Chapter 12
In complete contrast to Piper Griffin’s overzealous welcome, Wally Dupuis greeted Caleb with the warmth of a New England flagpole in mid-January. At first, Caleb feared he might have unwittingly stepped in something based on Mr. Dupius’s facial expression upon first meeting. Yet after several minutes in the man’s presence without a shift in the puckered lip and pulled brow, Caleb concluded this must be his interviewer’s normal look.
And it hadn’t taken long to realize he was, indeed, in the midst of an interview. With tiny round glasses perched on the end of his bulbous nose, the newspaper’s managing editor, as was proclaimed across his office door, fired off the typical interview questions, until Caleb interrupted him.
“If you don’t mind my asking,” Caleb said, leaning forward in his chair, “why exactly am I here? ”
Bushy gray brows drew together. “You don’t know what job you’re applying for?”
The tone of the question set Caleb on edge. “I helped Miss Hattie around her house yesterday afternoon, and she asked me to report to this address at nine this morning. That’s the extent of my knowledge.”
Wally sat back, his expression relaxing into something less ... offended. “I should have known,” he said, sliding the glasses up a long forehead to perch atop his nearly bald head. “Hattie didn’t tell you anything about why she sent you?”
Caleb shook his head. “Afraid not.”
“That woman should come with a warning.” The reading glasses hit the desktop. “We’re looking for a salesman, Mr. McGraw. Do you know anything about selling advertising?”
Though he’d worked the numbers, knew the sales structure and terminology, Caleb had never actually worked in the sales department of any of his father’s papers. He’d been groomed as future owner and leader, not the man on the ground shaking hands and making deals. Still, that didn’t mean he couldn’t do the job.
“I know about points, and how to calculate column inches. I’m sure you have a reference available with a breakdown of your basic pricing structure. Do you have a graphic artist on staff, or are customers required to submit their own artwork?”
“That’s more than most strangers off the street walk in knowing, Mr. McGraw. Seems odd that a minute ago you were clueless and now you’re talking pricing structure.”
With a smile, Caleb said, “I never claimed to be clueless about the business. I simply didn’t know if Miss Hattie sent me here to deliver papers, scrub the floors, or write up obituaries. She only asked if I knew anything about newspapers. When I said I did, that seemed to be enough for her to send me here.”
Wally rocked back in his chair. “Where did you learn about newspapers? ”
If Dupuis didn’t make the connection between his last name and McGraw Media, Caleb didn’t see the need to enlighten him. For once, he would land a job on his own merit, and not due to the power behind his name.
“Did some internships in college,” he answered. “My experience is more on the financial side, but I had to understand the sales department to analyze the numbers.”
Caleb heard the words come out of his mouth, all of which were true, but he wondered why he was bothering. Since when did he want to work in sales? He’d set out to get a job in town to make Snow happy. To prove he could be focused and useful, and selling ads did sound better than slinging a hammer, but Caleb had made a concerted effort to avoid working in the newspaper industry. He’d turned down every job his father offered, determined to find his own path.
This little windowless office stood as one of the many indicators that the Ardent Advocate was in no way competing on a mass-media scale. Working construction would have been temporary. What was wrong with selling ads instead? A hint of guilt entered the equation at the idea of taking an offered job with the intent to resign in a matter of weeks.
Caleb could see the wheels turning in the man’s head as Wally tapped a pen on his blotter. But were they turning in his direction? “The position would pay a base salary plus commission to start.” That answered that. “You’d shadow Gerald for the first couple weeks before we send you out alone.”
The men Caleb had dealt with through his father wore suits that cost more than Mr. Dupuis likely made in a month. And he’d held his own with all of them. Handling a few local business owners should be no problem at all. Still, to appease his conscience, Caleb said, “How about a trial period? You see what I can do, and I decide if selling ads is something I want to do.”
Not that he doubted Dupuis would be more than happy with his performance at the end of the trial, but this left Caleb an opening to walk away knowing he was honest from the beginning. Mostly.
