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Cole cleared his throat loudly.
“I’m not interested in any movie featuring a grown man wearing a dress. Right now, all I care about is this article and the damage it’s doing to Espresso’s image, which isn’t one bit funny.”
“Sorry about that, son.” Victor dabbed at the tears that had gathered in his eyes from laughing. “I guess I got sidetracked.” He extracted a pair of reading glasses from his shirt pocket and resumed studying the article.
A few minutes later, he shrugged. “Okay, so they took a bit of a dig at us. Try not to get so bent out of shape over it. It’s not that big a deal.”
“Not a big deal?” Cole fumed, the headline imprinted on his brain—Not Your Granny’s Makeup: Stiletto Cosmetics Puts Its Spiked Heel in the Competition. He quoted the article, “As Cole Sinclair makes a last ditch attempt to rescue his family’s declining Espresso Cosmetics from near extinction, an edgy new brand is poised to pick up the torch.”
Victor removed his glasses, folded the paper and tucked it under his arm. “We just had our first successful collection in nearly a decade thanks to you,” he said.
“And there wasn’t a single word in the press about it, despite the efforts of our public relations team.”
“Still, it was a huge boost to Espresso employees who haven’t had much to celebrate in a very long time,” the older man said. “You should be patting yourself on the back, not worrying about a ridiculous photo in some rag.”
“America Today has a nationwide circulation. Not to mention online and international editions.”
“My point is Espresso is finally making a comeback,” Victor said.
“Comeback?” Cole leaned against the front of his desk and folded his arms. “We’re a long way from what I’d consider a comeback.
“A sold-out holiday collection was a heck of a good start.”
Cole shrugged off the praise with a grunt. His first order of business as CEO of Espresso’s cosmetics division had been to sit down with the company’s chief financial officer, Malcolm Doyle, to find out exactly where years of stagnant sales had left them financially.
The second had been to untie the hands of the creative and product-development teams and allow them to do their jobs. For too long their ideas had languished due to Victor’s insistence on remaining loyal to what he believed Cole’s mother would have wanted for her company.
“You’ve done more for Espresso in five months than I accomplished after years of being in charge.” Victor’s chin dropped to his chest, his gaze cast toward the carpet. “It’s just I thought...”
“The success of the holiday collection was just a drop in the bucket.” Cole cut him off, refusing to play the blame game.
All he cared about was making Espresso relevant in the cosmetics industry again. It was too late to take back the harsh words he’d exchanged with his mother the very last time he’d seen her. Now the only way he could make it up to her was to save her legacy.
He swallowed hard. “We’d need a tsunami to erase the red ink from the company books and our old-lady image from women’s minds.” Rounding his desk, Cole tapped at his computer keyboard until the survey he’d commissioned appeared on the screen. “I was going to email you a copy of this later, but you might as well take a look at it now.”
Victor sat in Cole’s leather executive chair, once again retrieving his reading glasses from his pocket.
“This is a survey taken over the holidays of customers shopping at various department-store cosmetics counters,” Cole explained. He leaned over Victor’s shoulder, right-clicking the mouse to expand a page. “Here are just a few of the comments female shoppers made when asked about Espresso.”
The older man read aloud. “‘My great-aunt uses their foundation. We call her Auntie Cake behind her back because her face always looks like it’s been dipped in batter.’” Victor winced. “Ouch.”
“It gets worse.”
“You’re kidding.”
“Nope. Keep reading.”
“‘Their makeup counters are deader than a morgue.’”
Victor read another one. “‘I didn’t know they were still around.’”
Cole pointed out a remark made by a twenty-two-year-old woman actually making a purchase at an Espresso counter. This time he read it aloud. “‘I’m only here because my grandmother ran out of her favorite pink lipstick. No way I’d wear this old-lady stuff. I’m a Stiletto girl all the way.’”
His stepfather exhaled a long drawn-out breath. “This is why you’re so peeved about that article.”
Cole nodded. “The more I think about it, the more I believe it’s too late to change people’s minds about us. Our senior-citizen image is too entrenched.”
“But...” Victor started to protest, but Cole held up a hand to stop him.
“Hear me out,” Cole said. “Why keep banging our heads against a brick wall? Stiletto already has the hip, edgy vibe and is gaining popularity with the young demographic we’re chasing.”
“I’m not following you, son.”
Cole smiled for the first time in what felt like weeks. Why hadn’t he thought of it before?
“It’s the acquire-to-grow strategy—something I was in charge of implementing during my tenure at Force Cosmetics. Simply put, if we can’t beat them, we’ll just have to buy them.”
He paused to give Victor a chance to let the idea sink in. “We would keep Stiletto’s name and packaging the same, meanwhile continue to revamp Espresso and rebrand it as makeup for the classic or mature beauty or something along those lines.”
