Читать книгу The Baby Bargain - Wendy Warren - Страница 6

It was going well.

Lawrence Logan, Jr., LJ to his family and friends, stood in the pastel-toned meeting room of the Children’s Connection and managed, despite the overly cozy decor, to deliver a presentation guaranteed to knock the socks off the fertility and adoption clinic’s board members and staff. He was about to save the Portland, Oregon business from going down in flames after a series of tough breaks and terrible publicity.

It felt good to be a savior.

“The Children’s Connection has taken hits on local news and in print. That can’t be denied,” he told his listeners in a smooth, authoritative voice that was neither judgmental nor commiserating.

“Fortunately for us, there are more viewers watching American Idol than the local news at six. Via high-visibility commercial spots, a redesigned Web site and strategic interviews, we will redirect general awareness and reprogram public opinion. It can be done, ladies and gentlemen. Logan Public Relations is going to show you how.” Like a proud coach, he smiled at everyone around the table. “Let me give you a taste of what we have in mind.”

Taking two steps to a TV monitor, he prepared to start the video presentation he’d brought with him.

Behind him, chairs creaked as people angled for a better view. LJ’s adrenaline surged.

As a New York public relations consultant who was good at his job—in the interest of full disclosure make that great at his job—LJ was used to winning his clients’ trust and, eventually, their gratitude. He enjoyed the expressions of satisfaction and relief that relaxed their strained features when he presented a watertight plan to give their floundering businesses the spit-polished patina of success.

A new job was always a rush, but this one was different. This job promised less work but higher stakes. Winning this client’s trust was critical to a bigger game plan. If—no, when— LJ successfully bolstered the Children’s Connection’s flagging public image, he would be saving more than a business: he’d be saving a family…his own.

Not a bad day’s work for a thirty-seven-year-old man who considered himself something of a black sheep.

Adjusting a silk tie that was bloody uncomfortable, but worth the bother because of the taste and affluence it projected, he glanced at the people watching the ten-minute-long DVD.

His uncle’s family on his father’s side had founded and now ran the Children’s Connection. They’d been visibly stressed since he’d arrived in town. Past rumors of a black-market baby ring, insemination using the wrong donor sperm, kidnappings, and most recently the resignation of Robbie Logan, director of the day care center, had hammered the business like an Oregon storm.

Now the board of directors, including his uncle Terrence and aunt Leslie, plus assorted employees, including his cousin Jillian, watched the video. It offered mock-ups of two separate one-minute commercial campaigns, shot specifically for the Children’s Connection, and LJ saw his aunt and uncle glance at each other in pleased surprise. Satisfaction stirred in his chest.

As the first commercial ended, the door to the meeting room clicked open…though not on the first try.

LJ couldn’t help but watch as a medium-height, lavishly curved blonde juggled a plate and the largest water bottle he’d ever seen. As the only occupant of the room facing the blonde’s direction, he was also the only person present to witness her difficulty in getting a good grip on the door handle. He took a step away from the TV monitor, intending to walk to the rear of the room and hold the door for her, but she solved her own problem by sticking the water bottle between her knees, holding the plate in one hand, widely opening the door with the other, then snatching the water bottle from between her knees and racing in.

Several people heard her that time and turned to acknowledge her entrance. She smiled and offered a brief wave of the water bottle.

Stationing herself near the door, a solitary figure behind the board members and coworkers who’d arrived on time and were seated in a U configuration around the conference tables, she proved taller than LJ had first thought and stronger looking, too. He’d dimmed the lights for the video viewing, but could see clearly that the arms she bared in a sleeveless robin’s-egg-blue sweater bore no resemblance to the willowy, verging-on-emaciated model’s limbs he’d grown used to after years in New York. The woman at the door looked like a farm girl, healthy and rosy, teeming with life.

She scanned the room for a vacant seat, but before she moved to the table, the TV monitor caught her attention. Eyes bigger and softer than Bambi’s focused on the screen. Her full lips pursed in concentration.

