Secrets of Harmony Grove (3 page)

If I weren’t careful, he just might end up romancing them right out from under me—which, I realized now, might have been his intention all along, his and his brother’s. Maybe that had been their plan, to bring me here with the lure of big money, insinuate themselves with my biggest client, and then toss me out with some trumped-up charges that would likely disappear as soon as I did.

Was that what was really going on?

If so, then I had to wonder how it was that I found myself sitting across from these two schemers, they of the artfully absent consonants, who used words like “convo” and “sitch” as they cut me off at the knees. Talk about a hundred-and-eighty-degree turn! Had it really been just a month ago that they had finally wooed me over to their agency with an offer too good to refuse? The night I accepted, the three of us had toasted each other over tapas at Amada, smug at the knowledge that with their resources and my connections we would soon own the advertising in this town. Now it seemed as if I didn’t even own the pencils that were in a cup on the desk in my office.

How could I have misjudged things so completely? I had always been a competitive person, driven to succeed in business and in life. Though I had celebrated numerous small victories while at Biddle & Sons, it was my biggest achievement that had caught the eye of the boys at Buzz, a wildly successful advertising campaign for Empower Sportswear for Women, based on a slogan and a marketing angle that had been mine from the start.

By jumping ship and coming over to Buzz, I wondered if I had I let ambition cloud my better judgment and dollar signs obscure the truth. How ironic that my prize-winning slogan for Empower just happened to be “In It to Win It.” By wanting to win in business at any cost, I may have ended up destroying everything I had been working for all along.

“Extension granted,” Ric said, hanging up the phone and interrupting my thoughts. “But if things aren’t cleared up by this time next week, I’m reassigning the account.”

His tone was final, as if I had now been dismissed. But I wasn’t about
to just get up and walk out of there. I fought the good fight for another ten or fifteen minutes, begging for more information even as the two of them insisted that a suspension was their only option and that they couldn’t tell me anything more than they already had. They remained aloof but firm the entire time, except when I questioned their motives, at which point they both seemed genuinely offended. Either they were two very good actors or this suspension wasn’t about trying to steal my clients after all.

In the end there wasn’t a thing I could do, especially once they asked Shiloh to summon the security guard. He must have been hovering just outside, because a moment later he appeared in the office doorway, arms folded across his beefy chest, waiting to walk me out. Though I hadn’t done anything wrong, and I knew this was just some terrible mix-up that would soon be straightened out, I couldn’t help but feel embarrassed as I glanced over at him, my cheeks burning with heat.

I stood and stiffly walked to the door, pausing there to look first at Ric and then at Jon, my eyes boring into each man in turn.

“I’m not going to waste any more breath on defending myself against charges that you won’t even explain, but I will be speaking to my lawyer about this, and I can assure you that when this absurd mess is straightened out, you’ll owe me more than mere back pay. You’ll also owe me a massive apology and a full explanation of how you think it’s acceptable to treat an employee—any employee—like this.”

Turning back around, I marched toward my office, my shoes clicking rhythmically against the distressed faux-pine floor. If not for my new condo—not to mention my new car—I wouldn’t have merely threatened them with a lawyer but would have, in fact, quit this job entirely. I dearly loved playing with the big boys, and my time at Buzz had already become a daily roller-coaster ride of career high points, but when push came to shove, they were shoving me out the door, and I didn’t know if that was something I would ever be able to get past or not.

At least Ric and Jon had had the decency to give much of the staff the afternoon off. The few people I passed as I marched down the hall with the guard in my wake made a point of not looking my way, not even for a moment. In a sense, their discreet avoidance was almost more embarrassing
than if they had simply turned and stared, as I knew they all wanted to. To make matters worse, when I got to my office I saw that someone had put an empty cardboard box on top of my desk. Were they trying to insult me or be kind? Neither, I decided as I sat down and began opening drawers. They were simply being efficient. Everything at Buzz was all about efficient.

As the security guard watched silently from the doorway, I packed up all the personal items from my office. The whole process took only a few minutes, which wasn’t surprising considering that I hadn’t been there long enough to collect many things of a personal nature. That single, small cardboard box, once packed, was almost an embarrassment, really, as I couldn’t help but compare it to the cases and cases of stuff I had carted out when leaving my ten-year stint at Biddle & Sons.

At least I had come into this job with my own laptop, so I wouldn’t be computerless while this mess was being straightened out. It was still in its case on the chair, and once I was ready to go, the guard carried the box and two potted plants while I handled my briefcase and laptop.

We were silent when the elevator doors closed on the two of us and we rode down to the first floor alone. Once we stepped outside into the cool October air and began walking toward the lot half a block away, I wanted to say something, to tell this man that I hoped he knew this was all a big mistake, and that not only had I not done anything wrong, but I didn’t even know what I was accused of doing. But I held my tongue. Why bother? Obviously, with these people I was guilty until proven innocent.

