Page 42 of Knocked Up by my Rival

“It sounds like the project is going well,” Scott said. “Confident?”

“That I’ll win? You bet your ass.”

Scott laughed. “Atta boy.”

There was no way I could lose the contract now that I’d started making the small changes Toussaint had asked for. Mackenzie wouldn’t make them, so I was in the clear, and I didn’t have to panic. It wasn’t a competition anymore, so I could focus on spending time with her and doing my job the way it was supposed to be done.

The small voice at the back of my mind kept telling me this was a mistake, but I refused to listen to it. It wasn’t a mistake, it wasn’t personal. It was just business.

Keep telling yourself that.

“I have to go,” Scott said. “I’m going for a run before my next shift. Good luck for tonight. I’m sure you’ll nail it.”

“Thanks,” I said and grinned at the double meaning of that sentence. I would nail the project, sure, but Mackenzie and I had slept together more than once, too. Not that I was planning for tonight to go in that direction; we were going to focus strictly on business. I just couldn’t stop thinking about how incredible she was in bed and how I felt like I could just be my true self around her.

I pushed away all the thoughts and carried my loot to the till to pay for it before she came over later.

When I opened the door two hours later, Mackenzie stood in front of me.

“Your security doesn’t seem very secure,” she said. “He let me drive right past him.”

I laughed. “I told him to let you in.”

“Ah,” Mackenzie said. “I’m flattered.”

I let her in, and she followed me through the house, looking around.

“This place is incredible,” she said.

“You’ve been here before,” I pointed out.

“Well, yeah, but I didn’t exactly pay attention to my surroundings, then.” She offered me a mischievous smile, her eyes twinkling.

I laughed. “No, I had other things on my mind, too.”

I led her to an informal living room with plush, comfortable couches huddled around a low coffee table and bookshelves lining two walls. I had a large TV up against the third wall, and the fourth was made up of glass and looked out over my immaculate gardens. The storm had miraculously bypassed my place for the most part, and I’d had barely any damage.

I sat down on one of the couches, and Mackenzie unpacked her laptop, sitting down on another.

The chips and beer were laid out on the coffee table.

“Oh, this is quite a spread,” Mackenzie said and reached for a beer, cracking it open. “How did you know this is brain food for my brainstorming sessions?”

Scott suggested it.I shrugged. “I like to keep things simple.”

She laughed and took a sip of her beer. “Simple is the best way to go. People try to complicate everything.”

I cracked open a beer for myself, and we clinked our beer bottles together in a salute before we turned our attention back to our laptops.

“Okay,” Mackenzie said. “So I’ve been thinking about how we can really draw attention to the billboards in a way that’s still sensual. I imagine Toussaint wants his pieces to be very personal. They’re everything but mass-produced, and I want to capture that uniqueness.” She turned her laptop to show me a couple of things.

I nodded, looking at her ideas. They were great—they always were; she had an incredible mind for marketing—but it wasn’t exactly what Johnson and Toussaint would be looking for.

“That looks like it could work,” I said.

“What about you?” Mackenzie asked. “What did you come up with?”

“Oh,” I said. “I was thinking about spreading out the message across town, you know? So that as you see the advertisements driving down the highway, for instance, it will be like a story, each building on the next so that the customers would be dying to know what the ending of thatstorywill be.”

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