My Bluegrass Baby (2 page)

“Sadie Hutchins,” I said politely, withdrawing my hand.

There was a flash of recognition in his eyes and the corners of his mouth sagged.
“Sadie Hutchins?
You’re
Sadie Hutchins?”

I tilted my head, scanning his face again to jog my memory. The brim of my hat nearly
caught his chin, but he didn’t even flinch. There was no way we knew each other. Surely
I would have remembered someone who looked like him. “I’m sorry, have we met?”

Just then, Ray appeared at my elbow, eyeing Josh Vaughn with something close to panic.
“Sadie, can I speak to you for a moment?”

“Ray.” Josh smiled warmly and extended his hand for a shake. “Good to see you again.”

Mr. Perfect Pants knew my boss? How did Mr. Perfect Pants know my boss? What was going
on here? I could tell that there was something wrong. Ray was using his big, fake,
“I am trying to prevent a scene” smile. The last time I’d seen that smile, we’d had
to fish a comptroller’s wife out of a duck pond.

Ray gave our new “friend” a curt nod and looped his arm through mine, leading me toward
the patchwork of rosebushes. Rail thin from frequent marathons and sporting a head
of thick salt-and-pepper hair, Ray was more than just a boss; he was a father figure,
a friend. I was sorry to see him retire. But I was really looking forward to getting
his office. I liked my cozy, feminine office with its refurbished walnut desk, biscuit-colored
walls, and cardinal-themed knickknacks, a salute to my beloved alma mater, the University
of Louisville. But Ray’s office had a window. I had been working in artificial lighting
for far too long.

“Is everything okay, Ray?” I murmured, careful to keep a pleasant, easy expression
on my face. You never knew who was watching you at this sort of gathering. The last
thing I wanted was for some helpful random acquaintance of Commissioner Bidwell’s
to mention that they saw me pitching a hissy fit in Margene McBride’s garden.

Ray cleared his throat. He was trying too hard to appear calm and it was making his
big brown puppy-dog eyes look slightly crossed. “Well, there’s just a little problem
with your campaign.”

“What, like a printing error?” I said, looking over Ray’s shoulder to see that Mr.
Perfect Pants was watching the two of us. I frowned at him, stepping behind Ray so
he couldn’t see me. Well, he could see the outlying areas of hat, but not my actual
face. What was this guy’s deal? Was he some sort of headwear fetishist with a penchant
for green? “Is it anything that can’t be fixed before we do the mailing?”

“No,” Ray said, pinching his thin lips together. “It’s more of a conceptual issue.”

My smile faltered. “There’s a problem with the concept of my campaign and you chose
to tell me three minutes before I announce it?”

“Well, that’s the thing. You’re not going to be announcing it today, hon.”

“Okay, Ray, stop stalling and tell me what’s really going on,” I said, as a crowd
of women passed us, inspecting Margene’s collection of heirloom tea roses.

“We’re not going to use your campaign, Sadie,” Ray said quietly.

“What?!” I cried shrilly, startling several nearby ladies into bobbling their punch
cups. I scrambled for an explanation for such an outburst, following with, “—a lovely
hat.” I nodded toward Deanna Stanhope’s teal fascinator, decorated with a turquoise
bow the size of a Buick. “What an absolutely lovely hat. Where on earth did you find
it?”

Mrs. Stanhope, whose husband ran the most profitable personal injury practice in town,
preened a bit and gave me some long, circuitous story about a personal milliner in
New York. But I didn’t hear or care. Over Ray’s shoulder I spotted the hale, husky
figure of Tourism Commissioner Ted Bidwell and his fembot assassin of an assistant,
Gina, speaking to Mr. Perfect Pants. I wasn’t sure which was more confusing—the presence
of the department head or the quick clench of gut-level jealousy when I saw willowy,
blond Gina throwing her head back in a tinkling laugh at something Mr. Perfect Pants
said.

