Love and War

by Peg Sutherland

  In Drew’s opinion, infinitely bigger wasn’t necessarily better.

  “You still haven’t convinced me we even need a marketing director,” he had grumbled on the day Jake told him who they’d decided to hire for the new position.

  “And I never will,” Jake had said. “You’re still content to be a mom-and-pop operation. Britt and I think we can do more.”

  Drew and his cousin rarely disagreed, at least not anymore. They had disagreed plenty as kids, growing up in the same tiny apartment with their widowed mothers, who were sisters, and Drew’s siblings. Drew’s mother had always been too stubborn to accept any of the help Grandpa Stirling offered, so times had been tough. But now Drew knew how valuable that extended family had been. Drew had been just enough younger that Jake had wanted nothing to do with him—until Jake got old enough to realize how much Drew needed a big brother. He’d stepped in, guiding his cousin through high school, helping him line up a scholarship, then pointing him toward a career in sales. Between Jake’s steady influence and Clarence’s lifelong involvement, Drew had grown up a lot better adjusted than most boys without fathers.

  Jake had called his cousin in as a consultant in the early days of Yes! Yogurt, when he and Britt were still struggling to get the company off the ground. So although Drew hadn’t joined the business full-time until about six months ago, he had been in on it from the ground floor, giving his advice on sales and marketing techniques as it grew.

  Somehow, when he’d joined them half a year ago, he’d thought they were content with the company’s level of success.

  “Okay,” he had countered when Jake announced the decision about the marketing director, “if you’re determined to do this, at least do it right. On paper, this Murphy woman looks awfully young to handle the position.”

  “She’s twenty-five,” Jake had said.

  “That’s barely seasoned in business and you know it.”

  “She’s worked for us three summers, in every area of the business,” Jake said. “She knows Yes! Yogurt almost as well as Britt does. Besides, she spent more than a year as an assistant at International Baking.”

  Drew sighed. A beginning position for a year or so at a big conglomerate meant nothing, but try telling that to Jake and Britt.

  “She probably spent most of that year doing grunt work—drafting proposals for the real power in the marketing department and tracking down demographic data to support whatever conclusion somebody else wanted to prove,” he had argued. “If we’re going to have this kind of help on board, let’s at least get somebody who can pull her weight in the industry.”

  Jake and Britt had the final say, of course, although they sometimes made decisions based more on sentimentality than on horse sense. Drew told himself he would make the best of the situation.

  But before he left the boardinghouse, he dashed back upstairs. If Anna had noticed the necktie, so would Britt and Jake. And they would also know why he’d worn it. So he left the tie on his dresser, swapping at the last minute for his usual khakis and cable-knit sweater.

  He assured himself, as he stepped gingerly through the fresh snow and coaxed to life the reluctant engine of his no-longer-new sedan, that the seven years he had on Ms. Murphy would be all the advantage he needed.

  The drive to Yes! Yogurt, headquartered in an old farmhouse near the edge of Britt’s land, took longer than usual. The new-fallen snow had been rendered even more treacherous by a layer of sleet on top. And, as so often happened, Drew hadn’t allowed extra time to get to the office, so he was pushing the clock by the time he skidded to a halt in the slick drive.

  The meeting with Britt, Jake and the new marketing director was to have started five minutes ago.

  Damn! Drew walked through the front door, casting off coat and gloves. He’d wanted a few minutes to collect himself, to make sure he was in the right frame of mind before he went into this meeting. He’d wanted another quick glance at the résumé of this young woman, just to make sure nothing caught him by surprise.

  As usual, he was running late. As usual, he’d have to wing it.

  While making a quick dash through his office to retrieve his files, Drew mentally reviewed what he knew about Alexandra Murphy. Sandy, everyone called her. Another reflection of her youth, he thought. She’d worked on some high-profile projects for International Baking, one of the giants in the food industry. And she had grown up in Tyler. That was about the extent of her credentials. Under the circumstances, establishing himself as the one in charge should be a piece of cake.

  The problem was, it wasn’t the kind of maneuvering Drew liked to participate in and it unsettled him. He wasn’t here to play politics. He was here because he liked the challenges without the power plays that came with this level of business in the corporate world.

  Nevertheless, he’d been around long enough to know that this morning’s initial meeting with Ms. Alexandra Murphy would set the tone for their relationship. He intended to let her know in no uncertain terms that he was the one to whom she must prove herself. As vice president of sales, he was the one she had to please with her marketing plan. He was the one who knew how to get Yes! Yogurt into the hands of consumers. Her only role was to deliver the marketing tools he needed, when he needed them.

  Despite Drew’s best intentions, this felt suspiciously like the same kind of turfism and manipulation he’d left Chicago to escape.

  He frowned as he searched every drawer in his desk for a pencil. Why the heck hadn’t they hired a director of pencils and staples instead of a marketing person? Now that was something they needed.

  The tap on his door was followed by Britt Marshack ducking her headful of strawberry-blond curls into his office. “Good. You are here.”

  “I’m here,” he grumbled, finally grabbing a leaking ballpoint, the only thing he could find. “But all my pencils have taken the day off.”

