“The hell it won’t,” growled the tall blond in front. Barney tossed copies of designs on the table in front of him. “The others don’t hold a candle to it, Greer. And since you’re the only holdout-”
“And Marie’s vote would be on our side. You know that,” Tim interrupted.
Greer nodded patiently. The two potential choices for their fall catalog cover design were lying next to her. One was a pastel yellow lounging outfit, an infinitely soft design that draped loosely over the model’s figure. The look was sensual, comfortable and subtly alluring.
That was the one the men didn’t like. Their favorite was Marie’s coup de grâce, a negligee in pearl-pink satin and cream lace. The model wearing it had a Penthouse figure-which the gown required. Satin, however luxurious, was not an easy fabric for most women to wear. It had a sheen and, like a mirror, reflected a woman’s worst faults. The gown flowed over a body that had to be perfect, from flat stomach to smooth hips and long legs. The cobweb-lace bodice cupped breasts that had to be sizable and tilted up just so. The low, heart-shaped neckline, the cutouts showing the sides of the breasts-only a certain kind of woman could wear the style, a sexually uninhibited woman who had the courage to flaunt her assets.
“If our customers were men, I would agree with you,” Greer continued patiently. “But they’re women. Women we want as return customers.”
“Women who are increasingly buying sexy lingerie, or we wouldn’t all be here now,” Ray drawled from the chair closest to her. “Sex is in this decade, sweetheart. We’re asking you to catch up and become part of the times…”
Greer tossed a wad of paper in his general direction. Grant, from the back of the room, didn’t so much as raise an eyelid. “You can sell the nightgown on that basis,” Greer said evenly. “And it will sell, even if the price is much higher than for our usual lingerie. You’re still missing the point. The nightgown doesn’t enhance the image we want Love Lace to project, and in the long run, we’d lose money because of it.”
The argument raged on. Greer’s eyes darted back and forth between the men in front of her, her tone calm and her stance never wavering. This morning the men were generally behaving like turkeys. Normally, she was pretty fond of them.
In front of her sat Barney. In his mid-thirties, Barney was tall and blond and divorced. His specialty was fabric and tech care; he was great at his job, but she’d had a few problems with his roving hands when she first started working at Love Lace. There’d been no passes, however, after he’d had the flu and she’d taken chicken soup to his home…and listened for six hours to his divorce woes.
Tim, on the other side of the table, was the firm’s accountant. He looked harmless enough with his fluff of gray hair and myopic brown eyes, but he was one of the most confirmed misogynists Greer had ever met…until she’d discovered he was a sucker for doughnuts in the morning. The way to some men’s hearts was still through their stomachs.
In the back of the room sat Grant, the boss, a small, spare man with thinning hair, a wisp of a mustache, a gentle voice and the business instincts of a shark. Throughout the meeting, his face remained expressionless, except for the faintest of smiles as he watched his ad psychologist in action.
One of Grant’s favorite management strategies was never to conduct a staff meeting himself. Actually, few of his business methods followed a standard set of rules-they just worked, and woe to any competitor who misjudged his gentle look as weakness. Greer thought affectionately that the man had only one major flaw: He couldn’t stand arguing with his French wife.
Today he didn’t have to, because Marie had stayed home with a cold. Volatile and brilliantly creative, Marie was their chief designer. On the rare occasions when Grant didn’t feel that one of his wife’s designs would sell, he expected Greer to be his hatchet woman. And the cream lace on pink satin was Marie’s choice for their fall catalog cover, or someone’s life was going to be miserable.
Probably Greer’s, though she doubted Grant would escape the flying shrapnel when his wife returned to work.
Regardless, Grant had warned her when she started with Love Lace that there were areas in which she’d have to sink or swim. Because of her looks, she was better prepared than some to deal with sexism. She’d managed Barney and Tim, but Ray was her last holdout, and it was Ray who followed her to her office once the staff meeting was over.
He paused in the doorway while she tossed her glasses on her desk and unloaded the mound of paperwork in her arms. “You won again,” he remarked idly.
“Hmm.” Greer scanned the messages next to the phone before glancing up. Ray was their resident feudal baron, she thought whimsically. Black hair, black eyes, a subtle smile, broad shoulders in meticulous dress. He only needed a castle with moat to complete the picture. And an estate populated by women who bowed to him.
Ray could market oceanfront property in Kansas successfully, and Greer respected him for that. But at times his salesmanship didn’t make him any easier to work with. Ray generally backed down just before a clash, but he and Greer inevitably circled each other in conversation like wary combatants.
Leaning against her office door, he lazily crossed his ankles. “Marie will have your hide.”
“You’re telling me something I don’t know?”
Ray chuckled and moved in to slouch comfortably in the pale gray chair next to her desk. “It would have made a good cover.”
“For Frederick’s of Hollywood.” Greer sat down and slipped off her shoes. The others were used to her padding around in stocking feet; she wasn’t about to change her habits for Ray. As she waited for him to speak, she was aware that his eyes were roving over her mint-green suit, slowly removing that suit, and just as slowly continuing to talk with her stark naked-in his imagination. Used to his mode of operation, she paid little attention.
“You’re one of the few women who could wear that nightgown to absolute perfection,” Ray drawled.
“Yup,” Greer agreed smoothly. “Unfortunately, pink makes my face break out in spots.”
Annoyance flamed in his dark eyes, but only for an instant before he let out a low chuckle. “I still think I caught just a glint of lust in your eyes when you looked at that nightgown. Don’t tell me we’ve found a rare weakness in you, Greer?”
Something sharp pricked her finger, and she glanced down in surprise. The paper clip in her hand was completely bent out of shape, unusable now. Had she really just done that? Tossing the thing in the wastebasket, she let her eyes return to Ray. “I know you’re ticked because you were backing Marie on this one, but rationally you know better. Cost margins were part of it-the nightgown is too much higher than our regular lines. And style is part of it-the style simply has limited appeal; too few women would look good in it.”
“You want me to listen to your whole lecture again?” he asked dryly.
Greer leaned forward, resting her chin in her cupped hands, wondering why some men remained uneducable. “We’re selling fantasies,” she said patiently. “The whole business of lingerie is based on people’s fondness for make-believe. We sell sinfully delicious fantasies-daydreams that don’t threaten. A woman is going to buy what makes her feel good about herself. What feels good next to her skin. Clothes that give her confidence because she does feel sexy in them. And that’s entirely different from a nightgown that shouts-”
“Sex object. ‘Promoting sexuality is inherent to the field, but it doesn’t have to be on a sex-object basis,’” Ray quoted with another of his subtle smiles, mimicking her earlier words in the staff meeting. “One of the staff can be very, very picky on that infinitesimal difference between sexy and sex object.”