It Happened One Week Read Online Free Page B

not sure I like the sound of that,” Amanda muttered. Even in an industry built on ego and turf, the agency had become a nest of political intrigue and backbiting. The corporate team challenge week was going to be lough enough without them having to serve as some novice innkeeper’s shakedown summer season.
    “You can always call Popular Surplus and order up the tents.”
    Despite her concerns, Amanda laughed. The truth was, she really didn’t have any other choice. She could put twenty people—none of whom got along very well in the best of circumstances—into tents on the beach, eating hot dogscooked over an open fire, or she could trust the new owner of Smugglers’ Inn to know what he or she was doing.
    After all, how bad could it be? The landmark inn, located on one of the most scenic stretches of Pacific Coast, was pretty and cozy and wonderfully comfortable. She thought back on the lovely flower-sprigged wallpaper in the tower room she’d slept in that long-ago summer, remembered the dazzling sunsets from the high arched windows, recalled in vivid detail the romance of the crackling fires the staff built each evening in the stone fireplace large enough for a grown man to stand in.
    “Smugglers’ Inn will be perfect,” she said firmly, as if saying the words out loud could make them true. “I don’t know why I didn’t think of it in the first place.”
    “Probably because you’ve had a few other things on your mind,” Susan said, proving herself to be a master of understatement. “And although I have no doubt you can pull this thing off, I’m glad I’ll be holding down the fort here while you lead the troops in their wilderness experience.”
    That said, she left Amanda to worry that this time she’d actually bitten off more than she could chew.
    Never having been one to limit herself to a normal, eighthour work schedule, Amanda remained at her desk long into the night, fine-tuning all the minuscule details that would ensure the challenge week would be a success.
    But as hard as she tried to keep her mind on business, she could not keep her unruly thoughts from drifting back to the summer of her fifteenth year.
    She’d fallen in love with Dane the first time she’d seen him. And although her parents had tried to convince her otherwise, she knew now, as she’d known then, that her feelings had been more than mere puppy love.
    It had, admittedly, taken Dane time to realize they were a perfect match. But Amanda had steadfastly refused to giveup her quest. She pursued him incessantly, with all the fervor of a teenager in the throes of a first grand love.
    Everywhere Dane went, Amanda went there as well, smiling up at him with a coy Lolita smile overbrimming with sensual invitation. After discovering that one of his duties was teaching a class in kayaking, despite her distaste for early-morning awakenings, she showed up on the beach at six-thirty for lessons. Although the rest of the class was sensibly attired for the foggy sea air in jeans and sweatshirts, she’d chosen to wear a hot-pink bikini that barely covered the essentials.
    And that was just the beginning. During Dane’s lifeguarding stint each afternoon, she lounged poolside, wearing another impossibly scant bikini, her golden skin glowing with fragrant coconut oil. Grateful for childhood diving lessons, she would occasionally lithely rise from the lounge to treat him to swan dives designed to show off her budding female figure.
    She tormented him endlessly, pretending to need his assistance on everything from a flat bicycle tire to fastening her life jacket before going out on a sight-seeing boat excursion.
    Adding local color to the inn’s reputation had been the legend—invented by a former owner—that it was haunted by a woman who’d thrown herself off the widow’s walk after her fiancé’s ship was sunk by pirates off the rocky shoals. One night, Amanda showed up at Dane’s room, insisting that she’d seen the ghost.
    It would