Everything about the woman—especially those lush lips—made LJ hunger to taste her….

Whoa. Time for an intervention.

LJ shook his head a bit. He’d never been one to lose track of the matter at hand and he didn’t intend to start now.

Commanding himself to rise above the distraction, he refocused on the monitor, but admitted that the blonde’s presence amplified the anticipation rushing through his veins.

On-screen, a woman twirled a toddler in a dandelion-carpeted field. Carefully filtered lighting softened all harsh lines and strong colors. A soothing voice-over scored the shot:

“The Children’s Connection of Portland. Helping singles become families.” Music swelled. The mother pulled her toddler close, and they both tumbled, laughing, into the grass. “Pursue your dream.”

LJ nodded imperceptibly. After the commercial the video continued with statistics, demographics. LJ knew, though, that he’d hooked his audience already. No parent with a soul could fail to be moved. Hell, even he felt a little teary, and he was about as paternal as Scrooge.

Without question, single women eager to have babies would consider the Children’s Connection again as their first choice in fertility clinics. Though the commercial they’d just viewed was a mock-up, once it was shot at budget and aired repeatedly, it would seep into viewers’ hearts like honey into warm bread. LJ had to force himself not to turn toward the blonde to savor her reaction along with the others’. He written this spot himself.

There were times, like now, when he knew exactly what he was doing with his life.

Gag. Me.

That was Eden Carter’s first reaction as she stood in the back of the meeting room and tried not to laugh out loud.

Only a man could possibly have come up with the pablum they’d just watched. More specifically, the man would have to be childless or someone who had never asked his wife a single purposeful question about her mothering experience.

The Barbie doll in the commercial looked as if she’d never missed a night’s sleep, for crying out loud. Her face was gorgeous, her figure toned and perfect, her hair an überstylist’s work of art.

Come to the Children’s Connection, Eden thought, we’ll help you have a baby who hardly ever cries and will never bite your boob while he’s nursing.

Okay, so maybe she was cranky, but she’d missed lots of sleep lately. Whoever had written the syrupy commercial should have asked her—or any of the single mothers who had been helped by the Children’s Connection—what parenting an infant or toddler on one’s own really looked like.

Shifting the arm that held the plate of cookies she’d brought to the meeting, she surreptitiously pressed her forearm against her right breast with its poor aching nipple.

Her beautiful baby boy, Liam, was currently adding a new tooth to the three he already had. He’d clamped down on her right nipple so hard this morning that she’d let out a shriek before she could stop herself. Her poor little guy had opened his blue eyes wide then started to squall. It had been a rough finish to a morning that had started late because she’d been up half the night applying a homeopathic teething gel to his swollen gums.

Liam wasn’t the only one who depended on her availability day and night. As a doula, she was responsible for her patients anytime they needed her.

If she tried to twirl in a field like the gal in the commercial, she’d collapse from exhaustion.

Women who wanted to become parents, especially single parents, needed the kind of support and compassion that came from shared experience, and truth, not something so…so…

Silly!

When several people whipped around in their chairs to face her, she realized she’d spoken aloud.

“Do you want to comment, Eden?” Terrence Logan asked her with interest.

In her teens and early twenties, she’d had a bothersome tendency to speak first and think later. A committed yoga and meditation practice had soothed her jangled spirit and given her the discipline to insert a little lag time between her thoughts and her words.

Evidently she was suffering a relapse.

“No, thank you. Very sorry,” she said since she’d clearly spoken out of turn.

Her coworkers here knew her as the centered, hard-to-ruffle woman she’d become. She’d even Hypno-Birthed her way through an eighteen-hour delivery, thank you very much.

No one here was familiar with the Eden Carter who’d struggled through each painful day of her youth like a salmon slogging upstream. Back then her burdens had seemed to weigh more than she did, and sometimes she’d release her frustration by picking fights that weren’t even hers.

Involuntarily her gaze met the speaker’s. What was his name? He was one of the Logans, but belonged to a branch of the family that didn’t have much to do with the Children’s Connection, as far as she knew.

