Tease. Suzanne Forster
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as if all the hard work and long hours had paid off. She’d given it her all, and maybe too much, considering how everything else in her life was withering from neglect.
She picked up her off-the-shoulder jersey sheath, briefly tempted by the thought of the New York club scene, then relegated it to the storage box. The dress was too red, too tight. It shouted take me off—and a couple other things that ended with off.
Her conversion to celibacy had come immediately after the breakup with Dillon, her let’s-wait-until-the-perfect-moment-to-announce-our-engagement fiancé. That perfect moment was never, of course. Too late Tess had discovered that Dillon was involved with another woman, his mother. She steamed the wrinkles from his boxer shorts and enzymatically cleaned his contact lenses for him, while Tess could barely handle the instructions on a box of laundry detergent. The fact that Dillon had made his mother break off the engagement with Tess confirmed her suspicions about him. He was high maintenance and a commitment-phobe.
That had seemed obvious to Tess, but her always brutally frank friend, Meredith, had disagreed. “You’re the CP,” she’d told Tess, who’d protested, “How could I be the commitment-phobe? I’m the one getting dumped.” And then it had hit her. Maybe she was choosing CPs so that she didn’t have to commit.
She knelt to pull the plug on her clock radio and saw the time. “Ten? It can’t be.” She’d been up since 6:00 a.m. How did it get that late?
Pratt-Summers had arranged for a car to take her to the airport, and a moving van to pick up the last of her boxes. The van was due in thirty minutes, and not only did she have to finish packing, she had to get the apartment presentable. She was subletting her one-bedroom place furnished, and the tenant had agreed to a month-by-month arrangement, just in case Tess found herself packing for a flight back.
Not that Tess expected anything to go wrong. She was eminently qualified for the job, according to Erica Summers, the CEO at Pratt-Summers, who’d interviewed her personally just three weeks ago. But how often did a creative directorship of a large Madison Avenue ad agency come along?
“To most thirty-two-year-old ad execs? Never,” she said, aware of the flutter in her voice. God, she was nervous.
This job was huge. New York City was huge.
Maybe she wanted to miss the flight. She couldn’t even seem to make up her mind what clothes to take with her, and there was no time to call her brutally frank friend to discuss it. Meredith, voice of clarity in a jumbled world, steadfast shoulder, mother confessor and occasional scolding conscience. Were there any Merediths in New York?
Tess’s spirits sank with her shoulders. She looked around the place, marveling at the chaos. It could have been declared a disaster area. Fortunately, she saw the problem immediately.
She wasn’t dealing with Bank of America’s automated voice-mail system. She only had three options to worry about. Get rid of the crotchless day-of-the-week panties that Dillon gave her, obviously without his mother’s knowledge. Toss out anything else that brought the word hot to mind. Then pack the rest and go.
One week later…
“The best way to open the mind is to open the body. If one is closed, the other cannot be open. Breathe through the soles of your feet. Listen with your fingertips.”
Tess spoke in low, modulated tones to the five men and women lying on their backs on gym mats, arranged in a circle and forming rudimentary U shapes with their bodies. Their arms and legs were straight up in the air, reaching toward the ceiling, some steadier than others.
“Can you feel the energy flowing and your mind expanding?” Tess asked. “Focus on the base of your spine. Is it tingling?”
“Something’s tingling.” Carlotta Clark giggled.
“Would you tell Carlotta to stop looking at my balls?” Andy Phipps, who lay on a mat opposite her, tugged at his baggy gym trunks in an exaggerated attempt to cover himself.
“If you had balls,” Carlotta scolded in her sexy, hiccupy voice, “you’d be begging me to look at them.”
Andy lifted up on his elbows and appealed to the group with eyes as big and velvety brown as instant pudding. “You’re my witnesses, people. She’s harassing me again. I’m being harassed. That has to be obvious to everyone here.”
Andy suddenly collapsed, his elbow knocked out from under him by Jan Butler, a plump graying copywriter on the next mat. “She may want you, Andikins, but is she woman enough? Can she take you to Jannie Land?”
Andy seemed to be considering the idea. The others began to cheer him on. “Breathe through your balls,” someone suggested.
Tess rested her hand on her hip and watched their antics with amused forbearance. It wasn’t the relaxation break she’d had in mind. She’d had plenty of experience with ad agency brainstorming sessions. They needed to be loose and free-flowing, but this bunch was flowing all over the place. What they needed now was direction. Tess’s specialty.
She stepped into the center of the circle to restore order. “Back to your mats, wild things. Let’s finish the exercise and get on with our brainstorming.”
Jan gave Andy a wink.
Andy’s skinny legs boinged back into the air. “Don’t blame me if someone else loses control,” he warned Tess. “This position drives the ladies crazy.”
“We’ll bear up,” Tess assured him. Andy’s diminutive frame, rag-mop dark hair and dimples did seem to bring out the vixen in the over-fifty set, but Tess was hot for his fertile brain. And it hadn’t taken her long to figure out that he could be counted upon for comic relief, even when he wasn’t trying to be funny. He was in his mid-twenties, fresh out of grad school and a gifted illustrator. He’d been at Pratt-Summers just a month, which was three weeks longer than Tess had been here, but he was shaping up to be a key member of her creative team. He was bright, verbal and a bottomless pit of ideas. Exactly what Tess needed, considering that she’d been assigned the lucrative—and problematic—Faustini account. The leather-goods franchise was in big trouble. The Faustini name had always been associated with meticulous handcrafting and old-world elegance, but that wasn’t selling in a culture that prized everything young and hot. Faustini’s management wanted to expand beyond briefcases and luggage. They were after a chunk of the luxury leather clothing and accessories market, and that couldn’t be done without a total image overhaul.
“Nine thousand and ten thousand,” Tess said, counting out the final seconds of the position. “Okay, last chance to check out Andy’s balls. Now, lower your legs slowly, and don’t forget to breathe.”
They all copped a look, including Brad Hayes and Lee Sanchez, the other two males in the group. Brad was a thirty-year-old communications major from Harvard, and Lee was the team’s prematurely balding marketing whiz. Andy rose to a sitting position, as red as a stop sign, but seemingly pleased by all the attention to his male anatomy.
Tess had held this morning’s brainstorming session in the company gym so she and her team could take Qigong breaks. She’d expected skepticism toward the martial arts technique, especially from some of the agency veterans, but at least everyone had agreed to give it a try.
“Tell me again why we’re doing this?” Brad Hayes asked. “I tend not to do things I can’t pronounce.”
Carlotta snickered. “Do you even need to ask, Brad? Tess comes from la-la land.”
Tess took the jab in stride. In the week she’d been here, she’d picked up on some animosity from Carlotta, who’d been at Pratt-Summers longer than anyone else on the team. Tess could think of two reasons. Carlotta didn’t believe that Tess had the creative chops to handle the job, which was understandable. Tess had yet to prove herself. Or Carlotta felt the job should have been offered to her, which was a bigger problem, but Tess was optimistic that she could handle it with plenty of diplomacy, and maybe some plum assignments.
“It’s