Run To You (Puppy Love Romance Book 2) Read online

  Food. Treats. Collar. Sweater.

  The last one made her grin like a fool.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  THE CONFERENCE ROOMS HOUSED in the Breckenridge Building were kind of pretentious.

  Emily had always thought so, at least a little bit, but after being in Junebug Farms’s conference room, with its nice table, inexpensive chairs, and pictures of animals on the walls, this one seemed almost haughty. The mahogany table was polished so intensely, Emily could fix her makeup in the reflection it tossed back at her. The chairs not only swiveled, but rocked and were upholstered in a buttery burgundy leather that was so soft and comfortable, nobody wanted to leave their seat. The large windows overlooked an adjacent park, complete with a wooded sanctuary and several birdfeeders that were currently being visited by no less than a dozen birds.

  It was actually a gorgeous setting, and Emily wasn’t sure why she all of a sudden had decided to hate it. Maybe it was the obvious money that had gone into its décor. Nothing was cheap. In fact, most everything was top-of-the-line, including the lead crystal water glasses and matching pitcher that sat in the center of the table next to the tray of very expensive morning pastries, one of which Clark was happily stuffing into his mouth.

  They were part of this world, the expensive things. Emily knew this, had grown up with them. Maybe it was because, as the new head of the Breckenridge Foundation, she’d spent the last week and a half going into the offices of organizations that needed their donations. And if you are in need of donations, you cannot afford to feed your visitors fresh croissants and artisan coffee each morning. If the fabric on your chair rips, you shrug, or better yet, grab some duct tape. You use the ink in your printer and the toner in your copier until every conceivable drop has been sucked out of the cartridge. As somebody who knew she was privileged, but had never really thought about it, this new job was eye opening.

  “Good morning.” Emily’s mother, Cheryl Breckenridge was impeccably dressed, as usual, in crisp black pants and an elegant royal blue silk blouse. She carried a leather portfolio and took a seat across the table from Emily and Clark. While she projected the refined air of “experienced businesswoman,” she visibly softened when her eyes landed on her children. It would have been easy to be the stereotypical wealthy woman, poised, regal, and slightly condescending, but Cheryl Breckenridge, while easily able to pull of poised and regal, never looked down on others. It was the thing Emily admired most about her.

  She set the portfolio down on the table in front of her, folded her hands on top of it, and said, “So. How are things? How has the shift in positions been perceived? Tell me how it’s going out there.”

  Out of respect, Emily waited a beat to allow Clark to chime in first, as he was not only older, but the one who’d been “shifted,” so to speak. When that beat passed in silence, she spoke up. “For me, it’s all been going very well, very smoothly.” She listed the seven organizations she’d met with over the past two and a half weeks, along with the six more she had scheduled. She told her mother honestly how she’d been received and whether she’d heard any rumblings about the changes in the Foundation (she’d heard very little). “Everybody has been very welcoming.”

  “Of course they have,” Clark said around a mouthful of chocolate croissant. “We give them money. What are they gonna do, turn you away?”

  Emily opened her mouth to give a retort, but her mother beat her to it.

  “Excuse me, young man, but a large cause of this entire reorganization has been you and your reprehensibly embarrassing behavior, so if I were you, I’d dispense with the sarcasm.” Cheryl didn’t raise her voice. She didn’t need to; her tone was icy and her eyes flashed fire so very clearly, Clark would’ve had to be blind not to understand he had ticked her off.

  “Yes, ma’am,” he said, and Emily flashed to him being eleven again, scolded for playing catch in the house with his buddies and shattering the glass in their mother’s favorite picture frame. “Sorry.”

  Turning back to Emily, she indicated for her to go on.

  “I have additional meetings this week with The Carter House and Junebug Farms. I’ve been to both places already, The Carter House once and Junebug…I think three times. They do a great job there. I love it. I’m interested in seeing if we can increase our donations this year.”

  Clark snorted at that. Both Emily and her mother looked at him.

