My Bluegrass Baby (15 page)

I missed the way he teased me, the way he threw ideas around and got us focused on
the task at hand, the way he made me laugh. I missed his voice in my ear, and the
way he dissolved into twang whenever he was rattled. I missed the way he invaded my
personal space, because frankly, those boundaries I’d built so carefully needed to
be shaken up every once in a while.

There was a moment every morning when I walked past the conference room and looked
through the blinds to check whether Josh was sitting at the table, knowing that he
wouldn’t be. And somehow, I was always a little crushed when he wasn’t there. I kept
an eye out for him in the same way that Kelsey looked out for Charlie, as if he were
the highlight of my day and I wasn’t sure how to get along without him. And eventually
I realized I was sort of, maybe in love. With a total idiot.

Now what?

•   •   •

I did what any woman did when she was in love with an idiot. I forced him to talk
to me, whether he wanted to or not. Because I was a little bit of an idiot, too. That
night, I went to his apartment building and spotted Josh sitting on his tiny balcony,
drinking a beer.

Holy hell, he wasn’t making this easy on me. Josh actually had beard stubble. I’d
never seen him with more than the faintest five-o’clock shadow. He was wearing a faded
plaid flannel shirt over a gray T-shirt and jeans. It was the sloppiest I’d ever seen
him. And I sort of wanted to eat him up with a spoon and smack him all at once. Apparently
I had a thing for unkempt frat boys/mountain men.

This was not a good beginning.

I didn’t exactly get the warm, effusive greeting I’d hoped for. He just sort of nodded
grimly at me and got up to open his door.

The apartment was impeccably neat, even if its owner wasn’t. Other than the big stack
of flattened cardboard boxes stacked against Josh’s kitchen cabinets and the professional
portfolio spread out on the kitchen table, it barely looked as if anyone lived there.
I moved closer to the table and looked over the miniaturized campaign samples glued
to small black presentation boards. It seemed Josh was preparing for a job interview.

Josh gestured at the comfy-looking denim couch and chairs that provided the only seating
in the room, right in front of a mammoth flat-screen TV. It was a perfectly nice,
if a little small, room. But it was completely impersonal. There was no art on the
walls, no little knickknacks. He didn’t even have pillows or an area rug. The only
sign that he actually lived there, beyond the portfolio, was a small framed snapshot
by the TV. It was a picture of the staff dressed up in our Civil War Days finery.

The snapshot was a sweet one. We’d just started the day and Bonnie wanted to preserve
us for posterity while we were still “pristine.” She’d managed to talk one of the
state park staff into taking the picture while she posed with us. Kelsey and Charlie
were grinning at each other impishly, making me wonder what sort of mayhem Kelsey
had just suggested. I was smiling, bright and open, straight into the camera, while
Josh was looking down at me. Why didn’t I see him look at me that way before? How
had I missed it? Why had he taken the time to print and frame a picture when he didn’t
plan to stay with us?

Josh’s gravelly voice sounded just left of my ear. “If you’re here to try to make
me feel worse, Sadie, don’t bother.”

“Oh, no, this is more a ‘making sure you’re not dead’ visit than a social call. Because
the people you worked with—the ones that you thought of enough to frame a picture
of them, but not enough to say good-bye to when you left—would like to know that you’re
okay.”

“I’m sorry I left the way I did. I thought it would be easier if I didn’t have to
answer a bunch of questions,” he said. “The job is yours, Sadie. It should have been
all along. You want it so much more than I did. And the office just doesn’t fit me
the way it fits you. This is what you wanted. At least, it was until I showed up.”

“What are you talking about?” I demanded.

“Before I showed up, you knew exactly where you were headed. You wanted to be the
director of marketing. There was no doubt. And when that was taken away from you,
at first, you fought like hell to get it back. Even after we became . . . involved,
you still wanted it. You didn’t protect my feelings and tell me you’d be happy to
be my assistant, until the night before the fair. All of a sudden you were willing
to settle for less. And that scares me, Sadie. I don’t want you to accept anything
less than what you really want. And I definitely don’t want you to do it because of
me. You want that job more than I ever could, Sadie. You’re the right person for it.”

