Home At Last Chance (Last Chance #2)(12)
Author: Hope Ramsay

Tulane leaned back in his chair, folding his arms over his chest. He was furious, and Sarah felt a huge rasher of guilt descend right down on her head. What on earth had she been thinking when she’d put that particular detail into her revenge memo?

Short answer: She’d been trying to embarrass Steve Phelps. But Tulane Rhodes was paying the price. Proving that revenge was never a very good plan.

Jim turned toward Sarah. “So the car seats were your idea?”

She nodded. “Uh, yeah.”

“Where did you come up with that idea?”

Tulane gave her a warning glance.

She shrugged. “I don’t know. It just came to me. And for the record, Jim, Tulane was great with the kids at the baby-changing races. But, uh, they—”

“Enough, Sarah. You weren’t invited to this meeting to—” Deidre started.

“No, wait. I’m interested in what she has to say,” Jim interrupted.

Deidre aimed her laser-beam look at Jim. Usually this gaze caused people to curl up and die on the spot. But Jim seemed impervious. Maybe Deidre had met her match. Sarah shifted her gaze from Deidre to Jim to Tulane and back again as she realized that no matter what she said, someone was going to be unhappy.

“Sarah?” Jim said.

“Well, um, I don’t know where the idea came from. Seeing a lot of mommies with babies, probably. And, um, as I said before, Tulane was good with the babies.”

Tulane rolled his eyes. His biceps flexed. He was unhappy, and she didn’t blame him.

“Could we please get this conversation back on track?” Deidre gave Sarah the laser-beam treatment. Sarah felt a little queasy.

“No,” Jim said firmly. That one little word was so forceful and compelling. When Jim Ferguson spoke, everyone listened, even Deidre.

“No?” Deidre said, giving Jim another arch look, but this time the whole laser-beam thing seemed to have lost its potency.

“Deidre,” Jim said with quiet authority, “if we continue down this road, it’s going to end badly. So I have a suggestion to make.”

“Okay.” Deidre didn’t sound too sure.

“I’d like you to assign Sarah to Ferguson Racing for the season as our sponsor liaison. We can use her as a go-between on this car seat safety idea, and she can coordinate your hospitality events and whatnot from here. She appears to be a very creative young woman. And I think we ought to collaborate on this idea of a license deal with Racer Rabbit. That idea is brilliant, and you’d be a fool not to think it through.”

“I can’t assign her as a sponsor liaison. To be honest, she should never have been sent down here to advance Tulane. She has no experience, and she’s basically a research assistant in the marketing department. She doesn’t have—”

“A market researcher? Really?” Jim asked. His voice sounded calm, but amused. “Well, I’ll be. I guess she has a handle on the consumer end of things, doesn’t she? I’d say she has a better handle on it than the rest of the folks up there in your shop.” He leaned in toward Deidre. His whole demeanor was firm and in control. “Besides, Tulane has a point. Baby-changing races are humiliating in the same way as making a bunch of good-ol’-boy mechanics wear powder pink and a bunny logo is.

“Don’t get me wrong. I know that contractually you have the right to paint that car. But I don’t need to honor that contract for more than this year. So I’d say there is a lot of room for compromise and coordination. We could start with Sarah’s ideas on car seats and Racer Rabbit.”

Holy moly, Jim Ferguson was giving her credit for her ideas. That had never happened, ever. Sarah squared her shoulders. It felt really nice to be recognized for once.

A muscle ticked in Deidre’s cheek, and Sarah worried that her boss might literally start breathing fire. Instead, Deidre took three or four deep breaths, then said, “Would you gentlemen excuse us for just one moment? Sarah and I need to have a little chat.”

Deidre didn’t wait for anyone to answer this question. She simply stood up and nodded toward Sarah. “Come with me.”

Sarah had no choice but to follow her boss out into the hallway and then into a ladies’ restroom.

No sooner had the door closed behind them than Deidre turned on her. “That was some performance you just gave. Did Tulane tell you what to say?”

Deidre’s words felt like a slap to the face. “No, I—”

“Don’t.” Deidre waived her hand impatiently. “Of course he put you up to this. He thinks he can manipulate me by manipulating you. But he’s wrong. He and Ferguson probably set the whole thing up. And he’s already gotten you into big trouble. You do realize that.”

Sarah tried to decide if she minded being in trouble. For once in her life, she didn’t think so, even though she wasn’t entirely sure how Tulane had gotten her into trouble. It seemed clear that any trouble was entirely of her own making and involved a very stupid memo about a pink car.

Deidre shook her head. “I’m going to have to make you the liaison to Ferguson Racing or run the risk of further alienating Jim Ferguson. I can’t afford to do that right now. I need his cooperation on this car seat idea. This project is very important to me, Sarah. And that means you’re going to have to relocate here.”

“You’re going to do what Ferguson asked? You’re going to make me leave New York?”

