Going All the Way (10 page)

But as rational and logical as all that sounded, it wasn’t what he wanted. He had to be practical. She had gotten under his skin. He needed to get a handle on it, and if he couldn’t, he needed to spend as little time with her as possible. Hopefully this visit with Stu would be her last. No sooner did he have the thought than she stopped inside the bullpen with Stu by her side.

“Everyone, I’d like you to meet Carrie Steinhem,” Stu said, getting everyone’s attention. He stared at Ryan for a long contemplative moment. Long enough that Ryan became certain she’d said something to him about them. “Carrie is going to be coming on board to help us with the Costas account.”

You could have heard a pin drop. Ryan’s stomach tightened.

“Some of you might remember Carrie from a few years back. We built this company together, and I can assure you, she is the best. She’s our secret weapon that’s going to put Steinhem back on the map. I want all of you to make her feel welcome and to understand that she’s in charge. Whatever she wants, whatever she says, goes. You got that?”

“Yes, sir,” Ryan mumbled along with everyone else. No one looked happy.

“All right, let’s meet in fifteen minutes in the board room and show her what we’ve got,” Stu said, and then led her to one of the outer ring offices.

Ryan stood rooted to his spot. Great. The woman he wanted to forget, to stay away from, the woman he couldn’t stop thinking about…was now his boss.

Chapter Thirteen

After
Ryan left that morning, hurt and angry, Carrie pulled out one of her business outfits, got dressed and drove to Steinhem. Ryan was right. Why should she share her work, her ideas, with him? He never asked for them. Stu did. All Ryan wanted from her was a little sex and for her to watch his dog. At least Stu appreciated and respected her work. She enjoyed working on this account, and she was looking forward to sharing her ideas. And if he didn’t like it? Too bad. She parked in a nearby garage then walked into the offices. It had been a long time since she’d entered this building, but George the doorman still remembered her.

“Good morning, Ms. Steinhem,” he greeted.

“Good morning, George.” She smiled and walked through the lobby to the elevators without even the slightest twinge. Without the urge to turn-tail and run. Maybe she could come back to work here. Just for this one account. If she could convince Stu to let her do things her way. She pushed through a heavy wooden door into the receptionist’s area and walked across plush carpet.

“May I help you?” the young blonde asked from behind a tall U-shaped desk.

“Yes, tell Stu that Carrie is on her way.”

“But…” The young woman tried to stop her, but Carrie wasn’t going to sit in the waiting room. She wanted to see the place she helped Stu create. To see what had changed, and what stayed the same. She blazed through the double doors and into the bullpen—a large circle of cubicles with the walls at mid-length to encourage team building and the sharing of ideas. A wall of windows filled the entire length of the room with natural light.

Faces turned her way—some in curiosity, some in recognition. The few who knew her raised their hands in greeting or called out her name. She smiled and nodded, but kept moving through the pen toward the outer ring of offices and Stu’s corner executive suite. She didn’t see Ryan, but didn’t want to appear overly obvious looking for him either. She wondered if he saw her, and if he did, what he thought about her being there. If he even cared.

“Carrie, I’m so glad you’re here,” Stu said, popping out his tall heavy doorway before she even reached his office. “Have you read the file?”

“Yes,” she said, following him inside his office. With one last look around the room, she shut the door behind her.

Stu dropped into the worn, maroon leather chair behind the massive mahogany desk and smiled. “Good, I’m glad I can still inspire you.”

Ryan had inspired her, but no reason to tell him that. “Well, I wouldn’t go that far.” She sat across from him and admired the striking view of the San Francisco skyline.

“I’m relieved you’re here,” he admitted.

“So tell me, what do you think happened with Pepsi?” she asked, wanting to get a little background on what was going wrong with the company.

“
We don
’t seem to be hitting the mark. That’s why I need you back. Why
we
need you back.”

“You can butter me up all you want, but I haven’t decided if I’m staying to help. I’m just here to listen. To see what the others have come up with and to share some ideas I’ve had of my own.”

“I can’t tell you how much I appreciate that,” Stu said.

“But I’ll only stay and help you on one condition.”

“What’s that?”

“I work from home.”

