It Happened One Week

by JoAnn Ross

  Table of Contents

  Excerpt

  Dear Reader

  Title Page

  About The Author

  Dedication

  Prologue

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  8

  9

  10

  11

  12

  Copyright

  First Love Quiz

  When you think of your first love, you

  A) smile at the memories

  B) wonder what you ever saw in him

  C) wonder if he’s single and available

  If you came face-to-face with your first love, you would

  A) give him a friendly hug

  B) pray he doesn’t recognize you

  C) dream of being his bride

  If your first love offered you a second chance, you would

  A) fix him up on a blind date with a great gal

  B) fix him up on a blind date from hell

  C) run to the nearest wedding chapel

  Dean Reader.

  Remember your first love? Mine was a tall string bean (still my type), who broke my fifteen-year-old heart when the town “voluptuous” girl stole him. (To this day, I’m sure she stuffed.) I started thinking about first loves, so I boldly asked some Silhouette staffers about theirs:

  “I got so nervous around my first love that I wound up kissing his neighbor and best friend, instead of him.”

  —Tara Gavin, Senior Editor

  “I ran into him, unexpectedly, on a very bad hair day—and I never heard from him again.”

  —Gail Chasan, Editor

  “I saw him years later, and he forgot my name.”

  —Cristine Niessner, Associate Editor

  “We got married!”

  —Ross Richman, first love and husband of Karen Taylor Richman, Associate Editor

  (Thanks, Ross, for assuring us that sometimes first love is forever!)

  This month, JoAnn Ross tells the irresistible tale of a woman who finds her first love—ten years later—in It Happened One Week. And in Martha Schroeder’s wonderful What Engagement Ring?!, a woman’s supposed first love insists she return an engagement ring he never gave her!

  Next month, you’ll find two Yours Truly titles by Cait London and Kathy Marks—two new novels about unexpectedly meeting, dating…marrying Mr. Right.

  Yours truly,

  Editor

  Please address questions and book requests to:

  Silhouette Reader Service

  U.S.: 3010 Walden Ave., P.O. Box 1325, Buffalo, NY 14269

  Canadian: P.O. Box 609, Fort Erie, Ont. L2A 5X3

  It Happened One Week

  Joann Ross

  About the Author

  I’m often asked, “Where do you get your ideas?” At such times, writers are tempted to invent some lofty, literary answer. I’ve decided to tell you the truth.

  This story was conceived late one summer night in a Karaoke bar, where I was having an afterdinner drink with a few of my foreign editors and Dianne Moggy, a senior editor at Harlequin. When the man behind the keyboard began playing “Love Letters in the Sand,” Dianne looked up at the oversized screen and said, “JoAnn, look, there’s a Yours Truly!”

  My first thought was that I didn’t have time to write another book. I was, after all, already committed to several novels for Harlequin Temptation and another mainstream novel for MIRA. But watching the video of the waves rolling up on the sparkling sand started my imagination stirring. By breakfast, I knew I had to write It Happened One Week.

  This is one of my more autobiographical stories, drawing from my teenage days in Oregon and my own bittersweet summer romance. Fortunately, like my hero and heroine, Jay and I eventually got back together and went on to live mostly happily ever after.

  Happy Reading!

  JoAnn Ross

  To Dianne Moggy—who provided the inspiration

  Prologue

  Satan’s Cove

  The letters had been painstakingly carved into the shifting silver sands. Although she could see them from the top of the jagged cliff overlooking the Pacific Ocean, fifteen-yearold Amanda Stockenberg could not make out the message.

  As she descended the stone steps to the beach, slowly at first, then faster, until she was nearly running, the words became clearer.

  Dane loves Amanda.

  Despite the fact that she’d spent most of last night crying, Amanda began to weep.

  He was waiting for her in their secret, private place. Just as he’d promised. Just as she’d hoped.

  Smugglers’ Cave, carved by aeons of wind and ocean out of the rocky seaside cliffs, had long been rumored to be one of the local sites where pirates had once hidden stolen booty before moving it inland.

  Amanda wasn’t interested in the legends about the pirates’ nefarious behavior. And despite the violence that supposedly occurred here, to her, Smugglers’ Cave was the most romantic place on earth.

  It was here, on a star-spangled July Fourth night, while the glare of fire workslit up the nightsky, that Dane first kissed her. Then kissed her again. And again. Until she thought she’d literally melt from ecstasy.

  “I thought you wouldn’t come,” she cried, flinging herself dramatically into his strong dark arms. Her avid mouth captured his. The kiss was hot and long and bittersweet.

  “I told you I would,” he reminded her, after they finally came up for air.

  “I know.” Her hands were linked together around his neck. Her young, lithe body was pressed against his so tightly that it would have been impossible for the morning ocean breeze to come between them. “But I was so afraid you’d be mad at me.”

  “Mad?” Dane looked honestly surprised by the idea. “Why would I be mad at you?”

  “For leaving.” Just thinking about her imminent departure caused the moisture in Amanda’s sea blue eyes to overflow.

