Fortune's Perfect Match. Allison Leigh
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take a look at the marketing materials you’re using now and we can go from there.”
“Actually,” Tanner said, pushing back from his desk, “that all sounds great, including the website stuff, but I’m going to have to leave all that for you and Max to go over.” He rounded the desk. “I’m going with Jordana to her O.B. appointment.” He gestured at the small, round conference table in the corner of his room. “Make yourselves comfortable here, if you want. I know there’s more room there than in Max’s office.” He squeezed Emily’s shoulder as he passed by. “If you want a tour of the place, Max can give you one. He knows every nook and cranny around here by now. Right, Max?”
Max nodded, but as his boss left the office, he couldn’t help wondering what Tanner was thinking, leaving it all in Max’s lap.
“Why don’t we start with the tour, then? It would help if I can get a little bit of a feel for this place.” Emily was looking at him, her eyebrows lifted a little. If she had any suspicion that her expertise would be wasted on someone like Max, at least she didn’t show it.
“Sure.” He stepped out of her path so she could exit the office. “Do you know anything about flight schools?”
She laughed a little, and the sound seemed to send heat straight down his spine. “Not a single thing,” she admitted as she walked past him. “You’re the expert, here.”
He grimaced. Evidently, Tanner hadn’t told his sister-in-law much at all. Maybe she’d have refused to help if she knew how unqualified he was. “I’ve only been working for Tanner for a month,” he said. There was no point in putting any varnish on it. The truth was what it was. He’d started out—officially—on a part-time basis, but just a few weeks ago, Tanner had asked if he’d be willing to take on more.
Max still had a hard time believing it.
“I don’t know diddly-squat about marketing,” he told her.
She stopped in her tracks and looked at him. “Tanner said you are his marketing assistant.”
He hated titles. Mostly because they’d only ever pointed out that he was low-man on the totem pole, which he’d been perfectly aware of. “Assistant … whatever,” he said. “The marketing stuff is just a priority right now. A long time before he actually hired me, though, I was mopping floors and cleaning toilets around this place.” She might as well know that truth, too. “Did anything and everything, pretty much, in exchange for flying lessons.”
Her head tilted slightly. The silky end of her ponytail slipped over her shoulder. “How’d you learn about the flight school in the first place?”
He shrugged. “Everyone around Red Rock’s heard of the flight school.” He had, even before the day he’d actually walked through the front door.
“But how,” she pressed. “Radio spots? Signage?” A faint smile played around the corners of her lips, which only meant he was studying them too closely for politeness. “Good old word of mouth?”
“Word of mouth.” He dragged his attention away from her mouth.
“Never underestimate the power of good word of mouth. It can make or break the success of any number of things,” she said. “You’re lucky, actually. You’ve got a unique perspective, Max.”
Again, he felt heat slide down his spine. “How?”
“You’ve already been your own prospective customer.” She turned again and headed along the tiled hallway that led from the front door of the business office to the rear that opened out into the hangar. “You know what brought you to Redmond Flight School.”
He was pretty sure that “desperation” wasn’t the angle that Tanner wanted them to promote. Fortunately, Emily was unaware of his thoughts as she continued.
“So now what you need to think about is what would have brought you here even more quickly.” She glanced at him.
“Money.” It was an obvious answer. One that hadn’t exactly applied to him at the get-go but sure had ever since.
She sent him a smile over her shoulder again, obviously not shocked by his blunt tone. “Part of your job, then, is to convince the masses that money isn’t the object. Learning to fly is.”
“If everyone knew how it felt to be up there, we wouldn’t need to advertise.” He reached past her to push open the heavy metal door and got a whiff of something soft. Almost powdery.
Nothing around the hangar smelled like that, including him. Which just left her.
He would have been happy to stand there a long while breathing in that completely feminine fragrance, but she was already moving through the door, that long ponytail of hers swinging.
If he’d ever thought anything was particularly sexy about a woman’s hair, it was only when it looked messed up from his hands tangling in it. But there was definitely something sexy about Emily’s swinging length of sleek, corn-silk blond. He wondered what it would look like flowing over her bare shoulders …
“That’s even better,” she said, stopping again to turn on her heel and face him. Beyond her glasses, her eyes were animated. “You’re already honing in on your messaging,” she said, thankfully oblivious to his wayward mind. “Show your prospective customer what it feels like.”
The palms of his hands were suddenly itching. He shoved them in the pockets of his blue jeans. “What it feels like,” he repeated, feeling about as dumb as a rock.
“Up there.” She waved her hand. “You said it yourself. If everyone knew how it felt to be up there.” She pulled off her glasses, folded them and tucked the earpiece down the front of her jacket, giving him the briefest of glimpses of something black and lacy beneath, which did not help his distraction any.
“So … show me around,” she invited. “My only contact with airports has been as a passenger.”
A first-class passenger, he figured, but kept the thought to himself. Maybe if he concentrated enough on describing everything to do with the physical layout of the flight school, he’d get his thoughts off of her physical layout.
“This area, obviously, is the classroom.” He pushed on a hidden partition halfway down the main wall. “We can break it up into three smaller classrooms with partitions like these.” He nudged the partition wall and it smoothly disappeared again. “They’re all new additions since the tornado. Just had the desks delivered a few days ago, in fact.”
Emily wandered among the empty chairs that looked reminiscent of her high-school days, complete with an attached desktop, and wondered fleetingly what Max had been like in high school. Probably football team captain and hotly pursued by all the cheerleaders.
She had not been a cheerleader. Too ambitious with her eye already on making her place in her father’s company. Hoping that then, maybe, he’d see something worthwhile in her.
She abruptly pulled her thoughts back into the present. Ever since the tornado, she’d vowed to focus on the future. Period.
She glanced at Max and despite her good intentions, had to work hard to focus on her purpose there and not him.
Max had put another few chairs in between them. His eyes were still the same blue that they’d been that December day. But all of the gentleness in them that she’d clung to in those brief moments before he’d disappeared among the rescue workers crowding around her was nowhere in sight. Now, those eyes were completely unreadable.
She found him no less compelling, though.
Which was so not her purpose right now.
She mentally shook her head, trying to get her thoughts in order. It was more difficult than it should have been. “I, um, I know the terminal was badly damaged. But how much damage did Tanner’s building sustain?”
“It was still standing. Barely.”
She