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“Okay?” Zoe said slowly, still not following what that had to do with her and this interview.
“Will believes he should look at everyone interested in being the CDD.”
Zoe’s heart ached with a surge. “I’m not understanding, Marcus. You’re the president.”
“The CEO has a little more pull than the president,” Marcus explained. “And right now, he’s our last chance at keeping RC running.”
The rumors were true. Someone wanted to shut down Ravens Cosmetics. Zoe’s heart ached as if she’d been wronged. How could anyone think about dissolving this company? Five minutes ago she’d pumped herself up about wanting to board the RC ship. Now it felt like the ship was sailing away while she stood on the pier watching it depart. She asked herself again, how badly did she want to be the Creative Design Director?
“This is then a waste of my time, Marcus. I am too qualified to have to go through a screening process.” Zoe turned to leave. Through the glass, Zoe thought she saw Titus mouthing something to her. She was not in the mood for a fight. “Either you like my work or you don’t.”
With his hands still on her shoulders, Marcus clamped down firmly. He turned her to face him so her back was to the receptionist area. “I do, my brothers and sisters do, and Will is going to feel the same way.”
“You guys brought in Titus.” A tic began to flutter underneath her right eye. The other makeup artist was good, of course he was. But he’d copied her trademark ’80s style. This was too much stress for her. Zoe sighed impatiently. Great-Grandma Sadie would have a fit if she knew Zoe got this far only to abandon her own resolve. “I just can’t deal with this, Marcus.”
“Will you at least listen to me first? I’ll get Donovan on the phone.”
“I’m right here.” Donovan’s familiar voice filled the hallway.
Not wanting any pity, Zoe didn’t dare turn around. Like his brother, Donovan had an extremely charismatic smile. Ever the charmer, he always knew how to bring out a natural blush on any model Zoe had worked on. If she glanced at Donovan, Zoe knew she’d swoon, and right now she was too pissed off to be cheered up. She kept her angry focus on the Windsor knot of Marcus’s tie.
“Tell her everything is still going on as planned,” Marcus said over her head to his brother.
“The interviewing process?” Donovan asked, and Marcus nodded. “It’s just a process.”
“Someone too good for an interview?” Another deep voice asked.
While the voice may have been sexy, the tone was not. Zoe spun on her heels, prepared to give this person a piece of her mind when she stopped and gaped. Instead of the fitted shirt and jeans she’d seen him in earlier at the elevator, he now wore a tailored, classically cut two-thousand-dollar navy blue suit with a blue-and-yellow paisley tie. Suits made Zoe’s knees weak the same way lingerie did men’s.
“You?” The man brushed roughly against Donovan’s shoulders without apologizing.
“You?” Zoe repeated. “I don’t understand.” Zoe wondered how she hadn’t recognized the similarities.
“Will, this is Zoe Baldwin, the woman we’ve been talking about.” Donovan clamped his hands on his brother’s back. “Zoe, this is our baby brother, Will.”
“You’re a makeup artist?”
“She’s the B in Beauty Business,” Donovan interjected.
So, the man from the elevator wasn’t a struggling model? Judging from the expensive suit he wore, he was far from struggling. Zoe shrugged her shoulders indifferently. “Artist, genius, whatever you want to call me is fine.”
“How about we keep it simple and call you interviewee number six?” Will asked.
Gone was the charming smile from downstairs. Zoe’s hand brushed against the front pocket where she shoved his business card. She extracted it and fingered the raised letters, assuming it gave the three initials of his position. CEO. Jesus Christ, this man with a dry sense of humor held her fate in his hands. Somewhere in the back of her mind Zoe heard the proverbial ship sound its horn and sail off into the ocean.