“And the only way for me to get the job was for you to leave the running?” I asked
sharply.

“Don’t put words in my mouth like that,” he said, pulling at the collar of his shirt.
“But my leaving was the only way to guarantee that the voters would make the right
decision. I didn’t want to leave it to chance.”

A wave of anger and doubt rolled through my stomach with such force, I was afraid
I would be sick all over Josh’s nice denim couch. He had tried to do a nice thing,
I told myself, even if the result seemed to hurt me more. He thought he was giving
me what I wanted, not realizing that I wanted him, too. I looked up to see him tugging
at his collar as he watched me. And the wave of anger receded to make way for recognition.
“Wait a minute, that’s bullshit.”

Josh’s hand fell away from his neck. “What?”

“You’re pulling at your collar, which I guess is what you do when there’s no necktie
available. And you only pull at your tie when you’re really uncomfortable.”

“Of course I’m uncomfortable. A crazy woman is lecturing me in my own home!”

“Josh! Tell me what is going on. And don’t tell me that you wanted to make me happy.
I know you don’t respect me on a personal level—”

“Hey, don’t put words in my mouth!” he exclaimed again.

“—but you wouldn’t just walk away and surrender to me on a professional level. You
have too much pride in your work. Now, tell me!”

“Fine!” he yelled back. “I caught Rowley stuffing the ballot box.”

“What?!”

“Why do you always say ‘what’ so loudly?” He sighed. “I caught Rowley that first afternoon
of the fair. I walked out of my tent and saw him shoving a bunch of papers into the
ballot box between our tents. He’d photocopied a ballot a few hundred times and got
a couple of his friends to sign a bunch of different names to them. It wasn’t like
we were going to do in-depth checks on a fair vote for one job. We didn’t exactly
have Fort Knox security. I asked him what he thought he was doing and he just grinned
at me with that stupid smug face of his and said he was ‘helping a brother out.’ He
said he was going to fix it so I won the job by a landslide. I told him to go screw
himself, that I’d tell Ray not to count that day’s votes. But he said he’d just come
back and do it again the next day and the day after that and the day after that. He
was going to make sure you’d lose, come hell or high water. He didn’t particularly
care if I won, he just wanted to make sure
you
didn’t win.”

I plopped down in my seat, suddenly remembering Kelsey spotting Rowley on the midway
just before she’d brought me lunch. He must have skulked around all day until he got
the chance to rig the ballot box. Being the ego-driven moron that he was, Rowley wouldn’t
have wanted anyone else to do his dirty work for him. He would have relished stuffing
the faked ballots into the box himself. And it wouldn’t have occurred to him to shove
a few ballots into the box at a time over the course of the day.

Ray hadn’t even counted that first day’s vote, because it didn’t matter after Josh
quit. And frankly, I hadn’t really wanted to know the results. I was awarded the job,
no questions asked.

“Oh my— Of all the insane, sadistic, creepy, detail-oriented things to do,” I marveled.
“And it didn’t occur to you to tell anybody?”

“Rowley was going to find a way to keep you from getting the job,” Josh said. “Even
if we forgot about the vote or found some way to make it more secure. He would have
found some way around it. So I figured the best way to keep that from happening was
to quit right there. If I took myself out of the running, they would give it to you
immediately and he would miss his shot.”

I stood and held my hands up as I tried to process everything he had said. To sum
up, Rowley was insane. I had the job under false pretenses. And Josh cared about me
a little bit more than I’d thought.

“I am trying so hard to decide between kissing you for being all valiant and stoic
and trying to protect me, and smacking you for being all valiant and stoic and trying
to protect me. You—you considerate asshole! Why didn’t you say anything?”

