Bad Influencer by Kenzie Reed
Chapter Twenty
Elliott
“Elliott?” Edith pops her head in the door, a welcome distraction from reviewing the publicity photos that we’ll be including in our press kits. Why the hell can’t I smile on command like a normal human being? I look as though I’m suppressing gas in every single damn picture. God, I miss writing quarterly reports.
“Oui, mon Capitan? My favorite nag?”
“I’m so glad I’m your favorite. Jillian was supposed to meet me at nine. It’s nine thirty. She usually shows up three to five minutes late, which I have discussed with her, but I’ve let it slide because her work is excellent. Do you happen to know if she’s sick?”
“No, I mean, not that I know of. I’m sure she’d tell me.” I clear my throat, feeling my cheeks heat. ”Because, ah, we’re working closely on some upcoming campaigns.”
“Please,” she scoffs. “Everybody knows.”
“Knows what?” I narrow my eyes at her in a challenging stare.
“Do you want me to say it out loud?”
“Go on,” I dare her.
“All right.” She walks through the doorway and approaches my desk. “Every single person at this company knows that you and the charming Jillian Fletcher are, regularly, enthusiastically—”
“Stop!” I hold my hand up. “Fine, you’ve made your point. Not that I’m admitting anything. I shall neither confirm nor deny. Maybe she got the day wrong? Or the time?”
“She’s never done that before. And we had some major campaign plans to go over for the 125th anniversary celebration.”
“I’ll bet you did.” I wince at the thought of what they might be. Although as long as they don’t involve more mud up my ass crack, I can’t complain. I’ll say this, the mud run was such an ordeal that anything she’s proposed to me since then sounds like a stroll through the park in comparison.
Come to think of it, maybe that was part of her evil plan. Damn, that woman’s fiendishly clever.
Edith is staring at me with a smile quivering on her mouth and her eyes sparking with glee.
“What?” I challenge her.
“You’ve got that ‘I’m thinking about doing the nasty with Jillian’ look on your face.” And she ducks out of the room.
“Doing the nasty?” I yell after her. “Who says ‘doing the nasty?’ Are you seven?”
But it’s too late, she’s long gone.
I message her on the intercom. “That’ll cost you three chocolates. And yes, you have to deliver them to me personally.”
She trots through the doorway a minute later and deposits three chocolates on my desk. “Worth it,” she says. “Also, brush your teeth afterwards.”
“Thanks, Mom.”
“Please. If you’re my son, I want you to know that adoption is still an option. And let me know when you hear from Jillian.”
Smiling, I pop a chocolate in my mouth, grab another one for Jillian in case she’s just arrived, and head over to her temporary office. Yep, there’s no sign of her. Just for that, I eat her chocolate. No chocolates for Jillian. And I’ll tell her about it, too. I’ll describe every delicious silky bite.
Then I call her, and the phone goes straight to voicemail, so I send her a text.
Then I go to my meeting with the publicity department. After we’ve reviewed all the pictures, they draw the same conclusion that I’ve already reached. There’s not a single usable photo of me. The entire photoshoot was a fail and a waste of time. It’s June 21, we only have a couple of weeks left until our next investors’ meeting, and I’d really like to print a new company brochure that doesn’t make me look like a psycho.
Edith, Cameron and Trevor stand there at the conference table, holding up pictures and looking at them like they’re scenes from a car crash. “How can such a good-looking man take such terrible photographs?” Edith asks Trevor.
“Aw, Edith, are you flirting with me?” I smirk.
“You should be so lucky.” She throws the pictures down on the table in exasperation.
Cameron shakes his head sadly. “Bro. You’ve really got a problem. It’s called resting ass face, and I don’t know if there’s even a cure.”
I clasp my hand to my chest. “All the love in this room is bringing tears to my eyes. Really, guys, I want to thank you all for just being you. Don’t ever change. And why can’t we just use one of the pictures that Jillian took at the park?”
Edith’s eyes glint with exasperation. “Those are great casual shots, but you’re the CEO of a Fortune 500 company and we need a damn head shot. A good one. Every single one of these, you look like you just sat on a scorpion.”
Cameron snickers. Trevor chokes on a laugh.
I want to argue that I’m not a prize steer or a fashion model and we do not, in fact, need a headshot, but they’re not going to let it go, and they’re probably right. “I’ll get ahold of Jillian,” I say. “She’s good at making me look slightly less mad at life.”
Edith nods. “That’s being generous. Anything would be an improvement, though.”
I scowl at her.
“What?” she says. “I tell it like it is. That’s part of my charm.”
I pull out my phone. It’s 11 a.m. now, and when the phone goes straight to voicemail again, I feel a pinch of worry. Edith is right, Jillian does tend to show up a few minutes late, but she’s never been more than ten minutes late and she’s never entirely blown off a meeting.
I know her roommates are students who work over the summer, so I guess it makes sense that nobody’s home, but... where could Jillian be? Maybe she overslept? She did mention she had a shift at Nowhere Special last night, but she said she’d be out of there by 10 p.m.
I have meetings scheduled all day, and I can’t get out of them. As the day drags on, I’m climbing the walls, alternating between being pissed off and worried. I can’t tell if I’m over-reacting or not, which pisses me off even more.
“Do you want me to swing by her house for you?” Trevor asks me during the break in our 3 p.m. department head meeting.
Cameron shoots him an odd look. “Or I could go,” he drawls.
I shake my head impatiently. “Thanks, guys. It’s not a security issue, Trevor. And Cameron, if you go, you’ll just be an asshole.”
