Doukakis's Apprentice Page 6

  Making a sound in her throat, she gave a little pull but Damon tightened his grip. Her hands were smooth and delicate and he was blinded by a sudden image of those slim fingers closing around a certain part of him.

  Raw sexual awareness burned through his body, brutal in its intensity. He felt her hands tremble in his. The confidence and assurance melted away from her, leaving confusion in its place.

  Damon wondered if the air-conditioning in his office had broken. The atmosphere had suddenly become heavy and oppressive.

  Even as he was in the process of reminding himself that this girl’s father was the source of his current problems, she snatched her hands away and stepped back. ‘I’ll leave you to read the presentation.’

  Damon felt mildly disorientated.

  What the hell was he doing?

  ‘Yes. Go.’ If she hadn’t already been leaving of her own free will he would have ejected her from his office with supersonic speed. Not wanting to examine his own behaviour too closely, he dragged his gaze back to the document on the screen but all he saw was golden hair and long nails.

  Forcing himself to focus, he concentrated on the first slide. One glance told him that it had been prepared by someone computer literate and numerate. In fact it was the first sign of professionalism he’d seen since he walked through the doors of Prince Advertising.

  He stopped thinking about Analisa and analysed the data in front of him.

  ‘Wait—’ He stopped her as she reached the door. ‘Who did this?’ His rough demand was met by a long, pulsing silence and then she turned to face him.

  ‘I did.’

  ‘You mean Mr Anderson gave you the information and you collated it.’

  ‘No, I mean I put together the information I thought you’d need to be able to make an informed decision about the future of the company.’

  Damon glanced at the complexity of the data on the screen and then back at her. ‘I consider it a serious offence to take credit for someone else’s work.’

  A wry smile tilted the corners of her mouth. ‘Really? It makes a refreshing change to hear that from someone in authority. Maybe we’ll work well together after all.’

  Damon stared at the spreadsheet, trying to make sense of what he was seeing. ‘What exactly was your official role in the company?’

  ‘I was my father’s executive assistant, which basically means I did a bit of everything.’

  A bit of everything. ‘So this isn’t Mr Anderson’s spreadsheet?’

  ‘Mr Anderson couldn’t switch the laptop on, let alone create a spreadsheet.’

  Damon leaned back in his chair. ‘So you’re good with computers?’

  ‘I’m good with a lot of things, Mr Doukakis. Just because I wear pink tights and have fun with my nails it doesn’t make me stupid any more than wearing jeans would make you approachable.’ She still had her hand on the door handle, as if she was ready to run at a moment’s notice. ‘I need to get back downstairs. Having your future in someone else’s hands is very traumatic for everyone. It would mean a lot if next time you go down there you could maybe smile or say an encouraging word.’

  ‘They should be grateful I’ve taken control. Without me your business would have been bankrupt within three months.’ And in an attempt to protect his sister he’d landed himself with still more responsibility for jobs and lives. He felt like Atlas, holding the heavens on his shoulders.

  ‘We’ve had problems with our cash flow, but—’

  ‘Is there any part of the business you haven’t had problems with?’

  ‘The clients love us because we’re very creative.’ She looked him in the eye. ‘All I want is your assurance that there will be no redundancies.’

  ‘I can’t make that assurance until I’ve unravelled the mess your father has created.’

  ‘I know parts of the business have problems. I’m not going to pretend they don’t. But I’m asking you to look deeper and learn about how we work before you make an irrational decision.’

  ‘Irrational?’ Brows raised with incredulity, Damon leaned forwards in his chair. ‘You think I make irrational decisions?’

  ‘Normally, no. But in this case—’ she breathed slowly ‘—yes. I think you’re so angry with my father, and you feel so helpless about your sister, you were willing to do anything that might give you back some element of control. And as for the way you feel about me—you haven’t forgotten I’m the reason your sister was permanently excluded from school at fourteen. I really messed that up, I admit it, but don’t use something I did ten years ago to punish the staff. That wouldn’t be fair.’