“Because I hated the fact that Rowley steered me toward the job in the first place
to hurt you. Because you wouldn’t have let me walk away. You would have forced me
to explain and I just didn’t want you to start off your new job wondering whether
you should have it or not. And I couldn’t take that from you. I couldn’t stand the
idea of you being unhappy because of me, so I left.”

“And I’m assuming it would be pointless to ask you to come back?”

He stepped closer and I pressed my back against the wall to get away. The space felt
so small and his body took up so much of it. I’d done so well avoiding proximity.
But now I could feel the warmth of his skin, breathe in his clean cotton-and-rosewood
smell, and my resolve was weakening right along with my knees. I wedged my palm against
his chest and pushed him back. His mouth tilted down just a bit at the corners, but
he seemed relieved by my reluctance.

I was wrong.
This
is why you don’t sleep with people you work with.

“Yes, because I’m not good for you. Because I’m still the guy with the bad credit
and the shaky job prospects . . . and the former frat buddies hell-bent on making
trouble for you. Because it’s better for you if I’m not around the office. You’ll
have more control of the staff. There will be no doubt who’s in charge. I won’t be
there to distract you.”

“You don’t get to make those decisions for me,” I told him.

“No, but I can make them for myself,” he sniped, stepping around me to go into the
kitchen and rummage around the fridge for two more beers.

“Okay, then how do you plan on getting another job? You did quit in a pretty unprofessional
fashion in a very public venue. People in our field tend to remember that sort of
thing.” Josh shifted uncomfortably, his eyes glued to the floor. I glimpsed the flattened
cardboard over his shoulder. That wasn’t backed-up recycling. Those were leftover
boxes, the kind you harassed grocery stores into giving you when you were packing
up.

“You’re moving?” I exclaimed.

“Well, you said it yourself. This is the sort of thing that will follow me. Ray said
he would give me a good recommendation, but I’m probably going to have to move somewhere
without connections to here.”

“You were just going to move,” I scoffed, anger surging through my chest until I thought
my heart would lurch up through my rib cage like something out of
Alien
. “You were going to leave and not say anything, about Rowley or any of this. You
were going to leave me wondering what I’d done to chase you off, what I’d done wrong.”

“Sadie, I—”

“Don’t you ‘Sadie’ me, you jackass!”

“I didn’t want to hurt you! There just wasn’t time to explain!”

“I don’t want to hear it,” I told him. “I don’t have anything to say to you right
now.”

I strode toward the door before I threw anything that couldn’t be unthrown. “You know
what, that’s not true. I do have something to say. You left Atlanta before, when things
got hard. If you leave us—and by that, I don’t mean the lovely people we work with,
but
us
, you and me—if you leave now, it’s going to become a habit.”

No response. He continued to stand in the kitchen, his back to me, not saying a word.

“We’re going to be hiring a new assistant director and I can choose my replacement.
If you want it, the job is yours. I’m accepting résumés, but so far the applicant
pool has been frighteningly low on guys who inspire me by being as irritating as possible.
If I don’t fill the position by the end of the year, I’ll probably lose funding for
it. So this is a limited-time offer.”

And still nothing. Just a longer view of Josh’s back. It was a perfectly nice back,
but it was still pissing me off.

“Fine,” I bit out. “I’ll send everybody your regrets.”

Snagging my bag, I stormed past the kitchen, toward the door, and he caught my elbow,
yanking me close. His forehead brushed against my hair as he spoke. “It’s not easy,”
he swore quietly. “I promise you. It’s not easy to leave. I just need to do things
my own way.”

“Well, your way sucks,” I told him, pulling out of his grip.

He pressed a kiss to my cheek and another to my forehead, making me pull away entirely,
out of reach. “Good-bye, Sadie.”

“Good luck, Josh.” I closed the door behind me without looking back.

In Which I Touch Potential Employees Inappropriately

11

If I never saw another résumé, it would be too soon.

People just didn’t know how to accurately assess and account for their strengths and
weaknesses. And for the record, knowing how to set up programming on a TiVo is not
a special skill. Also, putting your résumé on scented, floral paper is super annoying.

