by JoAnn Ross
“It’s my new cologne,” Mary said with a laugh. “The saleswoman said it has vanilla in it.” She shook her head in mock regret. “She also said men would find it impossible to resist. I’m afraid I was oversold.”
“Never met a man yet who didn’t like sugar cookies,” Dane said agreeably. His grin slipped a notch as his attention turned to Amanda. “Good morning.”
Amanda had watched the way he brushed his finger down his mother’s cheek in a casual, intimate gesture that was as natural to him as breathing. Once again she was reminded how different the Cutters were from the Stockenbergs. It would be wise to keep those differences in mind over the next several days.
“Good morning.” Her tone was friendly, but cool. She could have been speaking to a stranger at a bus stop.
“Sleep well?” His tone was as studiously casual as hers.
“Like a baby,” she lied. She pushed herself up from the table. “Well, I really do have to get back to work. I just wanted to stop in and say hi,” she told Mary. “And to thank you for the lovely breakfast.”
“It’s been lovely seeing you again, dear.” Dane’s mother took Amanda’s hand in both of hers. “I realize you’re going to be extremely busy, but I hope you can find time to visit again.”
“I’d like that.” It was the truth.
Without another word to Dane, Amanda placed her cup on the counter, then left the kitchen.
“Well, she certainly has grown up to be a lovely young lady,” Mary said.
“Really?” Dane’s answering shrug was forced. “I didn’t really notice.”
Mary poured another cup of coffee and placed it in front of him. “Reva says she has a very responsible position at that advertising agency.”
This earned little more than a grunt.
“I couldn’t help noticing she’s not wearing any ring on her left hand.”
Dane’s face shuttered. “No offense, Mom, but I really don’t want to talk about Amanda.”
“Of course, dear,” Mary replied smoothly. But as she turned to the stove and poured pancake batter into an iron skillet, Mary Cutter was smiling.
Despite instructions that they were to meet at eight o’clock sharp, the team members straggled into the conference room. By the time everyone had gotten coffee, fruit and pastries and taken their seats, it was twenty-eight minutes past the time the kickoff had been scheduled to begin.
“Well, this is certainly getting off to a dandy start,” muttered Greg, who was sitting beside Amanda at the pine trestle table at the front of the room. “Didn’t you send out my memo letting the troops know I expected them to be prompt?”
“Of course.” Amanda refrained from pointing out that if one wanted troops to follow orders, it was helpful if they respected their commanding officer. “We arrived awfully late last night,” she said, seeking some excuse for the tardy team members. “Everyone was probably a little tired this morning.”
His only response to her efforts was a muttered curse that did not give Amanda a great deal of encouragement.
Greg stood and began to outline the week’s activities, striding back and forth at the front of the room like General Patton addressing the soldiers of the Third Army. He was waving his laser pointer at the detailed flowchart as if it were Patton’s famed riding crop. The troops seemed uniformly unimpressed by all the red, blue and yellow rectangles.
As he set about explaining the need for consistent process and implementation, even Amanda’s mind began to wander, which was why she didn’t hear the door open at the back of the room.
“I’m sorry to interrupt,” one of last night’s bellmen, who bore an amazing resemblance to Brad Pitt, said. “But Ms. Stockenberg has a phone call.”
“Take a message,” Greg snapped before Amanda could answer.
“He says it’s urgent.”
“I’d better take it,” Amanda said.
“Just make it quick. I intend to get on schedule.”
“I’ll be right back.” Amanda resisted the urge to salute.
The news was not good. “But you have to come,” she insisted when the caller, the man she’d hired to conduct the physical adventure portion of the weekend, explained his predicament. “I understand you’ve broken your leg. But surely you can at least sit on the beach and instruct—”
She was cut off by a flurry of denial on the other end of the line. “Oh. In traction? I’m so sorry to hear that.” She reached into her pocket, pulled out the antacids she was never without and popped one into her mouth.
