One Mad Night Read online

  “Not Jason,” he said, shaking his head. “That’s true—Jason hasn’t said anything to me.” He shoved his hands in his pockets, and, for the first time since Chelsea had met him, he looked uncomfortable in his skin.

  “Okay, then who?” she pressed.

  “Brad,” he said.

  Chelsea felt sick.

  “He called me yesterday. He told me the partners had made up their minds and they are giving Tesla to me.”

  That was impossible. It made no sense! Chelsea looked wildly about the room. “But we haven’t even pitched—”

  “I know, I know,” he said. “That’s the part that sucks the most. They are going to have us present our ads…but they’ve decided.”

  There were no words to describe her emotions. Chelsea felt betrayed, emotionally shattered, and nauseous with disbelief at the shamelessness of it.

  “Chelsea,” Ian said quietly, and he reached for her, but Chelsea batted his hand away.

  “How could they?” she asked, folding her arms tightly around her, feeling cold. “My work on this account is good.” She began to pace, trying to work it out in her head, where it had gone wrong. “Safety and innovation come together in this car,” she said to Ian, reciting part of her pitch. She’d been over this. Her pitch was good, the ad was good, it was all so good. “It’s a marriage of lifestyle to vehicle.”

  She had pictured the partners as she spoke, had imagined them looking at each other with expressions that said, how did we miss this?

  “Tesla. Because you expect it.” She looked at Ian. “That’s my tagline! And it’s a great tagline! They haven’t heard it yet, so how do they know?” she cried, casting her arms wide.

  “You’re right. It’s good. It’s really good,” he agreed.

  “Then what the hell?” she asked plaintively. “What’s wrong with my idea, Ian?”

  Ian winced a little, and Chelsea felt a wave of disappointment. She hadn’t realized until now how much she wanted Ian to like her work.

  “Look, I haven’t seen your ad. But I know that Jason and Brad think it might be a tad too…” He paused, as if trying to think of the right words.

  “Don’t tell me. Chrysler LeBaron Syndrome?”

  “They never said that. That was me,” he said. “But yeah. Something like that.”

  Chelsea blinked. And then she whirled around, her mind racing alongside her heart. Was he right? Had she geared her ad to an audience that was too old? Had she focused too much on the wealthy baby boomers?

  She felt Ian behind her before he put his hand on her shoulder. She couldn’t speak—she was too enraged, too hurt, too betrayed to speak. She wanted to push him away, but at the same time, as he slowly and carefully slipped his arm around her middle and pulled her into his chest, she needed his support.

  She had worked so damn hard for Grabber-Paulson. She had been promised that her time was coming, and now that it was here, they were going to pass her over again. “I’m confused and mad and…and crushed,” she admitted.

  Ian didn’t say anything. He rested his chin on the top of her head.

  “I feel so used.”

  “What are you going to do?” he asked.

  “I honestly don’t know,” she said.

  “Chelsea, look, I—”

  The front door alarm sounded, and Chelsea jumped. Ian quickly ushered her around to his back.

  “I’ll go look,” he said, but before he could get very far, a security guard appeared in the hallway. He saw Chelsea and Ian through the windows and gave them a wave.

  The security guard walked into the conference room and looked around. “How you folks doing tonight?”

  “Who are you?” Ian asked.

  “Night security,” the man said. “Walking the floors to see if anyone was stranded by the power outage. Found four down on the twenty-first floor. Everyone in here okay?” he asked, leaning a little to his right to see Chelsea.

  “We’re fine,” Ian said. “What’s going on out there?”

  “The elevators are working again,” the security guy said. He hitched up his pants and looked around the room. “A couple of the subway lines are up and running too.”

  “You mean we can get out of here?” Chelsea asked, popping out from behind Ian. She needed to be as far from Grabber-Paulson as she could get. She needed some time to think and digest, to prepare for whatever it was she would do tomorrow.

  “Depending on where you’re going—”

  “Brooklyn,” Chelsea said.

  “I think you can get there,” the security guard said. “Anyone else in the office with you?”

  “Just us,” Ian confirmed.

  “Well then, I’m going to go on and see if there is anyone else stuck inside.”