“Not permanently. Just for a few months. I’m sorry. I know it’s awful here. I tried to find a Starbucks and they don’t have them anywhere. But I’m going to have to do it. Jim can be a pain in the ass sometimes, and it’s your job to make him happy.”

It struck Sarah right at that moment that moving to South Carolina was a good way to get out of the library and far, far away from Steve Phelps.

That sealed the deal right there.

“Okay,” she said with more enthusiasm than was probably wise.

“You’ll do it? Really?”

She nodded.

“Good. Now, let me make myself clear. You’re job is not to express your thoughts on the color of the car, the design of the uniforms, the corporate logo, or the organization of the car seat safety campaign.”

Sarah found herself nodding, because at that point it seemed the best thing to do if she didn’t want to mess up what had just happened.

“And one more thing,” Deidre said, wagging a finger at her. “While you’re in South Carolina, I want you to compile a complete dossier on Tulane Rhodes. I want to know everything about him—secret ex-wives, bastard kids he doesn’t want to talk about, DUI convictions. You understand? That bio of his is a complete fabrication, and I’m not going to have some complete jerk, or worse yet a reprobate, as the spokesperson for my car seat safety campaign. Is that clear?”

“Yes,” she said. Oh boy, this was bad. Sarah had promised Tulane that she would keep his secrets. She couldn’t break that promise, even if she hadn’t spit on it. Promises were something a person kept, no matter what.

Deidre raised her eyebrow in a truly amazing facsimile of Grandmother Howland. “I want every detail of Tulane Rhodes’s life, and I want it on my desk by the middle of next week. You have a talent for research. Use it. Are we clear?”

“Yes,” Sarah managed to choke out from her clenched teeth.

“Good,” Deidre said as she turned and examined herself in the bathroom mirror. “I’ll expect regular reports. And I don’t want you to rest until you have uncovered all his secrets. We need to find a way to pressure Jim into firing him. He’s all wrong as a spokesperson for my campaign. So I need the dirt and I need it quickly. Hopefully, Tulane Rhodes will misbehave and make our jobs a whole lot easier.”

Five days later, Sarah sat in the little office Ferguson Racing had given her in their vast complex of garages and meeting rooms. She stared out her single window at the view of a large parking lot filled with pickup trucks and team haulers. The last few days had been a whirlwind. She’d left her apartment in Brooklyn; found an extended-stay hotel in Florence, South Carolina; rented a car; and ensconced herself here in redneck land. She felt like Custer scouting out the Indians.

If the folks here knew that her main job description was to mess things up in order to get Tulane fired, they might not be very charitable. What on earth was she supposed to do?

Her moral dilemma became obvious when Tulane strolled into her office and sat his long, lean body down in her single office chair. He wore a gray striped golf shirt and a pair of blue jeans so faded that the knees were starting to unravel. He smiled that little smile of his and put a stack of papers on her desk. Then he gave her a singularly wicked look and said, “Welcome to Dixie, honey.”

“Uh, thanks.” She folded her hands together, hoping that he wouldn’t notice the way they were sweating. He filled up her tiny office and made her realize that her new job was fraught with all kinds of occupational hazards.

Why did he have to be so handsome? He walked into a room, and her hormones immediately perked up and started paying attention.

“So I just came from Jim’s office, and he told me that I have to be nice to you. He also says that anyone as smart as you are when it comes to marketing could probably unsnarl all of this stuff.” He pointed to the stack of papers.

“What’s this?”

He shrugged. “A lot of e-mails and crap from people who want a little piece of me. Jim says I need to go through this stuff and figure out which offers I want to take. He says it would be good for my career. Only trouble is, I have no head for this crap.”

She pulled a piece of paper off the stack. It was from a toy manufacturer who wanted to work with Tulane on a toy pink car with a snuggle-bunny driver. Obviously, any toy like that would have to get National Brands’ approval and probably a license fee for the use of the trademark.

“All right, I’ll go through this paperwork for you and weed out the good ideas from the bad ones.”

“I’d be obliged.” He paused a moment and then leaned forward a little in his chair. “I reckon having you here will make it easier to keep an eye on you, just in case you get any ideas of spilling the beans on my secrets.”

“Um, about that topic, Tulane, there’s something I need to tell you.”

“Uh-huh?”

“See, um, well, Deidre wants to know your entire life story, and I’m supposed to give it to her by the end of today. She wants to make sure you’re an acceptable spokesperson for car seat safety. She’s looking for someone with more of a mom-and-apple-pie kind of reputation, you know.”

He crossed his arms and leaned back. “So, you’re going to try to fix things for me by telling her all about Haley, aren’t you?”

She shook her head. “No, I’m not. I promised you that I wouldn’t. But I think it would help your cause if you’d release me from that promise. I think Deidre needs to know the truth.”

“Hell, no.” The twinkle left his eyes, replaced by something hard.

She nodded. “Okay. I understand. But you should know that if I don’t tell her something, she’s going to…” Crap, how could she explain what Deidre was planning to do? It was so unfair.