Spring River Valley: The Winter Collection (Boxed Set) (31 page)

She was so intent on escaping, she didn’t notice Jared until he said her name. Her stomach dropped from a dizzying height when she slowed her pace and faced him. “What are you doing here?”

Ed Reese stood behind him, his expression inscrutable. The other members of the DenMar ad team clustered around Ed, looking pleased with themselves.

“We got a call from Mr. Todd. He wanted to see the presentation again and asked us all to come over. What’s in the box?”

Emmy took a second to digest what Jared had told her. If George Todd called DenMar back himself, he must want to give them the account. He wasn’t a man to waste time dithering. “Um…my stuff. I no longer work for TCL.”

Jared gaped. “They fired you?”

“No, I quit. I didn’t want my decisions to be questioned because of my personal…affairs.” She turned to walk away, and Jared followed her.

He caught her arm. “You didn’t have to quit because of me.”

“I quit for a lot of reasons. You weren’t one of them.” She hadn’t planned her response to sound so cold, but the chill of it seemed to engulf Jared. His expression flattened. She hated hurting him, but at this point, he couldn’t risk the gossip either. “Good luck. If Todd wants to see you, I’m sure it’s good news. He doesn’t jerk people around.”

“Em…”

“Bye, Jared.”

Emmy stalked off as the receptionist directed the DenMar team to Mr. Todd’s office. Her legs were jelly by the time she reached her car. She dumped her belongings in the trunk, climbed in, and dialed Evie’s number. “Are you free for lunch?” she asked without preamble when her friend answered the phone. Thank goodness Evie’s duties as a reporter for the local paper meant she kept a flexible schedule.

“What’s wrong?”

“How about Colette’s? We’re going to need alcohol.”

“That bad?”

“My whole life just fell apart.”

“I’m on my way.”

* * * *

Ed Reese sat heavily in the chair across from Jared’s desk and released a long, dramatic sigh of relief. “Helluva day.”

“I’ll say.” Jared hadn’t decided if he was still mad at Ed or not, so he kept his responses short and curt. Emerson had been right; George Todd didn’t jerk people around. He’d called the ad team into his office to tell them he loved the campaign, and it was, as Emmy had said, exactly the message TCL was looking to present to its customers despite the lack of flash and techno pop that Metro’s ad had relied on.

Ed was ecstatic, and he’d insisted on taking the team out to lunch immediately following the meeting. Jared was the only person in the group who hadn’t been on cloud nine since the big announcement that DenMar had landed the TCL national account.

“Would you like to see your new office now or first thing tomorrow morning?”

Jared shrugged. “Doesn’t matter.”

“Don’t tell me you’re walking off the job too?”

Jared shook his head. He was in awe of Emmy’s integrity, and it only made him feel worse about himself that he wasn’t sure he’d have done the same thing under the circumstances. He needed his job, and of course, now with TCL on board, his job needed him…but he needed to make things right with her just as much. In fact, he needed things to be better than right with her. He couldn’t let her out of his life this easily. “Nope. Not with the company’s largest account on my plate.”

“Good man. Look, I apologize for some of what I said before.”

“Just some of it?”

“Yeah, the parts that weren’t true.”

“What parts were those?”

“That I didn’t care if you screwed around with the girl to get the job. I didn’t mean that. That’s not how we do business, and I would be…disappointed in you if that’s how you’d gotten the account.”

“But I got the account. Isn’t that all that really matters?”

Ed chuckled. He could afford to now. “From where I’m sitting now, no…it’s not. Integrity matters. If we’d lost the account, my answer would be different. I’m not proud of that. Look, I’m just trying to say, I know better than to think you would stoop that low. You’re better than Dan Archer. You’re a better ad man, you’re a better employee, and you’re a better guy. I know you were here all night working on a new campaign to throw at TCL if this one tanked. That’s the kind of dedication we need around here, and it’s the kind of dedication that got us the job.”

Jared mimicked Ed’s laugh. “I guess, from where we’re sitting now, I can confess, I was here all night, but not working on the TCL campaign.”

Ed raised a brow. “Your résumé?” He grinned.

“No.” Jared pulled a video disc out of the rack on his desk and slipped it into his hard drive. He turned his laptop to face Ed and hit play. “A different campaign, more important.”

The presentation Jared had spent the night on played for Ed, and by the time it was finished, the man was laughing again. He could certainly afford the levity now. “That’s brilliant. I hope it works for you.”

“Me too. If you don’t mind, I’m going to call it a day. Maybe you can show me my office tomorrow.”

“First thing. Good night, Jared, and good luck with this new ‘account.’”

“They loved you!” Evie said as she slid into the back booth at the diner. A week had passed since Emmy had walked out of TCL, and this morning she’d had her first job interview with the
Spring River Valley Herald
.

“They did?” Emmy tried to keep her smile light. She wasn’t quite ready to hit Evie with the good news/bad news she had to share.

“I just talked to my friend Bailey. She manages the classified section, but she works with the ad manager a lot, and she said they were all talking about you in the break room. Did anyone call you yet?”

“No…not exactly.” Emmy concentrated on her coffee. She stirred the milky brew and tried to appear nonchalant.

Evie glared at her. “What are you hiding?”

“Nothing.” Emmy clamped her lips shut.

“Iced tea, please,” Evie said when the waitress appeared. “Spill it, Em.”

Emmy let out her breath. She felt terrible and strangely elated and very guilty all at the same time. “After I left the interview with the paper, I got a call from George Todd.”

“Your boss’s boss?”

Emmy nodded. She’d been terrified by Todd’s request to see her and figured she was in for a huge lecture about quitting the way she had. She’d skulked back to TCL, feeling once again like a kid being called to the principal’s office. “He asked me to come over and see him this morning.”