  Damon sat still, forced to acknowledge that there was at least a partial truth in her accusation. Had he been unfair to judge her on something that had happened when she was still young? ‘Go and settle the staff in downstairs.’ His tone was rougher than he’d intended. ‘I’ll call you if I have any questions.’

  An hour later he had more questions than he had answers. Exasperated, he hit a button on his phone and summoned his finance director. ‘Ellen, can you come in here?’ His eyes still fixed on his computer screen, he drummed his fingers impatiently on the desk. ‘And bring the salary details for the Prince people. There’s something wrong with the numbers.’

  Moments later he was staring at another set of figures that still didn’t make sense. Trying to unravel the puzzle, he stood up abruptly. ‘According to this information, all of these people took a salary cut six months ago. And his daughter has barely been paid a living wage for the past two years.’

  ‘I know. I’ve been going over the figures too.’ Ellen spread the summary pages over his desk. ‘The company is barely afloat. It’s a small agency with the overheads of a big agency.’

  ‘But the board are primarily responsible for those overheads.’ Polly Prince had been right in her assessment, he thought grimly. The board had been sucking the company dry. First-class flights. Elaborate lunches. Thousand-pound bottles of vintage wine… The list went on and on.

  ‘They’re in serious financial trouble. They’ve been hit by the economic downturn but made no compensatory moves. Peter Prince badly needed to trim staff. Instead they appear to have agreed to take a cut rather than allow anyone to be laid off.’ Ellen adjusted her glasses. ‘The business is a mess of course, but you knew that when you bought it. On the plus side they have some surprisingly good accounts and somehow they’ve just won a major piece of business with the French company Santenne. Their leading brand is High Kick Hosiery. That’s going to be huge. Didn’t our people pitch for that?’

  ‘Yes.’ The news that they’d lost out to Prince Advertising did nothing to improve Damon’s mood. ‘So how did Prince win it? They’re the most shambolic operation I’ve ever encountered.’

  ‘That’s true. Financially and structurally they’re a disaster. Creatively—well, I assume you’ve seen this?’ A strange light in her eyes, his finance director handed him a folder she’d brought with her.

  ‘I haven’t seen anything.’

  ‘But you always research companies so carefully.’

  ‘Well this time I didn’t.’ His tone was irritable and Ellen looked at him calmly.

  ‘We’ve worked together a long time, Damon. Do you want to talk about this?’

  ‘No.’ Damon shook his head and lifted a hand. ‘Don’t ask.’

  ‘I’m guessing this has something to do with your sister.’ Her tone was sympathetic. ‘She’s lucky to have you looking out for her.’

  ‘I wish she felt the same way.’

  ‘That’s because she takes your love for granted. Which is a compliment. It means she feels secure. Trust me, I know. I have teenagers. You’ve done a good job.’

  It didn’t feel that way, but the prospect of discussing it horrified him almost as much as the situation itself. ‘About this company—’

  ‘It’s not all bad news.’ Fortunately Ellen took the hint and changed the subject. ‘There is a creative brain at work there. You just need to harness it.’r />
  Damon opened the file and slowly flicked through the pages. Pausing, he lifted a glossy advert featuring a teenager in a nightclub. ‘That’s clever.’

  ‘It’s all clever. And creative. The customer profiling is spot on. Their use of social networking is astonishingly astute. My eldest has been nagging me to buy this for months, all based on the pester power generated by their campaign.’

  His interest piqued, Damon flicked through rest of the folio. ‘The creative thinking is original.’ He frowned down at the tagline under a famous brand of running shoes. ‘“Run, breathe, live.” It’s good.’ Staring at the work, he remembered Polly’s words.

  ‘Clients love us. We’re very creative.’

  ‘Their sales have quadrupled since that campaign went live. They tapped into the whole lifestyle thing. There is no doubt that Prince Advertising is a mess, but there’s at least one person in the company who is exceptional. I’d go as far as to say they’re afloat purely because of the talents of their creative director. Who is he?’

