to her bare legs. Damn, those shoes made him hard.
Oh man. This was not good.
Chapter Five
“Who the hell hired that idiot?”
Mason leaned back in his chair and regarded Sloane, looking calm and at ease in contrast to the anger and frustration simmering inside her. “Which particular idiot are you referring to?”
“Levi Wolcott.”
“Ah. Well, that would be me. I hired him. And I’m pretty sure he’s not an idiot. Is this about that incident this morning?”
“Yes!” She dropped onto the chair across from Mason’s desk, perching on the edge. “I walked into his cube and my eyeballs were seared by what I saw.”
“Come on, hon, you’ve never watched porn?”
“Mason.”
His lips twitched. “It was a practical joke, Sloane.”
“I know.” She blew out a breath and her shoulders slumped. “That has to stop.”
His eyes tightened at the corners. “Why? It’s not like you to be so hard-ass. I mean, you totally can be a hard-ass.” Her lips quirked. “But even though you’re a suit, I know you have a sense of humor.”
She sucked briefly on her bottom lip. “Joe wants me to clean up their ‘bad boys of beer’ reputation.”
Mason blinked. “Ah.”
“I get that he’s worried about optics,” she said, even though she despised that word. “How we’re perceived by the client. Last week, the marketing guys from Wrigley did a drive-by.” Their newest client. Big client. “They found the creatives sitting on the floor playing with LEGO.”
“The dreaded drive-by,” Mason murmured, setting his fingertips together.
“Yeah. I know they were trying to spur their creativity.” She sighed again. “And I get that. So should Joe.”
“He’s been removed from the front lines for a while,” Mason said. “His concern now is the bottom line.”
“We’re making money!”
“I know, I know. Relax, Sloane. Look at you. Your hands are about to snap the arms of that chair. You’re wound so tight when you release everybody better stand back.”
“That could be true,” she murmured, loosening her grip on the chair. She rubbed at the tightness behind her breastbone. “I wish people would just do what I say!”
Mason laughed. “Oh, honey, I know. It drives you crazy when you can’t control everything, doesn’t it?”
“Yes.”
She gave Mason a wry smile. He got her. With him, she felt like she could let down her guard a little and let him see the real her inside. And yet…there was only friendship between them.
Not that he wasn’t an attractive man. Only five years older than her, he had a sexy, mature handsomeness, fine lines at the corners of his eyes that fanned out when he smiled, a muscular and solid build with a flat abdomen and broad shoulders. There were shadows in his eyes, though, hints of a darkness he kept locked up behind his easygoing façade that she recognized…because she had them too. They’d never shared a lot of details but understood that about each other. Of anyone at Huxworth Packard, he was the one she was closest too, but it had never been anything sexual or romantic. Mason was a serial dater and made it clear he had no intention of ever settling down with one woman or starting a family. Her intuition told her something in his past had made him that way, and she got it because she’d never been able to commit to someone either.
“I’ve always appreciated working for a company that valued quality work above billings,” she said slowly. “I don’t want that to change.”
“I don’t think it is.”
“You know how shitty that is,” she mused. “When the team comes up with something, something great, and we’re sitting in a meeting with the client and they don’t like it and suddenly I’m all, yeah, that idea never really worked—taking their side.”
“You don’t do that,” he murmured.
“Sure I have. And hated myself after. I still do it, but I’ve learned to do it more diplomatically.”
He smiled.
“But I feel caught in the middle,” she said. “Between the client and the creatives. The client is always right. Right?”
“You know they’re not always right.”
She exhaled again. “Yes, but in the end, they’re always right. And same with Joe. He’s the boss. He’s always right. We do what he says. He says clean up their image, I clean up their image.”
“I get it, Sloane.” His dark eyes softened. “Look, I’ll talk to the guys, okay?”
She hesitated. Joe had asked her to deal with it. But Mason was directly responsible for them. And she trusted him. “Okay.”
“I’ve always got your back, hon.”
She slumped back into the chair. “I know. And thank you.”