  “You don’t have any choice, sweetheart.” With more tenderness than she would have imagined possible, he brushed her tears away with his fingertips. “We’ve both known that from the beginning.”

  “That doesn’t make it any less awful!” she wailed.

  “No.” Despite his brave words, Dane’s dark eyes were every bit as bleak as hers as he traced her trembling, downturned pink lips with a tear-dampened finger. “It doesn’t.”

  The tender touch left behind a taste of salt born of her overwhelming sorrow. “We could run away,” she said desperately, grabbing his hand and holding it tightly between both of hers. “Just you and I. Somewhere no one could ever find us. To Wyoming. Or Florida.”

  “Don’t think I haven’t been tempted.” His lips curved at the idea, but even as distressed as she was, Amanda noticed that the smile didn’t reach his eyes. “But running away is never the answer, princess.”

  She was too desperate, too unhappy, to listen to reason. “But—”

  “We can’t.” His tone, while gentle, was firm. “As attractive as the idea admittedly is, it’s wrong.”

  “How can love be wrong?”

  Dane sighed, looking far older, far more world-weary than his nineteen years. “You’re only fifteen years old—”

  “I’ll be sixteen next week.”

  “I know.” This time the reluctant smile turned his eyes to the hue of rich, warm chocolate. “But you still have your entire life ahead of you, honey. I’m not going to be responsible for ruining it.”

  “But you wouldn’t!” she cried on a wail that scattered a trio of sea gulls. “You’d make it better. Perfect, even.”

  As much as she’d first resisted joining her family for this annual summer vacation on the Oregon coast, the mom
ent she’d first seen Smugglers’ Inn’s sexy young bellhop, lifeguard, and all-around handyman, Amanda had changed her mind.

  Over the past four glorious weeks, her life had been focused on Dane Cutter. He was all she wanted. All she would ever want. She’d love him, Amanda vowed, forever.

  But now, she didn’t want to waste time talking. Not when their time together was coming to an end, like sands falling through some hateful hourglass. Rising on her toes, she pressed her lips against his once more.

  The morning mist swirled around them; overhead, sea gulls squawked stridently as they circled, searching for mussels in the foaming surge. Caught up in emotions every bit as strong—and as old—as the forces that had formed the craggy coastline, neither Dane nor Amanda heard them.

  The ocean’s roar became a distant buzz in Amanda’s ears. For this glorious suspended moment, time ceased to have meaning. The hungry kiss could have lasted a minute, an hour, an eternity.

  Finally, the blare of a car horn managed to infiltrate its way into Amanda’s consciousness. She tried to ignore it, but it was soon followed by the sound of an irritated male voice cutting through the fog.

  Dane dragged his mouth from hers. “Your father’s calling.” He skimmed his lips up her cheeks, which were damp again from the cold ocean mist and her tears.

  “I know.” She swiped at the tears with the backs of her trembling hands, looking, Dane thought, more like an injured child than the almost-grown-up woman she insisted that she was. Unwilling, unable to leave, she twined her arms around his neck again and clung.

  For not the first time since her arrival in Satan’s Cove, Dane found himself sorely tested. For not the first time, he reminded himself that she was far too young for the thoughts he kept having, the feelings he kept experiencing. But even as his mind struggled to hold on to that crucial fact—like a drowning man clinging to a piece of driftwood in a storm-tossed sea—his body was literally aching for fulfillment.

  Dane was not inexperienced. He’d discovered, since losing his virginity to a sexy blond Miss Depoe Bay the summer of his sixteenth year, that sex was easy to come by. Especially during vacation season, when the beaches were filled with beautiful girls looking for a summer fling.

  But he’d never wanted a girl as he wanted Amanda. What was worse, he’d never needed a girl as he needed Amanda. Accustomed to keeping a tight rein on his emotions, Dane wasn’t at all comfortable with the effect Amanda Stockenberg had had on him from the beginning.

  Finally, although it was nearly the hardest thing he’d ever had to do—second only to refusing her ongoing, seductive pleas to make love these past weeks—Dane gently, patiently, unfastened Amanda’s hold on him.

  “You have to go,” he said again, prying her hands from around his neck. He kissed her fingers one at a time. “But it’s not over, princess. Not unless you want it to be.”

  Distraught as she was, Amanda failed to hear the question—and the uncharacteristic lack of assurance—in his guarded tone.

  “Never!” she swore with all the fervor of a young woman in the throes of her first grand love. “I promise.”

  Her father called out again. The Volvo station wagon’s horn blared. Once. Twice. A third time.

  Giving Dane one last desperate kiss, Amanda spun around, sobbing loudly as she ran up the rock stairs. She did not—could not—look back.

  He stood there all alone, hands shoved deep into the pockets of his jeans, and watched her leave, resisting the urge to call out to her. He heard the car drive off, taking her far away from Satan’s Cove. Away from him.

  Dane stayed on the windswept beach for a long, silent time, watching as the relentless ebb and flow of the tide slowly, inexorably, washed away the love letter he’d written in the drifting silver sand.

