Devil in a Suit

Sara stared at me for a few seconds, searching my expression for any wavers or cracks. She wanted to find something to use against me, but I wasn’t budging. I wasn’t going to let her hold anything over me.

“I don’t care if you’re the boss’s pet. I’m still going to ace this assignment and pitch the best idea,” Sara said as she took a step closer to me. She then glanced over her shoulder at Tyler, who was talking to a group of people near the entrance of the ballroom. “Maybe I’ll get to be his new pet.”

I clenched my jaw tightly, the pressure threatening to ache. I couldn’t believe that she was actively competing with me for Tyler’s attention. It made me want to rub everything that I got to do with him in her face, but I kept my mouth shut. I wasn’t going to let her get what she wanted. Tyler was mine.

“Your goal is to be someone’s pet? You should have bigger ambitions.”

She could do so much for herself because she was fairly smart and incredibly connected, but she focused more on outdoing others than bettering herself.

Any traces of smugness or amusement faded away from Sara’s expression as her eyes narrowed. “You won’t be so cocky when Tyler doesn’t give you the time of day anymore,” she scoffed before walking past me, knocking her shoulder against mine.

Part of me wanted to whirl around and grab a handful of her annoyingly shiny blonde hair, but I stopped myself from even looking in her direction. If I wanted to rise above her, I couldn’t stoop to her level. I already made the situation worse by mocking her.

I knew that I wouldn’t lose Tyler to her. He wasn’t the least bit interested in her, and he didn’t like meaningless flattery. It still pissed me off that she was trying to win him over, though. I couldn’t get her to back off by saying that he was taken. I couldn’t rub all the secret sex and stolen kisses in her face. All I could do was keep my head down.

Unless I could humiliate her. Maybe I couldn’t do anything about her wanting to kiss up to Tyler, but I could do something about this assignment that Tyler gave us. He didn’t directly say that it was a competition, but the best idea won. I was going to have the best idea, and I was going to make Sara’s idea seem incompetent and lazy compared to mine. That meant that I needed to use my resources.

Once the conference came to an end and we went back to the office, there were only thirty minutes left in the workday. Tyler told us that we could go ahead and leave. However, I wanted to stick around for those thirty minutes, and Tyler actually wasn’t the reason for that.

“Come in!” Brittany called from inside of her office after I lightly knocked on her door.

I walked inside, smiling at her politely.

“Hi, are you busy?” I asked as I stepped closer to her desk. I was sure that she was ready to go home, but I wanted to take this assignment seriously. If I could get some pointers from the head of marketing, maybe that could give me an edge over Sara.

Brittany turned away from her computer and shook her head, gesturing to the seat in front of her desk. “What’s on your mind?” she replied with that usual warm look on her face. She was always inviting.

I sat down in front of her desk. “I’m sure you can’t tell me much, but I was wondering if you had any tips for this assignment Sara and I have to do,” I replied. Information was power, and I was going to use anything and everything that I could to outdo Sara. I didn’t like having to compete with her in the first place, but the business world was competitive. I saw this as practice.

Brittany’s face brightened even more. “Well, it’s nice of you to take the initiative to ask,” she said. “I can’t give you an edge but I will tell you to really think outside of the box with this one. We’re looking for a brand-new approach.”

At least Tyler was open to something new. He seemed like the type to get stuck in the “don’t fix what isn’t broken” way. That worked for a while, but business changed all of the time. If he couldn’t adapt, he was going to drown. I didn’t want Ashland Consulting to falter, so I was going to do my best to come up with an idea to help Tyler blast past the competition again.

“I think I can do that,” I said with a nod.

I had suggested some new ideas in the first assignment I ever worked on for this internship. At the time, Tyler wasn’t all that impressed by them, but it seemed to be what he was looking for now. I wasn’t going to recycle those ideas because I knew that I could do better, but I could take inspiration from their creative spirit.