  Britt walked over, shoved a stack of mail to one side and revealed a Chicago Bears mug filled with pens and pencils. Drew grabbed one and grinned.

  “You’re indispensable, Mrs. Marshack.”

  “I know. And you’re late.”

  “You wouldn’t notice that if you and that cousin of mine weren’t so compulsive about being on time.”

  Feeling frazzled before things even started, Drew followed Britt to the former dining room, which they now used as a conference room. Damn, but he hadn’t meant to be late today.

  From his first glimpse of Alexandra Murphy, he wished he’d worn the tie.

  She sat with her back to the French doors separating the conference room from the hallway, wearing a tailored red suit with a bit of white silk showing above the collar in back. Dark hair had been skinned into a neat, no-nonsense bun low on the back of her head. The suit had shoulder pads, but it wouldn’t have mattered; those shoulders looked squared and no-nonsense even without the extra help.

  Alexandra Murphy knew the importance of first impressions, too, and she was obviously here to impress. Drew’s mood continued to sink.

  He walked around the table to sit with Britt, and knew as soon as he looked Ms. Murphy in the eye that this day held more headaches than he’d dreamed.

  Yes! Yogurt’s new director of marketing was the impish young woman he’d flirted with at Worthington House the afternoon before—the one whose delicious smile had kept swimming before his eyes at dinnertime.

  He’d already made his first impression, and he wasn’t entirely sure it was the one he’d wanted to make.

  CHAPTER THREE

  EVERY SHRED OF self-confidence Sandy had brought into the meeting vanished in the time it took her to blink twice and swallow hard.

  Her red power suit didn’t help. Her grandmother’s choker-length pearls didn’t help. Her Marian the Librarian hair didn’t help. The outward composure she had mastered from mimicking Gin Luckawicz had n
ever failed her so utterly. As the vice president of sales eased, wide-eyed, into the chair across the antique oak table from her, Sandy felt like a kid caught with her hand in the candy jar.

  A jelly bean jar, to be exact.

  She barely heard the introductions. But it did sink in that she was to have no reprieve, no second chance. This was Drew Stirling, the one man in town she had been most apprehensive about impressing.

  Well, she had impressed him all right. Impressed him as a stammering, blushing, flirty girl who had a cartoon grandmother besides.

  She had only one choice. She had to prove to him that yesterday had been a fluke. Sandy Murphy did not flirt, was not easily intimidated. Sandy Murphy didn’t even like jelly beans, much less sneak them.

  Thrusting her hand across the table, she told herself there was some slim chance that if she pretended they’d never met, he might even fall for it.

  “I’m looking forward to working with you,” she said, giving him her best corporate smile and gripping his hand firmly. It was cool and long-fingered, and served as a reminder that hers was damp and probably even shaking. “Britt tells me you’ve made real strides in sales over the past six months.”

  Sandy took in his reaction and was relieved to discover Drew Stirling had one of those faces that hid nothing. The man would be dead meat in a poker game. No wonder he’d come to Tyler, far away from corporate one-upmanship. With his boyishly open face, he would be unarmed on the boardroom battlefields. She watched, fascinated, as his mood switched from surprise to dismay to amusement.

  He ended up with a look of sheer determination. Sandy wasn’t sure what that meant, under the circumstances, but she made up her mind to meet him with equal determination.

  With that reaction firmly in place on his mobile face, he asked, “Can I presume we’ll make even greater strides in the next six months?”

  What little bit of Sandy’s confidence had remained now fizzled and died, but she struggled not to let it show. His challenge wasn’t subtle. And she decided immediately that it rose out of his unfortunate first impression of her the evening before. Her heart began to thump fiercely. She had to do something to redeem herself and she had to do it right away, before that impression carved itself indelibly into Drew Stirling’s consciousness.

  “Absolutely,” she said, leaning forward slightly in her chair and adopting the toughest tone at her command. “Our present marketing strategy is...”

  She glanced at Britt, who looked a bit startled at how quickly this gambit for the upper hand had developed in Yes! Yogurt’s cozy little headquarters. Sandy hadn’t intended to launch into this right away. Her strategy had been to move in cautiously, allow everyone time to gain some confidence in her. Then and only then had she planned to suggest—one at a time—the changes that were so clearly needed.

  Thanks to ever-outspoken Gran and a fistful of jelly beans, Sandy needed her big guns right now—as a diversionary tactic to make Yes! Yogurt’s vice president of sales forget his first encounter with his new marketing director.

  “Don’t be shy,” Drew prodded. “We’re all eager to get your reaction.”

  Sandy doubted it. But she willed her breath to come slowly. “Frankly, you don’t have much of a marketing strategy. You’re shotgunning at the market.”

  “Shotgunning?”

  Sandy had the strangest feeling, as if she and Drew were alone in the conference room. Jake had settled back in his chair, to all appearances simply intending to enjoy the unexpected show. Britt’s expression said she might not enjoy the show, but it certainly had her mesmerized. The only thing Sandy knew to do was plunge ahead. If she got herself fired this morning, at least she would have the rest of the day to get on the phone and see if one of the other jobs she’d been offered was still available.

