Everyone at the table stood up automatically. It was impossible not to, when you looked at her. She was astonishing.

Ben thought he knew what beautiful women were like, but he’d never seen anything like her before. He couldn’t stop looking at her. She was luminous, like there was a spotlight on her somehow. She had golden brown skin, big brown eyes, and lips that . . . okay, he had to stop staring.

“Hi,” she said. “I’m Anna Gardiner.”

Everyone in the room had known that before she’d said it, of course. Anna Gardiner. The famous actress. Here for his pitch. His last-minute pitch. Thank God he hadn’t known she would be here on his drive down; he would have needed a much longer pep talk.

“Ms. Gardiner!” Okay, from the tone of his voice, the guy representing the client hadn’t known she was coming, either. “I’m sorry, I didn’t realize . . . Of course, you had a standing offer to come today, but we . . .”

Ben walked around the table. Someone had to save this guy from himself.

“Ms. Gardiner, I’m Ben Stephens, from Legendary advertising agency. Thanks so much for coming today.”

“Nice to meet you, Ben,” she said. “Please call me Anna.” Her voice was low, but warm. He wanted to listen to her talk for hours.

She smiled at him. Oh my God. He’d thought she was beautiful before, but with that smile aimed straight at him, “beautiful” seemed far too pedestrian a word for her.

He smiled back at her. Then he forced himself to remember why he was there today. Work, the pitch, he was their only hope, right. He couldn’t let this surprise appearance of the most beautiful woman he’d ever seen blow him off course.

“Anna, then. I’m so glad you’re here.”

He went back to his spot at the head of the table and watched the client representatives surround Anna. He nudged Vanessa—she looked at him with eyes full of terror, but he shook his head.

“Go meet her!” he said under his breath. She still looked terrified, but she walked around the table and greeted Anna.

Once the introductions were over, Anna sat down at the foot of the table and looked at him expectantly. He nodded at Vanessa, who now had a huge smile on her face.

“If everyone is ready, we’ll get started,” he said.

Now that Anna Gardiner was here, he wasn’t sure whom he was supposed to impress. The talent rarely attended meetings like this; he assumed they often had veto power over ad campaigns, but they were never in on the ground floor, making decisions; that was always the client.

But honestly, who the fuck cared about any of that right now? Because he sure as hell knew that the only person who mattered in this room right now was Anna.

He smiled at everyone in the room.

“Good morning, everyone. We at Legendary were thrilled to be invited to present our vision for this major ad campaign for your new phone. As you’ll see, it’s ambitious, but we’re known for our ambition.” Clients always lapped up that line; he could already see the dudes in the room puffing up their chests. “But it’s also tailored just for you and your needs. Let’s begin.”

* * *

—

Anna sat back to watch. She’d come today for two reasons—to make it clear to this enormous corporation that she took the line in her contract about having veto power over the ad campaign seriously, and because this ad campaign was going to be very high-profile, she sure as hell wanted to make sure she trusted the people in charge. While her manager might claim she needed complete control over everything, that wasn’t true. She just wanted to make sure that the people who were in control were worthy of it.

And she especially needed that right now. It wasn’t, exactly, that this was a comeback—despite everything that had gone on last year, she’d still been working steadily for the past six months. But there was a lot riding on this, and she needed to know it would be damn good.

Her entrance also hadn’t been as last-minute as she’d implied—yes, her manager had only called this morning to say she was coming, but that was intentional. She wanted to know what all of these agencies would put together if they didn’t know she’d be there. It had killed her to be late—unlike most people in L.A., who notoriously ran behind schedule, she usually had to force herself to be two minutes early instead of ten minutes early—but in this situation, it gave her an advantage.

Her presence hadn’t seemed to faze this charmer from the ad agency, though. Sure, he’d given her a very flattering look when she’d walked into the room, but he’d collected himself pretty quickly after that, and she liked everything he was saying during this presentation. A series of commercials and photo shoots for a new phone wasn’t rocket science; she didn’t think most of these campaigns would be all that different from one another, but the people running the shoots always made the difference—she’d seen that over and over.

It surprised her that it was just him and the young assistant with him. Not to stereotype ad agencies—especially the kind she assumed these big Silicon Valley companies used, but she hadn’t expected a Black man to be the lead on one of these presentations. She’d actually expected to be the only Black person in the room for all of this. And she hadn’t missed how he’d sent the assistant over to meet her, or how proud of her he’d looked when she’d walked back over to him. Treating assistants well was always a good sign.

“We wanted to make this phone seem like something that fits into the customer’s lifestyle, not that they’ll have to change their lifestyle around to fit it. And we want to show all of the great new bells and whistles of this phone, but in a relatable way. For instance, we want to show Ms. Gardiner—Anna,” he corrected himself, with a nod and smile at her, “doing things like running around town, someone knocking the phone out of her hand on the sidewalk, or at the beach—and the phone will still work fine afterward. But also . . .”

She appreciated that he wanted someone to knock it out of her hand, and not for her to keep dropping it everywhere.

“And we want to exploit Anna’s natural comedic talent—we’ve all seen how funny she can be, and this is a way to get people to not just remember the commercial, but remember the phone, too.”

That might just be flattery, but it worked—she did have natural comedic talent, damn it! And she hadn’t gotten to show it in a while. She started to ask a follow-up question, but the conference room door swung open.

“Our apologies, everyone.” Two white men and one white woman all walked in and joined the Black guy—Ben, that was his name—at the head of the table. “You all know how it is, trying to fly into SFO first thing in the morning, so much fog. We can do quick introductions and then—” The one white guy who was clearly in charge had been looking around the room as he talked, and he’d looked past her at least three times, until he’d finally realized who she was.