My office isn't an office. It's a small conference room that I took over as my personal workspace. I had a main table in the middle, though I'd gotten rid of all the chairs but four to give me more room in there. I rarely had more than another two people in there, so it worked fine. I had a low storage piece on both sides of the room, and a large flatscreen TV mounted on the far wall for video calls with clients. On the wall that I faced was an old fashioned cork board that I used when working on new projects to put up ideas on.

Nobody said anything about me stealing the room, because they knew I needed the extra space to do everything I needed. Since I was doing other jobs on top of my own, having the big table to spread out on, and cabinets to keep logs on every client was a huge help. If I was feeling spiteful, I could easily stop doing that and let the people that should be doing those jobs flounder. But I'm nice, so I don't. Besides, that would sink half of our clients, and I wouldn't want to make a mess for my coworkers.

This floor office had five other conference rooms. Three other small ones like mine, and a pair of big ones where we had staff meetings. Evidently, like this one. With that much space, nobody minded my use of one of the little ones too much. We hadn't had a meeting like this since we were in the running for a job for Apple, which we'd botched. It was pretty bad when Bryan gave a presentation, and then Jax got up to follow him and contradicted everything he'd just said. What a pair! I was just glad it hadn't been my pitch, or I'd have been pissed.

The meeting today wasn't with the entire staff, just those of us reporting to Bryan and Jax. They loved to refer to us as the Dragon team. I have no idea why, but I guess they thought it sounded cool. Oh, and there was a new girl sitting up at the head of the table with them. She was very young, with short brown hair in a wavy little cut while wearing a nice black button down shirt that showed just the hint of some nice breasts. Not that I was looking of course. Knowing the way things worked around here, she'd be banging Jax or Bryan by the end of the week. Or both. Looks like one of them had a new personal assistant, or maybe someone new in accounting.

"Thanks for joining us, Kris!" Jax called from the head of the table, no doubt trying to make me look bad for being the last one into a meeting that I didn't know existed. Yeah, I don't care asshole. Anyone with a brain knew better that to think it was anything other than a ploy to make me look bad.

"Any time, Jax. Sorry I didn't get the invite." Oh, and fuck you, there was no invite.

Bryan cleared his throat to make sure all eyes pivoted to him. "This is a very exciting day here. We have two things happening, and I'll get the easy one out of the way first. This is Brooklynn, our new senior copywriter. She'll be working with Kris, so try to be patient as she gets settled in."

I almost choked on my own saliva. A senior copywriter? She looked like she could still be in high school! What the hell! And why she was working with me? I always work alone! I guess I was babysitting the new girl. Lucky me. I'm sure that would go well.

"Now, here is the other exciting news," Bryan continued. "Nike is throwing an open pitch for a new campaign."

At that point the whole room erupted into chaos. I'd heard rumors that they were less than pleased with their last ad agency that staged a gimmick tortoise race that involved little sneakers on the tortoises, not realizing that they were an endangered species, and it only got worse from there. Hard to believe the tortoises didn't want to race! Whatever the reason, if they wanted to throw open a competition, I was down to try for that!

"Calm down people!" Jax bellowed. "Let Bryan finish!"

"Thanks, Jax. Nike would like to sponsor a new team, a new league or a new player, and then do an ad campaign around them. They've already done that in many pro and college ranks, but they need something new and different. We need to find them something big, something that they can own and promote in a new campaign that will take off. We need a campaign that will blow their sneakers off!" He just couldn't help but chuckle at his little jest. "Each team here will be spending time coming up with a pitch, and we have four weeks until the deadline. That means that for the next month we're going to bust our asses! Also, there is a promotion on the line here. We need a new creative director to help out the teams, so good luck! Now, does anyone have any questions?"

Not me, I was good. But several others did.

"Bryan, how much time should we spend on this, we're already pretty swamped with other work," Elliot asked.

"Elliot, if we land this account, then it would be a jetpack ride to the damned moon for our branch. Having the Nike brand under our belt would announce that we've arrived." Bryan just smirked after spouting all that crap that didn't answer the question at all.

I already knew that I'd end up sleeping at the office for a while just to clean up all my existing projects so that I could concentrate on the new one as quickly as possible. Not to mention I'd be breaking in a new copywriter! I could only pray that none of our existing clients needed anything pressing, or that Bryan and Jax would actually do their jobs.