“How are you going to work with the team if you’
re at home?
”

“Easy. I’ll meet with them once, hear what ideas they come up with, and then I’m on my own. They work up theirs, I’ll work up mine, we’ll come back together on Wednesday, get a consensus, pick one and run with it.”

“The presentation is on Friday.” He frowned and tapped on his desk, concerned.

She was tempted to relent, to do it his way for this one week, but if she gave in on this she’d find herself giving in again next week or on the next account—if she decided to stay that long. She had to be strong, and damn it felt good to do it. She stiffened her back. “Those are my terms. It’s the only way I’ll help out.”

He leaned back in his chair and stared out the window for a moment, contemplating her demands. “All right. If that’s the way it has to be, then let’s do it. Half of you is better than none of you. Are you ready to meet your team?”

Was she ready to jump back into the fire? To face Ryan? This wasn’t about him, she told herself. She wanted to work on this account, with or without him. Reading that file sparked a flame inside her, and she wanted to see how far she could take it. “Absolutely.”

“Great. Here are the feedback reports from the focus groups.” He pushed the files across the desk toward her. “Let’s go introduce you. I’ll tell the team to meet you in the conference room in fifteen minutes. That enough time to go through everything?”

“Should work.”

Carrie sat in the conference room going over the reports on the Costas account, crunching numbers as one after another as her new team walked in. She glanced up at each, but tried to not look directly at Ryan. She was still hurt over his dismissal of her that morning. All weekend long, she hadn’t been able to get him out of her mind, thinking about his smile, his touch, about how easy it had been for him to work his way into her heart and her life. But then he walked away. He never even gave her the chance to fully explain, or for things to cool enough between them to have a logical, rational discussion. He just cut her off completely. What kind of person could do that?

And worse, he wasn’t even interested in her help with the Costas account. Could care less what she’d come up with or what she had to say. It was as if her thoughts weren’t relevant, and didn’t matter. But they did. And soon he would see that.

Once everyone was seated, she started right in with her findings on the campaign. “Preliminary polls show viewers do not like the new ads.”

Everyone in the room was silent for a long moment.

“What sells chips better than a group of guys watching football?” one of the team members asked.

“Your name?” she asked, jotting down a brief note in her notebook.

“Mike,” he said, and then saw her writing and zipped up, sitting stiffly in his seat.

“Yeah, hot girls in the kitchen, filling up bowls of chips,” another added.

She looked at him, her eyebrows raised.

“Paul,” he said.

“All right. Let’s see if we can keep the comments productive,” Ryan said, obviously trying to rein his men in. Something Stu should have done. “The team is obviously disappointed by the feedback.” He turned to Carrie. “We’ve been working on this account for a while. What else do you have for us?”

She gave him a cool look. “Ninety percent of the female viewers shot them down as boring. Redundant. Out of touch.” She glanced at her notes. “As you are all aware, it is our female viewers that do the bulk of the food buying. This is the audience we need to target.”

“Then what do you suggest?” another of the team demanded, distaste twisting his square face.

She was beginning to remember why she was so insistent on working from home.

“We need something fresh,” she said. “Something different. What’s the message you’re trying to send? Ask yourselves, how does eating Costas Chips make you feel?”

“How do they make us feel? Are you kidding?” Mike asked then burst into laughter. “What is this, a therapy session?”

Carrie focused on keeping her expression blank. No reason to feed the animals.

“Okay, so women don’t want to see the guys watching football. What do they want to see? How about women doing…” Ryan paused. “Perhaps we focus on family.”

“Or women getting their nails done?” Paul suggested.

“How about a baby shower?” Mike added.

“All right, that’s enough,” Stu said throwing down his pencil.

“What about a birthday party?” Ryan suggested. “Moms, dads, and kids can relate to birthday parties. The tagline could be chips for everyone’s special occasion.”

“That’s better,” Stu cut in. “Work a few ideas up, and we’ll meet again tomorrow, come up with a few ideas to send out to the focus groups. But make them better than the ones you sent out last week.”

“Got it, boss,” the men said in unison.

“I’m going to head out,”
Carrie said, standing.

“
Carrie…” Stu smiled.
“Wait for me.”

She waited while the others filed out of the room. Stu closed the door then turned back to her.

“I know that could have gone better,” he said.

