are a mottled red. Gavin always has me sit in on his meetings with the marketing directors but hasn’t ever asked what I thought. Because I’m not a marketing director; I’m his executive assistant.
Gavin’s brown eyes pin me to my chair. “You hear the same number of proposals I do in a given week, which makes you as qualified as anyone to poke holes in a proposal. What do you think?”
It’s a challenge. It’s also a high compliment that Gavin is even asking me to weigh in. I want to bask in his praise. To roll around in it like a dog in grass on a sunny day in spring.
He’s going to be sorry he asked if you don’t say something, dummy.
The problem is that, like Gavin seems to, I hate Roxana’s proposal. And it has nothing to do with the way she’s been aiming her cleavage at him through this whole meeting, flirting throughout the presentation, or the way she’s currently looking at me with acid in her eyes. It’s just a bad idea.
Roxana is brilliant. All of the women in this office are. Juliet, the original owner who sold the business to Gavin when her elderly parents needed more care, dreamed of a whole office full of talented, smart women, making deals and taking names.
But whether Roxana is having an off-day or losing her edge, I can’t pretend the idea works. It doesn’t. I also don’t want to make her hate me more.
“Well,” I say, channeling a confidence I don’t yet feel, “I’m not sure about the print part of the campaign. I would cut that budget and shift the money toward the social media and influencer aspects.”
“No surprise that the barely out of college graduate doesn’t want to consider print.” Roxana raises her eyebrows, giving me a clear challenge across the table.
Gavin makes a low rumble, like he’s about to correct her for the dig, but I don’t need him to be my defender. Even if I love the idea that he wants to stick up for me.
I lock eyes with Roxana. “I’m not against print, when there’s a need. But the last few campaigns we’ve run for brick-and-mortar businesses lost money on the print side.”
“I’ve run the numbers,” she argues. “They’re solid.”
“I’m sure you have. But an all-digital campaign would make better use of your money and increase your reach. Consider the last campaign we ran for Blaze Auto. No print. All digital. The most effective part was utilizing Instagram influencers. It’s not what I would normally think of, but it worked. We can pull the numbers if you need a reminder.”
There’s a beat or two of silence. I keep my expression smooth and my gaze up. I see the moment that Roxana knows I’m right, and the struggle as she tries to figure out how to respond while saving face.
Gavin has been silent this whole time, and I’ve seen his frown deepen from the corner of my eye. I’m always simply aware of him, like my body has a Gavin-radar constantly tuned into whatever he’s doing.
“What will this do to the cost projections?” he asks. I’m shocked when he looks at me, not Roxana.
“It shouldn’t do much to the bottom line,” I say. “If you look on page three, where Roxana outlined the overall budget, we could cut the ads in the local magazines. We could use half that amount on influencers. You might even save a little.”
“Interesting idea,” Gavin says. “Roxana, what do you think?”
Roxana blinks down at the papers in front of her, then smooths out her expression and looks at Gavin. “It’s a different approach, but one that doesn’t fall far outside my original proposal. I think it could work.”
Gavin nods, then smiles at us both before standing. It’s lunchtime, which means the clock is running down and I need to give Gavin my resignation. But it’s hard to think about that now because Gavin asked for my opinion. Gavin likes my idea.
Maybe Gavin will finally promote me? Except then I have to stay here, fighting my crush and feeling out of place in this cold, cutthroat office. Juliet may have amassed a group of smart, capable women (Roxana’s performance today notwithstanding), but the vibe here is not warm. We’re not one big happy family. Everyone around me always feels like they’re trying to claw their way to the top.
“I’m happy with where we landed on this,” Gavin says. “Roxana, get me an updated proposal by the end of the day.”