by Thea Devine
Paradise and the surrounding towns could really benefit from an influx of new residents and vacationers. Maybe Carrie could come up with an ad campaign to attract new vacationers—and maybe even new businesses—to the area just the way Paradise’s chamber of commerce had gone after young professionals.
It felt good to be able to take action, even if the payoff would be way in the future. And to push aside all thoughts of Truck. And to make some contacts, athough she hadn’t made a cold call in years.
Carrie started at the chamber of commerce with Peter Stoddard, whom she’d met in passing at the Grange Hall dance. He was a lawyer who had decided that quality of life was worth far more than the partner track at some prestigious law firm. And he meant to make the most of being a fairly big fish in a small pond.
“I like affecting change from the ground up,” he told Carrie as he greeted her in his office on Main Street. He had a small conversational area set up in one corner, and he gestured for her to take a seat in one of the two leather wing chairs. “It could lead to bigger things.”
She could see it clearly—Peter was the kind of man who would get involved, who believed in civic participation, and that kind of dedication might well lead right to municipal and ultimately state politics.
“So what can I do for you?” Peter asked.
“I’d like to help the chamber bring more tourists and business investments to the area.”
Carrie felt his interest prick up immediately.
“I always like to hear about generating dollars in town. How?”
Here came the tricky part. “Advertising and promotion.”
“No money for that, Carrie. You know that.”
“The chamber got you here through advertising and promotion,” Carrie pointed out. “I think if the trilake chambers of commerce pooled their resources, they could afford to take on an experienced freelance advertising director who would handle all aspects of the promotion, from art and copy to timing and placement in the proper media, and that would include outside the state too.”
Peter thought about it a moment. “Okay. And this advertising director would be...?”
“Me. I have fifteen years’ experience in all areas, on all levels with all manner of clients. I’ll leave you a résumé. But what I want you to think about is that this little corner of Maine is one of the best-kept secrets around. It’s rural, but not even an hour from Portland, and within driving distance of Boston. You have summer and winter sports, theater, concerts, museums, university and community functions, an arts community, and on top of that, you have inexpensive housing, decent schools and an employment base that’s second to none.
“There’s an incredible opportunity here for new businesses to come in for no money at all, obtain a willing workforce and all the quality of life that brought you and Tom and others here in the first place. And that was just from some ads in the Portland papers.”
Carrie leaned forward as she saw it all clearly in her mind: what they had to do, where they had to go.
“What if you went farther afield?” she said. “What if you prepared a magazine supplement and got the campaign into every Sunday paper across the country? What if you did a selective mailing to businesses you knew were looking to relocate? What if you contacted everyone who’d gone to camp up here with a promotional piece about the Paradise they knew and loved? What if—”
“Whoa,” Peter held up his hands. “Slow down.”
Carrie sat back. “It’s such a great idea! We could get the radio station involved, and the newspaper—and then create a Web site—”
Peter was shaking his head and laughing. “Okay.”
“What?” She stopped short. She did like a decisive man.
“I said okay. You caught us at the right time. We had some meetings on attracting new businesses just last week. So, write up a proposal. Detail everything, including media expenses, and what you reasonably expect to charge for creating and supervising this campaign. You’ll have to do it on a dime, Carrie, if you expect the chamber to approve it. They’re serious about improving the economy, so this can’t be some New York pie-in-the-sky campaign.”
“I’m a native of Paradise, I know every good thing about it,” she said confidently, then wondered at her certainty. Rather, she knew everything about it from the point of view of a salesperson, not from her heart.
But maybe her heart was beginning to enter into it, she thought after she’d left the meeting with Peter optimistic about her proposal for the first time since she’d come home.
Home...well, well, well—she was thinking of it as home...
Carrie stopped in town to pick up some groceries at Verity’s store, and as she was backing out on her motorcycle she saw a sign in the hardware-store window:
Help Wanted. Part-time.
Carrie shut down the engine and sat there, biting her lip. No. Yes. She wasn’t desperate yet, but her bank balance was diminishing daily, and whatever happened with Peter and the promotion piece, she wouldn’t see any money from it for months. And taxes were upcoming, and payment due to Truck for services rendered—
Oh dear God, can I not stop thinking about Truck?
How bad could it be? Hourly wage. In town. Part-time, so she’d be able to continue working on the project she’d initiated today—if it worked out. Immediate money, and at this point, anything was better than nothing. All good reasons for walking into that store and asking for the job, whatever it was.
Carrie knew how to do that. Sometimes you had to seize the moment, just as she had done with Peter Stoddard not a half hour ago.
“Can I help you?” A gangly teenager met her as she walked in the door of the hardware store.
“Um, the sign in the window,” Carrie said. “I’m interested in the job. Is there someone I could speak to?”
“Yeah...Mr. Longford.” He turned and shouted, “Mr. Longford, Mr. Longford,” and a moment later a tall older man came out of the back of the store and motioned her over.
She held out her hand. “I’m Carrie Spencer,” she said, clasping his. “I live over on the Pond.”
“Sure, sure. I knew your mother, come on in, sit down.”
