Read It Happened One Week Online
Authors: Joann Ross
It Happened One Week (2 page)
Dane loves Amanda.
Despite the fact that she’d spent most of last night crying, Amanda began to weep.
He was waiting for her in their secret, private place. Just as he’d promised. Just as she’d hoped.
Smugglers’ Cave, carved by aeons of wind and ocean out of the rocky seaside cliffs, had long been rumored to be one of the local sites where pirates had once hidden stolen booty before moving it inland.
Amanda wasn’t interested in the legends about the pirates’ nefarious behavior. And despite the violence that supposedly occurred here, to her, Smugglers’ Cave was the most romantic place on earth.
It was here, on a star-spangled July Fourth night, while the glare of fire workslit up the nightsky, that Dane first kissed
her. Then kissed her again. And again. Until she thought she’d literally melt from ecstasy.
“I thought you wouldn’t come,” she cried, flinging herself dramatically into his strong dark arms. Her avid mouth captured his. The kiss was hot and long and bittersweet.
“I told you I would,” he reminded her, after they finally came up for air.
“I know.” Her hands were linked together around his neck. Her young, lithe body was pressed against his so tightly that it would have been impossible for the morning ocean breeze to come between them. “But I was so afraid you’d be mad at me.”
“Mad?” Dane looked honestly surprised by the idea. “Why would I be mad at you?”
“For leaving.” Just thinking about her imminent departure caused the moisture in Amanda’s sea blue eyes to overflow.
“You don’t have any choice, sweetheart.” With more tenderness than she would have imagined possible, he brushed her tears away with his fingertips. “We’ve both known that from the beginning.”
“That doesn’t make it any less awful!” she wailed.
“No.” Despite his brave words, Dane’s dark eyes were every bit as bleak as hers as he traced her trembling, downturned pink lips with a tear-dampened finger. “It doesn’t.”
The tender touch left behind a taste of salt born of her overwhelming sorrow. “We could run away,” she said desperately, grabbing his hand and holding it tightly between both of hers. “Just you and I. Somewhere no one could ever find us. To Wyoming. Or Florida.”
“Don’t think I haven’t been tempted.” His lips curved at the idea, but even as distressed as she was, Amanda noticed that the smile didn’t reach his eyes. “But running away is never the answer, princess.”
She was too desperate, too unhappy, to listen to reason. “But—”
“We can’t.” His tone, while gentle, was firm. “As attractive as the idea admittedly is, it’s wrong.”
“How can love be wrong?”
Dane sighed, looking far older, far more world-weary than his nineteen years. “You’re only fifteen years old—”
“I’ll be sixteen next week.”
“I know.” This time the reluctant smile turned his eyes to the hue of rich, warm chocolate. “But you still have your entire life ahead of you, honey. I’m not going to be responsible for ruining it.”
“But you wouldn’t!” she cried on a wail that scattered a trio of sea gulls. “You’d make it better. Perfect, even.”
As much as she’d first resisted joining her family for this annual summer vacation on the Oregon coast, the moment she’d first seen Smugglers’ Inn’s sexy young bellhop, lifeguard, and all-around handyman, Amanda had changed her mind.
Over the past four glorious weeks, her life had been focused on Dane Cutter. He was all she wanted. All she would ever want. She’d love him, Amanda vowed, forever.
But now, she didn’t want to waste time talking. Not when their time together was coming to an end, like sands falling through some hateful hourglass. Rising on her toes, she pressed her lips against his once more.
The morning mist swirled around them; overhead, sea gulls squawked stridently as they circled, searching for mussels in the foaming surge. Caught up in emotions every bit as strong—and as old—as the forces that had formed the craggy coastline, neither Dane nor Amanda heard them.
The ocean’s roar became a distant buzz in Amanda’s ears. For this glorious suspended moment, time ceased to have meaning. The hungry kiss could have lasted a minute, an hour, an eternity.
Finally, the blare of a car horn managed to infiltrate its way into Amanda’s consciousness. She tried to ignore it, but it was soon followed by the sound of an irritated male voice cutting through the fog.
Dane dragged his mouth from hers. “Your father’s calling.” He skimmed his lips up her cheeks, which were damp again from the cold ocean mist and her tears.
“I know.” She swiped at the tears with the backs of her trembling hands, looking, Dane thought, more like an injured child than the almost-grown-up woman she insisted that she was. Unwilling, unable to leave, she twined her arms around his neck again and clung.
For not the first time since her arrival in Satan’s Cove, Dane found himself sorely tested. For not the first time, he reminded himself that she was far too young for the thoughts he kept having, the feelings he kept experiencing. But even as his mind struggled to hold on to that crucial fact—like a drowning man clinging to a piece of driftwood in a storm-tossed sea—his body was literally aching for fulfillment.
