Turn Back the Dawn

Turn Back the Dawn

Nell Kincaid

"WHY ARE YOU HERE?" SHE DEMANDED.

"Because I love you," he said quietly. "And I'm not giving you up."

She laughed. "You're not? What about me? Oh, I forgot I have such poor judgment, according to you."

"Damn it, Kate," he exploded. "When I left, I thought I was giving myself time to think—and giving you time to think as well. It wasn't the end, not then. What happened? Why the letter?"

"You didn't even see the problem, Ben. You didn't even see that it was impossible, that it had to be over at some point. Don't you see? There's no chance for us. You've never seen that you're constantly driving me away." She sighed, her eyes filling with tears. "Maybe that's why I fell in love with you, because I knew you really didn't want me. You were like all the others
—
safe, unattainable, predictable. But I'm different now. I want a man who really, truly loves me. And that's not you."

CHAPTER ONE

Up on
the eighth floor of Ivorsen and Shaw, a large spe
cialty
store on East Fifty-second Street, Kate Churchill
picked
up the phone and pushed the flashing "intercom"
button.
"Yes, Linda?"

"The
people from Blake-Canfield Advertising are here,
. Kate."

"Thanks.
Ask them to wait, please, and I'll be with t
hem in a
few minutes."

"Right,"
Linda said, and hung up.

Kate
replaced the receiver and swiveled her chair ar
ound to
face Kurt Reeves, who was standing behind her and
looking
out the window.

"So your
guests are here," he said sulkily, his back still
turned. "And
your little secret from the art department ha
s to leave."

K
at
e sighed.
"Kurt, please. Don't start."

H
e
turned to
face her, looking even more boyish than his
twe
nty-six
years. He was blond with the good looks of a
surfer
, and Kate
liked him, but she was beginning to tire of
hus
childish moods. More important, she was beginning
to tire of
his games,
not the least of which was his probable
in
fide
li
t
y
.
She wasn't
certain of it; she had heard the rumor

only yesterday, when her best friend had told her that
Kurt might be seeing another woman. And she hadn't yet
said anything to him of her suspicions. For she knew it
was time, other woman or not, to end it. And perhaps
ending it simply, with no recriminations, would be best.

"Are you free tonight?" he asked, in a voice that suggested he half-hoped she wasn't.

"I don't know," she said. She hesitated, loath to say
more. "We'll talk later, okay? I have people waiting out
there to see me."

His eyes sparked with interest. "Which ones are these?
Gallagher Media?"

"No, they were yesterday. Today is Blake-Canfield.
They've done the ads for that new diet soda and for National Express."

"I'm impressed. Why don't I stay for the meeting?"
Kurt asked, trying to charm her with his smile.

Kate shook her head. "Sorry. If I choose them, you'll
meet them later on."

"Kate, I
am
acting art director. I don't see why I
haven't been in on all the meetings."

She sighed, running her hands through her thick black
hair. The heat in the building was on even though it was
only October, and she was warm even in her short-sleeved
silk blouse and skirt. "Kurt, come on. That's just the way
it is."

She had hardly given a thought to her words, had said
them almost automatically. But when she looked up at
Kurt, he was smarting, looking at her with a resentment
that was shocking in its intensity. "You're perfectly happy
to go out with me, Kate. When it's a secret. But you know,

you
treat me like dirt in the office. It's only outside that
we
have any kind of decent relationship."

"I'm not so sure about that," she said.

He blinked. "What's that supposed to mean?"

She sighed. She hadn't intended to get into a serious
discussion—
not now, right before a meeting.

"What about tonight?" he suddenly demanded.

"I
don't know," she said. "We'll talk later."

He
gave her a look of annoyance. "All right," he said
in a vaguely
threatening voice. "I might give you a call."
And he
left, slamming the door behind him.

She sighed.
Sometimes she didn't know what she had
ever seen
in him. He was extremely attractive, of course,
but she
knew she wouldn't have begun seeing him if there
hadn't
been more to him than just his looks. Yet the
relationship
was definitely over now. He was so young,
and though
she had always—since college, anyway—
tended to
involve herself with men who, in the end, want
ed only a
superficial relationship, Kurt was trying even her
limits. For
although he was often petulant, even whiny, at
work, he
was dominating in every other respect, taking
out his resentments
on Kate in a thousand different ways.

Her predilection
for men who were distant emotionally
or in other
ways was a form of self-protection she had
developed early on,
and though it always led her into
frustrating, no-win
situations, she found herself unable to
c
hange. Whenever
there was a man who seemed "wrong"

whether because he
was too wild or too good looking or
too
inaccessible—she
was attracted to him as powerfully
as
if he were the
most perfect man in the world. And
natur
ally, because he was
"wrong" in some way, the rela
tionship would inevitably end sooner than Kate wanted it to; and it often ended very unpleasantly as well.

Kate had often tried to analyze why she was so unsuccessful in this area of her life while in most others she had done so well. But she was too close to the problem to be able to see its causes. She knew that she hadn't had a particularly good example of relationships when she was growing up: her father had left their home in New York City when Kate was five, and her mother had since been married twice and gone out with a series of inappropriate, often married, men. But Kate knew that could hardly be the only reason for her behavior.