She followed him to a tiny office in the ell of the antique building that housed the store. His desk was crammed with papers, order forms, a computer and printer, and there were file cabinets spilling over, and shelves piled with catalogs.
Suddenly she had second thoughts. What if the call came? What if someone wanted her tomorrow in Boston or Los Angeles?
Fool. She took a deep breath. “I saw the sign outside. I need an interim position right now, but I honestly couldn’t guarantee I wouldn’t have to leave tomorrow. So maybe this isn’t a good idea...”
“No, no. Sit. Want some coffee? No? Okay. Well, I’ve been advertising in the papers about a month, and I haven’t had any qualified candidates apply for this job. Mainly high-school seniors, but this isn’t stuff I’d entrust to them, even with courses in business under their belts. I’m looking for someone to do the ordering, the bookkeeping, and generally make sense out of a system I’ve allowed to become very sloppy.”
He sent her a rueful smile. “So-o-o, let’s see if we can help each other. The way I understand it, you’ve been downsized and you’ve been looking for a similar position, but you haven’t yet had much luck.”
Carrie blinked, shocked that he knew so much about her. “How do you know that?”
“Everybody knows.”
The scariest words in the English language, she thought.
“So,” Mr. Longford continued, “let me propose you come in and start ordering the chaos for, oh, seven dollars an hour, mornings, eight to noon every day, that is, if you have the experience to handle it, and if something comes through for you, well, we’ll talk about it then.”
“I was a secretary for a lot of years,” Carrie said. “I can handle it.”
“Good. I’d like to hire you. My wife handles payroll. You come in tomorrow first thing, and we�
�ll get started.”
Simple as that. Straightforward, to the point, no convoluted paperwork and interviews.
Carrie stopped off at the bank and told Jeannie.
“Oh good,” Jeannie said. “We can do lunch.”
“I’ll have my calculator call yours,” Carrie said, waving at her. “See you.”
She couldn’t believe how much better she felt, knowing she had a place to go and something to do.
And then she had the wind knocked out of her when she finally got back to the house. Truck had been there, working in the crawlspace and the bathroom, but he was gone. He hadn’t waited for her to come home.
SOMETIMES IT WAS BETTER to be elusive.
That wasn’t usually the male position, Truck thought, but he wanted to keep Came off guard and ravenous—for him...like he was for her. He burned for her all day long, tortured by his memories and fantasies of what he would do once they were together.
Truck didn’t know how he had stayed away from her for three days. He should have stayed this afternoon, should have waited for her, but there was time enough tonight. There would be Carrie in her bed, yearning for the phantom lover who would take her in the dark—there was a fantasy to nourish a man’s desire.
Him. Soon. Loving her. And calling it something else altogether.
Truck eased his way into her house toward midnight, not quite knowing what to expect. The living room was dark as was the den. But the light was on in the kitchen, and Carrie sat at the counter, papers strewn all around her, sketching away, tensing as she heard his step.
He paused on the threshold and watched as she composed herself before she met his gaze.
“I hope you didn’t feel you had to come,” Carrie said finally, as if she hadn’t been sitting there and yearning for him.
“I hope you didn’t feel you had to say that,” he countered, matching her tone. “This is what you want. A hot body in the dark and no contact during the day. I’m here. I’m willing—tonight, and any night—so when you’re in the mood—”
He didn’t finish the sentence and she looked up sharply.
“—just whistle.”
He was on the last porch step when he heard her, damn her for waiting so long. It was one thing to call a bluff. It was another for her to torture him with it.
Truck took his time reentering the house, sloughing off his shirt, his boots, his socks on the way, and unzipping his jeans right to his root, before he got to the kitchen door.
Her throat had gone dry when he appeared in the doorway, his jeans slung low on his hips and unzipped down to there to tantalize her. He was naked under his jeans, his rigid manhood bulging tight. She felt herself quickening, becoming liquid with excitement This was what a phantom lover was for, only this. She slipped off her chair and went to him.
Truck was sitting with his hip nudged against his chair, one foot hooked on the rung; and the other leg splayed outward in a perfect male pose—and all the more devastating because of the mat of hair that covered his belly and went lower and lower.
And as she watched, he levered himself up and undid the zipper all the way. His jeans slid down his hips and legs with the faintest erotic whisper and he kicked them away.
Carrie couldn’t keep her eyes off him. She reached out to grasp him, wanting to feel him, absorb him.
He grabbed her hand before she could touch him, and he drew her in close to him. “Tell me, Carrie. Tell me what.”
“You know what,” she whispered.
“And nothing more,” he murmured. But dear God, he wanted it to be something more.
He hooked the fingers of his free hand in the waistband of her shorts.
“Nothing less.” He slipped them, agonizingly slowly, from her body. She was naked underneath, naked and waiting, for him.
That was all he needed to know. He held her eyes as he braced himself and pushed against her, at the perfect angle to claim her. She moved to meet him, canting her body to receive him by lifting one of her legs over his, and easing his way in.
And then they were face-to-face, connected in the most erotic way possible, not moving, not speaking, not kissing. Just feeling the deep power of their connection, and the radiating sense of fullness. It wasn’t the same frenzied coupling as the last time. It was long and almost lazy.