Why on earth would Commissioner Bidwell be talking to this bizarre, attractive stranger?
And how could I get him to leave and take his flirty assistant with him? We rarely
saw our mighty overlord out of the office, as he spent most of his off time working
his family farm just a few miles outside of Frankfort. He didn’t understand much about
marketing, but he knew that in order to get butts in seats you had to make sure people
knew that the seats were available in the first place. He reminded me a little bit
of P. T. Barnum, always looking for the next big draw. We got along just fine because
he didn’t mind my quirky ideas, as long as they worked.

“What is he doing here?” I whispered to Ray, smiling sweetly and waving at my boss’s
boss. Commissioner Bidwell gave me a diffident nod and returned to his conversation
with Mr. Vaughn.

“The commissioner dropped by this morning to let me know he wants us to use a new
campaign by some marketing whiz out of Atlanta,” Ray said, which sounded odd coming
through his tightly clamped teeth. “I’m sorry about the last-minute change, hon. I
really pushed to keep your concept, but he was adamant. He wants new blood, new ideas.”

“Since when does a state-run marketing department use an outside marketing consultant?”
I asked. Ray squirmed. “Damn it, Ray, just give me the bad news all in one shot instead
of dragging this out!”

“He’s not an outside marketing consultant,” Ray said. “He’s the commission’s new marketing
director.”

“What?!” I gasped, drawing the attention of several other guests, including Commissioner
Bidwell. “—do you think of starting in ten minutes? I think everything is ready to
go,” I quickly added.

Commissioner Bidwell barely made eye contact with me during my explosive bout of time
management, suddenly and conveniently finding someone across the lawn that he absolutely
had to see. My legs felt weak and wobbly as a new foal’s, collapsing underneath me.
Ray caught my elbow and kept me from flopping dramatically to the stones like some
antebellum diva. Mr. Perfect Pants moved closer, as if he would dive for me in the
event of a head-cracking descent. While it was a little endearing, it was more humiliating
to have a complete stranger witness this conversation.

“Please stop saying ‘what’ so loudly,” Ray hissed.

I took a deep breath, trying to school my features into something besides my current
“I am going to either burst into hideous wracking sobs or take out bystanders with
an ice sculpture” expression. I didn’t want to embarrass Ray in front of said bystanders.
“I’m sorry, Ray, I know this is really awkward and I’m not responding very well. I
know this isn’t your fault. But I’m—I am going to have to leave before I become some
sort of garden-party cautionary tale.” I turned on my heel to leave, only to run smack
into my blue-eyed stalker.

Oh, come on, now.

Who was this guy and what tragic lab accident had removed his social filters? I was
clearly in distress, and he thought now was a good time to try to hit on me? With
my boss standing right there? Where was Kelsey? Surely she had nunchuks or something
hurt-worthy in that giant shoulder bag of hers. I once saw her threaten to staple
an intern’s lips shut for stealing her tape dispenser.

“Ray’s had nothing but great things to say about you,” Mr. Perfect Pants said, though
there was an odd twitch to his lip, as if he didn’t quite buy Ray’s praise. “I’m looking
forward to working together.”

I stared at him as if he were speaking another language. I looked back to Ray, whose
gaze was bouncing back and forth between me and Mr. Per—Vaughn, Mr. Vaughn. My sputtering
brain finally made the connection between the overeager stranger and the low-down,
dirty snake who had swiped my job out from under me.

“The marketing whiz?” I hissed, my voice taking on the thicker, exaggerated Southern
accent that bled into my voice when I was upset. I shot a significant look at Ray
and felt an icy chill zip through my gut. I straightened my shoulders and let that
cold, crackling anger fortify my spine. My voice was steady and so saccharine sweet
it made my teeth ache. Of course, the way I was grinding them could have been a contributing
factor. “I wish I could say the same thing. I didn’t have any idea you would be here
today. Or at all.”

