“Fortunately it can be faked,” Nick continued. “We’ll get in make-up and hair stylists to take care of…” he indicated Zoe’s general head region with a wave of a hand. “…that. I daresay a deep pore cleanse will take care of some of it. And you’ll need to go on a diet.”
“I’ll what?!” Zoe knew that she was not ‘model thin’ but nor was she by any stretch of the imagination fat. ‘Pleasingly plump’ was how she liked to think of it.
If he noticed Zoe’s raising ire, Nick did not seem to care about it. “If there are cheek bones in there somewhere, I’d like to see them. For women of Vanessa’s breeding, a salad is a main course, not as a side order to a burger and fries.”
“That must be why they’re so miserable all the time,” muttered Zoe. There really was only so long you could listen to someone critiquing everything about you before the urge to beat them over the head with a chair became irresistible.
“Can you walk in heels?” asked Nick.
“I’m wearing heels,” Zoe ground out through grated teeth.
Nick glanced down at Zoe’s sensible, square two inch high pumps that could have doubled as orthopedic footwear for his Nana . “I’ll take that as a ‘no’. You know what? We don’t really have time now to go through every detail. I’ll make you up a schedule for the first week, starting tomorrow, and we’ll take it from there. Be back here eight o’clock tomorrow morning, we’ve got a long day ahead.”
“Right.” Zoe got to her feet and stalked to the door with suppressed rage in every step.
“Don’t forget!” Nick called after her. “Learn to love salad!”
On the way home, Zoe stopped at McDonald’s for lunch. It was, she considered, an act of well-earned defiance, and was in no way her eating her feelings (as that know-it-all school psychiatrist had told her). But when she got home she found herself staring for long minutes into the bathroom mirror. Was she really that bad? She had always rather liked her unruly curly hair, but was it just untidy? Vanessa, who the world’s most expensive weave, had hinted more than once that Zoe looked unprofessional wearing her hair as she did.
She had always though that over made-up women looked like sex dolls for clowns, but did her minimal make-up just make her look tired? She had always thought of her clothes as ‘practical.’ Did her clothes lack class? Was she overweight? Her face was round but it had always struck her as ‘cute’.
Until now.
In fact there were a whole lot of things, that she had not questioned until now, that suddenly seemed of real importance. After a lifetime of thinking that being herself was a pretty good idea, Zoe wondered if being herself was why she was single and alone and in a lowly desk job. The only taste of the high life she was ever likely to get was by impersonating someone else.
Insecurity of one sort or another had always been a feature of Zoe’s life, that was just the sort of person that she was, one who lacked the confidence to stand up and shout to the world about how great she was. But deep down she had always known that they were just insecurities – not to be taken seriously. And yet, now those insecurities seemed to have been confirmed by a third party, they had been given credence and with it a devious life of their own. They rampaged through her, gleefully pointing out imperfections and cackling at her.
Zoe went to bed and lay awake, staring at the ceiling.
“I’m fine the way I am. This is just a job.” Saying it out loud seemed to help, and she rolled over to go to sleep. But still, through a troubled night, the demons of her subconscious tormented her and told her that she was not good enough, and that maybe this was a chance for her, not to be Vanessa, but to be better.
Chapter Four
On first seeing Zoe in his bar, Nick had considered the task he had set himself of turning her into a believable approximation of Vanessa Reese to be difficult. After meeting her, he considered it almost insurmountable. It was not just that she had no experience or knowledge of the finer things (the sort of things Jacques Jourdan would expect her to be conversant in), she seemed to radiate an aura of unsophistication.
Zoe, in Nick’s estimation, advertised her lack of polish in every word she said, every move she made and even in the way she looked. There was no mistaking Zoe Blanchard for someone who knew which fork to use and simply dressing her properly and getting her a new hairstyle was not about to fix that.
She was rather pretty though.
In a common, girl-next-door sort of way.
Not that that mattered.
That was completely unimportant and he wasn’t even sure why his brain had brought it up.
Back to the point in hand – he was not sure how he was ever going to make this work. The lack of sophistication was bad enough, it meant he would have to teach her everything from square one, but it was made worse by the girl’s obvious slowness and general stupidity.
She seemed to pick up what he was saying about five minutes after he had said it! How she had ever gotten a job assisting a person in such a position of authority as Vanessa Reese, Nick could not imagine. Privately he wondered if Zoe had seen those stampeding wildebeest and simply been too dumb to consider them worth mentioning to her boss.
It was with no great expectations therefore that Nick started Zoe’s lessons the following day at eight o’clock sharp, with an overview of RothCo’s corporate structure, thinking he’d have to start at square one, given her obvious ineptitude.
