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  Teresa Mandrell's first encounter with advertising executive Rayann Germaine begins badly and goes downhill from there. Within minutes of their meeting, Rayann dubs Teresa a "bumbling amateur." The event changes the course of Teresa's life-she abandons the corporate world for what she hopes is a more satisfying career in Fine Arts Management.

  When budget cuts leave her without work, Teresa lands a job as a design artist in another firm, only to discover that the new department head is… Rayann! But the difference in the woman's demeanor is so startling that Teresa can't believe her eyes. Although the woman she'd fought with had been insensitive and rude, she was full of fire and passion. This Rayann is cold and withdrawn.

  To Teresa's chagrin, the woman doesn't even remember their fight. In fact, the two fall easily into an increasingly harmonious work relationship. As they grow even closer, Teresa slowly uncovers layer after layer of Rayann's hurt and pain. When she at last arrives at the terrible truth, Teresa is left with one burning question: How can she turn Rayann's heart away from grief and lead her back toward life and love?

  1

  "I can do this," Teresa repeated to herself. "I can do this." She squared her shoulders, certain the secretary was watching her, and went into the creative director's office.

  She'd seen pictures of Rayann Germaine in the trades, and she'd been warned that "presence" was an understatement. Nevertheless, she was unprepared for the lurch in her stomach when two piercing brown eyes dissected her with a dispassionate flick. More than handsome, this woman exuded purpose. She reminded Teresa of the Renaissance portraits of Italian matriarchs — iron under silk. The array of awards neatly arranged on the shelf behind the desk heaped fuel onto Teresa's bonfire of insecurities.

  She hoped it was a smile on her face as she crossed the room and sat down, relieved to find the chair wasn't one of those head game short ones that made her feel like a dwarf. Her relief was momentary. When she looked over the woman's shoulder the light glinted on a Clio award. Advertising's highest achievement, apart from money, was staring her right in the face.

  Her rehearsed greeting faltered in her throat. Ten seconds and her first meeting with the director was not going as she had planned.

  "You have the storyboards, right?" Ms. Germaine gestured for the boards with the air of someone whose time was extremely limited. While it was probably true, it made Teresa feel like a delivery clerk.

  Teresa handed them over. She was really proud of the way they had turned out, especially after having had to learn an unfamiliar system in the past two days. Between the time that she had accepted the job and her first day they had changed over their software to a package she wasn't nearly so expert with. Her supervisor had said she'd catch on and she had. This was her first opportunity to show her results to the —

  "This is not what the client wants."

  Teresa fought the urge to gulp. "I talked to them this morning. They've changed their mind seven times in the past two days, but this is their current concept. Mom in a white car, mom in kitchen, not baby's room, product break, fade."

  "Did you talk to Artie?"

  Teresa shook her head. She was too much of a plebe to talk to Artie.

  The director seemed at the edge of her patience. "Artie wants car, product break, baby's room, fade. As per two hours ago."

  "No one told me," Teresa said. She wished the woman would at least look at her.

  "Just do them over. Call Artie's office and let them know they're on the way."

  "Did he say how he wants to transition —" The phone buzzed and Teresa swallowed the last of her sentence.

  "When? No, that's not what she wants. Listen to me. Listen to me. Do I have your attention? That's not what she wants. How many times do I have to explain it? You don't want me to stop by again, believe me."

  Geez, this woman was on some sort of power trip. Okay, so she was the head of the creative department at Hand & Hoke, one of the west coast's most outre ad agencies. So she'd crafted the campaigns that made household names of new companies. So she'd won awards and made a lot of people a lot of money. But who would have thought she'd talk to someone on the phone like that? She was acting like some diva when she wasn't ten years older than Teresa, even though the brown hair was flecked with gray. So beautifully flecked, in fact, that it couldn't be natural, Teresa decided. Meow.