* * *
At six in the evening, Will Ravens sat back in his newly ordered chair and tried to get the feel of it and the new position. He was in over his head. As a former professional soccer player for the Texas Raiders, the only thing he knew about women was what he was attracted to. Not being raised in the family business, Will did not possess the same keen cosmetic eye as his siblings. He knew what he’d liked and what he’d seen in the portfolios from the interviews this afternoon. There was nothing to catch his eye—but that wasn’t necessarily true. The woman’s face from earlier this afternoon entered his mind. He thumbed through the portfolios of the potential CDDs. A silver paper clip fastened to the manila folder secured a photo of Zoe Baldwin’s heart-shaped face to the outside.
How was she the woman behind the makeup and not on the runway? Her flawless sienna-and-gold skin was radiant. Her chestnut-brown hair, secured today at the back of her neck, did not do her justice as the photograph before him did. In it, her mane hung over her shoulders and she smiled for the camera with one raised brow and a playful smile across her face.
“So, what did you think of Zoe Baldwin?”
Will dropped the portfolio at the unexpected interruption and cursed under his breath. “Jesus, Donovan, don’t you knock?”
“We’re family.”
“All the more reason to knock,” Will joked. The last round of complaints from their cousins were due to Donovan’s dating the models. He went through at least one on a weekly basis. They threw themselves at him. The one thing a lot of models wanted more than a modeling contract for a spread in an RC ad was to land one of the Ravens men. Having his brothers in charge of anything dealing with models was as productive as letting a fox guard a henhouse. Fortunately, Will, the youngest of the men, had more common sense.
Less than ten years ago, the new generation of Ravens had been placed on the board. Everyone owned an equal share of Ravens Cosmetics. Half of Will’s cousins wanted to dismantle the company. They were tired of the meetings and responsibilities. Will knew his great-grandparents were rolling in their graves at the idea. For the cousins, even the limited time they had to spend in the office was still too much. Will and his siblings, along with a handful of cousins, wanted to keep the legacy alive. The problem was, they were a band of eight against a band of another eight.
Donovan nodded his head. “Alright, you got me there.” He stepped inside Will’s office and made himself comfortable in one of the matching leather seats in front of Will’s desk. “So, I’ll ask you again, what did you think of Zoe?”
“Which one was she?” Will needed to play dumb. When the position opened up, Will was skeptical when Donovan suggested Zoe Baldwin. Given Donovan’s track record, Will didn’t want to risk any form of lawsuit. Given the chemistry Will felt when he spotted Zoe at the elevator, Will did not want to admit his attraction to a potential employee.
Gossip spread like wildfires in office settings. Kelly Towers, and all the businesses housed on the floors, was not immune to the tabloids. Home to the local news station, celebrity appearances and eager folks trying to catch a break in the media world, this building was often the target of tabloid spies. Will prided himself on his discretion. He took dating a person seriously. In a building filled with scantily clad women and men representing everything Ravens Cosmetics had to offer, spotting the demure woman at the elevator had been the highlight of his life for the last few weeks. Will’s days of going through women were over. He was tired of women impressed by and after his money. Will never realized how much he appreciated the classic beauty of a woman until he’d seen her. She’d worn a simple skirt, a somewhat loud red blouse and pearls at her ears, as well as around her slender neck. When was the last time a woman wore pearls around her neck as a part of an outfit—not several strands of pearls as an outfit?
Will summed up Zoe Baldwin in one word: beautiful. There had been an instant connection between them when he walked into the hallway downstairs. It had been the first time he’d actually passed out one of the business cards he was given when he took on his role of CEO. If his brothers and sisters knew Will had almost asked her out today, they’d never leave him alone about it. His cousins would never trust his decisions if he acted like Donovan or Marcus.
“Y’all talking about the interviews today?” Marcus asked, poking his head in the door.
“Yes,” Donovan said, leaning back in his chair to look at their oldest brother. “And Will is trying to act like he doesn’t know which one Zoe was.”
Marcus chuckled and entered the room. He took the seat next to Donovan and propped his elbows on Will’s desk. “The one you drooled so much over, we needed to get the cleaning crew to mop up the saliva? The one who caused the hallway to become so sexually charged when she and Will laid eyes on each other?”