The older man pressed his lips together a few moments, before he finally spoke. “Couldn’t we just develop our own offshoot brand?”
Cole shrugged. “We could, but that would take a long time. Even then, consumers can be fickle. There’s no guarantee it would catch on and turn into a winner for us.”
“But how?” Victor frowned, deepening the creases in his forehead. “You heard what Doyle said. The cosmetics division is buried in red ink. Your sister’s Espresso Sanctuary spas propped us up until you came back and threw us a lifeline.”
Cole crossed his arms over his chest. While Espresso’s finances had dwindled in his absence, his personal wealth had grown tremendously. “Don’t worry. I’ve got it covered,” he said. “I’m about to make Ms. Matthews an offer too good to refuse.”
Chapter 2 (#ulink_aa54f0e0-e839-5088-9c67-18983d11d012)
Sage Matthews pulled the phone away from her ear long enough to give it, and the woman on the other end of the line, the side eye.
“Your makeup brand would be a perfect addition to our store lineup.”
The buyer for the trendy boutique chain droned on, but the silent alarms on Sage’s bullshit detector drowned out the rest of her spiel. It sounded identical to the ones she’d heard all morning.
“Strange—that isn’t what you said a few weeks ago.” Sage kicked off her shoes under her desk and wiggled her toes. High heels were the worst form of torture, but when you owned a company called Stiletto, you had to dress the part.
She glanced at the notation she’d scribbled on a message slip next to the buyer’s name. “I believe you said Stiletto’s branding was too provocative. Your exact words were downright raunchy.”
“Um...well,” the woman stammered. “You must have misheard me. I said it was delightfully racy as in sexy. Clearly, there’s been a misunderstanding.”
Misunderstanding, huh? Sage stifled the harrumph on the tip of her tongue. “Hard to tell,” she said, “considering the way your secretary tossed me out of your office afterward like she was a nightclub bouncer.”
“Oh, dear. Please accept my apologies if my staff was a touch overzealous. Again, I assure you it was all a big mistake. One I hope we can...”
“Just stop.” Sage had heard enough.
“P-pardon?”
“Before you continue, you should know I refuse to do business with anyone who lies to me.”
Silence.
Figuring the buyer was weighing her options, Sage waited, making no attempt to fill the dead air. Long awkward moments passed, before a sigh emitted over the line. “Okay, the truth is I didn’t want to risk offending my more conservative clientele by selling lipsticks and eyes shadows with names like Spank Me and Missionary Position.”
There was another sigh, this one deeper and more drawn out. “Next thing I know, the hottest female singer on the planet is telling a national television audience she adores your lipsticks. Suddenly the same customers I was worried about offending are clamoring for Stiletto products, and I couldn’t be more sorry for turning you down.”
Finally, Sage thought, the truth.
She’d returned nearly a dozen calls that morning from eager buyers, the same people who had practically slammed the door in her face previously, criticizing everything from Stiletto’s faux black leather packing to the titillating names of their products. Of course, they’d changed their tunes in the weeks since pop star Crave had whipped out a tube of Stiletto lipstick and called it her secret weapon.
Sage knew it was just foolish pride. Still, she couldn’t help feel irked that instead of owning up to their blunder, they’d tried to gloss over it. Insulting her intelligence with meaningless flattery.
“My assistant will contact you later today to schedule a meeting to discuss adding Stiletto to your boutique’s lineup,” she said, satisfied. “However, you should know that as circumstances have changed, so has my first offer. Any deal we strike now will definitely have terms more favorable to Stiletto.”
“Eh...uh...of course,” the boutique’s buyer said. “I look forward to our meeting.”
Sage ended the call just as her assistant, Amelia, bounded into her office clutching a pink message slip. A huge grin deepened the dimples in the cheeks of her smooth brown skin. “I thought it would take forever for you to finally get off the phone.”
“What’s up?” Leaning forward in her office chair, Sage propped her elbows on her desktop. She dropped her chin to her chest and began rubbing out the kinks that had developed in her neck from talking on the phone all morning.
“You’ll never guess who called for you.” The nineteen-year-old shifted from one leg to the other, practically bouncing with excitement. “Not in a million years.”
“Well, don’t keep me...” Sage stopped midsentence and glanced up at her assistant. “Hold on. What are you still doing here?” She glanced at her watch. “Your accounting class starts in five minutes.”
Amelia huffed and rolled her eyes toward the ceiling. “I know. I know.”
The teen had started working for Stiletto a few hours a week after school during her last year of high school. Sage thought she was doing the girl a favor, but quickly discovered that in the efficient and organized Amelia, she’d struck employee gold.
