“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 dinner. I had drinks with her in the bar first, you know, just to see if she checked out.”
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 dinner, and damned if she wasn’t right. Wait until you meet this gal, Annajane. She’s the real deal!”
“This is a woman who really understands branding,” he told Annajane. “She built her own company from scratch—kids’ clothing, starting from the time she was twenty-one years old, working as a sales clerk at a little boutique in the middle of nowhere. She was the designer, the manufacturer, the marketer—everything. Last year, she sold the company to a big retailer. Believe that? Ten million dollars! Guess she’s gotten bored with the good life, because she’s doing consulting work these days.”
A few weeks later, Davis called her into his office and introduced her to Celia.
Annajane’s first impression had been that this was the most exquisite creature she’d ever met. The chair she was sitting in seemed to swallow her whole. Even with five-inch stiletto heels on her lime-green pumps, she was barely a notch above five feet tall. Her blond hair was silvery against a deep tennis-player’s tan, and her pale lavender suit and low-cut lime-green silk shell should have been too girly for business. But on Celia, it was perfection. She reminded Annajane of a hummingbird. The only thing missing was a tiny pair of wings.
“Annajane!” Celia had said, leaping up to shake her hand. “Davis has told me so much about you. He says you’re the heart and soul of the company. How can I lure you into going to lunch with me and sharing your insights on Quixie?”
Of course, Annajane had been flattered. Flattery was one of Celia’s many talents. She was warm and bubbly, so easy to talk to. They’d had a hilarious lunch, laughing and talking about the quirks of working for a small-town family-owned company. Celia had seemed surprised to learn that Mason was Annajane’s ex-husband.
“Really? And you still work for the company after all that? How do you stand it?”
Annajane winced now at how easily it had been for Celia to draw her into her confidences. For a few weeks, they’d been best buddies, sharing drinks, lunches, even a shopping trip to Charlotte.
Everybody, it seemed, loved Celia. Everybody except Pokey.
“She’s a phony,” Pokey said, after the first and only lunch date with Annajane and Celia. “If she’s so rich from selling her own company, why is she piddling around with contract consulting work for Quixie?”
Secretly, Annajane wondered if Pokey’s dislike of Celia wasn’t just a case of good old-fashioned jealousy. With three small children to ride herd over, Pokey was out of the loop on lots of things. And Annajane and Celia were seeing a lot of each other. But she kept that to herself.
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 Annajane could come up with a good defense for Celia, the memos started.
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 Annajane realized just how lethal Celia’s influence could be.
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
Stunned, Annajane had fired back with a memo of her own, detailing the subject matter of each meeting she’d attended and its value to the company, and adding the fact that she’d spent the other two nights of the conference in an old friend’s apartment, which cost the company nothing. And she’d ended her memo with one last observation.
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?—Annajane.
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 Annajane had dared complain to Mason about one of Celia’s pointed memos to her, Mason worked himself into a righteous indignation.
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, Annajane, something we desperately need right now. She’s done a great job of analyzing these types of things, and I have no intention of reversing her.”
Annajane could see the matter was closed. She and Mason had managed to keep their relationship at the office on an even-keeled, professional level after their divorce, but during that brief meeting, she realized things had changed. Celia was making sure of that.
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 dinner at Mama’s,” Pokey reported. “You know how many women he’s dated since you two split up—and he’s never brought any of those women around the family. Hell, we never even met Sophie’s mother. I’ve got a bad, bad feeling about this chick.”
It wasn’t long before Annajane came to realize just how astute Pokey’s assessment of Celia was.
The day Celia and Davis presented her with plans for the upcoming summer promotion with the Donnell Boggs tie-in, a promotion she’d had no hand in at all, Annajane realized that Celia had quickly and stealthily cut her out of the decision-making loop in the marketing department. Before that day was out, Annajane had begun updating her résumé and quietly putting out feelers to find a new job. Her days at Quixie, she knew then, were numbered.
Still, the engagement announcement, just six weeks after her own engagement, had taken Annajane totally by surprise. And not, she would admit now, in a good way.