  "I am not balking at the money. It doesn't matter. Nothing matters except that everything be the way she wants it. And she wants the minimum, the bare minimum, and I want to be able to tell her truthfully that that is exactly what she's going to get. If that is pine, then that's — What? I don't want to see it again. Look, you're supposed to be providing the service here. Everything was already supposed to be settled when we bought the package and now you want more decisions. Christ. Okay. Someone — not me — will be by soon."

  Teresa knew not to say a word while the woman dialed another number. She'd seen her grandmother in too many towering rages to mistake one when she saw it. She'd been told this woman was nice, for Christ's sake, one of the most influential people in advertising in the city and a lesbian, too. She had jumped at this job for exactly those reasons, even though it meant several years of menial graphic design. She'd been certain she'd learn a lot.

  "Danny? Those assholes won't finish unless someone actually sees the thing and approves it. I can't go there again."

  Then she glanced at Teresa. Teresa didn't think she'd ever forget it. She glanced, then closed her eyes and said bitterly, "She's got me in exile. I'm surrounded by bumbling amateurs and I just can't take it."

  Teresa sat there blinking, wondering if that remark had been directed at her. Of course it had. Amateur? Amateur? A Master's in Fine Arts and this woman called her an amateur?

  She had to be on the edge of a breakdown, Teresa decided. Rage was gone; now the manicured hand wrapped around the phone was white-knuckled. The other trembled on the desk. She was listening intently and Teresa knew her presence had been forgotten.

  "Thank you," she said, almost in a whisper. "I don't know what I'd do without you."

  Teresa couldn't decide how to break the silence after the phone call ended. A cough was contrived. Perhaps she should just begin speaking? No, the time for that had slipped away. She shifted her weight and the chair creaked faintly.

  The director jumped. "Weren't we done?"

  "Um, no, not quite. Did Artie say how he wanted the transition from break to home?"

  "No, he didn't. This is one of our biggest clients. Think of something. . . creative. This is the creative department. That's what we do here."

  Teresa skulked back to her workstation. It was an hour before she stopped shaking sufficiently to handle more than just rearranging the art order for printing. She gulped, down a huge cup of coffee while she worked. It didn't help the trembling but it made her brain start functioning again. She decided to transition from the product description by zooming in through the product logo to the setting of the mother tidying up in the baby's room. The deep green of the logo, recently freshened up by the folks across the hall in the sigils and icons department, could be carried over to anything in the baby's room for visual continuity.

  She left a message for the client saying the story-boards would be over right away. But she couldn't send them without the director's final okay. Her boss, Sandra, had been very clear about that.

  Even though the secretary said it was okay to go in, she knocked and stuck her head in as if the door were a shield. Rayann was on the phone but waved her forward.

  She turned over the boards without stopping her conversation, nodding absently. When she got to the transition shot she frowned, said, "Hold on" into the receiver and covered it with her hand. To Teresa, she snapped, "We can't send them somet
hing like this. Do it over. This client is a traditionalist. If you can't think of anything else, use a fade to gray — side wash maybe. Indicate it as less than two seconds." She glanced at Teresa, then back at the boards. "This is too art school."

  Teresa blinked at her, then her mouth took over. "I guess you're right." Her voice shook a little too much to be scathing, but she tried. "I'm just a summa cum laude M.F.A. with a piddly year's study at the Sor-bonne, and I'm sure that's influencing my work."

  The director said into the phone, "Hold on one more minute." Then she fixed Teresa with her cold, piercing gaze. "You want to be an artist, go be an artist. Been there, done that. But the truth is I'm here because I like advertising. That's why you need to be here. Georgia O'Keeffe is my favorite artist, but I wouldn't want her doing storyboards for baby food." Back to the phone she went. "I'm here."

  Teresa made it to the bathroom before she dissolved into tears. Too art school? Just who did that — that bitch think she was? She had treated Teresa like a robot without any feelings or ego or experience or anything. She must have an incredible PR machine to have convinced the advertising community she was not only talented but nice. Teresa usually regretted moments when her mouth took over her good sense, and lord knows she'd had plenty of practice removing her size sevens from her mouth, but this time she was glad.

