All Gabriel did was kiss her.
She got up from her desk and went over to the water dispenser, hoping a cold drink would put out the fire. On the way she passed the Messerschmitt mounted on the wall. “Give it your best shot,” she said softly. “I’m pretty fast.”
She drank several tiny paper cups of water and went back to her desk. This wasn’t her first time dealing with sluice gates. She was a healthy thirty-two-year-old woman, who’d been celibate for a very long time, and she’d had to find creative ways to deal with the situation. Quite by accident, she’d discovered a certain yoga position that had brought about some spontaneous relief. It might even have made the Cosmo orgasm quiz.
She needed to start doing yoga again. Quickly.
She was thinking fondly about her version of the full lotus position when the phone rang. It was the landline, which reminded her that her PDA was still missing. She’d looked everywhere, including the lost and found in the coffee lounge. She’d stopped by security this morning and reported it. She’d also picked up a replacement phone, but it contained none of her vital information, of course.
She went back to studying the glossies as she picked up the receiver. “Tess Wakefield,” she said.
“I know who you are. I just don’t know why you’re not here.”
Tess had a moment of confusion. The male voice struck a familiar chord, but she didn’t know how to respond. It had to be Danny. “Where are you?”
“Waiting for you down here in the Sandbox.”
“The Sandbox? Why are you there?”
“Tess, hello! It’s Andy. We’re all waiting for you down here in the sandbox. You called a team meeting this morning, remember?”
Tess fell back in her chair. Suddenly her heart was pounding when before it had been utterly still. She’d just daydreamed her way through fifteen minutes of the session she’d scheduled with her team. And after all the peptalking she’d done, trying to impress upon them how important it was for them to be prepared. Oh, yes, she definitely needed to get busy with those naughty fingers.
“Okay, this is major,” Carlotta told the team. “We choose one man and one woman with tremendous potential, and we call them Faustini spokesmodels. We create images for them that are totally distinctive, maybe something like Darth Vader for the man.”
Tess had been hoping for something other than Darth Vader, but Carlotta clearly loved the idea. Her expression said she was waiting for affirmation, applause, something. Her shapely butt was perched in a belt swing that hung from the ceiling on chains. Andy had taken the other swing, right next to her, and the rest of the team was sitting around the conference table, which was an old-fashioned picnic table.
Of all the agency’s themed conference rooms, the Sandbox was the favorite, probably because it suggested a day at the beach. Only a wall-size wipe board and a flip chart said business as usual. Otherwise, the wedge-shaped room was lined with real bamboo in naturalistic planter boxes, and the floor was exotic pink sand, imported from somewhere in the South Pacific. The rustic table could have been found at any state park, and the ceiling was painted sky blue. Several large skylights washed the room in sunny yellow.
Natural light, bare feet and sifting sands were supposed to inspire greatness, apparently. Mostly, they inspired Tess to nap like a cat in the sunshine, but that was about it. All this outer pressure and inner tension was getting to her.
“Batman and Catwoman?” Andy suggested.
“That’s distinctive?” Carlotta’s tone dismissed him. “With my idea, we save the client money because the spokesmodels do the entire campaign, and we create magnificent brand identification.”
“Only if the models are magnificent,” Tess countered.
“They will be—”
“Listen to this,” Brad cut in. He rose from the picnic table, his bare feet squishing in the sand. “We set the photo shoot in one of those hot new S&M clubs in the city. We’ll find ourselves the fucking Prince of Darkness and outfit him in Faustini.”
“I love it!” Carlotta squealed.
Tess wasn’t thrilled with the concept, nor did she think Faustini would be, but she was curious where her team might take it. “What about the woman?”
“Streetwalker chic? Gothic glam?” Brad offered his suggestions with a shrug. “I disagree that we need to be distinctive. Faustini already is distinctive. We need to get low-down and dirty. Make people notice.”
“What’s wrong with pulling women’s underwear out of a briefcase?” Andy said, apparently referring to his idea from yesterday.
Tess reached for her tote, where she’d put the manila envelope with the glossies. A moment later she had the pictures fanned across the picnic table like a large deck of cards.
“Good luck finding Darth Vader in this bunch” she said, “and by the way, I’m not sold on the club idea.”
Jan Butler got up from the table and went over to the wipe board, where she grabbed a grease pen and wrote two words.
“Performance advertising,” she said, turning to the group. “We hire actors in all the major cities to walk around in their underwear carrying Faustini cases, chanting ‘Clothes don’t make the man, Faustini does.’”
“And get our client charged for indecent exposure?” Tess shivered.
“Or,” Butler said, not giving up, “we could hire the actors to be human billboards, print Faustini across their foreheads and send them into the streets. It worked for a company named SnoreStop.”
Everyone laughed, but it didn’t work for Tess. “Sorry,” she said, “it’s back to the drawing board, everybody. I really am sorry.”
Andy fell out of the swing and onto his knees, pretending to collapse as he sank into the sand. His meaning was obvious. Tess was asking too much. It didn’t escape any of them. Nobody looked happy about her announcement, and neither was she. They were working 24/7 now, and they were running out of time. The meeting with Faustini was scheduled for late next week, but prior to that there was a dress rehearsal for Erica. If the boss wasn’t happy, Tess was screwed.
Tess quelled the urge to end the meeting with a pep talk. She couldn’t very well whip the group into shape when she’d just nixed all their ideas and didn’t have anything to offer herself. It was up to her now.
“He’s hot,” Mitzi said as Tess came out of the stall.
“Who’s hot?” Tess straightened her jeans and cashmere turtleneck as she walked to the counter, wondering if the sweater’s oatmeal color was washing her out a bit. She used to be a blue-eyed blonde. In this light everything looked dishwatery, even her eyes.
She glanced over at Mitzi, startled to see the washroom attendant holding up a glossy of one of the male models from the stack Tess had left on the counter.
“That’s my work you’re going through,” Tess said.
“Of course.” Mitzi seemed confused. “That’s why you left it out, isn’t it? A lot of