The interviews were not going well. Kelsey was sure I was violating several labor
laws by giving hypothetical scenarios designed to measure the applicants’ “douche-bag
factor.” But until she could show me the statute proscribing it, I would keep up the
tactic. It had already helped me weed out several candidates who lost their cool and
stomped out of the interview.

Some people are so touchy when it comes to questions about previous episodes of office
espionage or personal flakery.

I was officially director, but we still hadn’t hired my replacement. I was fairly
certain that with our current staff, I could get along without an assistant director,
but I didn’t want to chance it. So far, the applicants had been underwhelming. They
were either just out of college or had been in the marketing field for so long that
they felt they had nothing to learn from me or my staff. Oddly enough, a member of
each demographic group asked me whether they could just interview for the director’s
job. Meaning my job—the job of the person interviewing them.

The closest I’d come to an acceptable match was Jill Worthen, a perfectly nice woman
with ten years of experience in the field, including working for the Tennessee state
parks system. She seemed motivated, positive, and focused on making local residents
just as interested in the state’s resources as visitors. The problem was she was just
like me. There would be too much agreement, not enough interplay. If working with
Kelsey and Josh had shown me anything, it was that I needed challenges and strengths
that complemented my weaknesses.

I was sitting at my desk in Ray’s old office, poring over Jill’s résumé and mentally
cataloguing all of the reasons she would make a perfect addition to the staff, when
Kelsey came through the door bearing bottled water and her sick kit.

“I know you still rely on me to be your inner mean girl, so I’m just going to say
it. She bored the hell out of you, didn’t she?”

“She was so nice.” I sighed. “How can I not hire someone that nice, who knows how
to do the job?”

“Because she bored the hell out of you,” she told me. “A few weeks in power and you’ve
already started abusing it.”

I made a rude hand gesture at her, which she pointedly ignored.

“Come on, come on,” she huffed, pulling me up out of my chair and straightening my
jacket. She pulled my cosmetics bag out of my desk drawer and began rummaging for
powder. I looked down at the mini mouthwash bottle she’d shoved into my hand.

“I’m not feeling sick,” I told her. “I’m not nervous about hiring an assistant director.
I need one too badly.”

“I just think it would be a good idea to put your best foot forward,” she said in
a tone too nonchalant to be trusted. She brushed a fine layer of pressed powder over
the bridge of my nose and handed me a coral lip gloss. “Don’t forget to blot.”

“I won’t,” I grumbled, swiping the gloss across my bottom lip.

“Just one more interview,” Kelsey promised. “And then I will drive you home so you
don’t endanger the other drivers with stoplight hysterics.”

“I’m not having ‘stoplight hysterics,’ ” I protested. “That would imply that I’m just
having hysterics at stoplights, which isn’t accurate.”

“Trust me, I know.” Poor Kelsey had been propping me up with foreign chocolate and
non–Dr. Phil–approved pep talks for so long that it was wearing on her nerves. I hadn’t
heard from Josh since my uninvited visit to his apartment weeks ago. And frankly,
I wasn’t sure I wanted to. What was I going to say? Please come back? You were wrong?
I’m sorry that I may have overreacted to your absence in such a way that my cop cousins
have arranged for you to be pulled over and ticketed at every opportunity?

“Buck up, little camper,” Kelsey cooed, “and there’s a Toblerone in it for you.”

“Stop patronizing me,” I grumped.

“I think we can both agree that’s not a good idea.”

“I know.”

I closed my eyes and waited for the door to open. This interview was going to go well,
I told myself. This time, I would behave like a professional. I would not make the
potential employee afraid of the possibility of working for me. I would think optimistically
instead of fine-combing their personality for flaws. The next person who walked through
the door would be perfect for the job.

A familiar
rat-a-tat-tat
had me turning toward the door. My mouth dropped open as Josh walked in, wearing
his good blue suit and my favorite blue-and-green-striped tie.

What. The. Hell?

