Free That New York Minute by Abby Gaines Page B

“Anyone? Anything?”
    The entire team busied themselves flicking through Brightwater brochures, scribbling notes, or staring at their fingernails. If it hadn’t been so tragic, Rachel would have laughed.
    The silence stretched to biblical proportions as people hesitated to offer up ideas that would be either damned with faint praise, or dismissed. Garrett’s face betrayed a mix of irritation and confusion, as if he couldn’t figure out why this bunch of bright people didn’t have two ideas to rub together.
    At last Adam, the account exec who’d offered to carry Rachel’s chair, spoke up. “It’s going to be hard to promote the Brightwater brand—people care more about individual colleges’ track records than they do about the company that owns them.”
    Rachel’s team was already grappling with that issue.
    “Maybe we should talk to parents of precollege kids to see if there’s something that would make them care about the corporate brand,” Adam said.
    Garrett nodded. “Or to the kids themselves.”
    Since that was as close as Garrett came to wild enthusiasm, Adam carried on. “I think this is the kind of thing where kids really value their parents’ input.” Unfortunately, confidence turned him earnestly self-important, which Rachel could have told him Garrett would hate. “I know I did, when I was looking at colleges. It was, like, the first time in years I cared what my mom thought.” Sensing he’d lost Garrett’s interest—maybe because Garrett was folding a piece of paper into an airplane—Adam said, “You know what I mean? Didn’t you pay attention to your mom’s views on college?”
    Garrett launched the paper plane. “My mom’s dead.”
    Sympathy rippled around the table.
    The plane crash-landed into the water jug.
    Adam reddened. “Uh, sorry, Garrett. How did she, uh—”
    “She picked up malaria on a missionary trip to Africa,” Garrett said. “A particularly virulent strain that the doctors here couldn’t treat. So, no, I don’t know what you mean about parents and college decisions. But I take your point—figure out who you’re going to question and how, and run it by me before the end of the day.”
    He pushed back in his chair. “Let’s move on, people. Rachel, your mouth is hanging open.”
    Rachel snapped her jaw shut. Another story about his mother’s death. Was this one true? Were any of them true?
    Apparently sick of waiting, Garrett moved around the table, assigning research tasks to people who couldn’t think up their own.
    “Okay, you all know where you need to be,” he concluded. “I’m visiting Brightwater’s Porchester campus tomorrow—” Rachel and Clive would be on that trip, too “—then I’ll be in the library on Friday. Call me on my cell if you need me.”
    “The library” was the glorified name for KBC’s archive of former pitches and campaigns, on the fifty-fifth floor. Rachel wondered what he hoped to find there—it seemed an unlikely source of inspiration for a man who prided himself on his originality.
    The meeting over, the team filed out, tension dropping by measurable degrees.
    “Join us for a drink at O’Dooley’s tonight?” Adam asked Rachel as he left.
    “Love to.” She noticed he didn’t invite Garrett.
    “Alice, don’t forget,” Garrett said, “I want to talk to you soon about your contribution.”
    Alice muttered something incoherent and fled, leaving Rachel and Garrett alone.
    Rachel opened her mouth, but before she could speak, Garrett held up both hands, palms out. “Stop giving me those accusing looks. I don’t care whose goddaughter she is, she’s not pulling her weight. She doesn’t fit here.”
    “So you threatened to fire her? Nice going.” Rachel turned over an unused water glass and reached for the jug. Ugh, it still had that paper plane in it, but she wasn’t about to indulge his bad behavior by fishing it out. With the soggy plane blocking the spout, the water came out in a trickle. She gave up