by Kara Lennox
Max grinned. “I told you you were good. If Erin Freeman thinks you are, too…that’s not something to sneeze at.”
“But I have a job and a child to take care of. I don’t have time to put together a portfolio.”
“You did…what, four drawings in one night? Do a few more, and you have a portfolio. I’ll give you the time off if you need it.”
“But…why?” Didn’t he need her? Oh, Lord, was her job in jeopardy? She always came back to that fear.
“Because you deserve to succeed. Yes, I want to keep you as an employee, but I don’t want to hold you back. If something better comes along, take it. Don’t worry about me.”
That was just about the most unselfish thing anyone had ever said to her. No one had ever told her she deserved anything.
“Thank you, Max. But I like working at the Remington Agency. It’s exciting. I might like to do portraits as a sideline…Oh, I feel so guilty.”
“Guilty?”
“This was supposed to be Kaylee’s chance to shine, and I stole her big moment.”
“You didn’t steal anything. It was handed to you. Anyway, the door is still open for Kaylee.”
“Yeah, if I can come up with the money for pictures. Which really is out of the question right now. I bet this photographer charges a fortune.”
“I’ll pay for it.”
“What? Max, no.”
“She deserves—”
“I won’t be in debt to you. One promise I made to myself after the divorce was that I would live within my means, no matter what. Kaylee can wait until I’ve saved the funds to pay a photographer.”
“No strings attached.”
Oh, but there would be strings. She could already feel them pulling on her, drawing her into a closer emotional bond with Max. And that was crazy—for all the reasons she’d gone over and over in her head.
“I appreciate the offer, but no,” she said firmly.
The drive home was quiet. Kaylee napped through most of it, and Jane looked out the window, unable to stop herself from reliving this morning’s breakfast debacle.
Then she remembered something, and she simply had to speak. “Max, who is Laura Ann, and why was mentioning her name such a threat to Scott?”
Max looked decidedly uncomfortable. “I’m not sure you want to know.”
“Yeah, I do.” She glanced into the backseat. “Kaylee’s fast asleep. You can tell me.”
Max stared straight ahead. “I didn’t take it seriously when Scott said he would ruin me, but when I mentioned it to Cooper, he went into lawyer mode. He did some digging around and came up with a few skeletons in your ex’s closet. Laura Ann is an old flame…”
“Go on.”
“He saw her on and off through your whole marriage.”
“Huh.” Jane couldn’t muster much of a reaction. Perhaps she’d already known, on some level, that Scott hadn’t been faithful.
“I’m sorry.”
She reached across and touched his arm. “No, you did the right thing, and it really doesn’t bother me. I am well and truly over him.”
Max smiled. “Good.”
THE FOLLOWING MONDAY, as Max readied the conference room for a client meeting, he still wondered why he’d offered to pay for Kaylee’s modeling photos.
Jane and Kaylee were in no way his responsibility, and it wasn’t like him to just hand out money because he had a generous heart. Yeah, he used to be the guy who always bought another round of drinks and took clients and girlfriends to the most expensive restaurant in town. But he’d always had an angle.
What possible angle did he have with Jane?
It was a good thing she’d turned down his offer. He didn’t have wads of disposable cash like he used to. He couldn’t just go throwing it around. He needed his liquid assets to keep the agency afloat. Pay salaries. Buy food.
“Mr. Remington, your two o’clock meeting is here,” Carol said over the intercom in her most obsequious voice. He had to hand it to her, she knew how to play it just right. The client was a local bank. It wasn’t an account on the level of Kidz’n’Stuff, but it was decent. And the marketing guy was a stuffed shirt who would appreciate formality.
Max had actually put on a tie for the occasion.
He went to the reception area and greeted the two men and a woman who’d come for the meeting. Both men tried to crush his hand when they shook, and he struggled not to wince.
He couldn’t show weakness.
When they were all assembled in the conference room, he suddenly realized he’d made a tactical error. It was three against one. He was a lone guy, which made him look like small potatoes. He needed a team, like they had.
“Excuse me for just one moment. Let me get my…associate.”
He stepped into Jane’s office, where she sat engrossed in her computer graphics, as usual. Even if he didn’t have work for her to do, she was always experimenting with the program, learning new tricks, poring over the pages of the instruction manual with a highlighter and sticky notes.
“Jane.”
She jumped, as she usually did when he interrupted her work. “What?” She blinked at him owlishly.
“I want you to sit in on my meeting with Coastal Bank.”
“Really?” She stood and looked down at herself. “Do I look okay?”
More than okay. Her tailored slacks skimmed her slim hips and accentuated long legs and a tiny waist, and though there was nothing overtly sexy about her silk blouse, he could see the shape of her breasts clearly.
His mouth watered. “You look great. But grab your jacket.”
“Do I have to say anything?”
“Just nod when I speak and look utterly supportive.”
She smiled. “I can do that.”
Max didn’t waste time on idle getting-to-know-you chit-chat. He sensed this group would want to get right to it. So after a few preliminary comments, he dimmed the lights and started his PowerPoint presentation.
