Jennie
"Disgraced CEO hires publicity shark Lisa Manoban to repair image"
"Lisa Manoban has hands full with disaster Jennie Kim"
"Alpha Group founder hints at relationship with beleaguered billionaire"
My father stormed out of the office looking for someone else to terrify, and I relaxed into my chair.
"On that note, I'm going to head back to Bluewater and meet with security to find out just how our well-hung Ms. Manoban got in last night," Alison announced.
Lisa chuckled.
"You could just ask her," I suggested, scanning the fifty new emails that had rolled in on the drive here.
"It's much more entertaining this way," Lisa said, sitting down on my couch and opening her laptop.
"Alison, I'll call a car for you. You can pick me up tonight—"
"No need, Alison. I'll see the boss home," Lisa said, without looking up from her screen.
With an elegant flick of my wrist, I flipped her off.
She snorted. "Play nice, you two."
"Alone at last," she said when Alison left.
"Don't you have an unsuspecting woman to show your penis to?" I asked primly.
"Ms. Kim, what would your HR department say?" she asked, feigning horror.
I didn't feel like joking with her. Her presence was a reminder that my own board didn't trust me to run my own damn company.
I tapped the end of my pen on the notebook I always kept handy for notes and formulas. "What did my father mean by you wormed your way in?"
"Oh, that. I happened to personally witness those handcuffs snapping around your beautiful wrists. I also happen to be acquaintances with Imani on your board of directors."
I closed my eyes. "So you called her."
"So I called her."
I was suddenly very, very tired. "Lisa, why are you in my office? Surely this 'fixing' doesn't require you to shadow me 24/7?"
"My darling Jennie, how else can I help you?"
"Are you in my calendar right now?" I barked. Appointments were moving, times changing right before my eyes.
"Why, yes, I am."
"How did you even get access?"
"Do you really want me to bore you with the details of how I do things?" she asked.
My printer whirred to life and spat out several pages. "Stop using my equipment!"
"You're welcome to use my equipment at any time, Jennie."
I was going to find a way to destroy this person. Somehow. Someway. I would make her rue the day she agreed to be my babysitter.
I snatched the papers out of the tray and marched them over to her. "Lisa, I mean this in the nicest possible way. If you don't get out of my office and let me get to work, I am going to lose my shit in a scene so un-Kim-like that the entire building will be talking about it for years."
"I'd better get you two donuts tomorrow," she mused.
I threw the papers in her face and had to restrain myself from wrapping my hands around her neck and choking the life out of her.
"Take it easy, love," she said, relenting. "I've got a few things to go over with you first. I'll be quick. I promise."
"I give you five and you leave me alone?" I pressed.
"Is everything a negotiation with you?" she asked, amused.
"Yes. Now get out."
"You give me five and I'll stop distracting you."
That was definitely not a promise to leave my office, I noted.
She patted the cushion next to her.
I took a deep breath and counted backward from ten. Chaeyoung swore by counting away the mad. But it never worked for me. It just made me angrier that I'd wasted ten seconds in which I could have done something more productive.
"Five minutes," I repeated and sat, making sure to leave several inches of couch cushion between us.
"First up, a non-disclosure agreement," she said, spreading the paperwork out.
"You want me to sign an NDA?"
"No. I'm going to sign one for you, which is something your team should have done the second they hired me." She pulled a fountain pen from her pocket and scrawled her name across the contract.
Her signature was bold, confident. Just like the person it belonged to. It irked me. Just like the person it belonged to.
Lisa looked up, our eyes met and held.
"There. Now I'm all yours. You can tell me your deepest, darkest secrets, and I'll never tell a soul."
She was using her physical appeal against me, and I was not exactly falling for it, but my foundation felt a little shaky.
"I don't have any secrets," I lied.
She tapped me on the nose with her pen. I imagined myself catching her off guard with a palm strike to her achingly perfect nose.
"You most certainly do," she said. "But I'll let you keep them a little longer. For now, let me give you a visual demonstration of the services I intend to provide you."
For a fraction of a second, I was convinced she was cueing up a sex tape. It was a millisecond of envisioning her perfect ass as she thrust into a very lucky woman that had my face turning six shades of tomato.
It felt warm in my office. Close.
She pressed a button with a flourish and a video played on screen. It was me, arriving at work yesterday.
"While I admire your impeccable taste in vehicles—I hope you let me drive her—watch yesterday compared to today."
With the sound off, I watched as I pulled up in front of the building and got out of the Porsche. I strutted like an angry supermodel toward the front door without acknowledging the presence of the photographers. I looked… fierce. Powerful. Angry.
"And today," Lisa said, cueing up a second video.
There I was again, casual in my jeans and messy hair. Smiling, laughing. I turned and beamed—when had I ever beamed in public? Kims didn't beam—at something Lisa had said, laughed at Alison. I wasn't alone. I wasn't with an entourage. I looked like a woman having a good time with friends.
"Now, I won't insult your intelligence by pointing out the marked difference between yesterday and today," she said. "But I will further prove my point with a few stills."
She clicked through a few pictures. Back and forth from my grim arrival yesterday to my donut-toting one today.
"We literally walked in the door ten minutes ago. How did you put this together so quickly?"
"Minions," she said with an eyebrow wiggle.