It was going to take some time for Will to get used to being around his family like this. Luckily his sisters, Dana and Eva, were out of town at a convention. They would already have started planning his wedding. Will needed to get used to the idea of carrying on his grandparents’ corporate legacy before he thought about adding to it.
“You ought to go into creative writing,” Will said with a dry yawn.
“I’ve got my hands full being president.” Marcus glanced down at his fingers.
As Marcus inspected his cuticles, Donovan and Will dramatically bowed down at the president, a teasing move they did every time Marcus felt the need to inform them of his title. No one wanted to be the president. The president was the face of the company with not as much power as people believed. But if anyone needed to be the face, it was Marcus. He was what Will considered pretty, with soft brown hair and deeply tanned skin, helped out a bit by the Miami sun.
Thanks to a car accident a few years ago, Donovan never wanted to be in the public eye. He wanted to hide the long scar down his cheek from the cameras. No matter the differences Will saw between himself and his brothers, everywhere they went, people always knew they were siblings.
“You guys are jerks, you know that?” asked Marcus with a tight smile.
“You guys nominated me, a guy with no credibility in the business other than my last name, to be the CEO while I was recuperating,” Will said drily. “So sue me if I don’t feel sorry for you.”
“By ‘recuperating—’” Donovan raised his hands for air quotes “—you mean you were at your sci-fi convention?”
Will pressed his hands on top of the portfolios. “I believe you were right there next to me in a Flash mask.”
Marcus’s head snapped toward Donovan. “You said you were in New York.”
“I was, right after Comic-Con.”
Before his brothers went off on a tangent, Will cleared his throat. “Let’s talk about the interviews today. I’d like to be on a united front before we meet back with the cousins.”
His grandparents carried on a long family tradition of creating products for the community. They’d raised their six kids in a modest four-bedroom home in Overtown, a predominately African American neighborhood in Miami. His great-great-grandmother had sold hair-care products to the women whose husbands worked on the railroads. Skin-care and hair-care products had helped mold the Ravens into a millionaire family back in the day. Will wanted to make sure Ravens Cosmetics made it to one hundred years in business.
Will concentrated on his brothers in front of him. “Who did y’all like?”
“Zoe,” Donovan and Marcus chorused.
Will liked Zoe, but he wasn’t sure it was for the same reasons as his brothers. It wasn’t like Will to arrive at RC late, as he had that morning. His cousins Katie and Dixon had conveniently forgotten to remind him of the time change for the interviews. And to make matters worse, he’d worked out with Dixon this morning. No wonder Dixon had hopped off the treadmill a few miles sooner than normal. Will should have known better. These cousins were ready to dissolve Ravens Cosmetics. He frowned. Will refused to let that happen on his watch.
“I’m not sure she’s what I had in mind for such a position.”
“And what did you have in mind?”
Flipping open the portfolio with Zoe’s face on it, Will thumbed through the photographs of all the women and men she’d worked on. “This work is too busy for me. We’re here to support the everyday woman, and she paints a face like they’re eighties rock stars.”
“Paints a face?” Marcus snickered as if he’d said something erroneous. “What’s wrong with that?”
“I want to go in a different direction. I want something more classic.” Will sat back in his seat and poised his fingers like a steeple. “Like a 1940s look.”
“You want to start a new retro look?” asked Donovan.
“See, that’s what is wrong with you two.” Will shrugged his shoulders and continued without waiting for an answer. “What’s wrong with it? Everyone else is looking for these loud colors and makeup so heavy the girls resemble raccoons. I’m trying to save the company with something new this generation hasn’t experienced.”
“And you think you can bring classic back? Women evolved from that style, as well. Zoe is hot right now.”
Will shrugged again. Yes, Zoe was hot now and if she worked here, she’d also be un-dateable. “Hey, you guys put me in this position. I can take it, but you are going to have to trust me on this. Tell me the truth, do you really want to bring your lady to Sunday dinner looking like this?” Will held up one of the jobs Zoe had done and shook his head. At the elevator she’d given off a classic vibe, but her body of work on paper did not interest him. “No, I want to take things in a new direction. Trust me.”