A year later, when graduation and her eighteenth birthday aged her out of the foster-care system, the job became full-time with the stipulation that Amelia would enroll in college. Having grown up in the foster-care system, Sage knew the importance of having an education to fall back on when you had no one to depend on but yourself.
“Well?” Sage raised a brow.
“But I couldn’t leave. Not just yet. Not until I tell you who...”
“I don’t care who called. There isn’t anything or anyone more important than you being at school right now,” Sage said.
The same brusque tone that sent her other employees, and most people, scurrying for cover rarely intimidated Amelia. Nor did it dampen her bubbly enthusiasm over the caller she was dying to tell her about.
“Stand down, General. I’m going to class, but first you have to hear who called you before I explode.”
“For goodness’ sake. Spit it out so you can haul your fanny over to the community college.” Sage sighed. “And if you’re going to call me General, can’t you do it behind my back like everyone else around here?”
“Cole Sinclair!” The name popped out of her assistant’s mouth like the cork on a bottle of champagne.
Sage studied the message slip Amelia handed her and tried to place the familiar name. Then it hit her. “As in Espresso Cosmetics?” He and his family’s company had been a footnote in a feature article on Stiletto that had run a few days ago in America Today.
“Well, yeah, but Cole Sinclair is worth way more than that granny makeup company he runs.” Amelia dismissed the connection with a flick of her hand. “Remember the puzzle game we deleted from our phones and you banned from our office computers because it was too addictive?”
Sage nodded, recalling getting so caught up in the colorful game she’d spent an entire evening matching trios of circus clowns in an attempt to beat enough levels to earn the elusive title of ultimate ringmaster.
“Well, Cole Sinclair invested in the gaming studio that developed it years ago, back when it was just two college kids in their parents’ basement. His meager investment turned him into a millionaire twenty times over when the business eventually sold to a major corporation,” Amelia said. “It was one of the topics in my entrepreneurship class last semester.”
While the background information on Sinclair was mildly interesting, Sage’s concern was her own business and turning it into a multimillion-dollar endeavor. She stared at the name on the message slip. “Did he say what he wanted?”
“Only that it was important,” Amelia said. “What do you think?”
Sage shrugged. “Maybe he’s miffed about that article in America Today. The mention of Espresso wasn’t exactly flattering. Nor was that photo of the young, chic woman symbolizing us versus the old one that was supposedly Espresso.”
“Or maybe—” Amelia paused dramatically “—maybe he took one look at the photo of you with that article and fell head over heels for you. And he wants to ask you out on a date. Just think about it.” The young woman let out a squeal. “A tall, good-looking millionaire is smitten by your photo, falls hopelessly in love and is determined to sweep you off your feet.”
Sage stared at the dreamy look on the teen’s face, unable to believe the crap coming out of her mouth. How could a girl so smart about most things be so dumb about this one? Sage waited a beat, reaching for diplomatic words to set her assistant straight without hurting her feelings.
There were none.
“That is the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard,” she said.
“It could happen,” Amelia protested.
“Yeah, and maybe he’ll charge into my office on a white horse wearing a suit of armor or bare chested like the men on the covers of those ridiculous romance novels you’ve always got your nose stuck in.”
This time it was her assistant who frowned. “There’s nothing wrong with being a romantic. In fact, the more I think about it, a date is just what you need. It would loosen you up, and maybe folks around here might stop calling you General behind your back.”
They could call her Godzilla for all she cared, as long as they did their jobs—and did them well. “You need to spend more time with your textbooks and less reading those silly romances.” Sage checked her watch.
“I’m going, but first I need to schedule your meeting with Mr. Sinclair.”
Amelia pulled the smartphone she used for work from her pants pocket. “He wants to see you at your earliest convenience.” She tapped on the screen with a stylus she’d retrieved from behind her ear. “Your schedule is packed, but I could bump one of your other appointments so you can see him later this afternoon or perhaps first thing tomorrow.”
Sage held up a finger. “I haven’t decided if I’m meeting with him at all.”
The younger woman looked up from the phone. “You’re joking, right?”
“You, better than anyone, know I rarely joke.”
“Aren’t you curious? I can hardly wait to find out what he wants.”
Sage fixed her assistant with her most intimidating, no-nonsense glare. “You’ll have to wait because you’re leaving for your accounting class right now.”
Grumbling, the young woman reluctantly did as she was told.
Sage had no idea why Cole Sinclair had called. But unlike Amelia, she didn’t indulge in far-fetched fantasies. Sage lived in the real world.
And in the real world, when rich people wanted to talk business, they wanted to trick poor people out of something valuable.
Chapter 3 (#ulink_2515a372-20be-54f1-a347-0ffceaa7ca4d)
Money might not buy happiness, but Cole knew enough of it would buy just about everything else.