And she didn't, in fact, even think her skepticism about relationships was all that misguided. After all, with so many marriages crumbling into divorce these days, what was the point of making marriage a serious goal? She certainly wasn't going to fall into that trap. She wouldn't close herself off completely from the idea, of course; if she met the right man, and if she wanted to, and if
he
wanted to, they would get married. But it sounded like an awful lot of if's to her.

In the meantime she had other more important things to worry about, one of them being the new ad campaign designed to put Ivorsen and Shaw back on the map. The store's once-glowing image had tarnished over the past fifteen years, growing old along with its customers. Once the city's leading specialty store, it now had almost no image: private-school kids thought of it as the kind of place they would be forced to go to for school clothes if they didn't fight for Bloomingdale's instead; mothers thought of it as proper but perhaps a bit staid and certainly too expensive; and old women loved it, but didn't have the money to do much more than walk through the store and stop for lunch at the restaurant on the seventh floor.

But the store was in the last stages of a major renovation and redesign, and Kate had great hopes for its future. With its new look and the new campaign it had a good chance of recapturing its former place in the city's pantheon of luxury stores.

Kate felt as strongly about Ivorsen and Shaw as if the store were her own. In a sense she felt it was. She had grown up with the store, learning all she knew about her field in her rise from secretary to director of advertising and promotion. Now she would have a chance to give back some of what the store had given her; she would put into practice all the ideas, tricks, and plans that could help put Ivorsen and Shaw back in the spotlight. The store's revenues were the lowest they had been in years, and if Kate didn't help turn the situation around, she would be out of
her
job as quickly as her predecessor; he had lasted exactly
six
months.

Kate stood up and glanced in the mirror on the wall.
She
had been working hard, and it showed; her dark
brown
eyes had dark gray circles underneath, and her pale
skin
looked almost translucent. But her hair—straight, jet black, shoulder-length with wisps of bangs—looked
good.
And with the new clothes she was wearing—a short-
sleeved
lavender silk blouse and skirt—she knew she
looked
presentable.

She
turned and walked back to her desk and asked Linda to send the people from Blake-Canfield in, then
walked
across the soft carpeting to the door so she could
greet
her guests as they came in.

The first
—
young, red-haired, looking no more than a boy—introduced himself as Tommy Sullivan, assistant art director. He looked a bit wild-eyed and cocky, as if he were keeping a very pleasant secret, and Kate wondered whether his excitement was over the layouts he had under his arm. She certainly hoped so—she had great expectations for Blake-Canfield's presentation. And if Blake-Can- field's work didn't look promising, there was only one agency to go to before starting the bids all over again.

But Kate's worries and speculations disappeared as she took the hand of the man who stepped in after Tommy Sullivan.

He took her hand warmly and firmly in his, and when she looked into his hazel eyes, she thought they were the warmest, most compelling eyes she had ever seen. "I'm Ben Austin," he said, in a rich, warm voice that fit his handshake and his eyes. "It's nice to meet you and connect a real person to the voice Tve spoken to on the phone."

She smiled. "Yes. Finally. Well, please sit down." She looked at Ben Austin as he walked to the far end of the oval-shaped conference table. He definitely fit the voice she had liked so much over the past few weeks. He looked to be in his early forties, with the same surprisingly easy manner she had noticed in her conversations with him. There was nothing studied about the man: from the dark, gray-templed hair that went straight back in no particular style, to his clothes, he looked like a man who did what he wanted as he wanted. He was dressed much more casually than other account executives she had met recently, in a brown Harris tweed jacket, a heathery-hued plaid shirt, and black corduroy pants. And, aside from his attractiveness, there was something relaxing in the approach: with other account executives Kate always felt as if they desperately wanted something from her—which, naturally, they did. But the feeling that she was their last dying hope always made her uncomfortable and unreceptive. Ben Austin, on the other hand, looked as if he had all he wanted; arid if he wanted something from you, you'd be only too glad to help.

He smiled at her gaze of appraisal. "We didn't get where we are by playing games, Miss Churchill—either of us. You were, I'm sure, expecting the usual presentation, with an account executive—yours truly—promising you the world and assuring you you'll be our most prized client. You and I both also know that the worst thing an agency can do is come in and give the impression it needs the account." He smiled—a winning, friendly smile. "Acting desperate has never helped get anyone hired." He paused, his eyes shining as he leaned back and pulled a pipe out of the pocket of his jacket. He raised a brow. "Mind?" he asked softly.

"Please go ahead," she said. She loved the smell of good pipe tobacco—rich, sweet, woodsy—and she instinctively knew that anything owned or used by Ben Austin would be the best there was.

Kale watched as he tamped the tobacco into his pipe. His hands were tan and strong-looking, and there was something easy and very appealing in the way he moved: he was obviously comfortable with his attractiveness, aware of it but not obsessed with it. Perhaps one reason for this, Kate speculated, was that he wasn't classically all that perfe
c
t-looking: his nose was slightly off-center and looked as if it had once been broken, and he had a somewhat weathered look, with smile lines at the sides of his
eyes and mouth. But he was one of the most attractive men
Kate had ever met.