His articulate brows had hiked to express surprise then lowered quickly to a frown. At first glance he appeared almost confused, but as Eden watched he gathered his wits and smiled tightly, gearing up for a fight if necessary.

An answering thrill of anticipation shot through her, catching her off guard. She willed the feeling to pass and to leave in its stead a healing serenity.

“I’m sure we’re all interested in what you have to say, Ms….?”

Oh, geez. Move on, buddy. Please, move on. “Carter,” she muttered.

“Ms. Carter.” Silencing the monitor that had gone to blue screen, he flicked on the overhead lights and turned toward her again. “I realize you weren’t here for the entire presentation, but you’ve obviously had a strong reaction to what you did see.”

Eden’s eyes narrowed to mirror his. The gauntlet had been tossed. Challenge vibrated beneath the committed politeness of his words. He’d invited her comments and undermined them in a single breath.

“There’s a seat at the head of the table.” He gestured with an innocence that would melt butter, but she understood that his intention was to put her on the spot. “Of course, you’re welcome to stand if you prefer.” He stepped to the side, indicating he was just as pleased as could be to give her the floor.

Eden smiled, as innocently as he. You don’t scare me, bub. I went through back labor.

Adopting her smoothest gliding walk, she approached the front of the room, plate of cookies and water bottle in hand, and never broke eye contact with him.

As she drew near, she saw that his eyes were blue and that he was older than he’d seemed from across the room. On a bet, she’d risk good money that he was mid-to late thirties, at least. Her initial impression had been that he was the born-with-a-silver-spoon type, but the closer she got the less untouched by life he seemed.

She stood no more than a foot away when she noted the tension around his eyes, eyes that were almost as blue as hers and her son’s. He shared her son’s dark hair, too, though his was a smidge darker.

“Thank you,” she said when he held out a chair. He waited until she was comfortably seated before assuming the seat next to her.

He smelled good. Cleaner and subtler than cologne, more delicious than plain soap. Seemed as though she rarely had an occasion to smell anything more interesting than baby powder lately, so his scent hit her twice as hard.

Buck up, Eden, she told herself. You probably smell like baby spit up, which is why you have a point to make.

With a big smile, she plopped her plate of cookies atop the cleaned-for-company conference table and whipped off the crinkled foil cover.

“Chocolate chocolate chip and oatmeal butterscotch,” she announced. “Help yourselves. Three points each if you’re doing Weight Watchers.”

Her coworkers gazed hungrily at her homemade treats. She saw Jillian Logan glance at Dianna March, who was on the board of directors. Ordinarily the board and the staff rarely attended the same meetings. When the staff alone gathered in the afternoon, juice and coffee flowed and there was no shortage of snacks, making the furniture before them look like a picnic table.

Formality and professionalism seemed to be the order of this afternoon, however.

The meeting room appeared more official, less warm and friendly. A carafe of water and a coffee urn sat atop a sideboard, with a small container of sugar and packets of artificial sweetener as the only nod to the afternoon energy slump. Her cookies, which normally would have been half-gone in the time it took for her to notice the difference in the room, sat untouched as everyone waited to see what the board members were going to do.

That’s the problem, she thought. We can’t stop being ourselves just because we’re in trouble. That’s what this place was about: family first. Real life first. That was one reason she loved it so: you didn’t have to fake it to make it at the Children’s Connection.

Contrarily, the commercial she’d just watched looked like a trailer for The Sound of Music.

“Afternoon, everyone.” She raised a hand companionably. “I apologize for walking in late. I hope the cookies’ll make up for it. I stopped by the baby center to check on Liam. He’s been teething, and you know how that goes. Sleepless nights, cranky days and a nose like a lazy river—nothing ever comes of it, but it doesn’t stop running. You just can’t pay a child-care provider enough to deal with that, can you?”

