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Chapter Thirteen
On that cold day I was born, in February 1955, my great-aunt gave me a classic fruitcake for the celebration of the occasion of my birth. Every year during the holidays I pull it out of the attic and take a look at it and it still looks great, and every year I try to get up the nerve to take a slice and try it.
—Dean Fearing, chef of The Mansion on Turtle Creek
This job was going to kill her yet.
Emma Collins stared at the daredevil pilot who was urging her toward his plane. She’d come to Thun Field to drum up advertising dollars for her employer, The Puyallup Examiner, and wasn’t interested in taking a spin around southeast Puget Sound.
“Thank you, but no,” she insisted for the third time. Oliver Hamilton seemed to have a hearing problem. However, Emma was doing her best to maintain a professional facade, despite her pounding heart. No way would she go for a ride with Flyboy.
The truth was, Emma was terrified of flying. Okay, she white-knuckled it in a Boeing 747, but nothing on God’s green earth would get her inside a small plane with this man—and his dog. Oliver Hamilton had a devil-may-care glint in his dark blue eyes and wore a distressed brown leather jacket that resembled something a World War Two bomber pilot might wear. All he needed was the white scarf. She suspected that if he ever got her in the air, he’d start making loops and circles with the express purpose of frightening her to death. He looked just the type.
Placing the advertising-rate sheet on his desk, she turned resolutely away from the window and the sight of Hamilton’s little bitty plane—a Cessna Caravan 675, he’d called it. “As I was explaining earlier, The Examiner has a circulation of over forty-five thousand. As you’ll see—” she gestured at the sheet “—we have special introductory rates in December. We serve four communities and, dollar for advertising dollar, you can’t do better than what we’re offering.”
“Yes, yes, I understand all that,” Oliver Hamilton said, stepping around his desk. “Now, what I can offer you is the experience of a lifetime.…”
Instinctively Emma backed away. She had an aversion to attractive men whose promises slid so easily off their tongues. Her father had been one of them. He’d flitted in and out of her life during her childhood and teen years. Every so often, he’d arrived bearing gifts and making promises, none of which he’d kept. Still, her mother had loved Bret Collins until the end. Pamela had died after a brief illness when Emma was a sophomore at the University of Oregon. To his credit, her father had paid her college expenses, but Emma refused to have anything to do with him. She was on her own in the world and determined to make a success of her career as a journalist. When she’d hired on at The Examiner earlier that year, she hadn’t objected to starting at the bottom. She’d expected that. What she hadn’t expected was spending half her time trying to sell advertising.
The Examiner was a family-owned business, one of a vanishing breed. The newspaper had been in the Berwald family for three generations. Walt Berwald II had held on through the corporate buyouts and survived the competition from the big-city newspapers coming out of Tacoma and Seattle. It hadn’t been easy. Now his thirty-year-old son had taken over after his father’s recent heart attack. Walt the third, the new editor-in-chief, was doing everything he could to keep the newspaper financially solvent, which Emma knew was a challenge.
“Hey, Oscar,” Oliver said, bending to pet his dog. “I think the lady’s afraid of flying.”
Emma bristled, irritated that he’d pegged her so quickly. “Don’t be ridiculous.”
He ignored her and continued to pet the dog. She couldn’t readily identify his breed, possibly some kind of terrier. The dog was mostly white with one large black spot surrounding his left eye. Right out of that 1930s show Spanky and Our Gang. Wasn’t that the name? She shook off her momentary distraction.
“I’m here to sell you advertising in The Examiner,” she explained again. “I hope you’ll reconsider.”
Oliver straightened, crossing his arms, and leaned against his desk. “As I said, I’m just getting my business started. At this point I don’t have a lot of discretionary funds for advertising. So for now I’ll stick with the word-of-mouth method. That seems to be working.”
It couldn’t be working that well, since he appeared to have a lot of time on his hands. “Exactly what is it you do?” she asked.
“I give flying lessons and I’ve recently begun an air-freight business.”
“Oh.”
“Oscar and I haven’t crashed even once.”
He was obviously making fun of her, and she didn’t appreciate it. Nor did she take his alleged safety record as an incentive to leap into the passenger seat.
“But then,” he added, “there’s always a first time.”
“Exactly what I was going to say,” Emma muttered. “Well, I’ll leave the information with you,” she said more pleasantly. “I hope you’ll think about our proposal when it’s financially feasible.”
Retrieving her briefcase and purse, she headed toward the door—which Oliver suddenly blocked with his arm. His smile was as lazy as it was sexy. Hmm, funny how often lazy and sexy went together. Considering all that boyish charm, plenty of other women had probably melted at his feet. She wouldn’t.
She met his gaze without flinching.
“Are you sure I can’t take you up for a spin?” he asked.
“Absolutely, positively sure.”
“There’s nothing to fear except fear itself.”
“Uh-uh. Now if you’ll