My mockingly shiny new Sebring practically glowed from its slot in the parking lot. We put the plants and cases in the front passenger seat, and then I popped the trunk and told him to set the box inside, next to the suitcase that was already there. I couldn’t believe that just a short while before I had been wheeling that suitcase out of the airport, the return of the conquering hero. Now, as the guard simply turned and walked away, back toward the cold steel-and-glass skyscraper I had begun to think of as my new professional home, I couldn’t help but feel like a military general who had been stripped of his stripes and left to slink from the parade grounds in shame.

Looking at the building, I let my eyes rove upward as I counted ten
floors. The blue-and puffy-clouded afternoon sky reflected from the modern structure, making it impossible to see inside at this time of day.

But I didn’t need to see to know that there were at least two pairs of eyes looking down at me, probably more. I resisted the urge to wave—or to make any other hand gestures that came to mind—and instead simply got in my beautiful new car. Even as I gripped the smooth leather wheel, it was as if I could feel the grip on my identity slipping away.

Who was I, Sienna Collins, if not the rising young star, creative genius, and mastermind behind one of the most successful sportswear advertising campaigns since Nike’s “Just Do It”? I had never had to ask myself that before, so consumed had I been with my stellar career in the ten years since graduating from college. Now it looked as if I might have to face that very question. The problem was, I already knew the answer.

If I wasn’t that person—that star, that genius, that mastermind—I wasn’t really anyone at all.

My first stop was the office of my lawyer and best friend, Liz, the very same place where I had sat just last month and gone over the offer from Buzz with a fine-tooth comb, followed soon after by the condo closing. Though Liz’s office was half an hour away, I didn’t call ahead, probably because I knew that if she wasn’t there or couldn’t see me I would go into full freak-out mode. Instead, I simply drove as fast as I could, leaving uptown behind as I headed to Bryn Mawr. Fortunately, Liz was in and she agreed to see me, even though she was obviously swamped with work.

Her cluttered office was quite a contrast from the stark, trendy decor of Buzz, but as I settled into the overstuffed chair that she cleared by moving a stack of files, I couldn’t help but think how much more at home I felt here than I had there.

As calmly as possible, I told her everything that had just happened. She listened intently, typing notes into the computer as I went. When it was her turn to speak, however, I was disappointed to realize that she didn’t seem to care whether I was guilty of having done something wrong or not. She was all about the responsibility of my employer and the legalities of the suspension. After hearing her talk about that stuff for a good ten minutes, I simply held up both hands and asked her to change gears a little bit.

“I think the first order of business is to find out why I’m being investigated. Right now I care far less about my job than I do about whatever
government mix-up is putting that job in jeopardy.” I leaned forward to look at her intently. “You know me, Liz. You know I am an ethical and moral person. Whatever I’m being investigated for, if I could just find out what that is, I know I could get this whole thing cleared up.”

Though she probably felt as clueless as I did about how to proceed with such an odd situation, she agreed to make some phone calls on my behalf to see what she could find out. But even as she said it, I saw her eyes traveling across the mountain of papers on her desk, and I knew she was wondering exactly when she would have the time to pursue such a bizarre matter. I asked what I could do to help, and she said at this point her best advice was that I go home, sit down, and create a detailed list of my financial assets—savings, CDs, IRAs, investments, etc.—to figure out just how long I could manage without a salary.

“I don’t have to sit down to figure that out. I can tell you straight away. I’m overextended. I cashed in everything for the down payment on the condo.”

“Everything?” she asked, her perfect eyebrows arching upward. “Sienna, you should know better than to do something like that!”

“I know, but my new salary was going to be so much higher that I didn’t think it would be a problem.”

“What about the massive sign-on bonus they gave you? How long can you live on that?”

“Not too long.”

She raised one eyebrow.

“Most of it is now shiny and blue and parked at a meter just up the street.”

Liz groaned. Then, placing her hands on the desk in front of her, she leaned forward and gave me the
look
, that same look she used to give me in college when it was time to start a new semester, and I would have to admit that I had spent my textbook money over the summer on things like clothes or activities or art supplies.

Needless to say, finances had never been my strong suit.

Lately, with so much starting to come in, that hadn’t seemed to matter. But now that she was talking about security and investments and living within
my means and going without a salary, anxiety began to curl up inside of me like a fist. I didn’t know how to be poor. Correction: I knew how, I just didn’t want to remember. I mean, I had never lived in poverty, but when I was a kid we were definitely on the lesser side of modest, our family of four living on my father’s smaller-than-average pastor’s salary despite the fact that he served a beautiful church in one of the wealthiest counties in Pennsylvania.

When I was in my mid-twenties, once all of the trials were over, I had ended up with several huge settlements. After paying off my many outstanding medical and legal bills and reimbursing my parents for their numerous expenses incurred during that difficult time, I wasn’t sure what to do with the rest. Eager to live a normal life for a change, I had decided to stash it all in savings for the time being and act as if it didn’t even exist.