Yeah, there was no chance of that.

But that didn't mean I couldn't still get this done. If my ideas won us the Nike job, then there was no way I wouldn't get a promotion this time. And if it didn't, if they gave it to someone else, then it would look good on my resume. Elliot probably had a better chance than I did, not that I could hold it against him since he deserved it too, because they loved hiring men. If they went by performance, I should have had it years ago. Did they really think I would keep putting up with this over and over? I guess I'd proven them right if they did. I should have left last time, but I stuck it out. But this was the last time I would do so. This time it was a promotion, or I was gone.

With the meeting over, I headed back to my conference room, closed the door, and sat down at my laptop. I had the whole conference table to use as my desk and to spread out storyboards or notes or whatever else my brain needed to get a creative spark ignited. There was room for another laptop, but I wasn't sure that I wanted the new girl in here. Damnit, I already forgot her name! I guess it couldn't hurt, we might be able to brainstorm more together than if she was in a cubicle like the other teams used for their setups.

I needn't have worried. Not five minutes after I sat down, Jax opened the door without knocking and stepped into the room with the new girl. "I didn't see you in your cubicle, so I brought Brooke here," he said. "You guys should find some cubicles together so it's easier to work."

"Jax, I haven't used a cubicle in over four years. You know this. Everyone knows this," I reminded him. "Why you looked there is beyond me. Brooke will be in here with me, we can bounce ideas off each other a lot easier if we're sitting together in a quiet environment. If you were smart, you'd have the office reconfigured, so each creative team had a similar setup."

He turned red around the neck, obviously fuming. I don't know why he expected some sort of subservient response from me though, he hated me as much as I hated him. "I'll take that into consideration. Brooke, I'm sure I'll be seeing a lot of you." He ran his hand down her back, and she quickly jerked away, then stepped into the room and sat down opposite me.

Since Jax had been so kind to leave the door open, I got back up and closed it. I liked to listen to my music, and not the conversations of people in the hallway, while I was concentrating on my work.

"He doesn't seem to like you much," she said in a soft voice. I looked over at her and studied her face. She was very pretty, with a fair complexion, short brown hair and warm brown eyes that had a friendly twinkle in them. I could see why Jax would want to stake his claim. But unless my gaydar was way off, he had no chance.

"The feeling is mutual. He and Bryan are assholes, man whores and suck the life out of the company by doing the absolute minimum at their job while getting others to cover for them. Pretty sure they've slept with almost every woman in the office, in some cases at the same time, and I'm sure they'll be after you soon," I said bitterly.

"Oh, I know but I'm not worried about them. I've known they were pigs for years. Though I'll judge their work performance myself thanks." Her voice got hard as she spoke, and I looked up sharply at her. She then looked me in the eye. "Jax has been after me since I was 18, but I've made sure he knows very well I only like girls. And as for Bryan, he's my brother so I'd prefer not to hear you bad mouthing my family. They built this company from the ground up with my dad, so I know they work hard."

And just like that I knew who was winning the promotion competition. She seemed ok, and for all I knew she didn't even realize what was about to happen, but I was already resenting that I was in another competition for a promotion that was fixed from the beginning. Because there was no way that Zach wasn't promoting his daughter. She obviously been fed a load of horseshit if she thought those three built the company too, but there wasn't much I could do about it. She was an Adkins after all.

But it didn't mean I wasn't going to do everything I could to win this new competition. Not only did I want to win the company pitch that would be presented, but I wanted Nike to pick it too. This was all or nothing. That meant doing a ton of research on Nike too, because it wasn't just an ad campaign, it was deciding who they should spend money on and what that new exposure could get them.

I liked that thought. Researching was something that always gave me an edge, because I could help the client even when they didn't know what they wanted.

We were going to win this bid. And then I'd be leaving.

***

A/N - Okay, so I may have mentioned this before. This story does tie into (and was inspired by) my short story TDFL (Tongue Dominance Fighting League) that is the third chapter of my Short Story Soup short story collection. If you haven't read that, you may want to, if only to understand what you're getting yourselves into! I should point out, that story is completely ridiculous, meaning that this book is based on a ludicrous sporting event. But. It doesn't mean it won't be fun!