“I’m sure it will take a little time for us to get to know each other,” Ray said,
chuckling awkwardly. “Maybe we could all go out for drinks after the auction.”

I had barely gotten through Ray’s little announcement without causing a huge scene.
There was no way I would get through drinks with my dignity intact. My ice-maiden
impersonation was only going to last a few minutes. I needed to get out of there before
the numbness wore off. I needed to go somewhere I could process all of this and breathe
and react in a way that didn’t make Ray feel guilty or require the removal of my shoe
from any of Josh Vaughn’s soft tissues.

“Oh, I’d love to join you.” Gina appeared behind Vaughn and stroked her long, carefully
manicured fingers along Vaughn’s suit sleeve. “I want to help welcome Josh to the
family.”

Ray shot her an annoyed look and shook his head. I smiled wanly, as if Vaughn didn’t
deserve the effort of actually peeling back my lips, and said, “You know, I’m not
feeling very well all of a sudden. I’ll just do the introduction as scheduled and
be on my way. We can discuss this on Monday.”

“Actually, Sadie”—Ray’s discomfort was evident—“the commissioner thought this would
be a good time to introduce Josh as the new director of marketing. So he’ll be doing
the introduction.”

For some reason, experiencing this humiliation while wearing a hat the size of a satellite
dish made it so much worse.

Years of work meant nothing, apparently. Extra hours, extra effort, extra miles, none
of that mattered. Because Josh Vaughn was going to be the new director of marketing.
I was going to be
his
assistant. I was going to have to work for this smug, arrogant jackass, whose only
redeeming quality, so far as I could determine, was that he filled out a suit nicely.

“All right, then,” I ground out. I slapped my notecards into Vaughn’s open palm. “Good
luck, Mr. Vaughn. Welcome to the team.”

I maneuvered around them all, chin held as high as I could tilt it without losing
my headgear. I could feel the heat gathering behind my eyes, heat that would quickly
turn into tears if I didn’t get far away from here as quickly as possible. I’d almost
made it to the back door when I heard Mr. Vaughn’s voice from over my shoulder.

“Ms. Hutchins?”

I turned to find Vaughn giving me a long, deliberate once-over from head to toe. He
smirked at me, the little dimples in his cheeks winking in a blasphemous mockery of
good humor. “Great hat.”

Kiss my secondhand Manolos.

You look like Justin Bieber’s bastard brother.

I hope Gina gives you an incurable rash.

Those are all things I could have said. Instead I chose to give him the Brain-Melting
Glare of Doom™ and turned away. I walked through the McBrides’ great room, wondering
how I was going to get through the hour-long drive back to Frankfort without screaming
myself hoarse.

Damn it.
I stopped in my tracks, no small feat wearing high heels on a slick burnt-orange Tuscan
tile floor.

Ray had insisted that all of the staff members ride together in a state van so we
didn’t occupy precious parking space in Mrs. McBride’s driveway. I was going to have
to ride home with my coworkers, knowing that I’d been passed over for the promotion
and knowing that they knew.

I felt like throwing up all over again.

In Which I Smile Like a Serial Killer

2

Once again, Kelsey ran to the rescue. While I teetered through the McBrides’ house
past the tittering crowd of exotically bonneted debs and tried to determine exactly
how long it would take me to walk home in these shoes, Kelsey had already grabbed
her enormous bag and secured keys to another vehicle. She was the James Bond of secretaries.

“It’s okay, Sadie,” she said, wrapping her arm around my shoulders when she caught
up to me in the circular cobblestone drive. “Everything’s going to be okay.”

We reached a bottle-green Ford Taurus with a strange collection of Picasso-style sketches
spray-painted on the body. She reached into her magic bag and pulled out a tiny bottle
of vodka, a brand so cheap I could practically see the potato peelings floating in
it. I gave it a shake, my mouth pressed in a skeptical line.