  “Thank you,” Ian said. He watched the guard walk away and looked at Chelsea.

  She thought that he wanted to say something, but Chelsea didn’t want to talk. It had been a fantastic night with Ian, but now it was ruined. She was looking at the face of the man who would be sitting in her office, managing her account. She didn’t blame Ian. But it wasn’t okay.

  “I’m getting out of here,” she said, and she hurried past him to gather her things before he could stop her.

  Chapter 8

  Chelsea didn’t say much as they made their way to the subway, but then again, the wind was blowing and they were trudging through big drifts of snow.

  Ian walked down into the subway with her. She stopped outside the turnstiles. “I’m going to Brooklyn. Where are you going?”

  “Uptown,” Ian said. His station was another two blocks up.

  “Okay, well…” She brushed snow from her hat. “I guess this is where we part for now.” She tried to smile, but Ian could see how wounded she felt.

  “Chelsea, I’m sorry,” he said. And he was, profoundly sorry. He could kick himself for it. “Should I have told you?”

  She sighed. “Yes, you should have told me.” She smiled at him then, and she touched her mitten to his hand. He hated to see the disappointment brimming in her eyes. It made him feel helpless. It also made him angry on her behalf.

  “It’s bad for me but great for you. Congratulations, Ian. It’s not that I can’t accept defeat. I just…really do not like my employer right now.”

  “Sure,” he said, because he didn’t know what else to say. He only knew he’d spent an incredible night with this woman, and he had felt things he’d not felt in a long time. Exuberance. Passion. Hope for nebulous things he really hadn’t known he hoped for until tonight. And that had all been ruined by the games Grabber-Paulson had played with her.

  “So…I’m going to go now,” she said, pointing to her station. “I’m going to go and process this. But I’ll see you tomorrow.”

  “Right,” he said. She turned to go, but Ian caught her mittened hand and pulled her back. He wrapped her in an embrace and said, “Whatever happens, I just want you to know that tonight was…it was incredible,” he said. “I know that’s a weird thing to say, but I really…I hope things are okay between us.”

  He lowered his head to kiss her, but she suddenly rose up and kissed him on the corner of his mouth and then patted him on the chest. “Not to worry,” she said lightly. “I’d better go.” She turned and disappeared into the entrance to the subway.

  Ian watched her walk down the steps until she had disappeared into the bowels of the subway.

  And still, Ian didn’t move. That was the worst brush-off kiss he’d ever received in his life. Hell, it may have been the only brush-off kiss he’d ever received. But that’s what it was and Ian didn’t like it, not one bit.

  It took Ian two hours to get home. He showered and collapsed, exhausted, onto his bed.

  A few hours later, he received a robo-call from Grabber-Paulson. It was Brad’s cheerful voice informing employees that work was ca
nceled due to the unusual spring blizzard. They would resume normal activities on Monday.

  That gave Ian three full days to ruminate about Chelsea Crawford.

  He wanted to talk to her, to explain that the night in the office had meant something to him. He wanted her to understand it was a big deal to him, because those sorts of encounters rarely meant so much to him. He didn’t know exactly what it meant, but he knew he wasn’t going to let it go without fighting for it.

  Unfortunately, he didn’t know how to get hold of Chelsea. By Saturday evening, he wanted to speak to her so badly that he swallowed his pride and called Zimmerman to ask if he had her number.

  “Chelsea Crawford?” Zimmerman said. “Why?”

  “Ah…to tell her the pitch is rescheduled.”

  “Why are you calling her to tell her? Why isn’t Jason?”

  Since when had Zimmerman been such a busybody? “Don’t know. They asked me to do it.”

  “That seems weird, man,” Zimmerman said.

  “Do you have her number or not?” Ian demanded.

  “No,” Zimmerman said cheerfully. “Tell Jason or whoever put you up to it that admin is not your job.”

  “Yeah, okay. Thanks,” Ian said. He got off the phone before Zimmerman could launch into chatting about himself, as he was wont to do.

  Ian was cross and antsy, and his mood did not improve. He began to wonder if he’d just imagined the things he’d felt with Chelsea or if they were real. There was only one way to find out, but the city was only slowly crawling out from under the blizzard.

