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It always made me nervous when I was alone with him. I wasn’t sure if it was because he was my boss or because of how his eyes always seemed to travel down my whole body.
“What can I do for you?” he asked, not looking up from his desk.
Crap. He was in a bad mood. I knew I should have waited. I cleared my throat. “Is this a good time, Mr. Ellington?”
He sighed and looked up at me. “It’s Joe, Bridget. Please just call me Joe.”
“Sorry. Joe,” I said. His name sounded weird coming out of my mouth. But I’d rather start the meeting off on a good tone.
He smiled. “Take a seat.”
As I sat down, he stood up. He walked over to the side of the desk I was on and sat down on it, so that he was staring down at me. It seemed like a friendly thing to do, but I couldn’t shake the feeling that he had done it so he could stare down my shirt. I leaned back slightly.
“So, Bridget. What can I do for you?”
“Well, I heard that there was a new ad exec job opening.”
Mr. Ellington laughed. “I’m pretty sure everyone heard that when Jenkins was yelling at me.”
I smiled. “Right. Well, I’ve been thinking a lot about my position here…”
“Your position?” He raised his left eyebrow. “You mean, directly beneath me?”
“Umm…yes. About that…”
He held up his hand. “I know what this is about.”
“You do?”
“I do. We had discussed you getting a promotion a few weeks ago. And you never came in for a follow up discussion.”
When he had mentioned a promotion before he had made it seem dirty. Like he wanted me to start giving him hand jobs under his desk or something. That was why I had never followed up. But maybe I had it all wrong. Maybe he had been planning on giving me an advertising job the whole time. Maybe he actually liked my idea.
“Exactly,” I said. “I was hoping we could discuss that a little more.”
“What did you want your promotion to entail?”
“Well, do you remember my idea from a few weeks ago? For Sword Body Wash. Partnering with the Knicks cheerleaders…”
Mr. Ellington swiped his hand through the air. “Jenkins lost us that account. But your idea wasn’t a good fit for the brand anyway. We’ve already discussed that.”
I wasn’t expecting him to say that. “Okay, well, I know that the only thing that a company cares about is making money.” I regurgitated what he had said at our other meeting back to him. And it felt like I was regurgitating it for real, because it wasn’t true. Sword Body Wash cared about their image and their brand. But that wasn’t what Mr. Ellington wanted to hear. He wanted to hear that he was right. And I really wanted this promotion.
“Exactly, Bridget. Which means we always have to give our clients the very best. Experience means everything to our clients. Experience which you do not have.”
Shit. “I have a lot of other ideas, though. Maybe we could go through them?”
“This wasn’t exactly the direction I thought you’d want to go,” he said.
“What direction did you see me going?”
“South. Definitely south.” His eyes wandered down my body in that way that chilled me to the bone.
“Mr. Ellington…”
“Personal assistant.”
“What?”