  “You’re sending out a lot of scattershot messages to different segments of the market,” she said, growing more sure of herself as she warmed to her topic. “Even your logo isn’t used consistently. I’ve taken a look at all your marketing materials—and there isn’t much, other than your packaging and a couple of print ads in food-industry journals—and can’t discern a cohesive message about what Yes! Yogurt is.”

  “You want to change our packaging?” Drew said, zeroing in on one of those things she really hadn’t intended to bring up right now.

  Sandy refused to be sidetracked. “That’s a minor point. What really concerns me—and should concern everyone at this table—is that your identity is weak in the marketplace.”

  Drew didn’t look troubled. “Dairy distributors all over the country aren’t having a lot of trouble figuring out what we’re all about.”

  “You’ve had some good luck,” Sandy conceded, “mostly due to the fact that Britt created such a unique product to start with. But at a time when yogurt sales have mushroomed all over the country—all over the world—your numbers should look better. In fact, they will look better.”

  She paused to give each of the three people in the room an unwavering look. “I guarantee it.”

  Britt appeared surprised, Jake thoughtful. Drew seemed merely skeptical. “How?”

  Some of Sandy’s inner quaking returned. The voice of reason in her head screamed that now wasn’t the time to do this. She didn’t yet know whose toes she would be trampling with her suggestions and criticisms. What she was doing was corporate suicide.

  She plunged ahead anyway.

  “First, we’ll need some market studies.”

  She saw him barely stop himself from rolling his eyes—a familiar look from those who didn’t fully understand marketing. On him it was almost cute. This might be easier, she thought, if he didn’t have such compelling eyes and such a boyish smile.

  “I know,” she said, smiling herself as she felt the familiar ground of market research beneath her feet. “You’re not alone. Most people in sales want results without the homework. They like to think the product sells based on the sheer magnetism of their personalities. But if you want to take Yes! Yogurt to the twenty-first century, you need to know what your consumers want, not what you want to shove down their throats.”

  Britt finally spoke up. “But won’t that take a lot of time?” She glanced at Jake. “And money?”

  Sandy turned to the friend who had given her not only this opportunity, but her first real job during college. “It doesn’t have to, if you know what you’re doing.”

  Again, Drew was there with a challenge. “And you do?”

  “I certainly do.”

  Their gazes locked. Sandy saw respect in his bright, pale eyes, and that pleased her. But it was tempered with a touch of humor and a bit of impatience. It dawned on her that Drew Stirling didn’t want her here to begin with. Young or mature, experienced or not, a marketing director wasn’t exactly welcome on Drew’s territory.

  Something else crept into his expression, then was instantly banished. Sandy wouldn’t have noticed it at all, except that she had seen the same thing in his eyes the day before. When Drew looked at her, he saw a woman. And that kind of awareness appeared to be something he wasn’t willing to bring into this conference room.

  Seeing that in him forced Sandy to admit that she, too, liked what she saw of the man across the table. That had never happened to her at the office, and as she’d watched her former boss’s personal soap opera unfold these past six months, she’d sworn it never would. Shrewd, talented Gin had finally, with middle age staring her in the face, fallen in love. Unfortunately, she’d fallen in love with one of the vice presidents at International Baking. At first, no one had seen a problem. Then someone had suggested that Gin’s department got more attention at board meetings than other departments. Next, someone questioned whether the budget for Gin’s department was subject to less scrutiny than those of other department heads.

  Soon the accusations became so vicious that someone had to
go. That someone had been Gin.

  Sandy felt the rush of anguish and anger that always came when she pondered Gin’s fate.

  And now, as she admitted to herself what was playing at least a small part in the friction between herself and Drew Stirling, Sandy also felt a rush of anxiety. She tried to ignore it, to tell herself that because she recognized where her thoughts were straying she could now control them. To prove it to herself, she smiled at him. It was a mistake. His determined expression turned a bit more combative.

  “I’m sure you’ll bring some excellent ideas to the table, Ms. Murphy,” he began. “But for the moment, why don’t you slow down and get your feet wet before you suggest shaking up the whole company?”

  A couple of sharp responses formed in Sandy’s head, none of which she considered appropriate for a business meeting. While she groped for a businesslike reaction, Drew turned to Britt and Jake, opened a folder and said, “Let’s see what we can do about this outlet store Britt wants to open in town. I’ve got some information on a couple of buildings available to rent at a reasonable rate. Is this really the direction we want to take?”

  Sandy saw her own worst-case scenario shaping up on her very first day on the job: her ideas were being dismissed, her experience called into question.

  What would her mentor at International Baking tell her? For the moment, nothing came to mind. The vast reservoir of wisdom Gin had shared during the sixteen months they’d worked together had momentarily gone dry. Okay, then, what would Gran tell her?

  Give ’em something to talk about, girl.

  She grinned as she recalled some of Mag’s advice on life and business, then looked up in time to catch Drew watching her instead of Britt, who was reviewing the reasons for opening the outlet store in Tyler. Good. Let him worry about what her own expression meant. Let those committees in his head get together and talk about what she might be up to. She deepened her smile.

  He tried not to look at her during the rest of the ninety-minute meeting. But Sandy was alert enough to realize it was a struggle for him.