Tough Sell (Tough Love Book 1) Read online

  Adam reached into his desk drawer and pulled out a napkin, holding it out to her. She blew her nose. God, what a mess she had made of things. She thought of her father, thinking furiously. What did he expect his staff to say in situations like this? She knew immediately. “Listen, Adam, I understand everything you’re saying and you’re right. I’m not working hard enough and I’m asking for too much help. But Kathy has been a terrific mentor really, and I’ve learned a lot. Let me work on the next project. I promise, I won’t need any help. I’ll be prepared and on time. You won’t regret it. I would appreciate the chance to show you I can learn from my mistakes.” She forced herself to pause but couldn’t resist one final word. “Please.”

  Adam groaned. “That’s just it. I don’t have another project for you.”

  “What about the Tiffany Stone Shoes campaign? I can do it, I know it. Give me a week to come up with a better proposal.”

  He shook his head. “Evan has been working on that for a week already.”

  She swallowed. “You assigned it out last week? But I don’t understand. I just presented that in the slam three hours ago.”

  Adam was silent. Dorothy couldn’t look at him. She got it. He had known a week ago that she would fail today. How could she have been so stupid? Evan had been in the room and watched her presentation. She felt sick to her stomach. Had all the other interns known that she was a failure, even as she stood before them speaking? And Kathy … all that help had been a waste of her time. Dorothy could barely speak through her humiliation.

  “So this account, the Walker and Birkeland account, was my last chance?” she whispered the question, she couldn’t get the words out any louder than that. Of course it had been; she was useless. She was worse than useless, she was added work to have around.

  “I’m sorry, Dottie.”

  “Then can I have another chance at it?” He was shaking his head before she finished but she couldn’t bear to hear him say no. “Wait, don’t. Don’t Adam. What if I get it together quickly? What if I can get him to pay more? His products are important, I think you know that, otherwise you wouldn’t have met with him … please, how much could it cost for you to let me try?”

  “Nothing. It’s not going to cost me anything. Dottie, this just isn’t working out.”

  “Please, Adam, just let me try.” She held her breath, realizing she had somehow gone from trying to convince him to flat out begging.

  He looked down at his desktop for several seconds. When he raised his head, his face looked resigned. “OK.”

  Elation swept through her, followed swiftly by stunned shock at his next words.

  “OK, but it’s not going to cost me anything because you have two days—Thursday and Friday. I’ll see your presentation on Monday. You should expect that to be your last day.”

  Chapter 3

  Edward didn’t feel comfortable again until he arrived on his own block. When he had first moved to Manhattan, it had been right after he’d sold his landscaping business, so money hadn’t been a real issue for him. At the time, it didn’t matter how many apartments he looked at, he couldn’t get comfortable on any of the better streets. Nothing, anywhere in Manhattan, even remotely resembled a country house reeking with money, with an in-ground pool, tucked behind the manicured hedges. Still, it seemed that any type of abode, as long as the people looked like they might weekend on Long Island, triggered his anxiety. So, for better or worse, he lived one avenue over from the projects, in a two bedroom walk up, way up, over a bar that played Latin music until closing. There, he slept like a baby.

  He went through the lobby door, kicking the block of wood out of the way that was holding the door open. It didn’t look like anyone from the building was actually coming back in. No moving vans were blocking the street, so that meant some idiot had forgotten to move the doorstop. After checking the mailbox in the lobby and grabbing a couple of bills, some business letters and a bunch of catalogs, he headed up the stairs. It was eight flights up to his apartment but he never took the elevator. People who lived in a walk up all their lives, lived longer, according to an AARP article he’d read somewhere. And flossed, that was another long life habit to have. By the time he’d made it to his apartment, he’d sorted the mail, opened the most interesting of it and was ready to toss most of it in the recycle can as soon as he got through his door.