Dane was not inexperienced. He’d discovered, since losing his virginity to a sexy blond Miss Depoe Bay the summer of his sixteenth year, that sex was easy to come by. Especially during vacation season, when the beaches were filled with beautiful girls looking for a summer fling.
But he’d never wanted a girl as he wanted Amanda. What was worse, he’d never
needed
a girl as he needed Amanda. Accustomed to keeping a tight rein on his emotions, Dane wasn’t at all comfortable with the effect Amanda Stockenberg had had on him from the beginning.
Finally, although it was nearly the hardest thing he’d ever had to do—second only to refusing her ongoing, seductive pleas to make love these past weeks—Dane gently, patiently, unfastened Amanda’s hold on him.
“You have to go,” he said again, prying her hands from around his neck. He kissed her fingers one at a time. “But it’s not over, princess. Not unless you want it to be.”
Distraught as she was, Amanda failed to hear the question—and the uncharacteristic lack of assurance—in his guarded tone.
“Never!” she swore with all the fervor of a young woman in the throes of her first grand love. “I promise.”
Her father called out again. The Volvo station wagon’s horn blared. Once. Twice. A third time.
Giving Dane one last desperate kiss, Amanda spun around, sobbing loudly as she ran up the rock stairs. She did not—could not—look back.
He stood there all alone, hands shoved deep into the pockets of his jeans, and watched her leave, resisting the urge to call out to her. He heard the car drive off, taking her far away from Satan’s Cove. Away from him.
Dane stayed on the windswept beach for a long, silent time, watching as the relentless ebb and flow of the tide slowly, inexorably, washed away the love letter he’d written in the drifting silver sand.
Portland, Oregon Ten years later
“T
his can’t be happening. Not to me. Not now!”
Amanda Stockenberg stared in disbelief at the television screen where towering red-and-orange flames were engulfing the Mariner Seaside Golf Resort and Conference Center located on the Oregon coast.
“It is lousy timing,” her administrative assistant, Susan Chin, agreed glumly. It had been Susan who’d alerted Amanda to the disaster, after hearing a news bulletin on the radio.
“That has to be the understatement of the millennium,” Amanda muttered as she opened a new roll of antacids.
Hoping for the best, but fearing the worst, she’d left a meeting and run down the hall to the conference room.
Now, as the two women stood transfixed in front of the television, watching the thick streams of water prove ineffectual at combating the massive blaze, Amanda could see her entire career going up in smoke right along with the five-star resort.
She groaned as the hungry flames devoured the lovely cedar-shake shingled roof. The scene shifted as the cameras cut away to show the crews of helmeted firemen valiantly fighting
the fire. From the grim expressions on their soot-stained faces, she sensed that they knew their efforts to be a lost cause.
And speaking of lost causes…
“It’s obvious we’re going to have to find a new site for the corporate challenge,” she said, cringing when what was left of the wooden roof caved in with a deafening roar. Water from the fire hoses hit the flames, turned to steam and mixed with the clouds of thick gray smoke.
“I’d say that’s a given,” Susan agreed glumly. “Unless you want to have the group camping out on the beach. Which, now that I think about it, isn’t such a bad idea. After all, the entire idea of this coming week is to present the creative teams with challenges to overcome.”
“Getting any of the managers of
this
company to work together as a team is going to be challenge enough.” Amanda sank into a chair, put her elbows on the long rectangular mahogany conference table and began rubbing at her temples, where a headache had begun to pound. “Without tossing in sleeping in tents on wet sand and bathing out of buckets.”
Advertising had been a cutthroat, shark-eat-shark business since the first Babylonian entrepreneur had gotten the bright idea to chisel the name of his company onto a stone tablet. Competition was always fierce, and everyone knew that the battle went not only to the most creative, but to the most ruthless.
Even so, Amanda felt the employees of Janzen, Lawton and Young took the idea of healthy competition to unattractive and often unprofitable extremes. Apparently, Ernst Janzen, senior partner of the company that had recently purchased Amanda’s advertising agency, seemed to share her feelings. Which was why the idea of corporate-management teams was born in the first place.
In theory, the concept of art, copy, and marketing working together on each step of a project seemed ideal. With everyone marching in unison toward the same finish line, the firm would undoubtedly regain superiority over its competitors.
That was the plan. It was, Amanda had agreed, when she’d first heard of it, extremely logical. Unfortunately, there was little about advertising that was the least bit logical.
The agency that had hired her directly after her graduation from UCLA, Connally Creative Concepts, or C.C.C., had made a name for itself by creating witty, appealing and totally original advertising that persuaded and made the sale through its ability to charm the prospect.