“Well, of course you need to rest. And get well soon.” She dragged her hand through her hair. “There’s no need to apologize. You didn’t fall off that motorcycle on purpose.”
She hung up the phone with a bit more force than necessary. “Damn.”
“Got a problem?”
Amanda spun around and glared up at Dane. “I’m getting a little tired of the way you have of sneaking up on people.”
“Sorry.” The dancing light in his eyes said otherwise.
“No.” She sighed and shook her head. “I’m the one who should apologize for snapping at you. It’s just that I really need this week to go well, and before we can even get started on the kayak race, my adventure expert ends up in the hospital.”
“That is a tough break.”
She could hear the amusement in his voice. “Don’t you dare laugh at me.”
“I wouldn’t think of it.” He reached out and rubbed at the parallel lines his mother had smoothed earlier. “I don’t suppose a hotshot businesswoman—with her own window office and fancy Italian-leather chair—would need any advice?”
The soothing touch felt too good. Too right. Amanda backed away. “At this point, I’d take advice from the devil himself.” Realizing how snippy she sounded, she felt obliged to apologize yet again.
“Don’t worry about it. People say things they don’t mean under stress.” Which he knew only too well. Dane had found it enlightening that the temper he’d developed while working for the Whitfield Palace hotel chain seemed to have vanished when he’d bought the inn, despite all the problems refurbishing it had entailed. “How about me?”
“How about you, what?”
“How about me subbing for your kayak guy?”
Remembering how he’d taught her to paddle that double kayak so many years ago, Amanda knew it was the perfect solution. Except for one thing.
“Don’t you have work to do?”
Dane shrugged. “It’ll keep.”
“I wouldn’t want you to get in trouble.”
“Why don’t you let me worry about that, contessa? Besides, we all kind of pitch in where needed around here.”
That was exactly what Reva had told her. And Amanda was grateful enough not to contest that ridiculous name. “Thank you. I really appreciate your help.”
“Hey, that’s what we’re here for.” He grinned and skimmed a dark finger down the slope of her nose. “Service With a Smile, that’s the motto at Smugglers’ Inn.”
The knot of tension in her stomach unwound. It was impossible to worry when he was smiling at her that way. It was nearly impossible to remember that the man represented a dangerous distraction.
Relieved that she’d overcome the first hurdle of the week, and putting aside the nagging little problem of what she was going to do about the rest of the scheduled adventure exercises, Amanda returned to the conference room and began handing out the challenge-team shirts.
“What the hell are these?” Don Patterson, the marketing manager, asked.
“They’re to denote the different teams,” Amanda explained. “Reds versus blues.”
“Like shirts versus skins,” Marvin Kenyon, who’d played some high school basketball, said.
“Exactly.”
“I wouldn’t mind playing shirts and skins with Kelli,” Peter Wanger from the computer-support division said with a leer directed toward the public-relations manager, who was provocatively dressed in a pair of tight white jeans and a red j
ersey crop top. Her navy suspenders framed voluptuous breasts that, if they hadn’t been surgically enhanced, could undoubtedly qualify as natural wonders of the world.
“Watch it, Peter,” Amanda warned. “Or you’ll have to watch that video on sexual harassment in the workplace again.”
“Oh, Peter was just joking,” Kelli said quickly, sending a perky cheerleader smile his way. “It doesn’t bother me, Amanda.”
That might be. But it did bother Greg. Amanda watched her superior’s jaw clench. “Amanda’s right,” he growled. If looks could kill, Peter would be drawn and quartered, then buried six feet under the sand. “Just because we’re not in the office doesn’t mean that I’ll stand for inappropriate behavior.”
It sounded good. But everyone in the room knew that what was really happening was that Greg had just stamped his own personal No Trespassing sign on Kelli Kyle’s wondrous chest.
“Talk about inappropriate,” Laura Quinlan muttered as Amanda handed her a red T-shirt. “My kid’s Barbie doll has tops larger than that bimbo’s.”