She was stupidly beautiful.
"This is my goal," she continued. "To take you from unapproachable and frosty to down-to-earth and likable."
"I don't need to be liked, Lisa. I need to have the space to do my job. Not take the time to present Lynetta Dirk with the Women in Business Award at a luncheon today," I said, glaring at an event she'd hacked into my calendar in mere hours.
If my time was spent on a public apology tour, I'd fall behind on what really mattered. My work. Flawless wasn't some hobby. A lark. It wasn't even just about smoothing wrinkles. Or a billion-dollar IPO. It was science and growth. And it was mine.
"The presenter canceled last minute, and you were kind enough to swoop in on a moment's notice."
"Did you have the original presenter killed?"
She scoffed. "She is alive and well."
My smart watch buzzed, and I spotted a text.
Chaeyoung: Super cute and approachable! Love the outfit!
"Damn it," I muttered under my breath.
"Jennie," Lisa said, looking deeply into my eyes. I looked away, pretending to study my calendar. "You're not some drug-addled socialite on the verge of destruction, and you're also not a 'ladies who lunch' mannequin."
"I realize that," I sniped.
"Good," she said amicably.
"I have shit to do, Lisa. Never-ending shit to keep this company running smoothly. I don't need to suddenly become friendly and approachable. I need to prove that I am more than capable of running this company."
"I'm not here to hold your hand through day-to-day operations. I'm here to make the public realize what an intelligent, savvy, interesting woman you are. You don't invest in businesses, love. You invest in people. And right this second, you just skated on a drug arrest."
"The publicists want to push attention on to Irene. Let her do the award giving. Let me work," I said. "Why can't we do that?"
"Marching out a substandard Jennie Kim is not going to build confidence," Lisa said, sinking back on the couch. Her arm rested on the cushion behind me. "Irene does not own this company. Irene is not the face of the company."
"Irene is not a substandard me," I argued.
She waved it away. "Do you want to sit here and argue the unfairness of it all, or do you want to do something about it?"
I couldn't believe I felt like pouting. I blamed Lisa… and the emotional effects of a long overdue sugar rush.
"Do something." I sighed.
"Good. Now let's get down to business." She took my hands in her. "Your board of directors hired me. But as far as I'm concerned, you are my client. My job is to get you what you want. So what do you want, Jennie?"
She enunciated each word as if she were asking me the most important question of my life.
"I want this to go away. I want everything to go back to the way it was before I got in that stupid car."
She studied me with an intensity that made me want to squirm. I held eye contact on principle. No one made me squirm.
"Then I'll get that for you. But you have to trust me to do my job."
"I don't even know you," I argued.
"I'm Lisa Manoban. Age Twenty Eight Charming bachelor by choice. I dropped out of college to run a firm that specializes in fixing the damaged images of public figures. I charge exorbitant fees without the smallest measure of guilt because I'm confident that the service I provide is invaluable. I abhor anyone who can't be bothered to be real. If you're an asshole, be brave enough to be an asshole."
I pulled my hands out of her grip and crossed my arms. Some people didn't have a choice in how they were perceived.
"And in high school," she continued, "I very nearly destroyed my life with a series of terrible decisions culminating in me stealing a cop's personal car out of his driveway."
"You didn't." If she'd meant it to shock me, it had worked.
"I did. I had an excellent run of petty thievery until I set my greedy sights on that SUV," Lisa said almost fondly.
"What happened?"
"Oh, I was arrested and hauled downtown to face my worst nightmare."
"Jail?" I asked. I didn't want to be interested, but I couldn't help myself.
"My very angry single mother. My father left all of us when I was twelve. My mother worked seven days a week at a hair salon to make ends meet. My siblings and I took it upon ourselves to help out. My older brother got a job waiting tables. My middle sister started a tutoring business. My youngest sister clipped coupons. And I—"
"Stole cars?" I was horrified. And oddly intrigued.
She spread her palms, a magician distracting her audience. "I'm a thief at heart. Fortunately, winning at business is almost as much fun. Besides, it worked itself out."
"How?"
"Detective Michael Perez ended up being the best thing that happened to my family." Lisa sighed. "We all call him Dad now. And his kids are my siblings regardless of blood. Turns out that I'm not the only thief in the family. One look at my beautiful, angry mother who was still wielding scissors as she threatened my life and she stole his heart."
I'll admit it. A very teeny, female part of me swooned in the recesses of my very busy heart.
"So he just erased the charges?"
Lisa laughed. "Of course not. Neither of my parents let a good deed go unpunished. I had two hundred hours of community service to keep me occupied."
"Don't your clients care about your… colorful past?" I pressed. It seemed so unlikely that the elegantly wealthy would willingly part with fistfuls of cash and hand them over to a person with a criminal past.
"It makes me real, darling Jennie. I'm openly flawed, vulnerable even. There's a security there that no polite, socially acceptable mask can deliver. You know that you can trust me."
I trusted very few people in my life, and one romantic sob story about a teenage felony wasn't going to have me welcoming the man into my circle of trust.
"Do you still steal?"
A smile flickered across her face.
"Only when absolutely necessary," she said, slipping a hand into her suit jacket.
Oh, God. "Is that my father's…"
"Wallet. Yes. It seems he left it behind. Pity."