Total pages in book: 63
Estimated words: 59445 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 297(@200wpm)___ 238(@250wpm)___ 198(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 59445 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 297(@200wpm)___ 238(@250wpm)___ 198(@300wpm)
Maybe her boyfriend got engaged to a model too.
God, I was angry. And hurt. And I couldn’t show either of those things right now. Not while the video wrapped up and Seth flipped on the lights.
“What did you think?” he asked, all confidence and bravado. He had no idea he bombed this deal. How could he not read the looks on their faces?
The three execs shared a glance, then plastered on their best, most polite smiles.
“We can give you the room,” Seth hurried to add, finally a sense of wariness settling on his face. “If you need time—”
“We’re good,” one of the women said, standing up and the other two following her. They shook Seth’s hand, throwing in a “thank you for your time” before heading out.
Fuck, fuck, fuck.
Seth stood there, silent and contemplative as the door shut behind them. The rest of my team blew out a collective breath, shaking their heads.
“What about our proposal?” Jake asked me. “Why didn’t we show them that?”
“I don’t know,” I answered, barely capable of keeping the anger out of my tone. I glanced over where Amelia was waiting for me. “Weston told you to go with this one?”
She nodded. “Those were his exact words.”
I swallowed the rock in my throat. “Where is he?”
“He just got here a few minutes ago,” she answered. “He’s in your office.”
Perfect.
I sucked in a deep breath, flashing an apologetic look to my team before heading out of the conference room. By the time I made it to my office, I was fuming, but I had the decency to wait until the door shut behind me before I let an ounce of it show.
“Hey, there she is,” Weston called the second I’d gotten the door closed behind me. “How did it go? Are we celebrating?”
“How did it go?” I repeated his question, and the smile fell right off his face from the tone of my voice.
“Not good, then?”
I gaped at him. “No, Weston, it did not go good.”
He visibly swallowed. “What can I do?”
Ugh, I hated how my heart fluttered at his words, at the sincerity in his eyes. He was actually looking at me like he cared, like he was worried about me.
“You can give me some goddamned answers,” I snapped, stomping past him toward my desk. “That would be a start.”
“Whoa,” he said, spinning around to face me. “What the hell, Brynn?”
“Why did you go with Seth’s proposal?” I asked once I’d made it to my desk. “And why didn’t you tell me?”
“I tried to text you last night,” he said. “You never texted back.”
“It didn’t come through until this morning,” I explained. “And his proposal was totally the wrong vibe. The bid was for a women’s athletic line, and Seth’s proposal spoke to men, not to women.”
Weston blinked a few times, like he was putting pieces together, and then he shook his head. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I got word your proposal wasn’t testing well with a male audience and I made a last-minute decision to switch to Seth’s. I thought you’d do the same thing with the same information sitting in front of you. I didn’t realize—”
“You didn’t realize a lot of things,” I cut him off. I could feel my heart on the verge of breaking, but anger was doing its best to crush every other emotion at the moment. “We definitely lost the account.”
“Brynn,” he said, almost soothingly. “I’m sorry about the proposal. I’ll set another meeting with Nike and play yours. We’ll get another shot at it.”
“You don’t get it,” I said, emotions spinning on full speed in my body. “You don’t understand how devastating it is to lose. Because you’re you. You can always fix things, always try again. It’s not like that for everyone, Wes.”
Weston raised his hands as if he didn’t quite register where all my hostility was coming from. Well, he was about to find the fuck out. Fear crept up my spine, its icy chill wrapping around my nerves and crystalizing them as I reached for the magazine on my desk.
Part of me wanted him to tell me this was all a lie, that Lena had made it all up, but the more rational part of my brain knew that would be so outlandish it couldn’t be possible, right? I mean, how the hell would she get a hold of his grandmother’s ring?
Everything pointed to Weston giving it to her, and it just…hurt. It wasn’t like I was ready to get married and have babies right this second, but I certainly didn’t want to be a mistress while Lena trotted around the world with his last name. The fact that he could even think I would agree to something like that made me feel like I’d been living in a fantasy world these last few months, only seeing and feeling and hearing what I wanted to hear instead of actually paying attention.