Skirting The Issue

“Professional buds,” Sam clarified, though Josh didn’t have a professional bone in his body and she was no more his “bud” than…better not go there.

“If you insist.” His grin widened and he winked.

Sam wished she had a really good set of fingernails so she could scratch that grin off his loathsome face. Even so, she could feel what fingernails she had digging into her palms. In a couple of short sentences, he’d completely changed Bill Hennesey’s picture of her—and not for the better. Too much was at stake for Sam to allow Josh to get away with it.

“I do insist, as you well know.” She sent a deliberately casual smile toward Mr. Hennesey. “Josh and I have crossed paths on the convention circuit the past couple of years. He’s very good at what he does.” But what he does isn’t very good.

She congratulated herself on her word choice. Outwardly, it was a compliment. Maybe Josh would reciprocate.

“Why thank you, Sam. Glad to hear you didn’t have any complaints.”

Or maybe not.

Naturally, Mr. Hennesey chuckled. “Yes, he is, which is why we’re delighted to hire his company to train our staff.”

What company? “You mean Meckler?”

“Josh has left Meckler Hotels and has started his own sales training company.”

Josh leaned forward and dangled a business card from his fingers. Sam had to walk over to him and reach over the tiny coffee table in order to take it.

If Mr. Hennesey weren’t there, she would have ripped it into confetti and thrown it in Josh’s face. But Mr. Hennesey was there, more’s the pity, so Sam politely took the card, and looked at it. Josh Crandall, Perfect Pitch Sales Seminars.

Now what? With her back to Mr. Hennesey, Sam eyed Josh suspiciously. Was this another of his slick tricks? Devious ways? Underhanded maneuvers?

Josh gave her a blandly innocent smile which Sam didn’t buy for an instant.

Mr. Hennesey apparently did. “Josh has been so successful in convention sales—” Sam winced, knowing at whose expense a few of those successes came, “—that I was eager to give him the opportunity to share some of his secrets.”

“You’re actually willing to go on record?” she said to Josh.

“For a price.”

“Well, we always knew you had a price.”

“Everybody’s got a price, chickie, even you.” He threw one of his casual smiles at Mr. Hennesey. “Finding a person’s price is one of the strategies I’ll cover in my seminar.”

Slick, slimy and smooth. Vintage Josh. Sam gritted her teeth.

Mr. Hennesey was clearly mesmerized by him, but then most people were. Young, old, male, female. Everybody liked Josh. He made them feel good when they were with him which made them want to please him so he’d stick around. So they’d please him by giving Meckler Hotels their convention business. But then he’d leave anyway. Didn’t they get it?

He had a gift, Sam acknowledged, and she knew it wasn’t anything he could teach others.

“…know him, Samantha…” She quickly tuned back into Mr. Hennesey. “…so I’m putting you in charge of organizing the training sessions with Josh.”

No. No, no, no, no.

“Start with personnel here this week, then bring in the others from the eastern region.”

Nooooo. Except this was exactly the type of job the east coast manager would do. She should be thrilled that she’d been given the opportunity to prove what she could do and not one of the other candidates.

Except now she owed Josh.

“See to it that he has everything he needs,” Mr. Hennesey instructed expansively.

Josh’s eyes gleamed.

“He means equipment,” Sam snapped.

“My equipment is just fine.” He grinned. “Some have said it’s the best they’ve ever seen.”

“Then they haven’t seen much.”

Josh let her words hang in the air. “And you have, of course.”

How was it possible to loathe a human being as much as she loathed Josh? Belatedly conscious of Mr. Hennesey’s gaze ping-ponging between them, Sam once again prepared to salvage the situation. Turning to the man she hoped would become her permanent boss, she explained, “I’ve always made it a point to be familiar with the audio visual inventory of the hotels I recommend to organizations’ meeting planners. Carrington can be justifiably proud of owning and maintaining first-rate AV equipment.”

To Josh, she added, “As a start-up company it would be understandable if your equipment was…lacking.”

Their gazes locked.

Sam could see the muscle work in Josh’s temple and was silently congratulating herself for finally getting to him, when he spoke, “Bill, if you can spare Sam for a couple of hours, I’d like to show her my equipment.”

3

OH, THE LOOK ON HER FACE. Nobody, but nobody, could speak with her eyes like Sam Baldwin.

They flashed. They narrowed. They stared. They blinked. And once there’d been a time when they’d gone all smoky and dark…but it was better that he forget about that. With Hennesey’s blessings echoing behind them, Josh followed her from the room.

Yeah, the only downside to quitting Meckler to strike out on his own was the thought that he’d never go head-to-head with Samantha Baldwin again. Josh wouldn’t mind going body to body, either. At one time, it looked like that was going to happen, was happening, actually, and if he hadn’t had an attack of latent ethics…but he had. Surprised the hell out of him, too.

She headed for the bank of elevators and pressed—stabbed—the button, then stood silently and stared straight ahead.

Fine. He’d just wait her out. He shoved his hands into his pockets and watched her face in the reflection of the brass elevator doors.

She was doing the same, he saw. Once, again, he was struck by the expressiveness of her eyes. Like right now, they were saying, “You are a complete jerk, you know that?”

Well, sure. He didn’t want to do anything halfway—no, wait, she had actually said that. Out loud. He might have gone too far this time.

Nah. “Hey, you missed your line,” he said as they got into the elevator. “When I offered to show you my equipment, you should have said, ‘Only if you’re up to it.’ Or, no! You could have said, ‘I’ll show you mine if you show me yours.’”

“Did I mention the jerkish aspects of your personality?” She pressed the button for the fourth floor.

“Yeah.”

“And I have before, haven’t I?”

“Several times. But you change the adjectives. I don’t recall you using ‘complete’ before. Total jerk, you’ve used that. Let’s see…stupid jerk. Slimy jerk. Unethical jerk. And such a jerk as in ‘You are such a jerk, Josh.’”