Understanding smiles popped up around the room as heads bobbed. There, that was better. Dianna and fellow board member Wayne Thorpe looked almost human again. No matter what trouble they’d suffered recently, the Children’s Connection wasn’t all about business. That was one reason she’d moved clear from Kentucky to Oregon to take this job. She hoped to heaven this place would hang on to its unique character in the face of its struggles. It was so easy to forget who you were when you were scared.

Eden turned toward the man beside her. “Do you have children, Mr….”

She cocked a brow even though she knew his last name was Logan. Same as the uncle and cousins who’d hired him. Still, it never hurt to let one’s adversary believe he hadn’t been worthy of much interest up to now.

To his credit, his surprise showed only in his eyes.

“Logan,” he supplied. “And, no, I do not have children.”

Eden nodded and made a mental note. A very crisp “No, I do not” rather than “Not yet” or “I haven’t been so fortunate.” She colored her responding “Ahh” with gentle implication.

“Your commercial was lovely to look at,” she said sincerely. “Almost made me want to get pregnant again. If someone could guarantee I’d be like the woman in your ad. Now, there’s a gal who looks as if she could have triplets and not lose any beauty sleep. Most of us moms with little ones are lucky if we brush our teeth before noon.”

From her peripheral vision, Eden saw the women in the room nod and smile.

“I hope I’m not being too personal, Ms. Carter,” LJ said, obviously realizing he could lose the ground he’d already gained if he wasn’t careful, “but you’re far more attractive than the actress who was hired for the commercial. If you have a child young enough to be teething, I think we put the wrong woman on TV.”

Garnet Kearn beamed at him. Wayne Thorpe and Miles Remington raised their brows as if it was an option worth considering.

Score: Logan, 1. Carter, 0.

Eden couldn’t ignore the fact that he’d just made her look like Gladys Kravitz, butting in where she didn’t belong. When she’d first received the memo regarding the meeting, she’d considered the invitation to be little more than a courtesy. Who needed a layperson’s input with an advertising pro onboard? Now that she’d met the whiz kid, she revised her opinion.

You need me, buddy boy. And I need you to protect my place of employment. She was determined to speak up whether he liked it or not.

Smiling as if she thought he’d paid her a compliment, Eden cracked her knuckles under the table. He might know advertising, but Mr. New York was about to discover that mommies and babies were her areas of expertise.

LJ relished the victory he’d just won. Before Ms. Carter had tossed in her two cents, he’d been about to tie this job into a bow pretty enough to impress his uncle. No way would he allow someone to undermine a victory that was only moments away.

Her gripe could waste a lot of time if the board wasn’t savvy about marketing. No one on any sofa in any home in America had ever bought a product or service because it promised to make him look and feel exactly the way he looked and felt sitting in front of his TV.

Advertising, even for services like those provided by the Children’s Connection, appealed to people’s fantasies, to their idealized versions of themselves and the lives they would like to lead. Who fantasized about being overworked, sleep deprived and covered in baby puke?

He decided to use her objection to hammer his point home. My apologies, beauty, but this is a business meeting, not Mommy and Me.

“I’m glad you found the commercial aesthetically pleasing.” He spoke directly to her. “We want to plant a strong, positive image in the mind of anyone looking into an adoption or fertility clinic.”

When her pale brows gathered and it appeared she was going to rebut, he held the floor tenaciously, shifting his attention to the others.

“It goes without saying that the Children’s Connection has suffered a number of blows to its image and that the result has been public questioning of the organization’s agenda. More crucially, this board’s basic values have come under attack. I intend to plant an image firmly in the minds of every viewer that leaves no doubt about the Children’s Connection’s first love—the creation of families. I want hopeful parents to know we are unabashedly romantic about helping to build those families and watching them grow. That we will be part of their lives far past inception or birth or an adoptive placement. The world may be cynical…the Portland Children’s Connection is not.”

LJ always knew when he’d hooked his audience. The energy in a conference room began to hum. If he felt it, he was making his point.

Around the table members of the board sat taller in their faux-leather chairs. LJ’s uncle Terrence and aunt Leslie linked hands atop the table. The unconsciousness of the gesture told LJ a great deal.