Max had pitched this bank because he thought their ads were stale and old-fashioned. He believed their image needed a face-lift, especially when two national banks with big budgets had opened branch offices in Port Clara in the past year.
He showed them some ideas for new logos, expertly drafted by Jane, and then some ad concepts featuring young, hip-looking people.
“But those people don’t look like our customers,” the marketing manager complained.
“Ah, but they could be your customers.”
“Older people are the ones with money,” the woman pointed out.
“True, but in a few years, younger people will be older, and they’ll have money, too. When they start thinking about retirement funds, or college funds for the kids, wouldn’t it be nice if they were already loyal to Coastal Bank?”
“But that logo,” the older man complained. “It’s just too modern. I wouldn’t trust a bank with a logo that would be more at home on the front of a video store.”
“We’re certainly not married to that idea,” Max said smoothly.
Jane cleared her throat. “So what you’re looking for is a logo that says, ‘We’re safe, we’re secure, we’ve been around a long time,’ but also something that says, ‘We’re progressive, we’re not stodgy or old-fashioned.’”
Max shot her a warning look, but she studiously avoided looking at him.
“Well, yes, young lady, that’s exactly right.”
“What if we took your current logo and modified it slightly. Keep the type, keep the colors, but clean up that ship and make it more abstract. Give everything a 3-D look.”
“I’m not sure what you mean,” the older man said uncertainly.
Jane whipped out her sketchpad, which she brought with her everywhere. Had she foreseen that the client wouldn’t like Max’s concept?
She flipped to a page that already had the beginnings of her concept. When she and Max had discussed this, he had nixed the idea. She added a few lines to the drawing. He couldn’t believe how quickly the l
ogo took shape. Rough still, but easy to visualize the end result.
The bank’s team studied it. They studied it a long time.
Finally the older man looked up. “I like this. You fix this up and put it in the new ads, and I think we can do business. But…that kid with the beard. I don’t want him in my ad.”
“That’s no problem,” Max said. “You can approve the models before we move forward.”
There were handshakes all around. Max agreed to meet with the team again in a week, and he and Jane walked them to the door.
Once the door to the hallway was closed, Max took a deep breath. He waited until he was sure the bank people were safely on the elevator. Then he turned to a beaming Jane.
“What the hell did you think you were doing back there?”
Chapter Eight
Jane’s stomach plummeted. Here she’d been feeling on top of the world, so pleased by the successful outcome of the meeting.
But one sharp word from Max, and she was crushed.
She straightened her spine. “I was saving your bacon, what do you think I was doing?”
“Your instructions were to smile and nod.”
“I smiled and nodded for six years when I was married to Scott. I’ve decided I won’t do that anymore. Are you saying you wish I hadn’t said anything? Because those three people were getting ready to bail. You’d lost them.”
“I hadn’t lost them. Listen, I can persuade anyone to do anything. It’s my gift.”
“So you think the right thing to do was persuade them to go with a logo they didn’t like?”
“That bank needs to step into the twenty-first century.”
“Are you saying my ad doesn’t do that? It’s bold, it’s modern—”
“And I told you yesterday it wouldn’t work.”
“But they like it,” she argued.
“My job isn’t just to land accounts. My job is to create advertising that pulls in business.”
Carol looked on from her desk, obviously fascinated.
Jane pushed up her sleeves. “My logo is going to drive people away? Is that what you’re saying?”
“You might know a lot about art, but you know nothing about marketing.”
“So educate me. What, in your expert opinion, is wrong with my logo?”
“Well, it’s…it’s too much like their old logo.”
Jane took a step back. She walked to the coffeemaker and poured herself some in a foam cup, giving herself time to think. He was her boss, and she was obligated to do what he said. But he was also being pigheaded here.
“I think you don’t like it because you didn’t think of it. You want to be the boy genius behind everything. It’s why you didn’t show Kidz’n’Stuff the sketch I did with my own concept. You want to keep me in my place.”
“Whoa, girl,” Carol said, a cautionary note in her voice.
Max stomped around the reception room. There wasn’t much room to stomp, so he ended up right next to her again. The frond from an overhead Boston fern tickled his hair, and he brushed it away, annoyed. “That is so utterly not true. I believe in teamwork.”
“Then why did you tell me I should just smile and nod during the meeting?”
Carol’s jaw dropped. “Max, you didn’t really say that, did you?”
“Because each person on the team,” Max said steadily, “needs to work to their own strengths.”
“Fine. I’ll stick to my colored pencils and I won’t say a word. But don’t ask me to any more meetings. Do you want me to work up that logo or not?”
“We’re committed to it now.”
“I guess that’s a yes.”
“Work it into the ads. I’ll see if I can find some stock photos of young people without beards. I’ll need it all by the meeting next week.”
“Yes, sir.” She clicked her heels and stalked out of the room. Okay, maybe she’d gone too far. He was the boss. He signed her paychecks. But she couldn’t sit by and let that account slip out the door.
She wanted a career that allowed her to use her brain as well as her creativity. She’d thought Max valued her opinions. But apparently she’d been wrong.