  All of that and the whole time his mind had been replaying moments from that god-awful meeting. Including, he had to admit, some replays of the utterly sexy Ms. Dorothy. She had been so, well, interesting. One minute, a little pushy, one minute, a little flushed and flustered. And those legs. Holy God. When her blouse had fallen aside, revealing a little flash of blue lace, he’d almost leapt from his chair and ran away. He absolutely couldn’t be ogling the associate assigned to work on his campaign. And he couldn’t be thinking about how her underwear matched her damn shoes. After all, how hot would that be? He pictured her, flushed and flustered as he told her, just leave on the shoes and stockings, sweetheart … now, hands above your head … turn around. Her long legs would cross as she turned. Her ass would be a perfect heart, he just knew it. Damn. See? This was a problem. But it wouldn’t be his problem because that idiot Adam wasn’t going to take on his business account. So he wouldn’t have to worry about fraternizing with any sexy assistant, would he?

  The hallway had black and white marble tile that was about a trillion years old and the doors were glossy black over about twenty layers of chipped paint, so the whole door had an uneven look to it. The numbers and the peepholes were ancient brass, not a single one polished on the whole floor. He unlocked his apartment with two keys, one for the doorknob and one for the dead bolt, and pushed inside, where he entered another world—his world. His apartment was scrupulously clean and the front door opened directly into the living area, which in this case was basically an office with a couch and a TV. The couch and his desk chair were soft brown leather. In front of the couch was a trunk that doubled as a coffee table. The rest of the furniture consisted of a small bookshelf, a folding work table, and a reclaimed pine desk that adjusted from sitting to standing. The walls were white and hung with brilliant photos of colorful birds, animals and natural landscapes, all under threat from global warming. He worked surrounded by pictures of the places and creatures he was trying to save. At the very front of the apartment were three windows that formed a sort of bow shape so he had a small table there in that nook, surrounded by light and windows, where he could eat and look out over the street. In the rear was a minuscule bathroom that only a Manhattanite would tolerate and two bedrooms hardly big enough for a queen bed and a throw rug. He basically used one of them as a storage locker.

  A woman in bright blue underwear and heels would look great in here. An endangered species all his own.

  He enjoyed the image for a moment, then shut the door. Relationships were not for him, not anymore. He tossed the dead mail in the recycle can, set the rest on the tiny ledge by the door and headed straight for the bedroom. In five minutes flat, his suit was hung up and he was in loose jeans and a New York Mets T-shirt about two sizes too big. His feet were bare and he finally, finally, felt comfortable again. But he wasn’t relaxed because he still had obligations to meet today and, until he completed everything he needed to do, he wasn’t going to be able to sit and shut down. He still needed to talk to Gunnar and give him the rundown on the dismal meeting and the total fucked-upped-ness of the whole thing. For the millionth time, Edward wished Gunnar lived here, right here, like maybe in the building but then again, if that were true, he probably never would have become friends with him. In part, they were friends because Gunnar was never anywhere near Edward.

  Next up, some food. He ordered up a sub sandwich and a salad from the deli down the street and then, carrying a nice hot cup of coffee, made from a reusable K-cup, thank you very much, he went to his desk and turned on his PC. He had texted Gunnar on the way home so the Norwegian was ready to get on a video call with him. He
smiled at his best and only friend.

  “It’s nice to see you, friend,” he said and he meant it.

  “Eddie—how did it go with the agency?” Gunnar smiled encouragingly, his white teeth flashing, pushing pale thin hair back out of his face, a gesture Gunnar made countless times a day. “Did they agree to promote our good works pro bono, man?”

  Edward groaned when he thought about the ridiculous price tag. A million and a half dollars. What in the fuck had he been smoking to even think he could come up with that kind of money? “No, you ass. They want you to send them little Hildi and your wife Eva. Then with a one point five million dollar retainer, they’ll consider it. What do you think we should do?”

  “Well, we should definitely send Hildi over dere,” Gunnar said. “Dere will be nothing left of them by the end of the day and they should be ready to negotiate, yeah?” Hildi popped her head into view.

  “Hi, Uncle Eddie!” She got ready for her favorite joke “What did you and Daddy do today?”

