who made her nervous—and apparently had secrets that could blindside her. Great.

“Where is it?” Tess hesitated in her office doorway, talking to herself as she peered at her desk. Her heart jumped painfully. “Where’s my PDA?”

Her personal digital assistant was also her cell phone, but there’d been no place to attach it to her jumpsuit when she went to the Qigong session, so she’d left it on her desk. She’d set it on the lead-crystal box that had been her going-away gift from Renaissance. She specifically remembered doing that.

Tess didn’t have an assistant. She did her own scheduling via the PDA’s digital calendar and memo pad. It contained all her appointments, her address book, even her various passwords. All her vital information was stored on that contraption! She would rather have lost an arm.

She began to search her office, starting with the drawers of her desk, which was a rather strange-looking antique made of rattan and glass that creaked under any kind of weight. Actually, the entire office was strange, although Tess loved the wraparound windows that surrounded her from behind. She wasn’t as crazy about the enormous German Messerschmitt airplane nose coming out of the wall facing her desk. The last occupant had clearly been a World War II nut. There was a glass case of army divisional patches, of which the 101 stAirborne Screaming Eagle was her favorite. That was one pissed-off bird. If she could ever remember, she would have to ask why all the paraphernalia had been left behind.

She’d been told she could redecorate on the company’s budget, but there hadn’t been time to think about that. Meanwhile, she wanted to duck every time she looked up and saw the plane. She felt like she was about to be strafed.

“Where the hell?” She lifted a stack of account files and searched through the rattan baskets sitting on the credenza behind her desk. Nothing. The PDA had vanished. Maybe she hadn’t left it on the crystal box?

She noticed her quilted coat hanging on the coatrack and reminded herself to check the pockets. At the same time, she saw the blinking message light on her office phone. She’d missed that completely when she came in.

She picked up the receiver and punched in her voice-mail password. At least she had that one memorized. The disembodied electronic voice told her she had several new messages, and she raced through them until she got to one from Erica Summers. The CEO’s musical voice filled her ear.

“Tess, I just found out that Danny Gabriel can’t make our little dinner tonight. He left a message saying that he’d run into you this morning and was very favorably impressed, so didn’t feel a pressing need to attend tonight. Apparently he’s up against a deadline.” Erica sniffed. “We’ll just have to muddle through without him, won’t we? Looking forward to it, Tess.”

Tess hung up the phone and swore softly. Gabriel had just blown her off, and he’d used the company CEO to do it. The guy had balls. He would be conspicuous by his absence at dinner tonight, an obvious sign to the board that he didn’t consider his new codirector important enough to bother with.

Tess had feared the dinner might not go well, but this was ridiculous. She took a deep breath, willing herself to let it go and get back to work. She still had to find her PDA. There was no time to waste on professional ego trips, and she felt certain that’s what this was. But a half hour later she’d given up on the search—and she was still steaming over Danny’s slight. She couldn’t concentrate on anything but her outrage, which wasn’t like her at all.