“Oh, don’t pull the delicate-flower routine on me, woman. I remember the office Christmas
party.”

“Touché,” I muttered, cracking the seal and taking a swig while Kelsey wrestled with
the driver’s-side lock. “Whose car is this?”

“I went to college with one of the waitresses,” she said, nodding toward the catering
van. “Which just goes to prove that you should not major in poetry. But, fortunately
for us, she was running late to work today and had to drive.”

“And how exactly did you convince her to give you the keys?”

“You’re now the proud owner of about two cases of self-published volumes of esoteric
odes to the left nostril,” Kelsey informed me, cranking the engine. “We just have
to return the car to Eunice before Monday.”

“Just the left nostril?”

Kelsey shrugged. I whacked my hat against the frame of the car, ripping my hatpinned
hair out by the roots. “Sonofabitch!” I yowled, yanking the offending millinery off
entirely and beating it against the dashboard while shouting a string of words so
blue even Kelsey blushed. When I emerged from this R-rated fugue, I was holding a
crumpled linen hat carcass, and the tiny vodka bottle was empty.

“The hat had it coming. Bad hat,” Kelsey said, nodding as she sped out of the McBrides’
circular drive.

“I can’t believe this is happening,” I said, burying my face in my hands.

“You handled yourself pretty well,” she assured me. “Up until the hatricide.”

“How could Ray do that?” I asked. “How could Ray do this to me in front of all those
people? Did he time it so I couldn’t make a scene? Is that the work version of your
boyfriend breaking up with you in a crowded restaurant? What the—he told me the promotion
was just a matter of signing some papers.”

“Must have been some pretty important papers,” Kelsey muttered, turning the car onto
I-64 east. “Trust me, Sadie, I see everything that comes across Ray’s desk. He was
acting in good faith that you were going to replace him. I’m guessing he didn’t know
anything about Mr. All-American until this morning, just like he said. Look, you’re
going to go to the office on Monday. You and Ray will talk this out. I’m sure there’s
a good explanation.”

“A good explanation that will magically soothe my hurt feelings and get my promotion
back?”

“That would be shooting pretty high,” Kelsey acknowledged.

I groaned, rubbing at my aching scalp. This wouldn’t be the first time a political
appointment had upset the bureaucratic apple cart. Ray was the head of the marketing
department, but he answered to people on several levels of the administration. If
someone higher up decided that a job should go to an outside hire with an impressive
track record, there was nothing to be done about it. In some cases, outside applicants
got more consideration to avoid the appearance of cronyism.

I expected better than this from Ray. More than just a boss, he’d completely changed
the direction of my life. I was supposed to teach high school English with my shiny
bachelor’s degree in secondary education from the University of Louisville. I went
to a summer job fair on campus and there was Ray Brackett, trying to con some qualified
kid into coming to work for his office, unpaid. The marketing major huffed off and,
being the arrogant little coed that I was, I asked Ray if he really thought he was
going to be able to sell an unpaid summer spent stuffing mailers and making copies.
After acting sort of indignant about being able to sell just about anything to anybody,
Ray admitted that the position was paid. He had just wanted to see who was interested
enough to stick around and discuss it. Ray and I got along just fine. And because
I was the only kid who asked in-depth questions, and Ray didn’t want to go to any
more career fairs, I got the job.

Nothing bonds two people like the creative process. That summer, I learned everything
I could about tourism marketing in-house, from copywriting to putting together pictorials
to working with printers and media. Not everything we produced was gold—a memorable
misfire that encouraged tourists to trace moonshiners’ hidden routes through Kentucky
comes to mind. (Lost tourists primarily interested in illegal booze + isolated areas
+ locals irritated by increased traffic = angry calls to the people who put together
the brochure.) But in general, we produced good work together. And when I graduated,
he snatched me right up and hired me as his assistant.