  “Same thing we do every day, sweetheart,” he called out. Together all three of them shouted, “Try to save the world!” The reference to the old Pinky and the Brain cartoon was lost on her but she loved to yell with her father, and since Hildi was only four, he supposed that made sense.

  “What are you doing up so late, Hildi? It must be after midnight there.”

  The little girl hid her face against her father’s chest, her lighter-than-air hair lifting with static as she did so.

  Gunnar shooed her away with a “back to bed for you” and turned back to Edward. “OK, so really how much did they want?”

  Edward gave him the bad news and the whole rundown of the meeting, pausing only to answer the door and pay the delivery kid from the deli. When he was done, he asked his friend, “What can we do, man? We can’t afford this and they don’t even want to do it. Can we just go public without all this advertising?”

  Gunnar was already shaking his head. “No, no. You can’t go public like that, it will take forever to earn back the funds to buy out the loan and even worse, we won’t get money fast enough to make payroll at the factory. We only have enough funds now to pay for two more months of work.”

  “But a million five, Gunnar. I mean, if we just used that for payroll we would have enough wages for what, a year?”

  “Ya, but we wouldn’t have money for new research equipment, for advertising or any way to get enough of these things sold. We have to market this stuff. We have more products than ever and still very little sales. If we spent that money on keeping the lights on and paying the teams and trying to market this stuff ourselves, we would still owe all the funding back. Except then, it would have more interest on it and we’d owe them even more! We have got to get investors who don’t call in their loans. We need to sell stock.”

  Gunnar was right about that. “What about another ad agency? I’m in freakin’ Manhattan, man. There must be another agency you think can do the job.” Ed threw his empty sub wrapper into the garbage. “Or California. They’re all nature freaks out there. What about an agency out there? I can travel.”

  Gunnar looked at him with that expression, the one he hated. “That better not be fuckin’ pity I see on your face or I’m hanging up,” Ed said.

  Ed watched his friend compose himself in a hurry. Damn it.

  “Look,” Gunnar said. “We need a big IPO, yeah? We have to make a lot of money and we need help getting through it. CDP is the best at generating hype and they have all the right contacts. We don’t even need a media blitz if they just talk us up to all their other clients.”

  “Well that’s good ’cause you don’t want to know what it costs to advertise on national TV here.”

  “Or here,” Gunnar replied.

  “So, if we have to do this, where will we come up with the money? I wasn’t expecting that type of cost. Do you have any more funds?”

  Gunnar looked at him funny. “Eddie, I made a decision today. I bought the patent.”

  “The patent? You mean for the emission cleaner we were looking at?”

  “That’s the one. The guy had another buyer and I couldn’t let it get away. So that’s it. That’s all I have … I have just enough for a couple more months and that’s every kroner I’ve got in the world.” Gunnar looked glum. “I thought you would be happy when I told you but that was before, you know, when I thought this IPO thing would be easier.”

  Edward put his head in his hands. From the computer, he heard Gunnar’s voice quietly speaking the words he never wanted to hear. “What about the money from the video?”

  The video. The money from the video. Everybody thought he had money from it, but there was so little, it wasn’t enough for anything. The lawyers got most of it and they’d never caught the person who actually made it or anyone who was in it—just the website that allowed it to be published to the world. There was some money there. Not a lot but some. Money that Ed had vowed never to touch. After all, he had his pride, didn’t he?

  He heard Gunnar say his name and he looked up. “Eddie, I’m sorry man. Forget I said that. We’ll find some way to get through this. Let’s just think about it tonight. Maybe Eva will find a treasure sewed into our mattress.” A small shadow ran past Gunnar: Hildi playing around, not wanting to go back to bed.

  “Hildi, come wish Uncle Eddie good night,” Ed called out.

  The little girl’s angel face filled up his monitor. She put her palms up to the screen as if she was cupping his face and said, “Good night, Uncle Eddie. Don’t worry. Tomorrow is another day and you can save the world then.” Then she gave the monitor a little peck of a kiss and smiled at him. “G’ni-ight!” She sang out and ran away. Ed wanted to cry.