  “What?” he asked, all wide-eyed innocence. “I’m just laughing because she goes to Junebug for the hot accountant, not the shelter itself.”

  Emily felt scalding heat flush her face in an instant. “You are unbelievable.”

  Clark shrugged, his smug smile still in place. “Just telling the truth.”

  “Not everybody is like you, Clark.” Emily was seething now. He could embarrass her all he wanted, but not in front of their mother, and not when it came to something this important. She’d worked hard to show Cheryl she was capable of taking on a bigger role in the family business and she was not about to let Clark wreck her chances of succeeding. “I don’t hit on everything that moves.”

  “No, just the girls.”

  Emily growled through her teeth, trying hard not to let her anger take over, trying hard not to revert back to their childhood when he would poke her and poke her and poke her until she lashed out with her fists because he made her so mad. She never hurt him; he was too strong, and he’d laugh off her attempts at striking him, which only made her angrier.

  “Enough.” That one word from Cheryl was all it took. She stared at her children, looking from one to the other and back until they subtly squirmed in their chairs.

  “She doesn’t even like me anyway,” Emily mumbled, her childhood need to get the last word in still accessible somewhere in her brain.

  Cheryl merely arched an eyebrow at her.

  “Sorry,” Emily muttered.

  After another beat of silence, where the two Breckenridge kids wilted under the gaze of their mother, the meeting continued. There were no more snide comments and no insults lobbed back and forth. Cheryl nodded her approval of the report and gave the signal that they were finished. Clark exited the conference room like he was being chased. Emily sat quietly, subtly shaking her head at the way she’d let him get under her skin.

  “I don’t have anything to worry about, do I?” Cheryl’s words startled her and she looked up, surprised.

  “What do you mean?”

  “With the person your brother mentioned. The ‘hot accountant?’” Her mother made air quotes around the words at the same time Emily tried to smother a wince. How dare Clark marginalize Catherine that way?

  “No, Mom. I promise. Clark’s just being a jerk.” She shook her head, irritated by the whole thing.

  “Good. We managed to keep your brother’s…transgressions under wraps for the most part, but it leaked to a small number of people. We don’t need a similar situation with you. We have a reputation to uphold and I don’t want to have to worry about another black mark on it. Are we clear?”

  Emily nodded. “Yes, ma’am.”

  “Good. Now.” Cheryl reached across the table as she stood and grasped Emily’s forearm. “Keep up the good work, darling. I’ve heard nothing but positive things.” She smiled, gave Emily a quick wink, scooped up her belongings, and was gone.

  Emily sat for a moment in the empty conference room, a mix of emotions swirling around in her head. On the one hand, she was very happy to have gotten the approval of her mother. Oh, she gave it when it was deserved, but it could be hard to come by. Emily had many examples from her childhood of struggling to get a “good work” from her mother and missing it by that much. On the other hand, her mother was checking up on her. If she was to think it through—really think it through—she’d understand that of course her mother was checking up on her. Any employee would be monitored in their first few weeks of a new job. Instead, she allowed herself three minutes to not think it through, to just be annoyed…and mildly insulted that her mother d
idn’t trust her.

  Emily had a meeting scheduled with Catherine tomorrow to go over the fundraisers scheduled for the New Year celebration. This way, Breckenridge would have the opportunity to get in and sponsor, donate, advertise, and help out in any way and Emily wanted to do that. She’d had so much fun at the fashion show; she planned to participate as often as she could to help get those animals loving homes, Catherine’s dislike of her be damned.

  Pushing herself to her feet, Emily headed back to her own office and pretended Catherine’s unfair assessment of her didn’t rankle.

