whoever had inquired about her return that Heather was once again in the building.
As the old-fashioned elevator, sumptuously appointed in dark paneling and gleaming brass, rose laboriously toward the second floor, Heather took a moment to straighten the square oversize collar that all but obliterated the fitted bodice of her dress, which was short-sleeved in deference to the weather.
As the door slid open once more, Heather greeted the secretary to the head of advertising, who shoved a clipboard and pen at her as she stepped out of the elevator.
“The lifestyle column has to be cut,” she stated unceremoniously, “and they’re holding print until you okay it.”
“What’s the problem?”
“A larger than normal advertisement.”
Heather sighed inwardly. Carl Platt, the author of that particular column, would be screaming.
“Which advertiser?” Heather asked, glancing swiftly over the reedit as she moved past the receptionist’s desk and into the warren of cubicles that made up the magazine offices.
A popular Nashville restaurant that was both a regular and valued advertiser was named. Heather didn’t like cutting short one of their most popular features, but she knew too well on which side the Hamilton bread was buttered to kick up a fuss, not that she would have anyway. She added her initials to those of her sister Amy’s, endorsing the change, and passed the clipboard back to the twentysomething secretary, who promptly disappeared.
True to form, Carl Platt, whom Heather thought of as a rotund prima donna in a bow tie, pounced the moment she turned the corner. She nodded distractedly as he ranted.
“I know, I know,” she murmured sympathetically, tsking at the injustices Carl Platt heatedly recounted. “I’ll tell Amy as soon as I see her.” For all the good that would do.
Amy made decisions based on the overall needs of the publication and its parent company, but Heather didn’t bother pointing that out to Platt.
No sooner had she mollified him than another clipboard appeared beneath her nose. This one involved a title font change.
Heather liked the looks of the original, but it appeared to be impossible to center on the page. The proposed substitute was more uniform in the space required for each letter.
She added an exclamation mark for balance and kept the original font. Then she spent several minutes perusing a paragraph in an article that she was going to edit in its entirety at a later date anyway, before finally reaching her assistant’s desk.
In her forties, with teenage children and a husband crippled by a rare form of arthritis, Brenda was efficient, reliable, professional and not at all shy about voicing her opinions.
“Ellen’s in a panic. Like that’s anything new,” Brenda announced, handing over half a dozen phone messages. “Honestly, someone ought to give our beauty editor a personality makeover.”
Heather smiled without comment. Ellen Manning was something of a character. Physically stunning with long, perfectly styled ash blond hair, meticulous makeup, vibrant blue eyes and fingernails like manicured talons, Ellen approached her job as if beauty and fashion were the be-all and end-all of human existence. Consequently she was very good at it, which was reason enough so far as Heather was concerned to put up with her high-handed, overbearing methods and short fuse.
Holding up three of the messages in one hand, Heather commented in surprise, “These are from Ethan Danes.”
Ethan was the staff photographer currently working with Ellen on a photo shoot at the Grand Ole Opry in Nashville. Tall, dark and breathtaking, Ethan was the new office heartthrob—and for good reason. He had a quick, million-watt smile and a smooth, masculine charm that oozed from his pores.
“Yeah, I guess Ellen’s meltdown is justified this time,” Brenda conceded. “To hear Ethan tell it, we may not have a Makeover Maven feature this month.”
Frowning, Heather pushed through the door into her small office. Not much wider than the single window at its end, the room had just enough space for a file cabinet, a desk, a table wedged into one corner, an extra chair and the small potted plant perched on the windowsill. A large dry-erase board took up the whole of the wall behind her desk, leaving the wall opposite it for a series of framed covers and family photos. Only the ceiling fan, circling lazily overhead, kept the tiny room from becoming a stifling closet in the sultry June heat.
Heather reached immediately for her desk phone and dialed Ethan’s cell phone number. He answered on the first ring.
“Crisis central, this is the shutterbug speaking.”
“Ethan, what on earth is going on down there?”
“Well, let’s see. The makeover candidate is a no-show.”
“Again?”
“Yeah, this time she’s the one with the flu. Guess she got it from her kid. Anyway, the Opry says we can’t reschedule. Again.”
“Hasn’t Ellen explained the circumstances?”
“Let’s just say that Ellen is making enemies and influencing no one,” Ethan quipped. “Meanwhile, the window is closing. You’d better get down here and apply some of that patented Heather healing balm before we’re permanently barred from the most popular venue in town.”
Heather healing balm, was it? She tamped down a spurt of pride and made a quick decision. Well, she’d wanted to stay busy today.
“I’m on my way.”
“Come around to the side. I’ll be there to let you in.”
After hanging up, she headed back the way she’d come.
“If anyone needs me,” she said, breezing past Brenda’s desk, “tell them to ring my cell.”
“Better turn it on then,” Brenda called as Heather hurried away, mentally smacking herself in the forehead. Of course she’d turned off the phone while she was the hospital, and of course she’d forgotten to turn it back on again.
She dug in her bag on the way to the elevator and had the thing operational by the time she started her descent. It was ringing before she reached the street, and kept ringing for almost the entire next hour as she drove her deep blue Saab into Nashville and the Opryland complex.
After parking in the surprisingly crowded back lot, she made her way toward the side of the performance hall. To her surprise, Ethan was waiting for her outside the building, one scuffed brown loafer, worn sans sock, propping open a heavy metal door.
Tall and lean with that thick, black-brown hair falling rakishly across his brow, he wore not one but two cameras dangling around his neck on nylon straps. A third hung from his belt, a disreputable strip of cracked brown leather slung low around his lean hips.
As was often the case, he needed a shave. Yet even in comfy jeans and a snug black T-shirt worn beneath an open chambray shirt with the cuffs rolled back and the tail hanging out, he looked more like a model than a photographer. Dark almost to the point of black, his eyes sparkled with a hint of mischief as he smiled a stark white welcome at her, displaying killer dimples that cut long grooves in the square-jawed