  “Good night, buddy … we can figure this out in the morning,” said Gunnar. “I know today was hard for you. Get some rest.” With that the video session closed and Edward was left alone.

  The image of Hildi, telling him not to worry and skipping off to bed hit him like a bag of rocks to the gut. He couldn’t fail at this. He couldn’t let Gunnar’s family go bankrupt, not when Gunnar was the only person who had ever believed in him, and not when that little girl thought they were going to save the world. He sighed. Maybe he could stand to use the video money after all. He huffed out a laugh at that thought. Now he knew exactly how to find the place where he and his pride parted ways. It was right before his actions hurt that little girl.

  Her apartment was dark when Dorothy arrived home, feet so sore that she’d walked the last two blocks with her toes curled up inside her pumps. She gave the shoe rack, now free of jeans and underwear, a half smile and kicked off her blue dress shoes.

  “Oh. My. God,” she groaned. Who knew that wearing those shoes to work and back home would be more painful than being told she was a complete loser at work? She closed her eyes briefly and shook her head. She would not cry. She was lucky to be alive at all.

  She padded down the hall in her bare feet, trying to decide if she should call her mom. Dorothy, being adopted, had two mothers. Her birth mother was nineteen-year-old Charlotte Sykes who had been shot down during the massacre of the entire Sykes family. All of them had been killed on the same morning, in their respective trailer homes and bungalows in their little corner of rural Appalachia. All dead, except Dorothy and one pit bull named Road. Ugh! Those thoughts again. She was lucky, damn it. She had been spared and she had been adopted by her parents, and they loved her. They had been more than good to her. They were the best.

  Dorothy glanced at her watch. It was just about six thirty. Her folks were probably getting ready for dinner. She picked up her cell phone and dialed her mom. She wished she had never quit working at her dad’s company. Her father was demanding, but now that Adam had shared his thoughts, it seemed her dad might not have been demanding enough. In her hand, the cell phone rang once more and then her mom answered.

  “Hi, Dottie.” The soft voice soothed her. “What’s up, baby?”

  “Hi, Mom, I was wondering if you wer
e having dinner in the city tonight.” She wiggled out of her tweed skirt while they talked.

  “Hey, yes we are, as a matter of fact. Your dad is taking a new staff member out to dinner, so I worked late to stay and eat with them. We have reservations for seven. Do you want to join us?”

  The normalcy of it, the fact that she could predict her family would eat at seven, and that she would find herself welcome there even at the end of this terrible day, did what Adam’s stern lecturing couldn’t. Dorothy felt the tears start to fall. At least they were tears of gratitude, certainly it was OK to cry for that. “Yes, Mom. I would love that.”

  Twenty minutes later she was dressed in a nice black leather skirt and—wait for it—flats, being shown to a table at a divine Italian restaurant. Her parents were already there, drinks in hand, seated with a young man. He was a year or so older than Dorothy. She waved and smiled broadly. It felt so good to see them. She admitted to herself, that part her wanted to hear them say she could always come back to work for her dad. She wanted the confirmation that even if CDP didn’t want her, Dad always would.

  The men at the table rose at her arrival and her father pulled out her chair for her.

  “How are you, sweetie?” he murmured as he kissed her cheek.

  As she considered telling him the truth, she imagined her father’s reaction. She was sure her boss had been about to let her go before she had begged to be allowed to work with Ed. Should she tell her dad that she had basically snatched three additional days of employment at what was supposed to be her exit interview? Her father would be stunned and embarrassed. No, she couldn’t say anything tonight.

  “Dad, you can’t believe how happy I am to see you and Mom. It’s been a bear of a day.” She smiled broadly at him to show that she could take a bad day like a champ and his approval showed on every inch of his handsome, rugged face. When had her father’s hair become so gray? It seemed like yesterday, his face had been smooth, not so many lines and wrinkles, his hair a plain ash brown. Now his temples were completely gray and his laugh lines were more like road maps, branching out across his face.