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“Mama was sitting in our suite, leafing through the program for the marketing meeting, and she got all excited when she saw that Celia Wakefield was on a panel about brand building,” Davis said. “Turns out, she’d just bought a little dress for Sophie from a company called Gingerpeachy at some ritzy boutique up there and went crazy over them,” Davis said. “Of course, Gingerpeachy is Celia’s company. Or was, until she sold it. Sallie insisted on sitting in on Celia’s panel, and she was so impressed, afterwards she invited Celia to meet us for di
Davis rolled his eyes dramatically. “Of course, I took all of this with a grain of salt. I mean, come on, what does Sallie know about brand building, or marketing? I tried to get out of it gracefully, but you know Sallie. Damned if she didn’t force me to go to di
“This is a woman who really understands branding,” he told A
A few weeks later, Davis called her into his office and introduced her to Celia.
A
“A
Of course, A
“Really? And you still work for the company after all that? How do you stand it?”
A
Everybody, it seemed, loved Celia. Everybody except Pokey.
“She’s a phony,” Pokey said, after the first and only lunch date with A
Secretly, A
Instead, she repeated what Celia told her about herself. “She’s only thirty-two. I think the payout is probably over a number of years, and some of it’s actually in stock she can’t touch for a few years. She’s too young to retire, and, anyway, she’s one of these people who always have to be doing something. She loves a challenge. And you’ve got to admit, with the way things are going, we’ve got a big challenge on our hands at Quixie.”
“She wants more than a job,” Pokey warned. “You wait and see.”
But before A
Like Celia herself, they were charming and disarming initially, couched as questions at first, then as suggestions, and then, within a very short period of time, as directives and missives. Celia’s range was broad—she was interested in anything and everything that happened at Quixie, and no detail was too small for her laserlike focus.
But it wasn’t until she was on the receiving end of one of those memos—this one a coolly worded e-mail she received after filing an expense report following an out-of-town marketing association meeting—that A
AJ: Don’t you think it’s excessive to bill the company for airfare, meals and a night at an expensive New York hotel when we both know these conferences are really more about gossip and personal networking than they are about Quixie business?—CW
Stu
CW: Obviously, I disagree with you about the value of these conferences. And by the way, didn’t you meet Davis and Sallie at a conference just like this one?—A
After that, there were no more lunches or shopping trips. She had, she admitted to Pokey, finally seen Celia’s true colors. And they weren’t pretty.
But to everybody else at Quixie, especially Mason, Celia Wakefield was regarded as the second coming. The one time A
She’d entered his office meekly and couched her objection as tactfully as possible, but he’d issued her a stinging and immediate rebuke. “Frankly, criticism of Celia, coming from you, seems kind of petty. She sees the big picture, A
A
Not long after that, she noticed that Celia had been given her own parking space, with her name stenciled on the pavement, situated between Mason’s and Davis’s in the company lot. And not long after that, she’d seen Celia and Mason leaving for long lunches together. Soon, they were arriving at the office together on Monday mornings.
“He brought her to Sunday di
It wasn’t long before A
The day Celia and Davis presented her with plans for the upcoming summer promotion with the Do
Still, the engagement a