  ‘His name was Michael Anderson and I fired him.’ Damon was staring down at the pages in front of him. ‘And there’s no way these ideas came from him. The man didn’t have an original thought in his head.’

  ‘Maybe it was Prince himself?’

  Just thinking of Peter Prince sent Damon’s tension levels shooting skyward. ‘He’s in his fifties and he’s notorious for abandoning the company when it suits him. From what I can gather he treats it more as a hobby than a business. This stuff is young. Fresh. Visionary.’

  Ellen smiled. ‘And fun.’

  Fun.

  Damon thought of the skull and crossbones on Polly’s nails. The hot pink tights. The fish on the desk. The party atmosphere that hit him every time he went near the staff. ‘They certainly have an interesting work ethic.’

  ‘So if it wasn’t the creative director, who’s coming up with the ideas?’ Ellen gathered up the papers. ‘Thanks to their creativity they have some major pieces of business. Their billing is haphazard, their cash flow is a nightmare, but we can sort that—’ she shrugged ‘—and absorb them into our business. Just make sure we don’t lose the brain behind these campaigns. We need to find out who it is and lock them into a watertight contract. Any idea who it could be?’

  ‘No.’ Mentally scrolling through the people he’d met, Damon closed the file. ‘But I intend to find out immediately. And I know just the person to ask.’

  By seven o’clock Polly was the only one left on her floor of the office. She’d spent the latter half of the day juggling problems and soothing frayed nerves while taking endless calls from anxious clients who had seen news of the takeover on the TV.

  ‘Mr Peters, I think we should be reviewing the whole media mix.’ Sitting cross-legged on the floor, she talked into her headset so that her hands were free to unpack the last of the boxes, ‘Yes, it’s true that Mr Anderson has gone.’ She retrieved a packet of balloons from the bottom of the box and slid them into her desk. ‘But there are other people more than qualified to advise you on the best strategy.’ Like me, she thought, rescuing the charger for her BlackBerry and adding it to the stuff accumulating in the drawer. ‘I’m going to schedule a meeting in your diary, get the team to put together some ideas and then we’ll present them to you. I promise you will be blown away by our ideas … Uhuh … mmm, definitely … absolutely top priority.’

  When she finally hung up, she keyed in the task to the ever-growing to-do list in her BlackBerry and carried on sorting out her desk area. The rest of the staff had gone home hours before, all apparently excited by the prospect of riding down to street level in the glass elevator.

  Left alone, Polly removed her boots and settled down to an evening of hard work. Darkness spread slowly over the city as she worked her way steadily through her calls. After a few hours she glanced up at the towering panes of glass and saw that the view had changed from daytime city-slick to nighttime sparkle and she paused for a moment, captivated by the wide-angled view of London at night. The moon sent a sliver of light across the River Thames and for the first time in a horrid, hideous week she felt peaceful.

  Maybe, just maybe, this could turn out to be a good thing. Damon Doukakis was probably one of the few people with the talent to turn the company round, providing he didn’t fire all of them first.

  Romeo and Juliet seemed happy enough in their new surroundings and Polly had discovered that there were enough workstations for everyone without having to operate the Doukakis ‘hot desk’ system. She wondered how his employees must feel, coming to work every day and sitting down at an empty, featureless surface, greeted by nothing more than a power point and a phone socket.

  Damon Doukakis was focused on the success of his business to the exclusion of everything else.

  She paused in the middle of deleting an e-mail.

  Well, not quite everything else.

  Her cheeks burned and she stared down at her hands, remembering. The attraction had been like a searing blade, driven straight through her. And she was pretty sure he’d felt it too.

  He’d looked horrified, she remembered, which should have dented her ego except that she was a realist. There was no way he would sully himself with a mongrel like her. She’d seen enough pictures of him in the gossip columns to know that the women he chose were sleek and groomed. Elegant. Dignified. Controlled. Everything about his life was ruthlessly controlled, from work to women.