“Well,” Wally said, “you already have the owner’s approval, so now it’s a simple matter of paperwork.”
He’d met the owner? Caleb shuffled through his morning and cringed. Piper Griffin owned the paper? “I didn’t realize when I met her that she was the owner of the place.”
Exiting his chair, the editor motioned for Caleb to precede him into the hall. “Hattie’s family started this paper back in 1927. I’m surprised she didn’t tell you.”
Hattie? The eccentric old lady with the cat paintings and wild clothes owned a newspaper?
“Not knowing why you were here explains the jeans,” Wally continued as they strolled down the hall toward the front office Piper had occupied. “You won’t need a suit and tie, but khakis and a polo shirt is sort of the uniform for the sales team. Though team is a bit of an exaggeration. Gerald and Piper handle all the selling, and with Gerald retiring at the end of the year, you can see why we’re in a pinch to fill the spot.”
Caleb filed the issue of working on a team with Piper to focus on the bigger problem. The paper needed a permanent replacement for this Gerald person. There was nothing permanent about Caleb and Ardent Springs. “About the trial period—”
“No worries,” Wally said, stepping into the office across from the building entrance. “We’ll give it a shot, and if it doesn’t work out, no hard feelings. Eleanor,” he said, turning to a woman behind the desk, drawing Caleb’s attention to the stranger in the room, “Mr. McGraw here needs to fill out an application and a new hire package. He’ll be working with Gerald for the next couple weeks to learn how things run around here.”
“Bless your heart,” the stranger said, flashing a sympathetic smile as she glanced over the cat-eye glasses perched on the bridge of her nose. “You’re a daring soul. ”
Not the “welcome to the company” he was expecting.
“Let’s not scare him off on the first day.” Wally slid his hands into his pockets, which emphasized his protruding middle. “Gerald Nichols has been with the Ardent Advocate since 1960. There isn’t a person in this town he doesn’t know. He either went to school with them, coached them in Little League, or attended their baptism as an honorary grandparent. Since selling is all about relationships, that makes him the best around.”
“He’s also the crankiest SOB this side of the Mississippi,” Eleanor said. “And that nicotine gum isn’t doing squat to soften his disposition.”
Rolling his eyes, Wally sighed. “Gerald’s a longtime smoker. His wife, Dolly, finally had enough and said it was her or the cigarettes, so he’s trying to quit. It’s been a transition for all of us.”
If Caleb wanted to spend his days with a hateful old man, he’d go to work for his father. “Are you sure—”
“Gerald is a great guy,” Wally said, cutting him off again. “Everybody loves him. You’ll be fine.” Moving faster than he had since Caleb met him, the editor shuffled out of the room. “Eleanor, you can take it from here.”
The blonde stuck a pencil in her hair bun as she rolled to a file cabinet behind her and withdrew a long manila folder. “You will be fine,” she said. “Really. Have you ever worked in sales before? You can’t be but twenty-five or so. You fresh out of college? Though if you are, I don’t know what you’re doing in this little town of ours. What brought you to Ardent Springs, sugar?”
Caleb didn’t know which question to answer first, so he took them in order. “No, I’ve never worked in sales, and I’ll be twenty-nine this month. Not fresh out of college.” He ignored the final question.
“Oh,” Eleanor said, her moment of supportive enthusiasm wavering. Her voice dropped to a whisper as she leaned his way. “Not that I condone fibbing, but in this case, I highly suggest you not tell Gerald that. He’ll chew you up and spit you out if you do. Use that pretty face of yours to charm the customers and he won’t be any the wiser. ”
This was not how Caleb imagined his day would go when he’d parked in front of 121 Second Avenue North. Pride alone kept him from walking out the door without looking back. He didn’t need some old codger making his life miserable, but he’d taken the job now. Quitting before he’d gone on his first sales call would be the cowardly thing to do. And Caleb was no coward.
As Eleanor showed him to an empty desk in the back corner of the office, which was really two offices combined, a deep voice echoed from somewhere down the hall.