“Everyone is stressed.” Not a state of mind she wanted to go back to. “I’m sure they don’t appreciate a new team member at this stage in the game.”

“I’ll tell you what, most of the guys head out to Oysters down the street after work for a beer and to relax while they wait for the traffic to die down. Why don’t you come by, and we’ll join them for some team building?”

She’d rather poke herself in the eye with a sharp stick. Instead, she said, “
I don
’t know, I really don’t see what difference it will make.”

“You love a challenge. What better challenge is there than these guys?”

She stared at him. Was he for real?

“Ryan is a bright guy. He’s the outside consultant I hired. In fact, he lives right next door to you.”

“We’ve met.” She didn’t want to talk about Ryan. He didn’t look at her. Not once, and it bothered her more than she cared to admit.

“Come by. Meet them on their turf. I probably shouldn’t have thrown you at them the way I did.”

“All right,” she relented.

Maybe then she could get Ryan to talk to her.

…

Ryan tensed the moment Carrie walked into the bar. Why w
as she there? Wasn’t it bad enough that she had to haunt his thoughts, but now she seemed to show up everywhere he went? If this kept up, he’d never get her out of his head. It was bad enough that Carrie was all the guys had been able to talk about since they’d arrived at happy hour at their favorite little haunt. Wings, beer, how much better could it get than that? And instead of talking about the game or the hot babes at the bar, they were obsessing over Carrie. In fact, they were on quite a rant. And now she was there and walking toward them. Oh, yeah. This ought to get interesting.

“You guys were a little hard on her, don’t you think?” Ryan said, trying to diffuse the situation before she reached their table on the far side of the room. “Maybe we should give it a rest.”

“Not hard enough,” Chuck said.

“Yeah, who the hell is she that Stu would bring her in to head-up this campaign now?” Mike asked.

“His ex-wife,” Paul answered, unaware of the twinge his words brought to Ryan’s gut. “She and Stu built the company, made it what it is today.”

“Yeah, from what I heard when she was running things the company was doing a
lot
better,” Ryan piped in. “So why don’t we give her a break?”

Give her a break and forget about her. Hard to accomplish when she was all he could see. She was about halfway across the room and would soon be within hearing distance. He needed to leave, to get up and go before she got there, but he sat frozen, unable to keep his eyes off her, along with every other man in the room’s eyes. She walked with an air about her, as if she owned the place. As if this was her world and they were players moving the pieces. It was an attractive trait. Attractive and annoying.

“If she’s so great then where has she been?” Chuck asked.

“New York,” Paul answered. “One of our big competitors.”

The table went silent for a nanosecond.

“Carrie—” he started to stand, hoping to warn the others.

“So why is she back?” Mike blurted before Ryan could finish his greeting.

“Because this is my home,” Carrie said from behind him. Everyone looked up. Stu stepped behind her, his hand possessively moving to the small of her back.

Ryan felt an urge to pry his fingers off her and break them. Were they getting back together? What if they were? He didn’t care. He looked away. He had no hold on her. He didn’t want a hold on her. In fact, it didn’t bother him at all.

He gritted his teeth.

“Gentlemen,” Stu said, his mouth turned down in a frown, “I thought we could take advantage of this little powwow to get to know Carrie better. She is doing me—doing us—a huge favor helping us with the Costas account, and I think we got off to a rocky start.”

“Of course.” Paul got up and offered Carrie his chair.

“Why don’t we start with introductions again,” Carrie suggested as she took Paul’s seat with a grateful smile. A smile that shouldn’t rock Ryan’s world. “I’m afraid I can’t remember everyone’s names.”

“Chuck. But then I’m sure you remember me.” He laughed then took a large swig off his beer, his gaze narrowing in challenge over the rim.

“Yes, Chuck,” Carrie agreed. “You’re a hard one to forget.” Her words brought a laugh to the table and lightened the mood, everyone’s except Chuck’s. They all said their names and not much else as they went around the table. Including Ryan. No reason to let on that they knew each other. Intimately. Very intimately. In fact, it didn’t take much for him to remember the feel of her touch on his skin, or her taste on his mouth, the tickle of her curls against his chest, the smell of her shampoo. Even as he fought the images, he had to hand it to her—she gave nothing away. It was as if she’d never met him before. As if they hadn’t seen and kissed every inch of each other.