  ***

  “What about finding ways to help the public participate more?” Emily posed the question and glanced around the table. The expressions she saw were curious and she liked that. Jessica squinted slightly. Catherine cocked her head to one side as if waiting for Emily to elaborate. David Peters, who was the head of fundraising at Junebug Farms, had the beginnings of a grin forming. She’d heard of him in the past; he’d worked with her father more than once before taking up the mantle here at the shelter. In amazing shape, he was one of those guys that you merely had to glance at to know he spent an inordinate amount of time at the gym, probably with the free weights, and he was knowledgeable and super friendly, with enthusiasm that was contagious.

  “How do you mean?” he asked, his deep voice resonating, not unpleasantly, in the pit of her stomach.

  “I mean maybe have a contest. Ask them to suggest new ways to raise money.” She looked at Jessica. “You said one of your volunteers came up with the idea of the fashion show, right?”

  Jessica nodded. Catherine jotted something down on the pad in front of her.

  “And you said it made money.” Emily focused on Catherine who glanced up and realized the question was directed at her.

  “It did,” she confirmed. “Quite a bit, considering it was an experiment.”

  “So, what if we do that? Set up a way for your members, your random visitors, your kids who come on field trips, all of them, to suggest ideas. That, in itself—the contest—will also bring awareness. Advertise it in your mailers. Put it on the website. Send some e-mail blasts. Tweet it. Put it on Tumblr and Instagram. Even go old-school and place a box near the front desk for handwritten entries.” Emily watched them absorb the idea, warm to it. “I mean, it’s just a suggestion and I’m certainly not as well-versed in the area of nonprofits as you guys are, but…if the idea is to bring in more people, which would bring in more money, it seems like it’s worth a try. Maybe?”

  She watched the nods go around the table. Even the reserved Ms. Gardner seemed to like her suggestions.

  “I’ll sit with Anna,” David said, talking more to Jessica. “See what she thinks. I like it. I think we can make it work.” Turning back to Emily, he smiled widely, his teeth seeming extra bright in contrast to his dark skin, and pointed a finger at her. “I like your fire.”

  Emily returned the smile, tilted her head in gratitude. “Why, thank you.”

  Jessica nodded her agreement. “Seriously. This is great, Emily. It’s not enough that you’re our biggest contributor, but you also want to help us be even more successful. It’s amazing. I wish everybody we worked with had your drive.”

  Cheeks hotly pink, Emily held Jessica’s gaze and said softly, “Thank you. I just really like what you guys do.” She tapped her chest where her heart was. “I love the animals.”

  “That’s our favorite characteristic in anybody we deal with,” Jessica said with a warm smile, and Emily got a quick jolt of realization about how Jessica was able to garner so much love and attention for her shelter. She was kind, charming, and just the tiniest bit manipulative—the perfect combination for somebody who constantly needed money. “So,” she said, piling her things up in front of her. “Let me take you to lunch. Do you have time for that, Emily?”

  “I do,” Emily said, understanding suddenly that she really liked these people. “Can we all go?” She surprised herself by looking directly at Catherine. “Can you come, too?”

  Catherine blinked at her, those blue eyes mesmerizing, then gave a nod.

  “Excellent. You guys choose the place.”

  Half an hour later, they grabbed seats in a small café around the corner from the shelter. Emily had never been there before, never even knew it existed, but one spoon of the potato and cheese soup she’d ordered made her very nearly swoon off her chair, and she made a mental note to come back here. Often. Possibly every day.

  Once they were all chewing happily, Jessica posed a question to Emily. “I know you’re new to this position at your family’s foundation. What did you do before that?”

  “I was in the marketing department.”

  “Well, that explains the great advertising ideas,” David said before biting into his turkey club.

  “I actually have a marketing degree. That’s been my thing for a few years. When my mother needed a solution to her…” Emily let her words trail off, paused, but it occurred to her that the reason for the changing of the guards at the Foundation was no secret, she continued. “A solution to her Clark problem, I sort of lobbied hard for the spot.”

  “You have a marketing degree?” It was the first time Catherine had spoken in a long while. Emily noticed she seemed to be the kind of person who sat along the sidelines and observed, so her voice was a bit of a surprise. Also showing surprise was the expression on her face.

