Maliciously Obedient (BBW Erotic Romance) (9 page)

Lydia continued, “ – come in the 40-49 age range with the second largest group in the 26-39 range. Historically, romance novels were purchased in paper, and mass market paperbacks are by far the most popular format – but not for long. Nowadays those tend to priced at about $7.99 each. Trade book size is close behind, in terms of popularity, but with trade paperbacks floating anywhere from $12 to $20 each, it’s no surprise that people are rapidly adopting the eBook model.”

Matt smirked. She turned and clicked her Powerpoint, displaying the statistics as she popped through them, all of them reinforcing the point she was getting to. Dave looked at his watch and stopped any pretense of not being bored.

“What does this,” he waved dismissively at the screen, “have to do with advertising and social media, Lydia?” he asked.

“Good question, Dave.” She maintained her poise, working on trying very hard not to kill him. God knows how many run-throughs she had tolerated for him, letting him practice and drone on and on for pitches that he gave to higher levels of corporate or for going out and trying to snag new clients. Ungrateful ass. Here she was with an idea that could boost division profits and he acted like she was a little girl at a talent show.

Maybe she should stuff some marshmallows up her nose and start shooting.

This is how his director of communications treated an innovator.
Mike took a good, hard look at Dave out of the corner of his eye as Lydia continued her presentation, breaking down demographics and talking about the impact of
Fifty Shades of Grey, Bared to You, and The Virgin Menage
series
currently dominating the
New York Times
Bestseller List. As she went layer by layer deconstructing audiences, talking about market share, delving into numbers and specific profit levels, he watched as Dave systematically undermined everything she was trying to do, dismissed all of it out of hand, and wouldn’t even bother.

He knew what Dave earned; one of his assistants had researched it, when he made the decision to take the Director of Social Media job as Matt Jones, and from what he was seeing the guy was massively overpaid. He should have given Lydia the position – and by the time this presentation was done, he very well might.

Dave dressed well – a little too well. His look was crisp and clean, a bit overdone, with hands that spoke to never having touched a rake or a shovel or, Mike suspected, a keyboard, until he had no choice. He probably was a double thumber, proficient with a Blackberry, and the type who sent emails to his assistant so she could
email
them to others.

Corporate America was filled with Daves. What it needed was more Lydias. If he really
were
Matt Jones he’d be sitting here, probably adopting Dave’s crossed-arm blasé attitude in an attempt to fit in, trying to secure his place in the rat race, in the ladder climbing, in the petty world of one ups – of cut downs – of these social signals that permeated business life and took on meanings of their own.

But he wasn’t Matt Jones. He was Mike Bournham and he owned this company, which meant he owned Dave. Not really, but metaphorically speaking. He sized him up. Dave probably held no student loan debt. Those smooth hands told him he came from a pampered background. Mike guessed he probably had plenty of consumer debt. An overpriced car in his parking spot with a hefty lease fee – because these guys always leased up, flashing a car far more expensive than they should drive, but it projected status – right?

Was that a ring on his finger? Yup. Okay, married. Probably owned a house with a heavy, four figure monthly mortgage and at least another car for the wife. Maybe they had kids. If so, daycare costs. Undoubtedly the biggest cable package you could imagine, hundreds and hundreds a month. And of course they had to go to Disney every year and
hmm
... Guys like Dave radically underpaid their housekeeper and nanny and gardener and considered themselves great guys for giving ‘that type’ a job at all.

Dave was the kind of guy who left skid marks on his underwear for someone else to clean up. For Mike, that was a form of sacrilege as he sunk deeper and deeper into realizing how far he’d come from who he’d thought he would be by now. There were times when he skittered
waaaaay
too close to being a Dave, skidmarks notwithstanding.

Right now, though, wasn't one of them.

“And so, now that I’ve shown you the background, the demographics, the profit issues and where I think we can fit in, let me lay out the exact plan for how we can create a plug-n-play product, a set of services that will allow us to capture as much market share for these writers, bloggers, publishing houses, all of the people who are intimately connected with the romance industry. And how Bournham Industries and our advertising sector can reap the benefit financially.” Lydia's confidence was evident in the lilt in her voice, triggering a smile Mike couldn't contain.

This could really help Bournham Industries. He doubted the project could get underway fast enough to meet his needs, which were about eight weeks away – before the final board decision when he found out whether he was a billionaire or not.

On that he was confident, as long as everything unfolded according to plan. And why shouldn't it? So far, so good.

In the long run, for a fiscally healthy company and for more – for corporate responsibility, for feeding innovation, for growing internal employees like Lydia who cared, who were clever, who saw opportunities and went for them without any direct incentive – that?
That
was worth so much more than the money that they would see.

Dave held one hand up, palm facing her, “Hold on, hold on. I just...you know, Lydia.” He looked at his watch and shook his head, displaying a condescending smile. “I think that you've done a spectacular job putting together all this market data.”

Mike watched as Lydia’s cheeks flushed, her back straightened, knowing exactly where this was going but still staring Dave down. “And I think,” Dave continued, “in more sophisticated hands, you might have a great idea here. It just don't think it will fly. You’ve micro sliced too much. A smaller boutique firm that wants to take on something like this, a good mid-six figures kind of an account that you could create by going out, doing cold calls, working the network...alright,” Dave mugged, an expression as if he was considering the pros and cons of something.

“But, you know, we’re not one of those. We’re Bournham Industries and I just can’t imagine that Michael Bournham, the ultimate corporate alpha male,” he chuckled, “the kind of guy who would be a hero in one of these cute little romance novels, would go for it.”

A preternatural calmness seeped into Mike’s lungs, over his chest, up his neck, down his biceps and into his forearms, tingling his fingers as he looked at Dave and said, “How do you know what Mike Bournham might be thinking?”