“True story.” He nods in agreement. “It’s kind of my thing.”
Trevor shrugs. “I’d like to stay on top of it. With the leaks we’ve had, I’m extra cautious these days, okay? It’s not a security issue that we know of, but I did recommend that she come work here, and if she’s turning out to be a flake, that’s on me.”
“Turning out to be?” Cameron scoffs. “I mean, I hate to say I told you so…”
Trevor shoots him a disgusted look.
“Leave it,” I say abruptly. And an odd whisper of worry nags at me. Why did Trevor want to go by her house? Why did he hire her in the first place, for that matter? It was very out of character for him, but Edith and my mother were so on board with it that I just let myself be swept along with it.
I mean, Trevor is one of my oldest and best friends, and it’s not like there’s any obvious chemistry between him and Jillian like there was between Lauren and Keith, but it wouldn’t be the first time… or even the second time.
No. What the hell am I thinking? How could I possibly even think that about either of them? And if he was screwing around with her, he has her number. He could just call her… no. Again, just no. I’m being an asshole. I can’t let my past screw my head up like this.
The rest of the day drags by. I send another text message. “Kidnapped by aliens? By the way, Edith had chocolate for you and I ate it all.”
Still no answer. At the end of the day I’m dying to swing by her house, but I resist. I can’t tell if I’m being unreasonable, or stalkerish, or weirdly possessive.
I’m in a foul mood all evening, and it only gets worse the next day. Everyone except Edith, who fears no man, steers clear of me.
Finally, by two in the afternoon, I’ve had it. I’m not getting any work done, and I’m pissed off and worried by the sudden radio silence, which seems very unlike Jillian. I mean, I’m checking the damn news to see if there have been any car accidents. Does she want to dump me and quit? Just out of the blue? Well, she could at least woman up and do it to my face.
Or maybe she’s sick, but wouldn’t she have called in?
“Screw this,” I say. “Edith, please reschedule the rest of my meetings.”
I spin on my heel abruptly and storm out of the room. I hurry down to the garage, have the garage attendant fetch my car, and make my way to Highway 99 South. Half an hour later, I’m pulling up in front of her house in West Seattle.
I hurry up the steps and ring the doorbell. Bronwyn answers.
“Oh, it’s you,” I say, scowling.
“Well, excuse you,” she huffs. “I was hoping for a stripogram, so we’re both disappointed.”
“You were hoping for a stripogram?” Ari squawks from behind her.
She turns to him and shrugs. “I mean, kinda? I’ve never had one before. I want to know what they do. Like, do they play their own music? Do they take requests?”
“I can be your stripogram.” He winks at her. “And I definitely take requests.”
I don’t have time for their Mutt and Jeff routine. “Can I speak to Jillian?”
“She’s not here. I thought she was at work? There was some meeting, where she was going to come up with evil plans for you?”
Well, that sounds like Jillian. Except she never made it. “She’s not there. She missed two days of work, and her phone’s going straight to voicemail.”
Bronwyn frowns. “Well, her car’s not in the driveway. Ari and I were both at work today. We just got home a minute before you pulled up, so I haven’t talked to her, but that’s not unusual. Let me check her room.” Bronwyn gestures at me to come in.
I stand impatiently in the small foyer until she and Ari return.
“There’s a note on the kitchen counter asking us to take care of Blinky for the next few days,” Ari says, his forehead furrowing. “So, she wasn’t kidnapped or anything.”
“Is it unusual for her to do that?”
“Kind of?” He chews his lower lip. “Jillian does her own thing, but she would at least talk to us first before taking off like that. And she’d take Blinky with her. Yeah, this is out of character.”
Bronwyn chimes in. “She’s been in a really bad mood since Sunday night.”
I shake my head in confusion. ”I saw her Sunday morning, and she was fine.” Better than fine. She cooked a vegan cake that was to die for and hand fed it to me. Then she gave me her recipe, and we talked about expanding the park’s vegan and vegetarian menu items and introducing a line of vegan brownies in our stores. Everything was great. She blew me a kiss on her way out the door. “What could have happened since then? Maybe something at work?” But if there were problems at Nowhere Special, she’d come and talk to me about it.
“Are you sure you didn’t say something to upset her?” A flicker of suspicion lights in Ari’s eyes.
“Please,” I scoff. “Like she would just sit there and take it and not say anything to me? She’s not a doormat.”
“Good point.” Bronwyn nods. “If you’d upset her that much, she’d have ripped off your manly parts and served them to you on a platter.”
“Thanks for that image, which will now haunt my dreams.” I shove my hands in my pockets. “Seriously, though, guys. I’m getting worried.”
Bronwyn’s brow furrows in thought. ”She might have gone to her grandmother’s cabin. It’s near Carnation. I could give you the address. There’s no phone out there.”
That’s only about an hour’s drive. Maybe a little more since we’re getting close to rush hour. “I’ll go check right now.”
“Can you call us when you get there and just let us know she’s okay?” Bronwyn shoots a worried look at Ari, and he puts his arm around her shoulders.
“Absolutely.” Okay, so she hasn’t been kidnapped. Probably. But I did bring her to my house a few times. Was that too much for her? My dad insisted on giving her a tour of his greenhouse, Wisteria did some cleansing thing with crystals, my mother was sitting on the coffee table, meditating… It would be too much for a lot of people. Was it something I said or did? Did I move too fast?
I head to my car with the leaden weight of worry settling into my gut.