  By Sunday, Ian felt he’d explode if he didn’t get out of his apartment. He walked down the street to the gym and ran five miles on the treadmill.

  That wasn’t enough.

  He ran two more, and still he felt mixed up, turned inside out, upside down, by a girl.

  He ran ten miles, thinking about that night in the offices. Yes, he thought about the sex, but mostly he thought about Chelsea, and the way her eyes shimmered when she laughed, and how easy she was to get along with. Easy! And for these last few months, he’d thought her uptight and inflexible. But she wasn’t like that at all, she was funny and warm and pretty and smart. She was all the things he liked in a woman.

  He thought a lot about how this thing with Tesla had gone down. It was a horrible way to treat a trusted, productive employee, and Ian felt for Chelsea. He pictured her in an apartment in Brooklyn, staring at the television or maybe maniacally cleaning the toilet—

  Okay, so he didn’t know Chelsea well enough to know what she’d do in a situation like this. But he wanted to know. More than anything, he wanted to know.

  Monday morning, the city had slid back into its usual grind. Ian dressed in his best blue suit. He thought a lot about the pitch, but before he left, he stared at himself a long time in the mirror.

  The thrill of the pitch was missing, the hum of anticipation in his body absent. This was the thing he loved about his job. He loved going in, laying out an idea, watching the faces change from skepticism to excitement. He’d worked hard on Tesla, but this pitch felt different. It felt ugly and meaningless.

  When he reached the office, it looked just as it had Thursday morning before the blizzard, and it was hard to believe he and Chelsea had spent that evening here. He walked past her cubicle and saw her tote bag on the desk. Her lights were on. She was here, somewhere in these walls, preparing to pitch as if she didn’t know the truth.

  Jason saw Ian, and still seated in his chair, he rolled into the opening of his office and said, “Dude! Looking sharp! You ready to do this thing? Ready to get a big account?” He waggled his brows.

  “When are we doing it?” Ian asked.

  “This morning,” Jason said happily. “Get some coffee, clear out the cobwebs, and come to the partners’ conference room at eleven.”

  Yeah, it would have to be the partners’ conference room, wouldn’t it?

  Ian went through the motions of getting his act together. He accepted the good luck wishes of people walking by. He gave his ad to the tech guy to cue up. He swore to Zimmerman he wasn’t nervous, and he wasn’t. He just wanted it over.

  At ten to eleven, he picked up his file with his notes, shoved one hand in his pocket, and walked around to the conference room. That was when he saw Chelsea for the first time since Thursday night.

  She looked beautiful. Gorgeous. Had she always been this pretty? She was wearing her dark hair in a sleek ponytail. She had on a dress that flounced around her knees and a slim jacket that she’d buttoned up. She was also wearing the shoes that had danced in his memory of everything that happened Thursday night.

  She smiled when she saw him, a genuine, warm smile. “Hey,” she said. “You look great.”

  “You look better.” He glanced around them. “Are you okay?”

  “Me? Yep.” But she was looking down when she said it, and she pretended to be studying her notes.

  Ian shifted closer. He caught the scent of her perfume. “I didn’t know if you’d come.”

  “Silly man,” she said, and she looked up. “I had to come. I wouldn’t miss this. Not after all the work I put into it.”

  He could add “brave” to the list of things he liked about her.

  Jason popped his head out of the conference room. “There we are!” he said cheerfully. “Here’s our best and brightest. Great, great—so listen, you two can watch each other’s pitch if you like. Chelsea, we’ll give you the ladies-first option. That okay?”

  “Whatever you say, Jason,” she said cheerfully, as if there were no hard feelings.

  “Okay, well let’s get started!”

  “Yes, let’s,” she said, and she walked past Jason, her head high. He heard her wish the partners a good morning.

  He followed her in and took the seat that Jason showed him to. He refused to acknowledge the wink Jason gave him, as if they were all members of a secret club they’d not let Chelsea join.

  Brad Paulson smiled at Ian, too, and then looked at Chelsea. “Okay! Tesla account. Chelsea, show us what you’ve got.”