Chapter 2 (#u17e6ea83-ebe3-50d5-a35a-1814271114c9)
By the time Zoe turned the lock on her door at the Cozier Condos off Biscayne Boulevard, she was tired and heartbroken. Humiliated was a better description of her day. Never before had she expected to go through the stressful interview process to prove her worth. Well, maybe not never. Once she’d had to interview for the job as a scoop girl at The Scoop’s Ice Cream Parlor back in Southwood, Georgia, when Zoe’s love for makeup had exceeded her allowance. She had to prove to the owners she loved ice cream and all of the flavors they had to offer. Hopefully Zoe’s most stressful interviews would be her first and her last.
The set of house keys jingled with a clink into the clear bowl on top of the credenza. The weight of the keys shifted the bowl into yesterday’s mail, nudging the silver box with gold writing on top. The latest Ravens Cosmetic Artist Kit filled with fabulous foundation colors had arrived, along with the silver tubes of lipstick. Zoe broke out one bullet-shaped container and inspected the color—No Shade. Usually these beauty boxes excited her, but today’s mood rippled with disappointment.
When in doubt, Zoe always called on a hometown friend for advice. On her phone, she pressed the icon she had for Lexi—a tiara—and waited for the beauty queen to answer. While Lexi had gone to a different school during the year, she came home to Southwood for the summers and she and her friends had taken Zoe under their wing.
Lexi answered on the second ring. “How did it go today?”
“It was nothing like I expected,” Zoe drawled. She set the phone on the counter and swiped the speaker button for a hands-free conversation while she fiddled around in her condo’s kitchen. “I had to wait in the conference room like a person trying to...” Zoe lost her words.
“Get a job?” Lexi provided.
Even though Lexi couldn’t see, Zoe rolled her eyes. “Whatever. I have a job. Several of them. Did you forget the MET Awards are coming up next in August and Fashion Week after that?”
Celebrities were already requesting Zoe’s help for the big event for Multi-Ethnic Television. She had high-profile weddings in the Midwest on the schedule as well, and a few more job interviews up north. Travel was her middle name. At least the MET event was going to be held in Orlando this year.
“But you want just the one. You wanted to be in a permanent spot.” Lexi reminded her. “Or, at least, that’s what you told me the last time we spoke. I bet your suitcase isn’t even unpacked from your stint in Hollywood.”
Since her overnight bag was still by her laundry-room door, Zoe decided not to confirm Lexi’s statement. Instead, she hummed a little ditty for a moment while her eyes searched the kitchen counter for something to eat. Finding the bag of roti from Trudy’s, the local West Indian market and restaurant around the corner, Zoe grabbed a piece of the bread made from stone-ground flour and went to the refrigerator for the questionable leftover curry from last week. While the food heated up, Zoe grabbed the phone, took it off the stand and headed off toward her bedroom. Her apartment had only two bedrooms, a small living room and a dinette and kitchen, but it was home—subleased, but still home.
“I can still call in some favors with RC,” said Lexi.
It seemed there wasn’t a person in the fashion world Lexi did not know. Her store, Grits and Glam Gowns, was renowned. As women flocked there for dresses, whether for proms, pageants or weddings, a mention of her product meant everything in the world to a company. Lexi had a lot of power.
“No.” Zoe shook her head. “I want to earn this job without any favors. The president told me I’m golden. But this round of interviews is thanks to their new CEO.”
“So, who is the CEO of RC now?” Lexi asked. “Donovan?”
“No,” Zoe groaned. “His name is Will Ravens.”
“Wait, the soccer player?”
“No.” Zoe hummed a noise again, kicking out of her heels and footing them into the closet. “He’s the CEO. Donovan and Marcus introduced him to us.”
“Is he hot, like his brothers?” asked Lexi.