  Hoping none of her coworkers would notice her red-rimmed eyes, Teresa finished the fade-to-gray storyboard and gave the bundle to the receptionist for messenger service.

  She sat at her workstation and muttered, "I gave up an assistant curator's position — a job actually relevant to my Master of Fine Arts degree — to be treated like dirt by some power dyke on steroids." Christ, it looked like her father was right. His no-strings advice had been to forget the money difference, take the job her heart would be happy to go to every day. She'd told him she was going to have to start making her own decisions sometime. Ever so gently, he'd pointed out that independence did not mean she couldn't agree with him. He had been right, she decided. Business sucked.

  Sandra hurried into her cubicle with a breezy, "Knock, knock." She continued in her usual breathy way, "The boards are on the way, right? I really have to apologize for giving you something so important. You just haven't been here long enough to know all the ins and outs of the client."

  "Did she complain?"

  Sandra seemed to understand who "she" was. "No, she just reminded me that our biggest clients should get our more experienced people. And she's been under a lot of personal stress lately. But don't worry, you'll catch on."

  Teresa was sure that Miz High-and-Mighty Germaine had chewed Sandra out for letting the bumbling art-school amateur work on something "so important." Hell, it was just the storyboards for a 15-second spot. Personal stress was no excuse for treating people badly, including that poor person on the phone.

  When she got up the next morning, Teresa called Carla Hascom and asked point-blank if the museum job was still available. It wasn't. She dragged herself to work, dreading anything that might cause her path to cross with the creative director's. The woman had made her feel like a bug. No, less than that — like bug poop.

  The day was hectic and not as bad as the previous one, but she couldn't keep her job blues out of her voice when her father called that night.

  "I know something's wrong, punkin. Tell your old man all about it."

  "Oh, Daddy. You're going to say 'I told you so.' "

  "I wouldn't—"

  "You do it all the time."

  "I was going to say, if you'll let me finish..." Her father knew how to pause for effect.

  Teresa sighed. "Please continue, Mr. Alan Mandrell, sir, maestro. I await the pearls of your wisdom."

  He snorted. "I wouldn't say I told you so until after we'd come up with a solution to whatever your problem is. Then I'd say it."

  Teresa's chuckle got lost in the T-shirt she pulled over her head. She cradled the phone into her shoulder as she pulled her shoulder-length hair into a ponytail. "Well, I hate my job. Not even a week and I hate it. The creative director is a bitch."

  "And she was the reason you took the job. I'd say that's a problem. Of course, you can't always work with people you like."

  "She called me a — a bumbling amateur."

  "The woman is a Philistine, obviously. The Queen

  of Mean. So what are you going to do?" His uncondi¬tional support was soothing.

  "Stick it out for a while, I guess." She made a scrunchy face in the mirror. Was that a wrinkle? She peered closer.

  "Well, keep your eye on the paper, and put the word out. You never know when something might come along. And whatever you do, don't let your mouth get you into trouble."

  "Me? I have my verbal impulses fully under con¬trol, thank you." It was a wrinkle. Radiating outward from the corner of her left eye. Crap.

  "Did you check back at the museum? Reese?"

  "Ya? Oh, well, I guess I'll do that. I have a wrinkle! Work is aging me already."

  Her father did not need to laugh quite so hard. "Honey, think of them as character lines. It shows you have some."

  "Puh-lease. Men have character lines."

  "Au contraire, punkin." Her father was warming to his theme. "You can either look like Isabella Rossellini or Cher. I'll take Isabella any day. Don't get me wrong. I have no problems with Cher's character, but she's starting to look a little ... preserved."

  "Her mother probably didn't look like Ingrid Bergman as a starting place."

  "Yours did." She could hear the smile and hint of wistfulness in his voice.

