“It’s all spelled out in the records,” she said evasively, nodding toward Reece.
“Not enough, I’m guessing,” Cooper said. “Your competitors have splashy ads in every travel and tourist publication out there. You have only a few. And the Web site is woefully out of date.”
“The logo’s really good, though,” Max observed. “Who designed it?”
“It was my idea, but Jane designed it. You know Jane. Her husband slugged you.”
Max seemed to deflate. “Oh. Guess I can’t hire her, then.”
“Max is starting his own advertising and P.R. firm,” Cooper explained. “Remington Charters will be its number- one client.”
“One of many,” Max hastened to add.
“So what do you say?” Cooper looked at her expectantly. “Want to lend us your expertise? I’ll make it worth your while.”
“Why would I want to help you?”
“Because,” Cooper said, and she could tell he relished making his final point, “if you win, you get to keep whatever we come up with. Free. It won’t be any use to us.”
That brought her up short. She’d always wanted to do a full-blown marketing campaign, but she hadn’t known where to begin. Aside from the capital investment it would require, Johnny had been against it, anyway-he said they kept their schedule pretty full without running a lot of fancy ads.
But if these Ivy League-educated Remington boys could come up with ways to increase profits without alienating their longtime customers…she’d be a fool not to benefit from their expertise in areas where she had none.
“How much are you willing to pay me?” she asked.
“Whatever you’d make as a deckhand, plus twenty-five percent.”
“You don’t know what I make as a deckhand,” she pointed out.
“See, that’s one of the reasons we need you. We may need to hire on some help, and we have no idea what sort of pay to offer them.”
It was tempting to take them for a ride, but in the end she named a figure she probably could have earned working freelance.
Cooper nodded. “Plus twenty-five percent. You there, with the calculator-what does that work out to?”
Reece looked up a bit foggily. “Huh?”
“Never mind him,” Max said. “He’s deep into his facts and figures. We’ll sort it out.”
Working side by side with Cooper for a week might be foolhardy. What if he had some ulterior motive, some way to use her agreeability to gather evidence against her? But she looked at it from every angle, and she couldn’t find a reason to turn down the offer.
“Do we have a deal?” Cooper stood and offered her his hand.
Allie hesitated only slightly before clasping his hand in hers. “Deal.” A tingle of awareness buzzed through her at his touch, and she almost hated to release his hand. Why did he have to be so good-looking? Why did he have to have that charming smile and those twinkly blue eyes? She would have a much easier job despising him if he was as cold and arrogant as he’d first appeared.
“Our first order of business is to buy you some new clothes. Not that the Daisy Dukes aren’t attractive, but we don’t want to start a riot at the trade show.”
“Trade show?”
“This weekend, in Houston. Vacation Expo. You and I are going to work it. Together.”
Chapter Seven
Cooper enjoyed the look of consternation on his new employee’s beautiful face.
Reece and Max both thought he was slightly insane for wanting to hire Allie. But everything he’d told her was true. If the court awarded her the boat and the charter business, she would benefit from all the work they were doing. And if Cooper and his cousins prevailed, well, they had one week of Allie’s cooperation, which they sorely needed.
They had an incredible amount of work to get done before the weekend. It was a stroke of luck they’d heard about the trade show from Miss Greer, who paid to participate in a booth run by a bed-and-breakfast association. But it sounded like exactly the sort of place Remington Charters could get good exposure to people who were actually planning vacations, and he hadn’t wanted to toss away the opportunity, even if it meant they had to scramble to get ready in time.
“You want me to buy new clothes?” Allie repeated, looking at him as if he was insane.
“I’ll pay for them. Company expense. I was thinking something nautical.”
“You’re going to dress me in a sailor outfit and turn me into a trade-show booth bunny.”
“Hey, don’t be insulted. All the booths at trade shows hire beautiful models-you’ll see when we get there. We’re fortunate to have our talent in-house.”
Allie looked down at herself. “I’m fine the way I am.”
“Did someone say shopping?” Sara entered the living room wearing sunglasses and a straw hat, a huge denim purse slung over her shoulder. “Allie, if you’re going to shop, take me along. You can’t trust a man’s shopping advice.”
Cooper sensed an ally in Sara. Though she wasn’t exactly a fashion plate, she did have a certain style about her with her big, dangly earrings and bright, multicolored skirt. She certainly had Reece’s attention. The moment she’d appeared, Reece had lifted his gaze from his books and he hadn’t taken his eyes off her since.
Interesting.
Reece had been adamant that he wasn’t relocating to Port Clara, but maybe there was a way to keep him here after all.
The three youngest Remington cousins had always stuck together. And though he and Max would carry on without Reece if they had to, it wouldn’t be the same.
“All right,” Allie said, “I’ll go shopping if you insist. I guess it wouldn’t hurt me to buy a few new clothes, especially on the Remington dime. But you back me up,” she said to Sara. “Don’t you let him push me into buying some ridiculous, low-cut, nautical streetwalker outfit.”
That was sort of what Cooper had in mind, something form-fitting and low-cut to show off Allie’s figure. He’d have to see what he could talk her into.
Port Clara had one mall, if you could call it that, a collection of about twenty stores, mostly tourist-related. But the mall was anchored by a small department store and a couple of high-end boutiques.
Sara immediately zeroed in on the most expensive-looking of the stores. “This one,” she said. “I love the clothes in here.” She grabbed Allie by the arm and dragged her in, ignoring Cooper completely. Well, perhaps shopping just wasn’t something men really understood. He didn’t select his own clothes, after all. He had a personal shopper who knew his tastes and took care of all that for him.
But he did know what looked good on a woman. Sara veered to a rack of summery dresses first.
“No dresses!” Allie declared. “I don’t do dresses. Besides, I’m supposed to be the captain of a fishing boat. It wouldn’t be seemly. If I have to dress up, a pair of trousers and some kind of shirt will be fine.”
Sara looked disappointed, but she peered around the store until she saw what she wanted, then made a beeline for it. “This would look fabulous on you,” she said, grabbing a pair of white pants with a short jacket that matched. “And let’s see, how about a striped tee to wear underneath? That would be nautical.”
It also wouldn’t be sexy. Cooper looked around the store himself, trying to find something that matched his idea of what Allie should wear at the trade show. A couple of minutes later he found it: a blue-and-white halter dress with a plunging neckline. It had little anchors embroidered on the straps and around the bottom.
If he could get her to try it on, maybe to humor him, she would see how good it looked.
“What size do you wear?” Sara was asking.
“I don’t know,” Allie answered.
“What do you mean, you don’t know?”
Allie shrugged. “I never go shopping. I don’t think I’ve bought any new clothes this century other than the