I was torn between the urge to pole-vault over my desk and wrap myself around him
like an affectionate squid and the urge to whip my nameplate at his head. He was okay?
All these weeks, I was worrying about him, picturing him jobless and lost and possibly
living in a refrigerator box, and he was okay? Hell, he looked tanned, happy, in his
element. Other than a touch of interview nerves, he seemed to be doing just fine.

Josh tugged at his tie, as if he were any other nervous applicant who had not, in
fact, seen the interviewer naked. “Ms. Hutchins? I’m here for my interview?”

I raised an eyebrow, barely catching a glimpse of a triumphant Kelsey peering through
the door just before Josh closed it. I narrowed my eyes at her.

Josh gave me his most expectant, charming smile as he stood in front of my desk, briefcase
in hand. My mouth hung open and I could not seem to make actual word sounds. I had
no idea what to say. And his attitude would determine whether I forewarned him about
the tickets.

Josh reached into his briefcase and pulled out a copy of his résumé, carefully placing
it into my hands. I cleared my throat, deciding to play along. If we were going to
role-play our way through this, I could at least enjoy
one
of these interviews. “Oh, of course. Mr. . . . ?”

“Vaughn.” He stretched his hand out to shake mine. “Josh Vaughn.”

His warm fingers wrapped around mine and squeezed them tight. Lord help me, my knees
almost folded under me right there. I gave him a little squeeze back and then motioned
to the chair opposite my desk. I sat in my own chair and primly folded my hands in
front of me. “So, tell me about yourself.”

The most dreaded and lame of all interview questions. I was keenly interested in how
Josh would make this bearable.

“Well, I’m a Kentucky native. I grew up in Ohio County. I’m familiar with the tourism
industry here in the state and believe I could provide all of the support you need
to produce successful campaigns. Kentucky has so much to offer. I think that the people
here are unique and interesting, and we should do everything we can to preserve and
promote that character.”

I smirked, recognizing the words I’d used to get things off to such a rough start
on Josh’s first day. Josh preened.

So much for professional.

“And can you tell me a little bit about your last job?”

He grinned. “Well, I just got out of a position that I really enjoyed.”

“Really? Well, if the
position
was so enjoyable, why would you leave?” I asked, a bit more pointedly than I’d intended.

“Well, the fit wasn’t quite right,” he told me. “I think I need something with a little
less control, a little less stress. It will give me time to learn a new style of campaigning.
A bit more relaxed, user-friendly.”

I tilted my head, giving him a long, pensive once-over. “How would you feel about
working under a woman?”

“I’m very comfortable under women,” he assured me, letting that thick molasses accent
creep back into his voice. He lowered it, leaning closer as he grinned up at me. “Particularly
pert, complicated brunettes with a penchant for historically accurate corsetry. I’m
willing to put a lot of time and effort into making sure you’re satisfied.”

I shook my head, clucking my tongue as I stood and rounded the desk. “Well, I’m afraid
you’re going to have to show me exactly what you mean by that.”

And no, I didn’t care that I was re-creating every workplace-themed porn ever made.
If working with Josh had shown me anything, it was that sometimes being direct, and
a little vulgar, is the best route.

Bracing his hands against the desk, a palm placed on either side of my hips, he stood
and hovered a hair’s breadth away from my face. His lips parted over that white, wide
smile, and he nudged his nose along my cheek. He slipped his hands under my jaw and
pressed his lips to mine. I sagged into him, ignoring the way my stapler was digging
into my back while I wound my arms around his neck

“You were right. I’m so sorry,” he said, sighing against my lips. “I should have stuck
around.”

“I’m going to need to hear that one more time.”

He kissed me again. “I’m sorry.”

“Nope, the other part.”

“You were right.” He rolled his eyes.

“What changed your mind?”

“I went back home to see my family, turned off the phone, and thought it through.
I missed you. I missed this office and the people here. Everybody else I know is too
damn normal. I don’t want to work with anyone else. I want to work with you.”