At thirty-six, Laura was a displaced homemaker who’d recently been hired as a junior copywriter. Amanda knew she was struggling to raise two children on her own after her physician husband had left her for his office assistant—a young woman who, if Laura could be believed, could be Kelli Kyle’s evil twin.
Secretly agreeing about the inappropriateness of Kelli’s attire, but not wanting to take sides, Amanda didn’t answer.
“I can’t wear this color,” Nadine Roberts complained when Amanda handed her one of the red shirts. “I had my colors done and I’m a summer.”
“This week you’re an autumn.” Amanda tossed a blue shirt to Julian Palmer.
“You certainly chose a graphically unsatisfying design,” he complained.
“We should have come to you for help,” she said, soothing the art director’s easily ruffled feathers. Personally, she thought the white Team Challenge script just dandy. “But I knew how overworked you’ve been with the Uncle Paul’s potato chip account, and didn’t want to add any more pressure.”
“The man’s an idiot,” Julian grumbled. “Insisting on those claymation dancing barbecue chips.”
“It worked for the raisin growers,” Kelli reminded everyone cheerfully. Despite all the rumors that had circulated since the woman’s arrival two weeks ago, no one could accuse her of not being unrelentingly upbeat.
Amanda had been surprised to discover that beneath that bubbly-cheerleader personality and bimbo clothing, Kelli possessed a steel-trap mind when it came to her work. Which made it even more surprising that she’d stoop to having an affair with a man like Greg.
Not that there was actually any proof, other than gossip, that they were sleeping together, she reminded herself. However, given Greg’s Lothario tendencies, along with all the time the pair spent together in his office with the door closed, Amanda certainly wouldn’t have bet against the possibility.
Julian stiffened and shot Kelli a look that suggested her IQ was on a level with Uncle Paul’s. “Potato chips,” he said, “are not raisins.”
No one in the room dared challenge that proclamation.
“Wait a damn minute,” Marvin Kenyon complained when Amanda handed him a blue shirt. “I categorically refuse to be on his team.” He jerked a thumb in Julian’s direction.
Amanda opened her mouth to answer, but Greg beat her to the punch. “You’ll be on whatever team I tell you you’re on,” he barked from the front of the room. “In case I haven’t made myself clear, people, challenge week isn’t about choice. It’s about competition. Teamwork.
“And effective immediately, you are all going to work together as teams. Or at the end of the week, I’ll start handing out pink slips. Do I make myself clear?”
He was answered by a low, obviously unhappy mumble.
Smooth move, Greg, Amanda thought.
The worst problem with mergers was their effect on the employees. Even more so in advertising, where people were the agency’s only real assets.
The rash of changeovers had caused dislocation, disaffection, underperformance and just plain fear. Which explained why more and more accounts were leaving the agency with each passing day. It was, after all, difficult to be creative when you thought you were going to be fired.
There were times, and this was definitely one of them, when Amanda wished she’d stuck to her youthful dreams of creating a family rather than an ad for a new, improved detergent or a toothpaste that supposedly would make the high school football quarterback ask the class wallflower to the prom.
When the idea of home and children once again brought Dane to the forefront of her mind, she shook off the thought and led the group out of the room, down to the beach where the first challenge activity was scheduled to take place.
5
“Oh, my God,” Laura said as the group reached the beach and found Dane waiting. “I think I’m in love.”
While Greg had been harassing the troops and Amanda had been handing out T-shirts, Dane had changed into a black neoprene body glove. The suit somehow seemed to reveal more of him than if he were stark-naked.
His arms, his powerful legs, his chest, looked as if they had been chiseled from marble. No, Amanda decided, marble was too cold. Dane could have been hewn from one of the centuries-old redwoods found in an old-growth forest.
“That man is, without a doubt, the most drop-deadgorgeous male I’ve ever seen in my life.” Kelli was staring at Dane the way a religious zealot might stare at her god. “Oh, I do believe I’m going to enjoy this week.”