Maybe she would get to work on that portfolio for the agent. She would need the portrait thing to fall back on when Max fired her.
“THAT WASN’T PRETTY,” Carol said, clearly amused.
“Don’t start on me. You didn’t see it—she took over the whole damn meeting.”
“And that wounds your male ego.”
“It’s not that. It’s just…”
“You landed the account. Aren’t you happy about that?”
“Sure, but now I have to deliver results. I’m not sure I can.”
“Because…why, exactly?”
He didn’t know. Jane’s logo was fine. More than fine, it was good. She had sensed exactly what the client wanted, and she’d delivered it in a way that should have made everyone happy.
So why wasn’t he happy? Was it simply because they’d liked Jane’s idea better than his? Was he that shallow?
“I’m going to lunch.”
“Okay.”
“Maybe while I’m gone you could…unruffle some feathers?”
“I can try, but she was pretty steamed.”
“Just don’t let her quit, okay? I need her.”
And he wanted her, worse than ever.
He thought about heading to Old Salt’s for a burger. But instead he called Reece. “Want me to bring over some takeout?”
“Be still my heart. Sara has me eating so much salad and baked chicken it’s coming out my ears. I’d kill for a greasy burger and fries.”
“I’ll get us chicken sandwiches.” He wasn’t going to risk Sara’s wrath. Reece had been on the fast track to a heart attack before Sara had gotten hold of him, and Max wasn’t going to be an enabler. He could probably stand to improve his diet, too, since it was his father who’d had the heart attack a few years ago.
“To what do I owe the honor of your presence?” Reece asked a few minutes later. They were sitting at the B and B’s kitchen table, digging into their sandwiches. “You’ve been so wrapped up with work, we’ve hardly seen you.”
“I’m trying to turn a profit. It’s not going too well.”
“Sounds like something I should know about.”
He couldn’t meet Reece’s steady gaze. “I lost the Kidz’n’Stuff account.”
“Damn.”
“But that’s not what I came to talk about. I have a bigger problem than cash flow.”
Reece looked confused. “Is there a bigger problem than cash flow?”
“Jane.”
“Ahhhhhh. We all saw that one coming, dude. All of us but you, anyway. Did you cross the line?”
“No. I haven’t touched her. But it’s killing me. Seeing her every day, smelling her perfume or shampoo or whatever it is. And even if she didn’t work for me…there’s Kaylee.”
Reece nodded. He, if anyone, would understand. He’d been around during the Max and Alicia breakup fiasco. “You don’t want another Hannah situation on your hands.”
“Exactly. During the trip to Houston, when I was pretending that Jane and Kaylee were my family…it felt good. Incredibly good.”
“Really?”
Of course Reece would be surprised. Max hadn’t acted like a man ready to settle down, especially over the past few years. After Alicia he had played the field like a madman, never dating the same woman more than a month or two.
“I could never see myself married to Alicia. But Jane is different.”
“So you might bend your ‘no dating single moms’ rule for her?”
He thought about Kaylee, about how she’d pushed him away after she’d seen him bring her father down. It still stung. How much worse would it be if they truly bonded and then things ended badly? “I don’t want to hurt Kaylee.”
“It’s not like you to be fearful of risk. Cooper and I have spent half our lives pulling you back from the brink of one disaster o
r another because you are fearless.”
Max pondered that as he sucked down the last of his root beer. He’d risked all of his personal wealth on a business venture. But one little blond girl and her mother scared him to pieces.
“Even if I wanted to go for it,” he finally said, “I can’t. She’s my employee. And don’t tell me to fire her.”
“Find her another job, then.”
“I can’t. I need her.”
“You could find another artist. Didn’t you have three or four panting for the job a couple of weeks ago?”
“Jane is more than an artist. She’s brilliant with the clients. She comes up with concepts. I landed Coastal Bank today because of her.”
“You’ve answered your own question, then. You can’t date her.”
“I know that.” Maybe he’d just wanted someone else, someone he trusted, to confirm it.
“Or maybe you’re just using the boss-employee thing as an excuse because you’re afraid.”
Max didn’t dignify that observation with a response.
Reece polished off his sandwich and wiped his mouth. “Thanks for lunch.”
“Thanks for being a sounding board. I think.”
“Any time. What else can I do for you?”
“Can you get me an extension on my business loan?”
“I told you you spent too much on the remodeling.”
“I don’t need a lecture, I need cash. Payroll is coming up. I’ve hired two new account executives and a media buyer.”
“I’ll try to get the extension. But you can always borrow a little from me or Coop.”
Max shook his head. “No. I have to do this on my own. After the way I left Remington Industries, burning all my bridges because I was so confident, I can’t go borrowing from family, not even you guys. Especially you guys. You’re newlyweds, you and Sara have a kid on the way, you’re both trying to run businesses of your own.”
Reece nodded. “Okay. But we’re here if you change your mind. Whatever you do, do not default on that loan. You know who holds it, right?”
“Uh, no.” He never paid attention to that stuff, he just signed papers and spent the money.
“Coastal Bank.”