It wasn’t that I didn’t like being assistant marketing director. It wasn’t even losing
the promotion, though I’d really looked forward to it. I didn’t know this Vaughn guy.
I didn’t know his work. I didn’t know how he ran an office. I didn’t know his creative
process. What if he was like the assistant director who left right before I took the
job, who seemed intent on making all our promotional materials look like beer ads?

Could Vaughn’s work really have been that much better than mine? My print ads and
radio spots had always gotten positive feedback. I’d always scored well in my performance
reviews. Were my deficiencies as a potential office leader really so dire that the
commissioner of tourism had felt it necessary to look to Atlanta for a solution? Was
it because of my age? At twenty-eight, I would have been one of the younger department
heads, but it wasn’t unheard-of when the candidate was qualified. As far as I knew,
I hadn’t done anything to prove that I was
un
qualified.

The self-flagellation was doing me no good, I reflected. Professional wounding was
the least of my problems. I could go to Commissioner Bidwell and claim to be insulted
and hurt to be passed over. I could hop up and down and threaten to find some human
resources route to revenge. But deep down, what really scared me was that this job
was all I had. I was aware that this sounded a bit melodramatic, but it was the truth.
Little by little, I’d let it take over every aspect of my life. I barely took vacations.
I had no time to date because I was always running off to some event or doing game
night with Kelsey or going to Melody’s scrapbooking club. (I wasn’t much of a scrap-rat,
but I had a knack for cutting out those little paper embellishments.) There was also
the small matter of what Kelsey called my “impossible standards” for a guy—funny,
employed, considerate, nonsmoking, noncrazy, non-living-with-his-mommy.

My grandparents, who’d raised me, had both passed away in the past few years, leaving
me without much in the way of family beyond the odd collection of misfits in the office.
The closest personal relationships I had were with the people I worked with, good,
kind people who accepted my quirks and flaws and inability to use the fax machine
without occasionally sending documents to Beijing.

I loved my job. I loved finding that weird earwig of a promotion that made it impossible
to ignore the state I’d adopted as my own. I loved that it was my job to help other
people find their way to those same events and discover that quirky charm for themselves.
I loved writing funny ad copy, picking the right photos to complement my message.
I couldn’t threaten to walk away from my job, because I didn’t want to leave. I thought
about going back to my cozy little apartment and trying to rewrite my résumé, and
I was struck by a wave of despair so acute it made my chest ache.

I had no one to blame for this but myself. Why hadn’t I joined a book club? Tried
online dating? Joined a gym? Was it laziness or a stubborn belief that I didn’t need
anything else?

Probably laziness.

“I could have the guys look into his background,” Kelsey offered.

I grinned at the mention of the lovable band of software programmers who lived two
doors down in Kelsey’s apartment building—Aaron, Cyrus, Wally, and Bud. They lived
much as they had when they roomed together in college, two to a bedroom, with scheduled
game nights and Pizza Tuesdays. When Kelsey first approached them, they seemed to
think she had some sort of ulterior motive, like stealing their lunch money. But Kelsey,
whose passion for sci-fi and fantasy TV knew no bounds, fit right in as their den
mother. She cooked for them on occasion and made sure they left the house for fresh
air. In exchange, they secured bootleg copies of obscure British TV shows and fixed
her computer when her boneheaded boyfriend downloaded multiple viruses while surfing
for porn.

If Kelsey asked them to, her nerd-herd neighbors would get me Josh Vaughn’s credit
report, bank balances, college transcripts, prescription history, and probably a hair
sample if I asked really nicely. I smirked, rubbing my hands together in a gleeful
parody of a Bond villain. “Make it so.”

•   •   •

I will admit I wallowed.

