Unsure that her mouth would be able to produce coherent speech, she simply nodded her head.
“Fantastic. Why don’t I drive you to your place and drop you off. Then I’ll run to my apartment, shower and change, and then pick you up about forty-five minutes before the presentation. That should give us enough time to get there and get everything set up and maybe even run through it one more time before Julian shows up. Will that give you enough time to get ready?”
Lexi’s brain shut down after hearing that Vincent would be coming to her apartment. Busy worrying about whether there was a pile of laundry on her couch and dirty dishes in her sink, she only half listened to what he was saying. “That should be—”
“What the hell happened to my art room?” Tony roared as he burst through the door. Vincent’s entire body tensed, his jaw clenched, and his eyes darkened with anger, but he remained cool as he spoke, his voice never faltering. “Your art room?”
“There’s stuff everywhere. Papers, prints, photographs. What the hell was wrong with the presentation that you had to mess with it and leave the place looking like a bomb went off? You signed off on everything. There should’ve been no edits necessary!” Tony’s face was red by the time he ended his rant. It was only then that he noticed Lexi. An evil sneer crossed his face. “Or maybe it was you that messed everything up.”
“Tony,” Vincent growled, taking a step toward his cousin. “Enough. I was down in productions last night. I made the mess. I had this new idea for the Stone account, and I went for it. No one else was in town to help, and you were conveniently unable to be reached, so I handled it myself. I apologize,” he ground out the last word through gritted teeth, “if the room is not as clean as you would like. I’d be happy to have someone clean it for you.”
It took every bit of self-control Vincent had to make that statement, Lexi was certain of that. His hands were balled at his sides, his knuckles white from his tight grip. The muscles of his jaw visibly clenched and unclenched as he attempted to keep his fury in check.
Tony continued to glare at Vincent, then glanced over at Lexi in her wrinkled clothes and disheveled hair. His gaze turned back to Vincent, and he seemed to take note of his haggard appearance, something very out of character for his usually perfect cousin. That’s when he asked in a snide voice, “So the two of you were here all night? Together?”
“I’m going to start printing out the packets and getting everything packed up. I’ll be at my desk.” With her gaze planted on her shoes, Lexi stepped out of the room and, in her hurry, didn’t close the door all the way. From behind her desk she had a view of everything going on inside and could hear the argument continue.
Tony hardly waited for Lexi to leave the room before he started in again, “So you and Lexi, huh? I knew you two were hooking up.”
With Lexi out of the room, Vincent apparently saw no reason to contain his anger any longer. He began laying into Tony without apprehension. “Listen, I’m going to say this once. You work for me. If I want to come down to productions and work on a campaign, I can do that. Would I have preferred to hand this off to you or one of your people? Yes. However, you sent them all to a conference the same time Jared took his team out of town with my mother and on the eve of a huge presentation, I might add. Pretty piss poor planning on your part, wouldn’t you say? I wonder what Elizabeth would think? Doesn’t show very good management skills, now does it?” Tony remained silent as Vincent continued to seethe. “But don’t worry. Lexi did stay and help me with it, and this pitch is ten times better than the original. You better be careful, cousin, she might move up the corporate ladder faster than you.”
“Fuck you.”
“No, fuck you, Tony. And if I hear one little hateful word come from your mouth about Lexi again, you’ll be sorry. Painfully sorry.”
The anger in Vincent’s voice made Lexi shudder.
“So protective of her. I wonder what Jade would think about you showing such loyalty to your assistant.”
Vincent charged at Tony like a bullet, pinning him to the wall with a loud crash. His nose was millimeters away from Tony’s. “Not another word or it will be your last.”
The two men stayed locked together for a minute before Tony broke eye contact. “Get off me.” He gave Vincent a shove, but like a brick wall, Vincent didn’t budge.
“Do we understand each other?”
Tony refused to answer him. Instead, he wormed his way out of Vincent’s grasp and stepped out of Lexi’s view in the direction of the production boards and began critiquing everything.
“The photo layouts could be better. You needed to use the higher resolution when you merged the picture fields. Next time leave it to the professionals so you don’t look like such an amateur. This one is on you, Vincent. You lose this account, and you have no one to blame but yourself. And personally, I would love for everyone to finally see that you aren’t half as great as you think you are.” Lexi heard Tony’s footsteps heading toward the door so she quickly busied herself, keeping her gaze down on her desk as he stormed past and slammed the door shut behind him.
Seconds later, Vincent had gathered up all the presentation materials and rushed out of his office with the production boards in his hand. “You ready?” he asked Lexi as she bent behind her desk, scooping color copies out of her printer as fast as she could.
Lexi waved a single finger at him. “Last copy, then I’m good to go.” Vincent laid the materials down and quickly poured each of them a tall cup of coffee. By the time Lexi came from behind her desk, he had her coat draped over his arm. He gallantly held the jacket out so she could slip her arms inside.
She stole one of the cups of coffee from the counter and headed down the hall, not even bothering to wait for Vincent.
In the elevator, Vincent began practicing the pitch, and they came up with a hand signal for Lexi to give if he slipped into too formal a tone, which he had a tendency to do when feeling stressed. Their voices echoed in the massive concrete parking garage as they continued discussing what points Vincent should emphasize. Lexi nearly dropped her briefcase when Vincent stopped at his car.
In the parking space was a Matchbox-sized black Lotus convertible. “What the hell is this?” she laughed, peering down at his undersized car. He popped the trunk and carefully maneuvered the production boards inside with barely any room to spare. He slammed it shut and rolled his eyes.