  “I’d be delighted,” she said. She stood up and walked to the front of the room. “Tesla is unique in that it marries lifestyle to principle in a vehicle,” she began.

  Her pitch was good. Ian was impressed with her delivery—she was smooth, she was personable. She understood how to deliver the message. Ian really didn’t understand why Jason had said she couldn’t deliver sex appeal, because he thought she did. And he thought she had a great angle on the Tesla. In fact, as he listened to her, an idea formed in his head. When he watched her ad and watched the couple going through life in a Tesla, he saw the product in a completely different light. He and Chelsea had come at this from different angles. But one idea wasn’t better than the other—they complemented each other.

  Chelsea finished to a smattering of applause. “Thank you for the opportunity,” she said, and she took her seat across the room from Ian.

  As he got up to present his idea, he thought she gave him a smile. Maybe it was that smile, but the idea that had formed during her pitch was beginning to feel brilliant. Whatever it was, Ian completely changed the course of his life in the time it took him to walk from his seat to the front of the conference room.

  Chapter 9

  To Chelsea, it was a no-brainer. As she watched Ian’s presentation, she understood what it was that the partners loved about him. He was fantastic, his pitch sexy, catchy—all the things a campaign like this needed to be.

  That didn’t lessen her disappointment. She still felt wounded that her bosses would lead her on so unnecessarily as they had. She was a big girl. She could see when she’d been bested. She understood now that they’d never meant to give her Tesla, that likely they used her to light a fire under Ian to get his best work. Everyone responded to competition, didn’t they?

  She watched the
partners eating Ian’s presentation with a spoon and chocolate drizzled on top. He looked like an executive. He looked like a partner, more in tune with the world than any of the jokers sitting around that conference table. What she had initially believed was arrogance was self-confidence. Chelsea supposed she could learn a thing or two from him about how to wear confidence. Unfortunately, she wasn’t going to be here to learn anything from him.

  That was the one conclusion she’d been able to reach this weekend. That was the thing that had been crystal clear to her when everything else had seemed so murky.

  In all honesty, it had been a hard few days. Stuck in her studio apartment, her thoughts swimming back and forth between her feelings about what had happened with Ian, and then this pitch. She really liked Ian. Under any other scenario, she would be over the moon, wanting to see more of him. But this pitch—which represented so much more, everything she’d thought she was working toward—had tainted it.

  Chelsea truly wished Ian well, but she had to stay true to herself and she could not—could not—let this slide. Jason and, by extension, the partners, had lied to her. They had used her. And that was not okay. Good God, she should have recognized the handwriting on the wall. So many opportunities passing her by, always a promise of next time. You’re getting there, Chelsea. Next time is yours, Chelsea.

  Ian’s ad ran, and it was as good as Zimmerman had told her in line at Starbucks one afternoon. The partners began to clap, Brad Paulson most enthusiastically. Chelsea wished she’d eaten all of his Lean Cuisines.

  “Great work, Ian. Great work,” Brad said.

  “Thank you,” Ian said. He looked at the window for a moment. “I have put a lot of thought into this campaign. But I realize this morning it’s not the right approach.”

  Everyone paused, including Chelsea. She stared at Ian—what was he doing?

  “What do you mean?” Brad asked.

  “Honestly? Now that I’ve seen Chelsea’s ad, I think that the best approach is somewhere between the two.” He was suddenly animated. “Picture this—we start with my ad. Guy in a bar, gets the girl. They drive up the PCH and we see the bra. A great image, draws in the testosterone crowd. But then,” he said, moving around the table now, “we cut to babies in a very green yard with lots of flowers and bushes and trees, car seats in the Tesla sedan. It’s safe, and it’s safe for your children. It’s a cleaner world for them too. And you see the same couple, a little older, with the kids. A flash of them, a little older still, leaving their daughter’s wedding. We incorporate Chelsea’s ad. The car is safe; it handles well. It’s carried them through the important parts of their life.” He braced his hands against the end of the conference table. “We get the full gamut of the way Americans want to live.” He stood up, spread his hands wide. “Tesla: For the way we want to live.”