“Who washed my goddamn coffee cup?”
Handing him a pen, Eleanor said, “And that’s another thing. Don’t ever wash Gerald’s coffee cup. He doesn’t like that.”
Great, Caleb thought. What the hell had he gotten himself into?
By noon Snow had scheduled a consultation with an art dealer out of Nashville, who sounded skeptical about the authenticity of her painting, but she’d agreed to travel to Ardent Springs to see this miracle find for herself. She’d also answered two inquiries about the handsome man who’d accompanied her to the auction the day before.
Social media had nothing on small-town gossip lines. Busybodies had been passing along rumors and conjecture far and wide long before the term going viral was even a concept. Snow usually observed the speed with which news spread in her adopted town with rapt fascination, until the news involved her personal life.
Now this small-town quirk didn’t seem so quaint.
Nitzi Merchant had been the first to ask, when she’d stopped in to put her new bits of lace for sale in her booth. The doilies were priced at more than they were worth, but Snow knew full well that Nitzi always started high before making drastic price cuts, which led the customers to feel as if they were getting a deal. The practice was as old as time, and Nitzi knew how to make it work in her favor.
To Snow’s surprise, the second inquiry had come from Priscilla Winkle. The first lady of Ardent Springs didn’t have much time for Snow after she’d befriended Lorelei Pratchett, against whom the Winkles had waged some kind of personal vendetta. Priscilla’s daughter, Becky, was best described as Lorelei’s arch-nemesis, but Snow had never liked the snarky blonde with the bouffant hair.
When Mrs. Winkle had approached Snow near a stack of vintage suitcases she’d been straightening and asked whom she’d been with at the auction, the woman’s tone implied that said man might be new meat for the local marriage market, and therefore her daughter’s next matrimonial victim.
“He’s my fiancé,” Snow had informed her. “We’ve been in a long-distance relationship for a while and have decided to take things to the next level.”
Though she’d been reluctant to use the engagement element, seeing Priscilla’s dull blue eyes go wide with surprise made Snow feel as if she’d won a contest. The conversation hadn’t proceeded far beyond that point, as Mrs. Winkle lost interest the moment she heard Caleb would not be courting her daughter.
It wasn’t until she’d finished her peanut butter and jelly sandwich that Snow experienced her third surprise encounter of the day, when Piper Griffin blew into the shop for their regular Monday meeting.
Piper was Snow’s sales rep from the Ardent Advocate . The middle-aged brunette dressed too young for her age, wore enough perfume to gag a moose, and could sell space heaters in the Bahamas. She’d been harassing Snow to increase her ad budget for three months.
If the painting turned out to be authentic and worth as much as Snow hoped, Piper might get her way.
“Am I glad Halloween is over,” Piper said, sliding behind the counter and lifting a plateful of cookies from a lower shelf. They’d made a deal long ago that Snow would always put a select number of cookies aside for these visits, since Lorelei’s goodies rarely lasted past lunchtime. “Now we can get on with my favorite time of year.” Piper popped a piece of gingersnap between her deep-red lips and talked around the morsel. “The Christmas shopping season.”
Snow noticed that Piper did not state that Christmas was her favorite time of year. So much for the reason for the season.
“We’re still weeks away from Thanksgiving,” Snow reminded her rep. She wouldn’t exactly call them friends, since Piper was only interested in the commission she could make off Snow’s advertising, but they did speak at social functions, on the rare occasion they crossed paths. So she was at least a friendly acquaintance.
“Pish posh.” Piper shooed the facts away. “I’ve bought four presents already, and if you don’t want people taking their business online, you need to remind them why they should shop local.”
And how she should do that was to buy a bigger ad. “Are you doing the Buy Local promotion again? That did well last Christmas.”
The paper had created a full-page ad the previous year dedicated to encouraging readers to invest their hard-earned money into local businesses, instead of driving down to Nashville to hit the big stores, or making the majority of their purchases on the Internet. Each local business had the opportunity to contribute a relatively small amount to be included in the promotion.