  1

  Portland, Oregon Ten years later

  “This can’t be happening. Not to me. Not now!”

  Amanda Stockenberg stared in disbelief at the television screen where towering red-and-orange flames were engulfing the Mariner Seaside Golf Resort and Conference Center located on the Oregon coast.

  “It is lousy timing,” her administrative assistant, Susan Chin, agreed glumly. It had been Susan who’d alerted Amanda to the disaster, after hearing a news bulletin on the radio.

  “That has to be the understatement of the millennium,” Amanda muttered as she opened a new roll of antacids.

  Hoping for the best, but fearing the worst, she’d left a meeting and run down the hall to the conference room.

  Now, as the two women stood transfixed in front of the television, watching the thick streams of water prove ineffectual at combating the massive blaze, Amanda could see her entire career going up in smoke right along with the five-star resort.

  She groaned as the hungry flames devoured the lovely cedar-shake shingled roof. The scene shifted as the cameras cut away to show the crews of helmeted firemen valiantly fighting the fire. From the grim expressions on their soot-stained faces, she sensed that they knew their efforts to be a lost cause.

  And speaking of lost causes…

  “It’s obvious we’re going to have to find a new site for the corporate challenge,” she said, cringing when what was left of the wooden roof caved in with a deafening roar. Water from the fire hoses hit the flames, turned to steam and mixed with the clouds of thick gray smoke.

  “I’d say that’s a given,” Susan agreed glumly. “Unless you want to have the group camping out on the beach. Which, now that I think about it, isn’t such a bad idea. After all, the entire idea of this coming week is to present the creative teams with challenges to overcome.”

  “Getting any of the managers of this company to work together as a team is going to be challenge enough.” Amanda sank into a chair, put her elbows on the long rectangular mahogany conference table and began rubbing at her temples, where a headache had begun to pound. “Without tossing in sleeping in tents on wet sand and bathing out of buckets.”

  Advertising had been a cutthroat, shark-eat-shark business since the first Babylonian entrepreneur had gotten the bright idea to chisel the name of his company onto a stone tablet. Competition was always fierce, and everyone knew that the battle went not only to the most creative, but to the most ruthless.

  Even so, Amanda felt the employees of Janzen, Lawton and Young took the idea of healthy competition to unattractive and often unprofitable extremes. Apparently, Ernst Janzen, senior partner of the company that had recently purchased Amanda’s advertising agency, seemed to share her feelings. Which was why the idea of corporate-management teams was born in the first place.

  In theory, the concept of art, copy, and marketing working together on each step of a project seemed ideal. With everyone marching in unison toward the same finish line, the firm would undoubtedly regain superiority over its competitors.

  That was the plan. It was, Amanda had agreed, when she’d first heard of it, extremely logical. Unfortunately, there was little about advertising that was the least bit logical.

  The agency that had hired her directly after her graduation from UCLA, Connally Creative Concepts, or C.C.C., had made a name for itself by creating witty, appealing and totally original advertising that persuaded and made the sale through its ability to charm the prospect.

  Although its location in Portland, Oregon, was admittedly a long way from Madison Avenue, some of the best copywriters and art directors in the country had been more than willing to leave Manhattan and take pay cuts in order to work long hours under the tutelage of Patrick Connally. C.C.C. had been like a family, Patrick Connally playing the role of father to whom everyone came for inspiration and guidance.

  Unfortunately, two years ago Patrick Connally had died of a heart attack at the age of seventy-five, after a heated game of tennis. His widow, eager to retire to Sun City, Arizona, had sold the agency to another company. Eight months after that, the new owner merged the united agencies with yet a third creative shop.

  Unsurprisingly, such multiple mergers in such
a short span of time resulted in the dismissal of several longtime employees as executives trimmed excess staff. A mood of anxiety settled over the offices and morale plummeted as everyone held their collective breath, waiting to see who was going to be “downsized” next.

  After the initial purge, things had seemed to be settling down until the advertising wars kicked up again. A sixmonth battle that played out daily on the pages of The Wall Street Journal had resulted in an unfriendly takeover by the international mega-agency of Janzen, Lawton and Young, and those employees who’d been breathing at last, found their livelihoods once again in jeopardy.

  Janzen, Lawton and Young had long had a reputation for the most artless and offensive commercials to run on American airwaves. But it also boasted the highest profits in the business. In order to keep profits up to the promised levels, a new wave of massive staff cuts had hit the agency.

  Morale plummeted to new lows.

  Unsurprisingly, the same creative people who had once been responsible for some of the most innovative—and effective—advertising in the business, turned on one another.

  A recent case in point was today’s client meeting. The creative group had been assigned to propose a new concept for a popular line of gourmet ice cream. From day one, the members of the recently established team had been at each other’s throats like a pack of out-of-control pit bulls.

  “I can’t believe you seriously expect me to be a part of this presentation,” Marvin Kenyon, the head copywriter, had complained after viewing the animated sequence proposed by award-winning art director Julian Palmer.