“Uh-oh.”

“No, it was good. He offered me my job back.”

Evie’s expression flickered between excitement and disappointment, much the same way Emmy felt. “Oh! Wow…that’s…great? Are you going to take it?”

Guilt weighed Emmy’s shoulders down. Evie had encouraged her to apply to the paper and had put in a good word for her—of course, knowing Evie, it had been more like a thousand good words. “You could say he made me an offer I couldn’t refuse.”

Evie’s jaw dropped. “In the Godfather sense?”

“Well, no, not really. He told me he understood why I quit and that he thought Frank had been an ass—and he
actually used the word ‘ass’—to suggest I would let anyone bribe me or manipulate me. He said he respected me for having the courage to walk out, but if I was so brave, then I should be able to handle anyone whispering behind my back, if it happened. And he said he wouldn’t allow anyone who worked for him to get away with gossip.”

Evie’s
iced tea arrived, and she took a gulp. “Playing the bravery card. He’s crafty.”

“Yes, and it worked. I told him I’d come back.”

“What about Frank?”

“He was there. He apologized.”

“So now you have to work with Jared, don’t you?”

That was the part she was both elated and terrified about. Her heart hadn’t stopped pounding since Mr. Todd had given her the timetable for the campaign, and she’d realized they would need to start production on the first of the planned television commercials ASAP. She’d be facing off with Jared at the office by the end of the week. “Yes, and I’ve been avoiding him. He’s called a couple of times…but I just wasn’t up to small talk.”

“You should get everything straightened out with him outside of the office, or you’ll definitely have all that whispering going on.”

Emmy sighed. “It’s not going to be easy, seeing him every day. What went on between us was intense
, and—”

“And you’re not over him yet.”

“I don’t want to be over him. I want to be under him.” Emmy covered her mouth and made a face. “Did I say that out loud?”

Evie giggled. “So go tell him.”

“We can’t…do what we were doing. That’s exactly the problem. If we’re together, people are going to know, and they’re going spread rumors. It’s going to be impossible for anyone to take us seriously at work.”

“But your project will speak for itself. You show them a kick-ass commercial, and who’ll care if you were sleeping with him while you worked on it? It’s only going to be a problem if you don’t deliver the goods, and you will.”

Emmy wanted to believe that, but even if they ultimately wowed everyone with the work they did, it would be an uphill battle to get there. The rumor mill at the office churned constantly. What had Mr. Todd said about bravery? She could face everyone at the office, but could she face Jared after shutting him out completely for the past week?

“I’m going to call him as soon as I get home. Maybe if we talk we can work out how to deal with each other when we’re at the office.”

Evie quirked a brow. “I have a feeling you’ll work out a lot more than that.”

* * * *

Emmy spent the first hour after returning home from lunch pacing around her living room. Pauly sat on the arm of the sofa, watching her, a critical cast to his golden eyes.

“I should call. I know I should call,” she told the cat. “I’m working on it. But what should I say? I’m sorry I screened your calls all week, now I want to talk?”

The cat yawned.

“Sorry to bore you, but this is important. I can’t just wait until—”

The doorbell interrupted her, and she jumped. Pauly flew off the sofa and headed for his favorite hiding spot under the kitchen table. Not sure who to expect, Emmy pulled the door open and found no one there. Suspiciously she opened the screen door, letting in the first of the damp spring breezes. She didn’t see anyone around. Kids, she thought. Some of the neighbor children had discovered ding-dong ditch last year, and now that the sidewalks were no longer icy, they were probably enjoying running around from porch to porch.

The envelope almost went unnoticed lying on the doormat. She scanned the street again before bending down to pick it up. It was heavy and square, rather than oblong. The words ‘TCL working campaign’ had been printed on the front in a block font.

Jared. He had to be behind this. She searched the empty street again but didn’t see any sign of his pick-up. Was he hiding somewhere? Was this how they’d have to work on the commercial, by leaving each other anonymous notes?

Annoyed, she closed the door and ripped open the thick envelope. A compact disc fell into her hand. It was labeled
Play Me
.

“Cute.” She pulled her laptop from its case and turned it on. While the machine booted up, she went around peeking out of her windows. No sign of Jared or his
truck anywhere. Had he really just dumped the disc and run off?

Once the computer was ready, she slipped the disc into the drive and waited. The DenMar logo appeared then dissolved into a full-screen photo of Jared sitting at his desk. A popular love song began playing, and then a video started.

“Don’t give up on us, baby,” Jared echoed the words of the song when the refrain ended. “Let me tell you why I’m the man for you.”

Emmy stifled a sound that was half laugh, half sob as Jared appeared in a series of comically sweet, silly scenes, offering her flowers, opening car doors, lighting candles at a romantic table set for two, holding a toy cat that looked like Pauly, and finally, pulling his
pick-up into her driveway. She squinted at the screen. He had to have set a video camera up on her porch to get the shot.

On the screen, he got out of his car with a white rose in hand and faced the camera. “Come outside and ride off into the sunset with me. Your satisfaction is guaranteed.”

She ran for the front door and flung it open to find her driveway empty.

Disappointment swept through her and would have claimed her completely except Jared’s
truck turned on to the block just then, and in less than a minute he was recreating the scene from the video.

She flew down the front steps to meet him. “Almost perfect timing,” she said.

He handed her the rose. “I dropped off the disc, and I had to jog around the block to get my truck so you wouldn’t see it. It took a little longer than when I rehearsed it.”

Emmy laughed and sniffed the rose. “Ride off into the sunset with you?”