Better Than Chocolate...

Rumors had circulated about Jack LaRoux, Eve’s counterpart at Hendley and Wells Advertising San Francisco office in the six months he’d been onboard. Descriptions had included arrogant, extremely talented and ruthless. Oh yeah, and yumm-o. Nice, however, never entered the picture.

Eve quirked her brow at Andrea and opened her bottled water.

“Uh, nice doesn’t come into it, does it?” Andrea said. Arguably one of the best graphic artists in the city, Andrea abhorred the high-stakes competitive nature of Eve’s job. “I mean they don’t call you Eve the Avenger because you’re nice.”

Eve bit back a smile. No, they didn’t. She’d earned that nickname ostensibly because she never let anything get the best of her. No one crossed her unscathed. Besides, it had a nice cadence to it.

Meanwhile, Andrea was talking herself into another one of her infamous corners. “I mean, I think you’re nice because you’re my friend, but not everyone…” She trailed off, squirming on her end of the bench. “You know what I mean.”

Eve relented and laughed, tugging Andrea out of the corner she’d backed herself into. “I do know what you mean. It’s okay. Do you know what you call a nice account executive?” She took a long swallow of water.

“What?”

“Unemployed.”

Andrea wrinkled her nose. “Very funny.”

“Nah. Just sorta funny. But listen, it gets even better. I got an e-mail from Kirk Hendley this morning. Whoever wins the Bradley account gets the marketing vice presidency over both the New York and San Francisco offices.”

“So, your professional fate rests on farm equipment and lawn mowers?”

“Not terribly glamorous, is it? Lucky for me, I’ve got one of the best teams in the business working with me.” She grinned across the space at her friend and team graphic artist.

Andrea nodded at the compliment. “So, if Jack won he’d have to move to New York?”

“Yes. But Jack doesn’t need to worry about moving. I’m going to show him just what our New York office is made of.”

“It’s only fair to warn you there’s already a pool going in the art department whether you or LaRoux will get the job,” Andrea said.

Neither the pool nor the fact that a confidential memo she’d seen only three hours ago had already leaked surprised Eve. Office gossip was the local pastime at Hendley and Wells. “Who’s the favored winner?”

She took another swallow of water and closed her eyes briefly, reveling in the warmth of the sun on her face and the cool sweetness of the water sliding down her throat. She was only mildly interested in the art department’s predictions about who would win the vice presidency. She knew she would.

“The bets are running close to even,” Andrea said. Eve opened her eyes and leveled a stare. Andrea couldn’t lie worth anything. Flustered, Andrea caved. “Oh, what the heck. Okay, LaRoux’s favored two to one because he’s a man and Bill Bradley has a reputation for being a good old boy. And because, farm equipment is, well, man stuff.”

Eve threw back her head and laughed, earning a dirty look from the couple one bench over. “Man stuff? Jack LaRoux lives in San Francisco. Unless he’s some off-the-farm prodigy, he’s probably never been any closer to a tractor than I have. Consider this an insider tip. Put your money on me, ’cause I’m going to win.” Eve wanted that vice presidency so bad she could taste it. Correction. She didn’t want it, she needed it. Maybe that meant she needed to get a life, but it was the bottom line—this promotion meant everything to her. “I don’t expect Jack the Ripper to play nice. And if he wants to step outside of fair, I’m more than willing to take him on there as well.”

“I think it’s kind of sick and weird that Kirk Hendley’s dangling this vice presidency over your heads like a carrot, making you and Jack compete against each other for it,” Andrea said.

“Seems like good business sense to me,” Eve countered. “We’ve both got outstanding track records….” That was no boasting, just fact. “And we’ll both turn ourselves inside out to come up with something awesome. Kirk and the client wind up with a kick-butt campaign and one of us winds up with a vice presidency. It’s beautifully logical. Guess that makes me sick and weird too.”

“Nah. You were that way before now,” Andrea teased. Then she sobered. “But what if you lose, Eve?”

“I won’t.”

“Our team is good, but so is his. What if—”

“Losing is not an option.” As a middle kid with an older and younger brother, Eve had discovered at a young age that absolute conviction was the necessary ingredient to winning whatever you wanted, be it an ice-cream cone or a vice presidency. And as a girl, she’d learned to try even harder.

Eve also possessed a perverse streak. The more someone told her she couldn’t or shouldn’t want something, the more determined she was to get it. Her parents, much as she loved them, had sought to quell her ambition from an early age. As their only daughter, it was okay for her to marry an “ad man” but certainly never aspire to be one.