  Polly looked down at herself. The women he dated would no more dream of sitting shoeless and cross-legged on the floor unpacking a box than they would be seen in public without perfectly blow-dried hair.

  Wondering why she was wasting time thinking about what sort of women Damon Doukakis dated, Polly finished emptying the box and put it ready for recycling.

  Her desk was covered in pink sticky notes with various phone messages taken by Debbie while she’d been on the phone to other people.

  Urgent. Call Vernon White about the Honey Hair campaign.

  Ring the media buyer at Cool Campaigns about the media strategy for Fresh Mouth mints.

  David Mills from Fox Consumer wants to talk urgently …

  Urgent, urgent, urgent. It was all urgent. She felt a rush of panic as she contemplated all the work she still had to do. Everyone had heard the news of the takeover and was wondering whether Prince Advertising was going to exist in a month. And she couldn’t give them an answer. She had no idea what Damon Doukakis intended to do so all she could do was sound positive and up-beat.

  Knowing that if all her clients walked in the opposite direction then the staff would definitely lose their jobs, Polly peeled off the notes one by one and added the calls to the list. Then she settled back into her cross-legged position on the floor and worked out a priority for the morning.

  She was wondering whether it would be any help to get a second phone, when she heard the swish of a door opening and saw Damon Doukakis striding towards her.

  Her confidence melted away like chocolate held in a child’s palm.

  When it came to work she was more than ready to fight her corner but she had no idea how to fight these other feelings that squirmed inside her whenever she was in the same room as him.

  Once glance at the exquisitely cut black dinner jacket and bowtie told her that his plans for the evening were infinitely more exciting than hers and she held her breath as he approached. His startling good-looks made it impossible to do anything but stare when he was in the room. It didn’t help that he carried himself with that inborn confidence that seemed genetically embedded in people born into wealth. It had been years since she’d felt that awful creeping sense of inferiority but she felt it now as she stood trapped by those glittering dark eyes.

  Polly’s head began to spin and suddenly she was glad she was sitting down, because at least sitting down didn’t require strength in one’s legs. It was just the tiredness, she told herself. Nothing more. He wasn’t that gorgeous.

  As he stood looking down at her from
his formidable height, she was forced to revise that opinion. OK, so maybe he was gorgeous. To look at. But it was all on the surface.

  Feeling out of her depth, she made a vague attempt to defuse the crackling tension. ‘Nice outfit. I didn’t know you had a second job as a waiter.’

  There was no answering smile and she felt a flash of relief. There was no way she could ever find a man without a sense of humour remotely attractive, even if he did have an incredible body that did miracles for a dinner jacket. She told herself that the flutter of nerves in her stomach was down to the ominous look in his eyes as he scanned her appearance.

  ‘Theé mou, why are you sitting on the floor? Where are your boots?’

  ‘Under the desk. I was emptying boxes and my heels kept catching in my hem—’ Realising that his eyes were fixed on her legs, she felt her body heat. ‘Never mind. I promise to wear shoes when I see a client, so save the lecture.’

  ‘You have absolutely no—’ He broke off in mid-sentence, his attention snagged by the dramatic transformation of his previously ordered office space. ‘What happened here?’

  ‘You told us we could do what we wanted with the space.’ Knowing that she sounded defensive, Polly scrambled up from the floor, acutely conscious of his height now that she wasn’t wearing her heels. She followed his appalled gaze and saw the calendar of half-naked firemen someone had stuck to one of the steel rods that supported the ceiling. Oops. ‘That was a project we did for one of our clients. It’s a photographic masterpiece, don’t you think? We put it up because it helps us to think creatively.’

  A dark brow lifted in mockery. ‘The more I discover about your creative process, the more fascinated I am.’

  Polly shrugged awkwardly. ‘I accept we’re a bit more—er—informal than you, but to be honest the whole “hot desk” thing doesn’t really work for us. I think we’re very possibly cold desk people. Or maybe lukewarm desk. We like knowing where we’re going to sit instead of playing musical chairs when we come to work every day. We like having a home. A little space to call our own.’