And he found himself taken completely by surprise.
What Zoe did not already know – and she proved far better informed than Nick had anticipated – she picked up with speed and intelligence.
Yesterday had shown her in a poor light, and it did not bode well for the plan that she was not at her best when being thrown into a strange situation, but her business knowledge and her ability to use that knowledge was first rate… better than Nick’s own if he was honest. She was quick with numbers, able to do sums in her head that Nick had to pull out his calculator for.
In the afternoon, Nick proceeded quickly to the deal itself, jumping a few steps as Zoe clearly needed no extra tuition, and found that Zoe was as well versed as he could have hoped and more. More than once she corrected him in his knowledge of the most up to date figures and several on his math.
“You’re very good at this,” Nick admitted, feeling a little guilty at his previous condescension.
“Thanks,” smiled Zoe. She sipped the coffee that Eddie had brought in, and then added four sugars and a huge helping of cream, an act which reminded Nick that his job was not finished yet.
As their ‘lesson’ progressed it was clear that Zoe not only understood what he was talking about and had a command of all the necessary facts, figures, and jargon. Zoe clearly had a business mind – she saw the future implications of actions and how they might be exploited to the company’s advantage.
She automatically included tax and subsidiary revenue in her mental calculations and applied the most advantageous business model, typing them quickly into an excel spreadsheet, pulling up pivot tables and showing him just how different variables affected the bottom line of RothCo.
It occurred to Nick that, had it not been for the manifest disadvantages she possessed elsewhere, then she would have long since moved up in the company.
But the bottom line remained; Zoe did not look like a business woman - she barely looked like a PA – no one was going to trust her with greater responsibilities because that first impression was the one that people took away.
Nick was starting to realize that was a mistake. Perhaps Zoe would mix uncomfortably with the more traditional type of executive, but she certainly didn’t lack the skills or ability.
In a way it was funny: Nick himself had all the right social advantages, but he lacked the business mind – him trying to explain this stuff to Zoe was a little like Barney the Dinosaur giving Stephen Hawking a lecture on the nature of time.
“You’ve done really well today,” said Nick, and immediately regretted it, as it sounded conde
scending, like a teacher talking to a child. It could be hard to congratulate someone without sounding massively patronizing.
“I know,” Said Zoe, apparently unconcerned. “Same time tomorrow?”
“Yes. There’s still a lot to do - but the business side you clearly have down pat.”
Zoe nodded. “Cool. Goodnight.”
“Goodnight,” said Nick as Zoe turned to leave. “And Miss Blanchard? Try not to say ‘cool’.”
He regretted that as well afterwards.
She would have to get out of the habit, of course. Executives did not say ‘cool’ (unless they were those executives who are trying to sound young and hip, usually for marketing purposes, and they just made everyone cringe), but the lesson could have waited until tomorrow. He could have let her go home on a positive note. She had done well today and they were ahead of schedule already, but the days to come would be the tough ones. With business taken care of they would be moving onto how to be Vanessa Reese, and that was an area in which Zoe had no prior experience.
The more time he spent with her though the more he noticed that she was prettier than he had first given her credit for.
Nick shook his head to dispel the thought. Why did his brain keep throwing that in there? She was not really that pretty. Was she? He shook his head again – it didn’t matter.
“You’ve got to be kidding.” Zoe looked at the horse incredulously. “You want me to sit up there?”
“On the saddle? Yes,” confirmed Nick. “Unless you can see somewhere else more convenient to sit on a horse.”
“I’ve never ridden a horse in my life!” Zoe wailed.
“You must have ridden something!” said Nick. “A pony, a donkey, a lazy boyfriend!” He wished he hadn’t said that last one – why had he said that?
Zoe shot him a dark look. “I don’t think that’s the same thing at all. And if it is, then I’m definitely not getting up there.”
“Sorry.”
“I rode a donkey once at a friend’s birthday party when I was five.”
“There you go!” Nick said encouragingly.
“Is riding a horse similar?”
“Not in the least.”
“Then why does it matter?!”
“Because,” Nick thought quickly, “the donkey was as much bigger than the five year old you, as the horse is bigger than you now. So it shouldn’t be that scary.”
Zoe looked at the horse again. “Okay.”
She placed a foot in a stirrup and, before Nick could say ‘wrong foot’, swung herself into the saddle. It was a surprisingly graceful swing for someone who had never done it before, which made it all the more of a shame that it ended with Zoe facing the horse’s backside.
Zoe peered forwards. “Something’s gone wrong.”