A Place Called Home by Jo Goodman Read Free Book Online Page B

earlier. “Here.” She handed him the glass and indicated the layout with a nod. “What do you think?”
    “I think you ad people are a devious and unscrupulous lot. I’d buy this.”
    “No, you wouldn’t. You’ve never used a cleaning product like that in your life. But thanks for the devious and unscrupulous compliment.”
    Grinning, Joel handed her the board. “I’m sure Betty would buy it,” he said, referring to his housekeeper. “Are you going after the Carver Chemical account?”
    “Not with ideas like this, we’re not.” She dropped the board on a stack of layouts she had discarded earlier. Although there was room beside him on the sofa now, Thea sat in a chair opposite Joel. She crossed her legs and saw his eyes immediately follow the movement. Not for the first time Thea wished she was more comfortable with his overt interest. What was wrong with her that she didn’t feel flattered? “Whether or not we can get the account depends on our ability to make their most familiar, tried-and-true, big-yawn products exciting again. With so many competing products on the market, Carver needs to build brand loyalty with a new generation. Betty already buys Shine and Shield. Her daughter probably does, too. But her granddaughter? Not likely.”
    “Maybe her granddaughter doesn’t clean.”
    Thea’s arch look was only moderately playful. “Then we have to find out why, change an attitude, and put Shine and Shield in her hand.”
    Joel regarded her as if he were completely confident in her ability to do just that. “If Satan had hired Foster and Wyndham, his temptation-of-Christ campaign would have been a success.”
    “Joel!”
    His smile was mischievous and youthful. “I’m Episcopalian. We live on the edge.”
    Thea laughed. Sometimes he seemed so much younger than she felt. It was more than the fact that he wore his sixty-one years so very well. It didn’t hurt that his dark hair had just begun to gray and that it was a gunmetal color that perfectly matched his eyes. He kept himself fit playing golf and rowing. He walked the links and his rowing was done on the Allegheny. Machines, he’d told her, were for pussies. Give or take a few pounds, he’d kept his weight at 175 for the last thirty years and except for an occasional cigar, he had never been a smoker. He was still taut in all the right places, firm and toned and vital. At just over six feet, Joel could turn heads, and often did. He worked hard, as hard or harder than most of the people under him at Strahern Investments. He was tough, sharp, and competitive, and he had had plenty of young turks for lunch when they forgot he was ultimately a predator; but when the mood was on him, he could also be boyishly curious and playful. For all his years in business, he’d never attached himself to a cynical life view that did not allow for change or hope.
    It was, perhaps, the quality that Thea found most appealing. If not precisely jaded herself, then she was certainly weary.
    Joel’s eyes settled thoughtfully on Thea’s face. Now that she had shaken off her pensive, vaguely distracted mien, signs of tension were visible in the set of mouth and the crease between her brows. “Tell me about the meeting,” he said. “That’s why I came over.”
    She thought it had been. “You could have called, Joel.”
    “I could have. It would have been a tad impersonal, don’t you think?”
    Thea’s small smile acknowledged the truth of that. He had known he couldn’t trust her to be quite so honest over the phone. It was not that he thought she would lie about what happened, but rather that she would minimize how she felt about it. “It was ...” She hesitated, searching for the right word. “Difficult. Mitchell was there with Wayne. Emilie, Case, and Grant were all in school, so I wasn’t ambushed by them in Wayne’s office.”
    “You were right, then. You said he wouldn’t bring them.”
    “He’s a decent man, even if some of his ideas are from