Piper finished off a chocolate chip cookie before responding. “We’re definitely doing that again, but it’s going to take more than your name included in a mass ad to let our readers know of the treasures you have here.” The empty plate returned to the shelf as Piper added, “You’ve got one-of-a-kind stuff in this place, Snow. And a much bigger inventory than you had this time last year. People need to know that.”
Snow supposed she was right. Though the shop benefited from its central location on the corner of a major downtown intersection not far from the town square, which, ironically, was round, there was less foot traffic in the winter. Buyers needed a reason to visit the store.
On a sigh, Snow said, “Why don’t you draw me up some sort of Christmas marketing plan and we can talk about it.”
Pausing in brushing crumbs from her cleavage, Piper looked up. “Are you serious?”
With a nod, Snow said, “I am. I’m not promising I’ll spend a lot, but you’re right. I need to advertise more, especially this time of year.”
“Brilliant!” Piper exclaimed, throwing her arms in the air. “I’ll have a full plan drawn up for our meeting next week.”
Snow had half expected the saleswoman to demand they sit down and work something up right then. “Oh,” she said. “Okay. I look forward to seeing what you come up with.”
“You’re going to love it. Now I have to get back to the office.” The flamboyant woman shifted her abundant hips through a narrow opening between two large displays. “A new guy started at the paper this morning, and he is delicious.” She glanced at her phone. “He’s following Gerald around, and that means they’ll do a midday check-in within fifteen minutes. Bless that old man’s heart, you could set your watch by his schedule.”
This sounded like good news to Snow. Another new arrival might take the gossip heat off of her and Caleb.
“A new guy as in a new hire, or new to town?” she asked, hoping it was the latter.
Piper tapped her chin. “I’ve never seen him before, so I’m thinking new to town, but I didn’t get as much time with him as I wanted. He’s young, tall, and hot as all get-out,” she said. Piper wiggled her brows. “And no wedding ring. That means he’s fair game.”
A trickle of concern danced along Snow’s spine. That description matched her husband to a tee, but then young, tall, and hot weren’t exactly specifics.
“How was he dressed?” Snow asked, hoping against hope the answer would not be jeans and a red button-up shirt .
Warming to her topic, Piper said, “Oh, honey, let me tell you. The boy fills out a pair of jeans like he was born to wear them. I made sure I got a good look, and I’d bet my best push-up bra that you could bounce a quarter off those cheeks, and I don’t mean the ones above his neck. The red button-down was simple enough, but accentuated those broad shoulders to the point that I nearly wept.” With a wink, she added, “If I have my way, that boy will be the present under my tree, and wearing nothing but a red bow I plan to untie real slow .”
Snow was too stunned to say any of the million things running through her mind. A wave of jealousy smacked her like a bucket of ice water, while anger bubbled up over Caleb not telling her he was taking a job with the local paper. He hadn’t even mentioned the newspaper.
Was he planning to surprise her? “Hi, honey, I’m home. Guess what I did today? I got a job!”
And was Snow supposed to be happy? Relieved? Proud of her ultra-rich husband sinking low enough to take a salesman position with a paper that would be a joke in his father’s media conglomerate world?
She was torn between ripping Piper’s eyes out for fantasizing about her man, and the urge to follow Piper back to the paper and order her husband to go home.
As Snow stewed, Piper stepped through the front door into the November sunshine, yelling, “See you next week!” She was off to see her client’s tall and hunky husband, who had apparently failed to mention he had a wife. Or a fiancée, rather, since they were keeping the wife thing a secret. For now.
In that moment, Snow wanted nothing more than to claim Caleb as her own. To make sure every woman within a hundred miles knew the gorgeous man with the tight jeans and blazing blue eyes was very much off -limits.
Instead, she went back to straightening her suitcases and simmered, grinding her jaw tight enough to rub her teeth to dust. Mr. McGraw would have some serious explaining to do to Mrs. McGraw this evening.