not following you, son.”
Cole smiled for the first time in what felt like weeks. Why hadn’t he thought of it before?
“It’s the acquire-to-grow strategy—something I was in charge of implementing during my tenure at Force Cosmetics. Simply put, if we can’t beat them, we’ll just have to buy them.”
He paused to give Victor a chance to let the idea sink in. “We would keep Stiletto’s name and packaging the same, meanwhile continue to revamp Espresso and rebrand it as makeup for the classic or mature beauty or something along those lines.”
The older man pressed his lips together a few moments, before he finally spoke. “Couldn’t we just develop our own offshoot brand?”
Cole shrugged. “We could, but that would take a long time. Even then, consumers can be fickle. There’s no guarantee it would catch on and turn into a winner for us.”
“But how?” Victor frowned, deepening the creases in his forehead. “You heard what Doyle said. The cosmetics division is buried in red ink. Your sister’s Espresso Sanctuary spas propped us up until you came back and threw us a lifeline.”
Cole crossed his arms over his chest. While Espresso’s finances had dwindled in his absence, his personal wealth had grown tremendously. “Don’t worry. I’ve got it covered,” he said. “I’m about to make Ms. Matthews an offer too good to refuse.”
Sage Matthews pulled the phone away from her ear long enough to give it, and the woman on the other end of the line, the side eye.
“Your makeup brand would be a perfect addition to our store lineup.”
The buyer for the trendy boutique chain droned on, but the silent alarms on Sage’s bullshit detector drowned out the rest of her spiel. It sounded identical to the ones she’d heard all morning.
“Strange—that isn’t what you said a few weeks ago.” Sage kicked off her shoes under her desk and wiggled her toes. High heels were the worst form of torture, but when you owned a company called Stiletto, you had to dress the part.
She glanced at the notation she’d scribbled on a message slip next to the buyer’s name. “I believe you said Stiletto’s branding was too provocative. Your exact words were downright raunchy.”
“Um...well,” the woman stammered. “You must have misheard me. I said it was delightfully racy as in sexy. Clearly, there’s been a misunderstanding.”
Misunderstanding, huh? Sage stifled the harrumph on the tip of her tongue. “Hard to tell,” she said, “considering the way your secretary tossed me out of your office afterward like she was a nightclub bouncer.”
“Oh, dear. Please accept my apologies if my staff was a touch overzealous. Again, I assure you it was all a big mistake. One I hope we can...”
“Just stop.” Sage had heard enough.
“P-pardon?”
“Before you continue, you should know I refuse to do business with anyone who lies to me.”
Silence.
Figuring the buyer was weighing her options, Sage waited, making no attempt to fill the dead air. Long awkward moments passed, before a sigh emitted over the line. “Okay, the truth is I didn’t want to risk offending my more conservative clientele by selling lipsticks and eyes shadows with names like Spank Me and Missionary Position.”
There was another sigh, this one deeper and more drawn out. “Next thing I know, the hottest female singer on the planet is telling a national television audience she adores your lipsticks. Suddenly the same customers I was worried about offending are clamoring for Stiletto products, and I couldn’t be more sorry for turning you down.”
Finally, Sage thought, the truth.
She’d returned nearly a dozen calls that morning from eager buyers, the same people who had practically slammed the door in her face previously, criticizing everything from Stiletto’s faux black leather packing to the titillating names of their products. Of course, they’d changed their tunes in the weeks since pop star Crave had whipped out a tube of Stiletto lipstick and called it her secret weapon.
Sage knew it was just foolish pride. Still, she couldn’t help feel irked that instead of owning up to their blunder, they’d tried to gloss over it. Insulting her intelligence with meaningless flattery.
“My assistant will contact you later today to schedule a meeting to discuss adding Stiletto to your boutique’s lineup,” she said, satisfied. “However, you should know that as circumstances have changed, so has my first offer. Any deal we strike now will definitely have terms more favorable to Stiletto.”
“Eh...uh...of course,” the boutique’s buyer said. “I look forward to our meeting.”
Sage ended the call just as her assistant, Amelia, bounded into her office clutching a pink message slip. A huge grin deepened the dimples in the cheeks of her smooth brown skin. “I thought it would take forever for you to finally get off the phone.”
“What’s up?” Leaning forward in her office chair, Sage propped her elbows on her desktop. She dropped her chin to her chest and began rubbing out the kinks that had developed in her neck from talking on the phone all morning.
“You’ll never guess who called for you.” The nineteen-year-old shifted from one leg to the other, practically bouncing with excitement. “Not in a million years.”
“Well, don’t keep me...” Sage stopped midsentence and glanced up at her assistant. “Hold on. What are you still doing here?” She glanced at her watch. “Your accounting class starts in five minutes.”
Amelia huffed and rolled her eyes toward the ceiling. “I know. I know.”
The teen had started working for Stiletto a few hours a week after school during her last year of high school. Sage thought she was doing the girl a favor, but quickly discovered that in the efficient and organized Amelia, she’d struck employee gold.
A year later, when graduation and her eighteenth birthday aged her out of the foster-care system, the job became full-time with the stipulation that Amelia would enroll in college. Having grown up in the foster-care system, Sage knew the importance of having an education to fall back on when you had no one to depend on but yourself.
“Well?” Sage raised a brow.
“But I couldn’t leave. Not just yet. Not until I tell you who...”
“I don’t care who called. There isn’t anything or anyone more important than you being at school right now,” Sage said.
The same brusque tone that sent her other employees, and most people, scurrying for cover rarely intimidated Amelia. Nor did it dampen her bubbly enthusiasm over the caller she was dying to tell her about.
“Stand down, General. I’m going to class, but first you have to hear who called you before I explode.”
“For
