Chapter 19
Annalise
At eight a.m., I’d already been in the office for hours.
On my flight home yesterday, I’d typed up a summary of the information I took away from the Star meetings and sent an email to three staff members—two from Wren and one from Foster Burnett—asking them to read over my notes and meet for a brainstorming session first thing this morning.
When I’d gotten to the office at five a.m., Bennett’s door had been shut, although the light was on. After catching up on emails for an hour, I went to get coffee and noticed his door was open and the light was now off. I figured he’d done what he often did—arrived at the office early, did some work, and then went for his morning run after a few hours. We hadn’t had any contact since I’d left him passed out in my hotel room yesterday morning, and even though my curiosity about how he’d handle what had happened was eating at me, I had no time to waste today.
Just as my meeting began, Bennett strolled past the bullpen. He took a step back, catching sight of us inside. His hair was wet, and he held a large Starbucks coffee in his hand.
“What’s going on in here?”
“We’re just getting started on the Star Studios pitch,” I said.
His eyes inventoried the people in the room, and I thought he might be about to question why I’d picked people to work on the campaign with me without discussing it with him first. But instead, when our eyes met, he merely offered a curt nod before walking away.
Me and my handpicked team worked the rest of the morning together. I’d had a dozen loose concepts for Star in mind before we started, and we narrowed my list down to two ideas and then expanded on them, as well as adding two more that the session came up with. Our plan was to spend a little time on our own, each running with all four of the concepts, and see which popped when we met again in a few days.
On my way back to my office, I stopped off at Bennett’s. He had his head down, sketching something.
“Did you make your flight?” I asked.
He leaned back in his chair and tossed his pencil onto his desk. “I did. Luckily I had the wherewithal to set an alarm, I guess.”
Ummm... No, you didn’t.
He continued. “I don’t really remember much about the night after we finished dinner. Did I pass out on your floor after walking you to your room or something?”
“You don’t remember knocking on my door?”
“Apparently not.” His brows furrowed. “Why did I knock?”
“To apologize for the way you acted at dinner.” And tell me why you acted the way you did.
“I don’t usually have more than one or two hard-liquor drinks. I’m more of a beer person.” He grinned. “Hope you didn’t try to take advantage of me.”
Disappointment hit me. He doesn’t remember. I’d known there was a good chance the entire night would be a blackout for him, but I hadn’t expected to feel hurt that he didn’t remember the things he’d said.
But of course, it was better this way. “You got confused which room was yours and passed out when I went to put a sweater on and show you to your room.”
I felt my face start to heat from my lie. Shit.
“Gotta run. Talk to you later.” I abruptly walked away and went to hide in my office with the door locked before he could notice.
Later in the afternoon, I spent some time tweaking Bennett’s Bianchi Winery campaign. The copy he’d written needed work to reflect that the winery was family owned and not part of a large corporate conglomerate—something Matteo took great pride in. Other than that, I changed a few colors on the labels for the new line of rosé that Mom wanted brightened up and replaced the proposed late-night radio air buys with evening slots.
I had plans to hit the gym on my way home tonight—to avoid running into Andrew in the morning—so I cleaned up my desk at a reasonable hour and packed files to work on for the Star Studios campaign afterward. I grabbed the revised Bianchi art and copy to drop off at Bennett’s office as I passed on my way out. Only my hands were full, and right before getting to his door, a few of the papers from the top of the pile fell. I bent to pick them up and overheard Bennett talking.
“I’m not angry. This is just my face ever since Annalise arrived.”
We’d had our share of arguments and name calling, but that was between us, and it’d felt more like a game of cat and mouse—not truly insulting, even when we were flinging insults at each other. But him talking shit about me to someone else felt worse than if he’d said that same thing to my face, for some reason.
“She seems nice enough to me,” a man’s voice said. I thought it could’ve been Jim Falcon. “Smart, too.”
That made me feel a little bit better.
“Sort of a shame you had to meet the way you did, in competition for the same job and all. If you’d met at a bar, I think the two of you would have hit it off.”
“She’s not my type,” Bennett snapped.
Yesterday, I was beautiful. Today, I wasn’t his type. I wanted to be annoyed, but instead all I felt was hurt.
“Yeah. Guess you’re right. Smart, nice, and beautiful…what man would want that shit?”
Thanks, Jim!
“Fuck off, Falcon.” Bennett’s voice turned terse. “If I’d met her in a bar, I’d have kept my distance after spending three minutes with her. Trust me.”
I’d never actually been in a fistfight, yet I suddenly knew what a punch in the gut felt like. My insides felt a hollow pain. What had I been thinking? Allowing myself to believe his drunken words were a confession of feelings of some sort and more than incoherent drivel? Worse, I’d let myself start to think that beneath the arrogant Beast was some sort of misunderstood Prince Charming.
Sometimes a beast is just a beast, no matter how many layers you peel back.
The sound of footsteps snapped me out of my momentary pity party. I turned around and started to walk in the other direction. Jim had moved closer to the door, so I could still hear him as I put distance between us.
“It’s been a while. Let’s do happy hour Friday night. We’ll find you someone mean, ugly, and stupid to drag you out of this mood.”
***
The hot-and-cold relationship I had with Bennett took a turn into the tundra by midweek. Only this time it was me doing the instigating.
Jonas had assigned the second account the board planned to judge us on, Billings Media, and we were both in the thick of working on early drafts of our separate Star campaigns. Near the end of our weekly meeting, I mentioned to Jonas that I had an appointment scheduled for next week with one of the VPs from Star. I knew that would piss Bennett off. He glared at me, but said nothing, and I ignored him and continued talking to the boss.
When Tobias had originally offered to look at any early designs, I’d assumed both Bennett and I would take him up on it. But that was back when I was an idiot who thought the playing field should be fair so the true better person could win.
After the crap Bennett pulled in L.A., and overhearing how he really felt about me, I no longer had any doubt that the better person was going to win—me.
I’d just returned to my office and picked up the phone to return some calls, when Bennett barged in without knocking.
“The door was shut because I’m busy.”
He took an exaggerated look around my neat office. “Don’t look busy to me.”
I sighed. “I need to make some calls. What do you want, Bennett?”
“Flying to L.A. for a lunch? Let me guess, you’re meeting at a hotel?”
“Screw you.”
He glared at me. “No, thanks. I told you, I don’t like to share. Certainly not with Toby boy.”
I stood. “Did you come into my office for any reason other than to pick a fight?”
“Your friend Tobias isn’t taking my calls. Is that your doing?”
Tobias hadn’t even mentioned that Bennett had called. “Absolutely not.”
“I walked over while Marina happened to be making your flight reservations the other day. That’s the only reason I even knew you’d decided to go see your friend. Nice teamwork, by the way. I’d almost fallen for your we’re one team bullshit. When the invite was extended for them to take a sneak peek at our work, I assumed it was a company invitation…not a personal Annalise invitation.”
I leaned my palms on my desk and put on a saccharine sweet smile. “Me too. Guess we’ve both learned a lot about each other since L.A.”