“Thanks,” I scoffed, trying to pull away from him to smack him or something, but he
just held me tighter. “You’re sure you really want to work for me? It’s not exactly
running your own firm. I don’t want to make you give up your dream.”

“Dreams can change, especially when you had them for the wrong reasons,” he said.
“Besides, what good would it do, running my own firm, when I wouldn’t be able to take
the team with me? I’d have secretaries who could make nonchewable coffee, interns
without distinct personality disorders. Where’s the fun? I want to be with you. I
want to work with you and watch you achieve these bizarre, wonderful visions of yours.”

I chuckled, running my fingers through his hair. “I missed you so much . . . It’s
not as much fun without you here tormenting me. I . . . I don’t love you,” I told
him. “I really like you. But I think we should actually, you know, go out on a few
dates before we make the big pronouncement. And you will have to take me somewhere
without cloth napkins, preferably with wall-mounted paper towel dispensers tableside.”

“That’s all I’ll be able to afford for a while anyway.” He snorted. “And I don’t love
you either, by the way. I just want you to know that. I have strong feelings of like
for you, that’s all. You being adorable, and gorgeous, and incredibly smart, and the
only person who could possibly understand the way my twisted head works, those are
just bonuses.”

“We would still need to put off dating for a while,” I said. “You know, the whole
‘unwelcome sexual advances’ thing. It’s one of those frowned-upon things that won’t
exactly impress, hiring my new boyfriend as one of my first acts as marketing director.”

“So, we behave like normal people—for us—at the office, and then when we’re off the
clock, you can make all the sexual advances you want. Trust me, they’re welcome,”
he said. “Please let me come home, Sadie.”

I told him, “You’re putting yourself in an awfully weak position, you know. You don’t
want to at least ask some questions or set some conditions? No special requests for
vacation time or a parking spot?”

“Okay, I have two conditions,” he said, his hands settling at the small of my back.
“One, I get to work with you from square one, so I can figure out your creative process.
And two, whatever evil phobia-based revenge you have planned for C.J., you let me
help.”

I grinned, just sharply enough to make Josh wince a little. “Actually, we don’t have
to do anything to Rowley. He’s got enough problems to deal with.”

Josh frowned. “I haven’t heard anything.”

“Well, these are the sort of problems you wouldn’t post in the fraternity alumni newsletter.
Let’s just say that some of Kelsey’s technologically gifted friends intervened on
our behalf. And now the federal government is acutely aware that Rowley owes forty
thousand dollars in back taxes, has six years’ worth of unpaid parking tickets, and
has several bench warrants for failure to appear for those unpaid tickets.”

Josh’s mouth fell open. “Kelsey has friends that can change government records?”

I waffled my hand back and forth. “They didn’t so much change the records as flag
them so Rowley’s problems would come to the attention of the court system and IRS
sooner. Last I heard, Rowley came barreling out of his favorite bar to yell at some
poor traffic cop for ticketing him—he was parked in a handicapped spot, by the way.
The cops noticed the bench warrants and he was hauled away. And in front of all his
friends, too.” I clucked my tongue and shook my head as if I felt some sympathy for
the tool.

“Could you please tell Kelsey that we’re on good terms now?” Josh asked, shifting
uncomfortably. “Because I have enough problems with my credit report.”

I laughed. “I think we can arrange that.”

Josh pressed his mouth to mine and pulled me into the office chair, into his lap.
I pressed my forehead against his while he twined his fingers through mine. “So do
I get the job?”

“You’re hired,” I told him solemnly. “But we need to talk about your first Casual
Friday.”

“What about it?”

I grinned wickedly. “Don’t forget your pom-poms.”

He frowned for a split second before he figured out my meaning. He groaned. “You’re
not serious!”

“Of course I am; you lost. Therefore, you wear the cheerleader uniform.”

“You wouldn’t,” he scoffed as I crawled off my desk and rooted around in a drawer
until I found a red-and-black bow. I tossed it to him, and he blanched when he saw
the little U of L cardinal imprinted on the material.