“Lexi!” Zoe gasped, wanting more than anything to elaborate on exactly how hot Will Ravens was. “You’re married with a baby on the way.”
“I’m married, not blind,” Lexi reminded her. “If it’s who I think it is, William Ravens played soccer and was hurt during a game. I want to say a broken leg.”
Slipping out of her skirt, Zoe padded barefoot into the bathroom. “Since when did you become the sports fan?”
“You can thank my beautiful husband for that.” Lexi giggled on the other end of the line. Zoe thought it was a nice laugh. She wanted something like that one day. A man who made her blush just by thinking of him. “I’m pretty sure he paused the match to show me the horrific leg break,” Lexi went on.
The corners of Zoe’s lips turned down. “Ouch. Well, this Will Ravens did not show signs of any leg injury.”
As a matter of fact, Zoe thought wantonly, she thought his strut was rather sexy. At least, she had when she thought he was simply a model. As a makeup artist, Zoe was constantly around handsome men. None of them ever had her wanting to jump in a cold shower. How was it going to work out when she got the job at RC? Zoe shrugged and pushed the thought out of her mind.
“Lexi, what was it you were going to ask me earlier?”
“Oh, that. I need you to come home for an event next week,” said Lexi. “I’m hosting the Miss Southwood Glitz Pageant and I need a nonbiased makeup artist. Please say you’ll come. I’ve booked up Magnolia Palace from Monday to next Sunday. All the judges and working staff will start coming in Tuesday. I want everyone to get to know each other so they can trust their opinions when it comes time to voting and making this the best pageant ever.”
The mere mention of the old hotel, Magnolia Palace, evoked a memory of Zoe’s youth. She closed her eyes and heard the sound of her bare feet pounding down the wooden planks as she raced to jump off the bridge. Her parents met on that same bridge. Her mother had been a model and her father out fishing. He’d certainly snagged the biggest catch of his life that day. “Now, how am I going to say no to an offer like that?”
“You’re not,” Lexi laughed.
“Since I won’t be starting my CDD position any time soon, I’ll be there. Text me the details.”
Zoe swiped her phone to the off screen and stood in the center of her bedroom, contemplating what to do next. She was hungry, but the recent talk of Will Ravens began to make her sweat—again. A shower would do her some good, then she’d eat the curry.
Fifteen minutes after her ice-cold shower, Zoe padded barefoot back into her kitchen and reheated her food. She’d slipped her cell phone into the front pocket of her fluffy pink bathrobe and felt it vibrate on her thigh as she sat at the counter.
You were great today. A decision will be made in a few weeks.
Zoe reread Marcus’s text message two more times. How was she supposed to go to bed tonight knowing she hadn’t secured the position of Creative Design Director? Her life was being held up by a man she knew nothing about. Where had he gone to school? Had he been a business major or something in the field of cosmetic chemistry? What had Lexi said? He’d played sports before deciding to join the family business? A feeling of dread sunk to the pit of her stomach at the thought of her life being upheld by an athlete. At least she knew that by the weekend she’d be back home in Southwood and away from the drama for a while.
* * *
Will didn’t look up from the rest of the portfolios after his brothers left to pick up dinner. In soccer he’d put in his time on the field and in the locker room. He spent more time on the field finessing his skills than in the club, like some of his teammates. Will knew the odds were against him. He had no training and no experience other than on the soccer field. Since coming to RC, Will couldn’t remember getting home before the sun set. Trudy’s, the West Indian market and restaurant down the block, saw more of him than his own kitchen.
The grandfather clock in the corner of the office chimed eight. A smile tugged at his mouth. When they were kids, he and his brothers used to play hide-and-seek on this floor of the building. Will’s favorite place was in here, where Grandpa Joe shared the office space with his wife. With a chuckle, Will realized why they’d shared an office. If Grandma was going to stay late at work, so was Grandpa. It must have been nice to have someone who stayed with you if you couldn’t get home on time.