  "Oh, Daddy. You are too sweet to be a man." She stretched the skin over her left temple. The wrinkle was still there. How long had this been going on?

  "Don't be sexist. I raised you better than that."

  "How's Melanie?" She pressed down hard on her nose, which in her opinion was a little too pointy.

  The red herring worked. Her father said, with great enthusiasm, "She is just wonderful. In fact, that's why I called."

  Teresa felt a chill of warning — she had had a feeling about Melanie. Daddy had been seeing her for over a year. "Why?"

  "Mel and I are going to get married."

  "Wow. Congratulations." She said it with all her heart. She meant it, really she did. But it would take some getting used to. It had been just the two of them for as long as she could remember. "When?"

  "Vegas isn't even an hour's flight from L.A. so we thought we'd do it there — a couple of months from now. Mel can't really take any vacation until the real estate market cools off in the late fall, and we don't want to wait that long."

  "What's the rush? You haven't done anything you're not supposed to, have you?" Teresa smirked at her reflection. He'd walked right into that one.

  Her father was not perturbed. "Yes, we have. But we were as safe as I expect you to be."

  "Oh, man. An admission of fooling around combined with a parental lecture. You're sharp, today, Dad."

  "Just practicing until you give me grandchildren." His gale of laughter made the line crackle.

  "Daddy!" She felt fifteen again, when she'd informed him that she had no maternal instincts. "There's very little hope of that."

  He sobered, but only slightly, and said, "I'm aware of that, but a father can dream."

  "I don't know what Melanie sees in you," she teased.

  "Me, neither. Don't tell her, okay? Anyway, is there a chance you could get away long enough to fly to Vegas? Our treat, of course. Melanie really wants you there. Her son — you have to meet Ken sometime — is going to make it, too."

  "Wild horses and bitchy creative directors can't keep me away."

  They chatted a while longer and Teresa sat there for a few minutes with her hand on the receiver. Married! He hadn't exactly been a monk while she'd been growing up, but as far as she knew, he'd never been serious about anyone after her mother's death. That was — twenty-seven years. Wow.

  She was startled by the phone, chirping under her
hand. Daddy probably forgot something.

  "Hi, Teresa, this is Carla Hascom. Have I caught you at a bad time?"

  "No," she said, surprised.

  "The person we hired — really, our distant second choice — just called me and said she's not going to show up tomorrow. She took another job. Do you believe that? She was supposed to start tomorrow. Are you still interested?"

  "Very! I just have to give two weeks' notice. I don't want to burn my bridges too badly. This is so exciting." She bounced on her chair.

  "I do want to ask why you're giving up the job you chose."

  "I made a mistake," she said easily. "A cost of youth, maybe? I don't think I'm cut out for the business world. I miss school and thinking about art

  all day." And my talents are completely unappreciated, she added silently, especially by that vicious witch.

  "Well, you won't think about it all day here." Teresa heard a smile in Carta's voice.

  "I know. I'm in for a lot of database and scut work. I can deal."

  "Great. I can't help but think everything worked out for the best."

  "Me, too. So I'll see you in . . . two weeks from tomorrow? The eighteenth?"

  "Sounds great. I am really enthused, and the board will be delighted."

  Teresa did a little dance around the apartment and left a happy note for her roommate, Vivian. She'd whined Vivian's ear off last night. Then she slipped her favorite Madonna mix into the Walkman and set out for her run.

  The steady thup thup of her Air Nikes on the pavement gave rise to a feel-good chant: bye-bye, Queena Meana, bye-bye.

  She was just putting down her things the next morning when Sandra chivied her into a meeting with the director and a copywriter she knew by sight only. He was hard to miss — rainbow hair and multiple studs in each ear. She had wanted to give Sandra her notice right away, but she settled into her chair at the small conference table and realized it would have to wait for a more private moment.

  "We've been invited to submit a concept to Prime Life Beverage Company," Rayann was saying.