I held it together for the rest of the drive home, but as soon as Kelsey dropped me
off I flopped facedown on my couch and sobbed like a reality TV star on confessional
day. I retreated into my failure bunker and avoided contact with the outside world.
I loved the one-story duplex I shared with a retiree, Mr. Leavitt, whose doting attention
kept the front yard from looking like something from
The Addams Family
. The décor was sentimental rather than stylish. Kelsey and I had spent hours searching
for the perfect shade of soft buttery yellow paint, one that matched the walls of
my childhood bedroom at my grandparents’ house. It served as a bright, airy backdrop
to my grandmother’s collection of Candlewick glass and my own locally made Bybee pottery.

I turned off the phone. I watched John Hughes movies. I even made a Derby pie, which
was sort of a Hail Mary pass in terms of trying to cheer myself up. Custard, dark
chocolate, and pecans in a pie shell could replace every antidepressant on the market
if I could figure out how to shove it into a tiny gelatin capsule.

But come Monday morning, I rolled out of bed and made coffee so strong it was practically
chewy. My
GETTIN’ LUCKY IN KENTUCKY
mug would never be the same. I put on my black cashmere cardigan over a white camisole
and gray slacks that fit my ass like a particularly flattering second skin. A mess
on the inside was no excuse for a mess on the outside, as Gran used to say. I paid
extra-careful attention to my under-eye concealer, because there was considerable
baggage there.

I hadn’t done any permanent damage at the McBride party. I could turn this around.
I would make my displeasure known, but I would be professional. I would come up with
fantastic ideas that would blow Vaughn’s butt right out of the water and prove to
Commissioner Bidwell that he was wrong not to promote me. I would be an ice queen,
I told myself.

That lasted all of about five minutes.

For a state capital, Frankfort was a surprisingly small town, surrounded by heavily
wooded hills and valleys. The gently winding Kentucky River flows right through the
center of town. It divides the town into sections: the somewhat cramped downtown area
and a mix of new industrial government buildings and gingerbread historic darlings
arranged in a mind-boggling maze of one-way streets that always seem to be under construction.

Across the river, the Kentucky Commission on Tourism was contained in a complex of
annexed government buildings near Bellepoint. Our office was home to ten employees,
including myself, plus Michael and Jordie, the Goofus and Gallant of office interns.
(Michael, a senior from the University of Kentucky, cemented his Goofus status the
day he fell asleep at his desk with a copy of
Maxim
over his face.) While our building was plain and unassuming on the outside, when
you stepped inside you saw how Ray strived to create a family atmosphere from the
requisite pale gray carpet and off-white walls. In addition to comfy waiting-room
chairs and a colorful area rug that had been wrangled at an estate sale, Ray had added
large, artfully framed photos Kelsey had taken of staff at different events around
the state. There was a shot of our historian, Bonnie Turkle, wearing full Daniel Boone
regalia while she detailed the explorer’s earliest expeditions to elementary school
kids; another of Melody and me smiling from the dunking booth at the annual Hunter’s
Moon Festival near Buford; and one of the entire office staff huddled at the finish
line at the Great Outhouse 300 Race in Lebanon, Kentucky. (Our team lost because the
other team opened their crescent-moon-embellished door and edged us out just before
we crossed the finish line.)

Gina, who hadn’t liked me since a particularly ugly White Elephant Christmas gift
exchange incident involving a Sephora gift card, worked in a separate part of the
building, outside Commissioner Bidwell’s oft-unoccupied office. She saw the scathing
glare I sent her as I came down the hallway, and she scurried away. I passed Melody,
our sweet-faced front-desk receptionist, and dropped a small brown bag containing
her favorite cranberry muffins from Sweet Eats on her desk. This ensured the delivery
of my mail and faxes for at least a week. Kelsey was at her desk, ruthlessly sorting
through Ray’s e-mails and typing the important notices into her usual Monday morning
memo. As I went to get some office coffee, I saw The Interloper, Thief of Promotions,
through the conference-room windows. Watching him pore over our materials with an
amused smirk on his face made me want to smash the window with a chair. He must have
caught my glowering vibe because he turned toward me and gave me one of those megawatt
smiles that was supposed to turn me into lady jelly.