Carrie held on tight, letting him dictate the moves, reveling in the pleasure of his hands on her, and in the sweet slow slide of him possessing her.
Her climax came out of nowhere, one moment low and slow, the next a blowtorch of sensation that blasted her body and dissolved her right into his culmination.
Then she left him, just for a moment, just to prepare. She wanted to spend the night with him, she wanted him in her bed. But when she returned, her phantom lover had disappeared.
CARRIE ARRANGED to have lunch with Jeannie after her first day working at Longford’s, and they met at the Country Roads Restaurant just outside of town.
Jeannie was dressed to sexy-lady perfection and the sight of her startled Carrie all over again.
“So,” Jeannie said after they’d ordered. “What do you think?”
“I think the previous secretary made a mess of things,” Carrie said. “It’s going to take a while to straighten out, and to learn the ordering system. But things are slow right now, Mr. Longford tells me, so...I should have some time to learn my way around his system.”
“Sounds good. Sounds like just what you needed.”
“Maybe,” Carrie agreed.
“Did you tell Truck you were working there?”
“No,” Carrie said, more sharply than she’d intended. “Why should I?”
Jeannie grinned at her. “Why shouldn’t you? Did you know he’s performing at the festival Saturday with the band?”
“I didn’t know that. No reason I should.”
“Jeez, Carrie, the guy’s working on your house for practically nothing. The least you could do is be a little neighborly.”
“Well, speaking of that,” Carrie said, more to distract Jeannie than to read her the riot act, “what about Tom?”
Jeannie flushed. “He’s a friend. He’s our vet, actually.”
“And he’ll be there Saturday.”
“For the animals,” Jeannie put in.
“Right, for the animals.”
“You’re tough, Carrie.”
“You’re more stubborn than I. You’ve been trying to hatch up something between me and Truck since I got home.” There, throw her off the scent.
“Well, why not? I don’t think he ever got over you.”
“There was nothing to get over, not after fifteen years.”
“I know my Trucker,” Jeannie said affectionately. “Guys like him simmer forever. I told you that he usually goes out of town. Well, he hasn’t been going out of town that anyone’s noticed.”
“For heaven’s sake, Jeannie.” Carrie lost her appetite. “And if everyone knows that much about him, what do you think they know about you? Especially after all these radical changes you’ve made.”
“They know I’ve made changes. They know about Eddie. They know I’m friends with Truck and Tom and about a half-dozen other guys I can think of, and they know I’m looking pretty damn good these days.”
“And they’re calculating that one plus four makes two,” Carrie said.
“Fine if they do. It would be pretty interesting to be viewed as a femme fatale for a change. Ladies, hide your husbands. Jeannie Gerardo is on the town.”
“Jeannie, I know you’re joking, but this is serious and I feel partly responsible for it.”
Jeannie dropped her sandwich. “Don’t be stupid, Carrie. All you did was give me the motivation to do what I always dreamed of doing.”
“Do you hear yourself? What did you always dream of doing?”
“Dressing flashier, sexier. Getting noticed. Attracting men.” There was a wealth of loneliness and yearning behind her lighthearted words.
“Well, you’ve done that for sure,” Car
rie murmured, not certain where she wanted to take her objections. Maybe Jeannie wasn’t talking about leaving Eddie at all. Maybe she was just trying to get his attention, and it was working, but in some perverse, unexpected way. And in the meantime, Jeannie was enjoying her new look and her newfound confidence. So why did she have a problem with that?
She didn’t, Carrie decided. What worried her really were the long-term consequences, but no one could predict what they’d be.
“It’s kinda nice, too,” Jeannie said. “Getting noticed, I mean. But that’s not something you’d understand. Everyone notices you.”
“Not before I got big blond hair, they didn’t,” Carrie said. “You have to stop thinking that I just emerged like this. This—me—took lots of hard work. Everything was hard for me. The business with Truck senior year. Going to college. Living away from home. Worrying about my mother. The guilt You can’t believe the guilt I felt being five hundred miles away. And the jobs. They used to start secretaries in advertising departments out on less than Longford is paying me now. And the competition was fierce. Everyone fresh out of college went right to some creative department as a secretary, hoping to get a break someday.
“Then there was the salary that never covered the rent, roommates either bad or indifferent, failed relationships, moves from agency to agency trying to better your position. And finally, the client bureaucracy that used to hang us up over every line of dialogue, every angle of a scene in the commercials. I won’t even tell you how many campaigns got trashed. How many focus groups dictated what the client would advertise.”
“Then why,” Jeannie said, puzzled by her passion, “were you ever in that business?”
“Because...” Did she really know why? Carrie wondered. Had she ever known? Was it purely the risk of walking on the edge of the knife every day? Had she been doing anything creative in the last few years, really, that she could justify her need to sacrifice herself all over again?
And she would do so again, in a heartbeat when the call came.
“Because,” she said again, “that’s what I wanted to do, I guess. I mean, it sounded just as glamorous from my standpoint as it sounds from yours. And it’s not. It probably never was.”