“You know, you’re a little scary when you get that look in your eye.” Andrea held her hands up in surrender. “Okay, so, you’re going to win. When does the battle commence? Monday? Where’s the preliminary meeting? Here in New York or San Francisco?”

“Neither. We’re meeting on Bradley’s home field—Chicago. Technically, we’re both supposed to arrive Monday morning and meet that afternoon. I checked with the travel agency as soon as I got the memo.” She smiled. “That’s why I rebooked my flight for Friday night after work. Who’s to say I can’t enjoy a weekend of rest and relaxation on my own dollar?” Eve opened the plastic lid on her salad and squeezed a lemon half over the green leaves.

“And get a jump on the competition?” Andrea asked, unwrapping her steak-and-cheese hoagie.

“Maybe. I might pick up a few things during my weekend of R and R.” Namely a competitive edge. She was always on her game with a good eight hours of sleep behind her.

Pencil-thin Andrea looked from her hoagie to Eve’s pathetic excuse for a salad. “How can you eat that?” she asked, biting into her sandwich.

The scent of warm onions wafted over to torment Eve. For a second she fantasized about taking a bite of the juicy steak, melted cheese, grilled peppers and onions on a warm, crisp roll. Instead she stabbed her fork into the crunchy green leaves in her salad bowl.

It was a good thing she and Andrea were close friends, otherwise she’d have to hate the waiflike creature scarfing down the sandwich next to her. Eve tugged at her skirt’s too-tight waistband. “I had three choices. Eat the salad and lose weight, buy a new wardrobe or go naked. The first option struck me as the best plan.”

“Perry and Godiva?” Andrea asked.

“Yep. Insult to injury. Some women might’ve lost weight. Not me. I find my boyfriend diddling my secretary on my desk and I binge on Godiva, gain five pounds and wind up with a zit the size of Delaware on my forehead.”

“More the size of Rhode Island and it’s gone. And you’re working on the five pounds. But Perry definitely wasn’t worth it.”

“Perry’s a rat bastard,” Eve said without vehemence. She still didn’t want to talk about the Perry debacle, even with her best friend. Not because she was brokenhearted. No, it was just so damn embarrassing.

And tawdry. Eve’s bare-assed boyfriend and her bare-breasted secretary going at it on Eve’s desk. Her desk. Ugh. Perry, the cheapskate, couldn’t even shell out the bucks for a motel room. Eve had needed an entire canister of antibacterial wipes before she’d felt comfortable sitting at her desk again.

Clearly they hadn’t expected her to miss her flight and return to the office. Delores had still been gasping for air and Perry searching for a lie when Eve had calmly picked up their clothes—Perry’s carefully draped Armani suit and Delores’s size-two skirt—from her guest chair and walked back out the door.

Perry had screamed bloody murder but hadn’t followed her down the hall. Too many people worked late for him to give chase with his johnson catching wind. And Eve would bet they were also pretty surprised when security showed up shortly thereafter based on an anonymous tip. Perry had called the next day, not to apologize but to demand his suit back. She’d referred him to the Goodwill she’d passed on the way home.

Getting mad was a waste of energy. But getting even was definitely satisfying.

“He could’ve told me he wanted to see Delores. It was the deception that bothered me.” She tugged at the waistband of her skirt. It wasn’t a size two. It was a twelve and it was tight. Too tight.

“Sorry, babe. He was doing more than seeing her. Delores is a skinny tramp,” Andrea said. Andrea was a good friend.

“Bimbo.”

“Floozy.”

Eve basked in the satisfaction of name-calling for a few seconds. It was almost as satisfying as a steak-and-cheese hoagie. Well, not really, but it’d have to do.

“Delores might’ve been a bimbo, but she was a great secretary. I definitely miss her more than I miss Perry.” Eve was still getting used to LaTonya, Delores’s replacement.

“You know the whole thing’s turned you into something of a legend. The women revere you and the men fear you. Eve the Avenger, superhero to women around the world.”

Eve indulged in a little eye-rolling. “I hope they write better copy for the Bradley ad.” She tried to bring the conversation back to her latest assignment. Perry was old news. Embarrassing old news.

“Hey, they can only work with the material they’re given.” Andrea tore open the wrapping on a Twinkies. “You ought to have a little weekend fling while you’re there. You know, clear out Perry’s bad karma.”