Although its location in Portland, Oregon, was admittedly a long way from Madison Avenue, some of the best copywriters and art directors in the country had been more than willing to leave Manhattan and take pay cuts in order to work long hours under the tutelage of Patrick Connally. C.C.C. had been like a family, Patrick Connally playing the role of father to whom everyone came for inspiration and guidance.
Unfortunately, two years ago Patrick Connally had died of a heart attack at the age of seventy-five, after a heated game of tennis. His widow, eager to retire to Sun City, Arizona, had sold the agency to another company. Eight months after that, the new owner merged the united agencies with yet a third creative shop.
Unsurprisingly, such multiple mergers in such a short span of time resulted in the dismissal of several longtime employees as executives trimmed excess staff. A mood of anxiety settled over the offices and morale plummeted as everyone held their collective breath, waiting to see who was going to be “downsized” next.
After the initial purge, things had seemed to be settling down until the advertising wars kicked up again. A sixmonth battle that played out daily on the pages of
The Wall Street Journal
had resulted in an unfriendly takeover by the international mega-agency of Janzen, Lawton and Young, and those employees who’d been breathing at last, found their livelihoods once again in jeopardy.
Janzen, Lawton and Young had long had a reputation for the most artless and offensive commercials to run on American airwaves. But it also boasted the highest profits in the business. In order to keep profits up to the promised levels, a new wave of massive staff cuts had hit the agency.
Morale plummeted to new lows.
Unsurprisingly, the same creative people who had once been responsible for some of the most innovative—and effective—advertising in the business, turned on one another.
A recent case in point was today’s client meeting. The creative group had been assigned to propose a new concept for a popular line of gourmet ice cream. From day one, the members of the recently established team had been at each other’s throats like a pack of out-of-control pit bulls.
“I can’t believe you seriously expect me to be a part of this presentation,” Marvin Kenyon, the head copywriter, had complained after viewing the animated sequence proposed by award-winning art director Julian Palmer.
“It’s a team effort,” Amanda reminded him mildly. “And you
are
a valuable member of the team.”
The copywriter, who’d won his share of awards himself, folded his arms over the front of his blue oxford-cloth shirt and said, “I categorically refuse to share blame for something as sophomoric and static as that animation sequence.”
“Sophomoric?” Julian Palmer rose to his full height of five feet five inches tall. What he lacked in stature, he more
than made up for in ego. “Static? Since when are you an expert on visuals?”
“I know enough to see that if we present your idea, we’ll blow the account for sure,” Marvin retorted. “Hell, a baboon with a fistful of crayons could undoubtedly create a more visually appealing storyboard.”
Julian arched an eyebrow as he adjusted the already perfect Windsor knot in his Italian-silk tie. “This from a man who creates—” he waved the printed sheets Marvin had handed out when he’d first arrived in the presentation room like a battle flag “—mindless drivel?”
“Drivel?” Marvin was on his feet in a shot, hands folded into fists as he came around the long, polished mahogany table.
“Marvin,” Amanda protested, “please sit down. Julian didn’t mean it, did you, Julian?”
“I never say anything I don’t mean,” the artistic director replied. “But in this case, I may have been mistaken.”
“There, see?” Amanda soothed, feeling as if she were refereeing a fight between two toddlers in a kindergarten sandbox. “Julian admits he was mistaken, Marvin. Perhaps you can amend your comment about his work.”
“I
was
wrong to call it drivel,” Julian agreed. “That’s too kind a description for such cliché-ridden rubbish.”
“That does it!” Marvin, infamous for his quicksilver temper, was around the table like a shot. He’d grabbed hold of his team member’s chalk-gray vest and for a moment Amanda feared that the two men were actually going to come to blows, when the conference-room door opened and the client arrived with Don Patterson, the marketing manager, on his heels.
“Am I interrupting something?” the longtime client, a man in his mid-fifties whose addiction to ice cream had made him a very wealthy man, asked.
“Only a momentary creative difference of opinion,” Amanda said quickly. “Good afternoon, Mr. Carpenter. It’s nice to see you again.”
“It’s always a pleasure to see you again, Ms. Stockenberg.” The portly entrepreneur took her outstretched hand in his. His blue eyes warmed momentarily as they swept over her appreciatively. “I’m looking forward to today’s presentation,” he said as his gaze moved to the uncovered storyboard.
Wide brow furrowed, he crossed the room and began studying it for a long silent time. Since it was too late to begin the presentation as planned, the team members refrained from speaking as he took in the proposed campaign. Amanda didn’t know about the others, but she would have found it impossible to say a word, holding her breath as she was.
