“No, no, no!” she groaned. Why was her brain torturing her like this, tempting her with things she could never have? It was masochistic. She had to forget about Cole. As long as she was working for him, they had no future. At least, not one that didn’t involve giving up everything she’d worked so hard for at PBA. And she would be damned before she’d quit.
One way or another, she was going to get that promotion. All her life, people had been telling her who she was, and what she could and couldn’t do. She hadn’t listened before, and she wasn’t about to start now. Hell, those doubters were half the reason she’d moved to the city in the first place. Their doubt fueled her determination and her drive, and she’d proven them wrong at every turn.
She wasn’t giving that up. Not for Cole Bennett. Not for anyone. She needed to stick to the plan. It had gotten her this far, hadn’t it? She mindlessly turned the page on her ereader. Her eyes skimmed over the words, but they didn’t sink in. After rereading the same paragraph three times, she gave up entirely. Although she’d been counting down the days until the release of the last book in the trilogy, her head wasn’t in it tonight. Stellar. Now Cole was screwing with her reading time too.
Olivia stood and stretched. She grabbed her plate and carried it into the kitchen where she scraped the uneaten and congealed blob of food into the sink. It fell into the stainless steel basin with an unimpressive splat that turned her stomach. She rinsed the plate off and hit the switch for the garbage disposal. While it whirred the blob into oblivion, she refilled her wine glass. She flipped the disposal off and wandered back into the living room, sidestepping a box of books that she’d been meaning to unpack for…two years.
Two years since she’d beat feet from that crappy walk-up studio in the West Village and she still wasn’t fully unpacked. She’d meant to get a bookshelf some weekend when she wasn’t working. It just hadn’t happened yet. Her gaze travelled the room, taking in the stark white walls and the cardboard boxes tucked in the corner. It was nothing special. It wasn’t even home. Not really. It was just an apartment, a place to sleep and shower when she wasn’t at the office.
It was also depressing as hell.
How had she let her life come to this? She sighed. Her childhood on the pageant circuit had taught her that nothing in life came without some sort of string attached. For her, the strings tended to tug on insecurities better left alone. It was so much easier to not connect in the first place. Since she’d moved to the city, she’d done everything she could to push people away, never letting them get too close. She’d been so busy protecting herself and proving her worth she’d become cold and one-dimensional, like a paper doll.
Tears stung Olivia’s eyes. She blinked them back furiously, refusing to let them fall. The last thing she needed to do was get herself all worked up and add a pounding headache to an already craptastic day. Besides, acknowledging those tears would mean that for the first time since she’d moved to New York, she would have to admit she was lonely.
…
“Man, is there anything Vixen hasn’t tried in the last ten years?” Cole asked as he pushed pause on the sexy Vixen commercial blasting from his laptop.
“No,” Olivia responded quietly, “and that’s the problem. There hasn’t been a lot of focus. McKenzie was all over the place, just throwing crap at the wall to see what stuck.”
After subjecting himself to every commercial Vixen had ever run, he had to agree with her. He shut off the media player. One more video and he’d reach sensory overload. Whether it was the strobe lights and techno music from the catwalk or the excess of bare skin, he wasn’t sure. Either way, he was a man who knew his limits. And he’d reached them about five minutes ago.
“Agreed.” He leaned back in his chair and clasped his fingers behind his head. “They’ve diluted the brand, which is an opportunity for us.”
Olivia didn’t respond. He wondered exactly what she was working on. She’d been uncharacteristically quiet the last half hour or so and her silence was killing him.
“You still with me?”
“Huh?” she responded, oblivious to his last question. He watched as she rubbed her thumb to her fingertips. First her right hand, then her left. Then both. “I’m sorry. What did you say?”
“I was just saying the Vixen brand has been diluted over the years,” he remarked, studying her across the table. “That’s an opportunity for us.”
“Uh, yeah,” she agreed, nodding slowly. She glanced briefly at the overhead light and rubbed her temple.
“Are you okay?” He knew better than to tell a woman she didn’t look so good, but something was definitely off. “You seem…distracted?”
“I’m fine,” she lied unconvincingly, her face twisting in pain. When she placed a hand above her eyes to shield them from the light, he knew it was time to call it quits.