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You'll Be Mine in 99/The 100-Year Itch
By Jennifer Drew Harlequin Enterprises Ltd.
Copyright © 2003 Harlequin Enterprises Ltd.
All right reserved. ISBN: 0-373-44166-5
Chapter One
The beauty pageant contestant with rusty auburn hair dropped her baton for the third time. As she snatched it up from the basketball court's hardwood floor, the seat of her hot pink Capri pants seemed in imminent danger of splitting.
"Grandma, you have to concentrate," her pint-size coach with bright red braids said. "It's even harder when it's flaming."
"Do you think the kid will be in the contest, too?" Joel Carter asked his boss, who was sitting beside him on the fold-out bleachers of the Hiho High School gym.
Herbert Edson, known throughout the automobile industry as Big Bert, glanced at the well-endowed but over-the-hill contestant practicing in a space in front of them and shrugged off Joel's less-than-serious question.
"According to the rules," Bert said in a voice that seemed too soft for his impressive height and muscular build, "all they have to be is eighteen and currently single. I guess Granny must qualify."
"So does half the town," Joel responded gloomily, more to himself than to the CEO of Vision Motors.
Joel loved his job as marketing director for the small but aggressive auto company. He'd started work for Vision when he graduated from Ohio State, and it still amazed him that, at age twenty-eight, he'd been promoted to head of his department in the Cleveland-based corporation.
Even if he hated Big Bert's idea of using a small-town beauty contest winner to promote the company's new line, he couldn't afford the luxury of losing his job over it. He was helping his younger brother, Jon, through dental school since their father's estate had only been adequate enough to let their mother live comfortably with her sister in Florida. Jon had two years to go, and Joel was determined he start his practice without college debts hanging over his head.
Unfortunately, he didn't think Big Bert's idea was a good plan. A professional model made a lot more sense even though the Incline, a car-truck hybrid, was being marketed to middle America buyers who would enjoy seeing one of their own in an ad campaign.
When his boss heard that Joel, a descendent of Hiho's founder, was the guest of honor at the town's one-hundredth anniversary celebration, he decided to offer a modeling job to the new Miss Hiho as a prize. The company was building a new assembly plant in nearby Mayville, and capitalizing on the publicity the town's centennial was garnering from large statewide media outlets could only help the launch of the new sport-utility vehicle. So a local spokesperson made some sense if they could feature her as a beauty contest queen to add glamour to the promotion. It would also be an excuse to have the model in a bathing suit. In theory, Bert's idea could work, but Joel had serious doubts. Using an amateur could also be a lot of trouble.
"The blonde jumping around on the stage is a possibility," Bert said optimistically.
Joel had already dismissed the fledgling ballerina practicing on the empty stage at the end of the gym. She was cute, but her mother had been micromanaging everything since the pair came into the gym. If the girl couldn't put on her dancing shoes without Mom hovering over her, she'd drive any good photographer nuts.
He wished, not for the first time, that his great-great-grandparents, Hiram and Hortense Hump, had stayed in Erie, Pennsylvania, instead of starting a new town in Ohio. The couple had owned a general store, the Wal-Mart of their day, but they'd sold out and moved their business to a rich farming area in southeast Ohio. Hortense became the first postmistress and the first county clerk, and Hump's General Store in Hiho had prospered.
Joel understood that kind of restlessness but didn't share it. He was happy in the metropolitan area of Cleveland and had no desire to move. His father had been a city manager who'd changed jobs every few years in search of new challenges.
Growing up, Joel had lived in more "population 10,000 or less" places than he wanted to remember.
Hiho reminded him of all the dreary little towns he'd hated as a child, but his mother would have been terribly disappointed if he'd refused the honor of being in Hiho for the centennial. She wanted to come herself, but was recovering from dental surgery that would, most likely, keep her away.
"All we need is a girl who's sort of Midwestern-cute," Bert said, still scanning the mostly female crowd scattered around the gym for possibilities. "You know, sweet and genuine. If she can deliver a few words in the TV spots, all the better. If not, we'll work around it."
"It would be easier to use a professional actress or model," Joel pointed out, knowing he'd be ignored. When Big Bert got an idea, he was unstoppable. No wonder he'd successfully launched a new company in the cutthroat auto industry.
"It's only a cattle call today," Bert said, more to himself than to Joel. "The beauty contest's a week from Sunday. That gives the girls a couple more days to sign up. Wait a minute! There's a possibility." He wagged his thick finger in the direction of the doorway, where a tall woman with a bobbing black ponytail was leaning over the sign-in table where a gray-haired woman presided.
"Look at that sweet behind," Bert whistled between his big square teeth.
He ran his hand through thinning gray-blond hair and fidgeted with his navy-and-silver striped tie.
Joel looked. He figured the gray suits they were wearing made them as conspicuous as FBI agents at a Hell's Angels beer blast, so he wasn't surprised when the woman straightened and glanced directly at them. She couldn't have heard Bert's comment, but Joel felt like fidgeting under her gaze.
"That's what we need-a pretty girl who looks down-home and wholesome," Bert said. "Men will be hot for her, and women will love that she's a regular woman who made good as a beauty queen. It will feed into their fantasies and make them take a long, hard look at the Incline when they're ready to buy a new car."
"She doesn't look like beauty contest material to me," Joel said.
"Forget the wire-frame glasses and the hair," Bert said. "She has the body. Look at those long legs. Put her in a bikini and do a little makeover magic, that girl will be our Incline model."
Could Bert be right? Joel wondered. Worn blue jeans and an oversize red Hiho Hornets sweatshirt didn't disguise her dynamite body, but she was far from glamorous in round glasses that were perched on her nose and the kind of ponytail elementary school kids liked to yank.
"I know two things-cars and women," Big Bert said. "There's our winner. Your job will be to make sure she gets a good makeover, then sign her up as soon as she wins."
"The blond ballerina has a better chance, I think." Big Bert knew cars, but Joel wasn't so sure about women. His boss was married to wife number three, a wannabe Marilyn Monroe clone, who shattered her glamorous image every time she opened her mouth, which was often.
"I'm heading back to Cleveland now," the big man said. "You'll be gone how long?"
"Two weeks." Two weeks of unwanted vacation, not that he didn't have months accumulated. "But I have my laptop with me. I'll be able to work...."
(Continues...)
Excerpted from You'll Be Mine in 99/The 100-Year Itch by Jennifer Drew Copyright © 2003 by Harlequin Enterprises Ltd.
Excerpted by permission. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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