Whatever tone of voice he used, Lydia and Dave snapped to attention and stared at him. Lydia narrowed her eyes, the flush gone from her cheeks, the shake gone from her fingers, her body more composed, turning to face him with her shoulders straight. Mike’s jaw felt about as tight as a reconstructed virgin on her twenty-fifth wedding anniversary – a trend he’d been alarmed to learn from one of his last dates was gaining popularity in his city.

A pinched smile from Dave. “Well, I can’t claim to speak for him, but why don’t
you
go ask him, Matt?”

“I’m afraid I can’t do that, Dave,” Mike said. Lydia’s hand flew to her mouth, suppressing a chuckle.
Ahh
, so she got the cultural reference. Dave clearly didn’t, eyes flashing in anger at her laughter, at Mike’s face. Whatever anger he was transmitting, he realized it wasn’t enough. He had to be...
no
. Dammit.

He couldn't be Michael Bournham right now.

Role play for the cameras. He had to be Matt Jones; he had to be this asshole’s subordinate. This was the part he was playing. This hidden boss for the sake of the cameras, for the sake of the drama, for the sake of those
profits
. And even if Dave was wrong, Matt had to back down. Even if Mike wanted to roar up.

Quickly, he calculated the best next step.

Meanwhile, Dave answered, “That’s right. You can’t do that because you don’t have a direct line or even an indirect line to Michael Bournham. I do. I’m the Director of Communications.” He used his hand to gesture for importance, for emphasis, as if somehow that hand using an “okay” sign spun about, the palm being used to emphasize boundaries, as if it made a difference.

As if it made him more important.

Mike
wanted to crush this guy like the bug that he was, yet
Matt
had to defer. That didn’t mean that Mike wouldn’t act later. It just meant that it was time for Matt to be the good guy in a different way.

“This has been a great meeting,” Mike said, speaking with as much sincerity as he could muster. “And Lydia,
I
would love to watch the rest of the presentation. You’ve got some innovative ideas there but I,” he choked out, “have to defer to the boss – because he’s the boss, right?”

Her eyes sparkled with panic. Mike knew what she was feeling. This was going down, down, down the drain and he flashed back to his own presentation upon which his entire career had hinged. Except that he had been eighteen, nervous, geeky, a code jockey, and telling his dad about the importance of data mining and using these new technology techniques in the mid 90’s to help raise the business profile, to help gain customers and market share and new clients. He hadn’t been taken seriously at first either.

His father's reaction had been the opposite of Dave’s. He’d simply told him go for it. “Do whatever you wanna do kid, just have fun doing it.” Oh, how Mike had – helping his father quintuple the size of the company in a handful of years.

Lydia didn’t have that luxury. He didn’t have the authority as Matt Jones of saying, “Go for it, Lydia. Here’s a budget – run with it and show me what you can do.”

As Mike Bournham he could. Just not yet.

She began stuffing papers and pulling thumb drives out of the company laptop, head down, clearly too upset to speak but remaining professional. She gave Dave a very tight, wide-eyed, overwrought, but restrained look and said, “Thank you for giving me an opportunity to show you what I’m capable of.”

Mike jumped in and said, “Seriously, I’d like to see the rest of that,” gesturing to the thumb drive.

She tossed it to him and he caught it with a practiced hand. “It’s all yours,” she said.

Yeah it is,
he thought.
It is all mine.
But she didn’t know that.

Dave stood, looked at his watch again, pulled out his Blackberry and started thumbing a text. Without even looking at either of them he said, “See you guys later. And by the way, Lydia, I sent you an email and I need you to email that out for me to the Borden account.”

Lydia bit her lip, clenched her fists behind her back, closed her eyes and said in a fake, cheery voice, “Will do Dave. Don’t worry about it. I got it covered.”

“You always do,” he called back, then quietly closed the door.

She was about to break down. The way that her fingers snapped quickly to grab at the papers, how her wrists flicked with the ever-efficient motions that her body used to control what he imagined to be a chaotic mind right now, furious, fuming and indignant. Most of all, hurt.

He reached out and put a gentle hand on top of hers, staring at her face. She paused, then looked up. Oh, man, she was barely holding it together but he had to say something, had to do something – because right now it was either comfort her or kill Dave.

“Lydia, he’s an ass,” he said quietly. Her eyes widened and she looked at him, roaming up and down his face. He could feel her not just surveying him, not just sizing him up, not just figuring out his level of sincerity and whether this was a ploy to get her in bed, but
really
taking him in.

“You figured that out in your first week, huh, Matt?” she said, a veil floating swiftly down her face, covering everything. She snatched her hand away as if he’d burned her. “You're a real go-getter.”

He held out the thumb drive. “I mean it. I’m going to take a look at this.”

Sweeping all the rest of her papers into her arms, she marched toward the door. “You do that, Matt. Thanks. Appreciate it. Bye.”

A shaky tone in her voice told him that she was trying, desperately, to get somewhere before she broke down in tears. Unctuous Dave, cutting her down so quickly, without a thought, brought her to this. How many times had he done that to people, male or female? As if his brain worked faster than everyone else's, calibrating, measuring, weighing and making a snap decision on the spot, thumbs up or thumbs down, and then not caring about any of the other details that had gone into this distilled moment where he was apparently the master of someone else’s fate. Who lets someone like that thrive in a company?

He did. Mike sighed, the sound more of disgust than relief.

And that...that just went along with being the CEO of a major corporation. Being Matt Jones meant that he got to see how the sausage was made. The inner workings of his company, each worker, each office, all the way down to expensing a travel request. He’d noticed that the people who cleaned the bathrooms were no longer Bournham Industries employees. They were subcontractors, contracted out from a company that Bournham paid.