“We’re not here to enjoy ourselves,” Greg ground out. “It’s not a damn holiday.” He turned his sharp gaze on Amanda. “That’s the guy you hired to lead the adventure exercises?”
Call her petty, but Amanda found watching Greg literally seething with masculine jealousy more than a little enjoyable. Less enjoyable was the realization that Kelli’s and Laura’s lustful looks and comments had triggered a bit of her own jealousy.
“Not exactly.”
Blond brows came crashing down. “What does that mean?”
“I’ll explain later.” She cast a significant glance down at her watch. “You’re the one who wanted to stay on schedule, Greg. Come with me and I’ll introduce you.”
The introductions were over quickly, neither man seeming to find much to like about the other.
“The plan,” Amanda explained to Dane, “as it was originally laid out to me, works like a relay race. Team members pair up, two to a kayak, paddle out to the lighthouse, circle it, then return back to the beach where the next group takes their places in the kayak and follows the same course. The best combined times for the two out of three heats is declared the winner.”
Dane nodded. “Sounds easy enough.”
“Easy for you to say. You haven’t seen this group in action.”
Seeing her worried expression and remembering what she’d told him about this week being vastly important to her, Dane understood her concern.
“Don’t worry, Ms. Stockenberg,” he said in his best businesslike tone, the one that had served him well for all those years in the big city, “before the week’s over, you’ll have turned your group into a lean, mean, advertising machine.”
“That’s the point,” Greg Parsons snapped.
Amanda, who’d detected the sarcasm in Dane’s tone, didn’t respond. Instead, she introduced Dane to the others, then stood back and ceded control to the man she hoped could pull it off.
He didn’t raise his voice above his usual conversational tone, but as he began to explain the basics of kayaking, Amanda noticed that a hush settled over the suddenly attentive group. Even the men were hanging on every word.
It was more than the fact that he was a stunningly goodlooking male specimen. As amazing as it seemed for a man who’d been content to stay in the same job he’d had in high school, Dane Cutter definitely displayed leadership potential, making Amanda wonder yet again what had happened to
sidetrack all his lofty career goals.
Perhaps, she considered, once this week was over and she’d earned the position of Northwest creative director, she’d offer Dane a job in management. After all, if he actually managed to pull this disparate, backbiting group into cohesive teams, helping him escape a dead-end life in Satan’s Cove would be the least she could do.
Then again, she reminded herself firmly when she realized she was thinking too much like her autocratic father, there was no reason for Dane to be ashamed of having chosen a life of manual labor. It was, she admitted reluctantly, more honest than advertising.
Dane gave the teams a brief spiel about the versatility of kayaks, demonstrated forward and bracing strokes, explaining how the foot-operated rudder would help steer in crosswinds or rough seas, and skimmed over the woodpaddles-versus-fiberglass argument.
Amanda was not surprised to discover that despite the introduction of high-tech Kevlar and carbon-fiber models, Dane remained an advocate of wood. The fact that he obviously felt strongly about a century-old inn proved he was a traditionalist at heart.
When he asked for questions, Kelli’s hand shot up. “Shouldn’t we be wearing wet suits like yours?” she asked.
“It’s not really necessary,” Dane assured her, making Amanda extremely relieved. She figured the sight of Kelli Kyle in a neoprene body glove could easily cause at least two heart attacks.
“But what if we get wet?”
“One can only hope,” Peter murmured, earning laughter from several of the men and another sharp glare from Greg. At the same time, Amanda worried that Kelli in a wet T-shirt could be even more distracting than Kelli in a snug neoprene suit.
“Hopefully that won’t prove a problem,” Dane said with an answering smile.
“I’ve seen kayaking on the Discovery channel.” This from Nadine Roberts. “And they always tip over.”
“That technique is called an Eskimo roll. And you don’t have to worry about learning it for this exercise,” Dane told her.
“What if we don’t intend to learn it? What if we roll anyway?” An auditor in the accounting department, Nadine was not accustomed to letting things slide.