Though he kept his gaze on the others, he could feel the frustration simmering in the woman seated beside him. What was her beef? So the actress in the commercial was skinny. Eden Carter’s body was made to attract men, most of whom would go nuts over her more liberal curves. The subtle Southern lilt in her voice wouldn’t hurt, either.

He had a fleeting desire to apologize for cutting off her protest—very fleeting. He’d never been that nice in business. And since he was about to win his father’s approval for the first time in two decades, he wasn’t about to let a pretty blonde with a body image issue compete with his father-approval issue.

Beside him, the woman cleared her throat. When LJ looked at her, she smiled.

“That is a wonderful saying. ‘The world may be cynical. The Children’s Connection is not.’” She splayed a hand on her chest. “I’m a sucker for great sayings. I still get weepy over ‘You had me at hello.’ Still, if I understand the recent allegations, it’s our credibility that’s at question. We’re being called irresponsible. Or out-and-out liars.”

Damage control alert. LJ’s brow furrowed so deeply he could have grown carrots. Eden Carter looked and sounded like an angel, but as she turned to address the people around the table, she was far from heavenly. She was a bad-ass thorn in his side.

As she began speaking, he ground his teeth and felt pain stab his head. If she gave him a migraine, he was going to stop being polite.

“In our First-Time Moms class we tell women exactly what to expect,” she said in that soothing, eminently reasonable tone she had. “We insist they be armed with real-life information so their experience won’t overwhelm their expectations. The public should know that. They should know we educate and arm our clients with knowledge before they become parents and while they’re pregnant and after their babies arrive. Our prospective clients and all those nasty people who have been so rude to us need to know we would never ever try to snow anyone. We don’t merely value honesty around here, we insist on it.”

She thumped, actually thumped a fist on the table. He almost felt sorry for her, because she’d obviously forgotten that she was addressing a board of directors, not just a roomful of fellow employees. If this were a Frank Capra movie and Jimmy Stewart were on the board, fist-thumping idealism might work.

“If our intentions are in question,” she continued, as earnest as could be, “then, shouldn’t we be as frank as possible now? We don’t have to sugarcoat reality to make it palatable. The truth is good enough. The Children’s Connection is good enough.” She placed both palms on the table and sat forward in her chair. “I ought to know. I work here, and I’m a client.”

Hold the phone.

LJ’s brain, which was starting to hurt, scrambled to take in the information that she was a Children’s Connection client. By God, he loathed surprises.

How was she a client? Of which services had she availed herself? Adoption or the fertility clinic?

And what did she do here, anyway?

Racking his brain some more, he sought a polite way to remind everyone present that he was the professional here and that Little Bo Peep didn’t know advertising from a flock of sheep.

He opened his mouth, but applause came out. Huh? Frowning, he glanced around.

Every soul around the table had his or her hands in prayer position, clapping enthusiastically. Heads nodded. Broad, unmistakably proud smiles wreathed every face.

He looked to his left.

Eden Carter ducked her head humbly, adding an “Oh, pshaw” shrug before she picked up her plate of cookies and passed it around.

And he was worried about finding a polite way to discredit her?

His irritation rose and his head pounded harder with each “Ahhh” a bite of her apparently excellent baked goods inspired.

The hell with polite.

The meeting was out of his control, the first time he recalled that happening ever, and he had five feet, six inches of curving Betty Crocker to thank for it.

When the plate of cookies made it back to their end of the table, she reached in front of him and held it aloft. Unshakably pleasant, she offered, “Cookie? Only—”

“Three Weight Watchers points?” he recited along with her. “I heard.” Smiling with no humor at all, he reached for a perfectly round disk studded with chocolate chips. Examined it. “It looks good. And sweet.”

Returning the cookie to the plate, he curled his lips into something feral. “But I’m an Atkins man.” He leaned toward her, his words for her ears only. “See, I have a goal. Don’t think for one second that I’m going to let a little sugar get in my way.”