When Fred Carpenter finally did speak, his words were not encouraging. “You people have serviced my account for five years. I’ve dropped a bundle into your coffers. And this is as good as you can come up with? A cow wearing a beret?”
“Let me explain the animation,” Julian said quickly. Too quickly, Amanda thought with an inner sigh. He was making the fatal mistake of any presenter: appearing desperate.
“Don’t worry, the art can be rethought,” Marvin interjected as Julian picked up the laser pen to better illustrate the sequence. “Besides, it’s the words that’ll sell your new, improved, French vanilla flavor, anyway.” He paused, as if half expecting a drumroll to announce his message. “A taste of Paris in every spoonful.”
“That’s it?” the snack-food executive asked.
“Well, it’s just the beginning,” Marvin assured him. Moisture was beading up on his upper lip, his forehead. Another rule broken, Amanda thought, remembering what Patrick Connally had taught her about never letting the cli
ent—or the competition—see you sweat. “See, the way I envision the concept—”
“It’s drivel,” Julian said again. “But the team can fix that, Fred. Now, if we could just get back to the art.”
“It’s not drivel,” Marvin exploded.
“Marvin,” Amanda warned softly.
“I’ve seen cleverer copy written on rolls of novelty toilet paper,” the art director sniffed.
“And I’ve seen better art scrawled on the sides of buildings down at the docks!”
Amanda turned toward the client who appeared less than amused by the escalating argument. “As you can see, Mr. Carpenter, your campaign has created a lot of in-house excitement,” she said, trying desperately to salvage the multimillion-dollar account.
“Obviously the wrong kind,” Carpenter said. “Look, I haven’t liked how all these mergers resulted in my account being put into the hands of the same agency that handles my competitors. It looks to me as if you guys have been instructed by your new bosses to soften your approach—”
“The hell we have,” both Julian and Marvin protested in unison, agreeing for once. Amanda tried telling herself she should be grateful for small favors.
“Then you’ve lost your edge,” the self-proclaimed king of ice cream decided.
“That’s really not the case, Fred,” Don Patterson, the marketing member of the team, finally interjected. A man prone to wearing loud ties and plaid sport jackets, he was nevertheless very good at his job. “Perhaps if Julian and Marvin went back to the drawing board—”
“There’s no point. We’ve had five great years working together, you fellows have helped make Sweet Indulgence the second-bestselling ice cream in the country. But, the team over at Chiat/Day assures me that they can get me to number one. So, I think I’m going to give them a try.”
He turned toward Amanda, who could literally feel the color draining from her face. “I’m sorry, Ms. Stockenberg. You’re a nice, pretty lady and I’d like to keep my account here if for no other reason than to have an excuse to keep seeing you. But business is business.”
“I understand.” With effort, Amanda managed a smile and refrained from strangling the two ego-driven creative members of the ill-suited team. “But Don does have a point. Perhaps if you’d allow us a few days to come up with another concept—”
“Sorry.” He shook his head. “But things haven’t been the same around here since all the mergers.” His round face looked as unhappy as hers. “But if you’d like,” he said, brightening somewhat, “I’ll mention you to the fellows at Chiat/Day. Perhaps there’s a spot opening up over there.”
“That’s very kind of you. But I’m quite happy where I am.”
It was what she’d been telling herself over and over again lately, Amanda thought now, as she dragged her mind from the disastrous meeting to the disaster currently being played out on the television screen.
“You know,” Susan said, “this entire challenge week isn’t really your problem. Officially, it’s Greg’s.”
“I know.” Amanda sighed and began chewing on another Tums.
Greg Parsons was her immediate supervisor and, as creative director, he was the man Ernst Janzen had handselected for the job of instituting the team concept. The man who had moved into the executive suite was as different from Patrick Connally as night from day. Rather than encouraging the cooperative atmosphere that had once thrived under the founder of C.C.C., Greg ruled the agency by intimidation and fear.
From his first day on the job, he’d set unrealistic profit targets. This focus on profits diverted attention from what
had always been the agency’s forte—making clients feel they were getting superior service.
Apparently believing that internal competition was the lifeblood of success, he instigated political maneuvering among his top people, pitting one against the other as they jockeyed for key appointments.
Although such intrigue usually occurred behind the scenes, one of the more visible changes in policy was the conference table at which Amanda was sitting. When she’d first come to work here, the room had boasted a giant round table, the better, her former boss had declared, to create the feeling of democracy. Now, five days a week, the staff sat around this oblong table while Parsons claimed the power position at the head.
Although it might not seem like such a big thing, along with all the other changes that had taken place, it was additional proof that C.C.C. had lost the family feeling that had been so comfortable and inspirational to both employees and clients.