Paris Is Always a Good Idea - Jenn McKinlay Page 0,37

less is more,” he said. “If that helps.”

“It doesn’t,” I snapped. “I watched a YouTube tutorial to get this right, but I don’t think my eyes match to begin with.”

He studied me. “What are you talking about?”

I turned to face the phone. “I think my right eye droops a little in the corner.”

“What, like you’ve had a stroke?” he asked. He stared at me hard.

I glared. “No, Knightley, it’s the corner of your mouth that droops after a stroke.”

“I think it’s both,” he said. “And your eyes are perfectly matched. It’s just that one is all gooped up and the other isn’t. You have pretty eyes—you don’t need to make yourself look like a cat or smoky or glittery or whatever it is you girls think is trending.”

I hesitated. “Are you sure? Because this is a very important date.”

“I’m positive,” he said. “But lipstick is important. No pressure, but make it a good color, like cherry red.”

“What? How is lipstick important but eyeliner isn’t?” I asked.

“Men don’t think about kissing your eyeball,” he said. “But lips? Lips will stay on a man’s mind for days, weeks, possibly years.”

“Gotcha.” I washed the liner off my other eye and patted my face dry. “Okay, what did you call about?”

“In anticipation of my conference call, I was going over your proposal,” he said. “It’s good, but the fundraising incentives you’ve come up with for the employees—you know, the weekend-getaway prizes, the free dinners, the cancer screenings—it’s all very . . .”

“What?” I pumped my mascara wand and looked at him. “What were you going to say?”

“Pedestrian,” he said. “Movie tickets or a new television as prizes for getting donations to support them in a bike-a-thon or have them sell raffle tickets is so meh.”

I rolled my eyes. “Those are all tried-and-true methods for employee engagement, especially as the company departments will be competing against each other for the yet-to-be-named grand prize.”

He didn’t say anything, and when I glanced over at my phone, he was yawning a big fakey yawn.

I gritted my teeth. “Listen, I am not going to have this go the way of the Overexposure Media Group ask.”

He winced. That was the only time we’d ever worked together, and it had been an unmitigated disaster. Frankly, I was still surprised that Aidan had kept us on after losing that ask.

“Overexposure Media Group tanked because we didn’t appreciate each other’s unique working styles,” he said.

“Among other things,” I said. I refused to mention “the incident.”

“In anticipation of this, I did some reading up on workplace personalities.”

Oh, this should be good. I gave my phone side-eye. “Really? And what personality am I?”

“You’re a guardian,” he said. “You like meticulously detailed, strategic plans executed with precision.”

“Because they work,” I retorted.

“Whereas I am a pioneer,” he said, ignoring me. “We’re all about the big idea, more theory, less detail, and imagination is the key.”

“Agreed,” I said. “Except that’s not why our ask from Overexposure Media Group failed.” He opened his mouth to speak, but I plowed on. “It failed because you thought doing videos of our staff rapping about cancer prevention while getting cancer screenings in the ACC mobile unit was a great idea.”

“It was a great idea,” he argued. “It could have gone viral.”

“Yeah, except you neglected to tell me that’s what we were doing. I thought it was supposed to be an ensemble piece where I said one line while standing by the machine. News flash—I can’t rap, especially not while getting a mammogram!” All right, fine, I brought up “the incident.”

“No, you really can’t,” he agreed. He pressed his lips together as if trying not to laugh. “In my defense, I thought mammograms were just like an X-ray. I figured you could rap the lines I’d given you while getting a chest X-ray like Davis on my team did for lung cancer. I had no idea they smashed your, you know, between plates of glass.” He looked pained.

“Do not make light of this,” I said. “Imagine my shock when you appeared from behind the curtain while I was in a hospital johnny with a boob on the loose.”

“I swear I didn’t see anything.” He blinked, the picture of innocence.

“So you said . . . repeatedly.” I hadn’t believed him. To his credit, he’d never spoken of “the incident” to anyone and neither had the technician, but for months afterward just seeing Knightley across the room had caused me to suffer a hot-faced case of extreme mortification. I couldn’t look the man in the