  “I do.” Emily almost added, Does that surprise you? That I actually went to college and got a usable degree rather than being handed a position in my rich family’s company? If they’d been alone, she might have actually said it. Lightly, of course. Instead, she just smiled.

  “Why did you want out of the marketing department?” Catherine asked, stabbing a slice of cucumber with a fork.

  Emily spooned some soup into her mouth and pondered her answer as she chewed. “I think I’d done all I could there. Breckenridge Associates is so different from Junebug when it comes to things like marketing and advertising. Two different animals, no pun intended. My family’s company and all the arms of it that are part of the package can be…a little stuffy. So you can only be so creative with PR before you turn your clients off. Which is unfortunate. I had some great, fun ideas, but they just didn’t fly with the older—” she cupped a hand around her mouth “—male, white members of the department.”

  David chuckled at that.

  “For you guys,” Emily went on, “I think it’s important to make sure you skew a little younger. Junebug was your grandmother’s, yes?” She looked to Jessica, who nodded even while seemingly startled Emily knew this information. “I do my research,” Emily said with a wink. “Regardless, I think it’s important that you make sure you’re reaching today’s young adults. People in their late twenties and early thirties as well as older. Technology is important. The website. Social media. You need to stay current.”

  David glanced at Jessica, whose grin was so wide it was almost comical. “I think you might be getting a marriage proposal soon,” he joked.

  “Seriously,” Jessica said, still smiling. “You say exactly the things I have in my head, but can’t seem to find time to deal with.”

  “I can sit with her, go over things and compile a list of ideas.” Catherine’s voice was low and even and Emily was blindsided by wondering what it would sound like excited. Or aroused. She clenched her jaw on the thought.

  “I’m good with that,” Emily said before she could change her mind. “We could brainstorm.” She looked to Catherine for confirmation. Catherine nodded and ate more salad. When she glanced back at Jessica, her expression had changed to something more like worry. Emily read it immediately and held up a hand like a traffic cop stopping a car. “Consider it me volunteering.”

  Jessica grimaced. “Are you sure? It feels a little like I’m taking advantage of you.”

  “You are.” Emily softened the words with a wink. “But I’m giving you my permission to do just that. So, no worries.”

  The CEO
of the animal shelter didn’t look sold, but Emily was okay with that.

  “You sure you have time?” Jessica asked Catherine.

  “Mm-hmm,” was all the answer Catherine gave, and she paired it with a nod as she chewed. When she glanced over at Emily, their eyes held for an extra beat and Emily felt her heart beat speed up just the tiniest bit.

  Well, this oughta be interesting.

  CHAPTER NINE

  CATHERINE HAD MORE THAN one reason to be nervous.

  For one thing, she was about to step all over Anna’s toes. Public relations was her job at the shelter, after all, and she was not going to like that Catherine stepped in to bat around ideas with Emily. Jessica had pulled her aside after lunch yesterday to make sure she’d been thinking clearly when she offered to brainstorm with Emily. Catherine had brushed it off like it was no big deal, but…Anna was not going to be happy about it. Catherine was going to have to be proactive and talk to her, smooth things over. Soon.

  Secondly, she really wasn’t creative that way, the way that people in advertising were. She was a numbers girl. She was logic and practicality, not a pie-in-the-sky dreamer who wanted to finger paint the world. What could she possibly bring to the table? Also odd that Jessica knew this about her, yet said nothing…

  And third, it was Emily.

  Emily.

  Emily, who she’d insulted last week.

  Emily, who had called her on that insult and put her in her place.

  Emily, who seemed to hold no grudge, who was apparently over that whole exchange and had moved on.

  Emily, who looked the way she did.

  What the hell had Catherine been thinking?

  “Well, it’s too late now,” she muttered as she glanced around her office. It was neat—it always was. She was just going to have to fake her way through the next hour or so. She sucked in a huge breath of air, then let it out slowly. Emily would be here any minute.