Man of the Year. Lisa Ruff

      SAMANTHA FELT JARRETT’S EYES follow her every step out of the locker room. As the coach showed her the team uniforms, the costume for the mascot—a brown fuzzy suit that was supposed to resemble a marmot, but looked more like a man-sized rug—and gave her a tour of the stadium, she mused over Jarrett Corliss. Like most jocks, he obviously thought of himself as God’s gift to women. With his teasing blue eyes and that dimple, she supposed he had more than his fair share of baseball groupies. He would be popular with the young women who hung around the gates after practice or a game, offering their bodies to anything in a uniform. “Mitt-muffins,” Boomer called them. Jarrett probably took advantage of that willingness on occasion, too. Just like all the other players.

      Samantha had yet to meet a baseball jock who would resist what a mitt-muffin offered. She supposed they saw it as their due, a perk of fame and success. But, to her, it was repugnant. She had tried to love a ballplayer once or twice and learned a bitter lesson. Let the boys have their fun: she would find a real man who played the game by the rules.

      Which made her own starstruck gawking at Jarrett doubly embarrassing. What had she been thinking? She had acted like a groupie—or nearly as bad. No wonder he had flirted with her so outrageously. He was gorgeous, she admitted, but he was just one piece of her advertising campaign. Nothing more, nothing less. This was business, not some singles club. From now on, she would treat him like all the rest of the team. She would put his offer of cooperation to profitable use—though certainly not the way he intended.

      She pushed Jarrett Corliss and his dimples to the back of her mind and concentrated on the tour Coach Cummings was giving her. She took copious notes as they walked to the dugout, stood at home plate and took a quick tour of the concessions area. Every new sight, every detail, added to the ideas swirling in her head. All the while, she peppered the coach with questions. When they completed the tour and the talk, Samantha had a feel for the inner workings of the Rainiers: how they practiced, who made decisions on and off the field, what they hoped to achieve and how, and what the biggest obstacles were to winning. She requested videotapes of recent practices and last year’s games. Cummings promised that he would get them to her office before the week’s end.

      By the time they were finished with their tour, the team had dispersed from the locker room. Peter Brinks told her that Boomer had also left for the day. Whatever her brother had to say must not be that important. She bid goodbye to Coach Cummings and slipped through the wire-mesh gate to the parking lot.

      The chilly wind and rain cut through her wool suit and she was glad to get inside her red BMW. She turned the heater up full blast and used the wipers to flick away the light mist on the windshield. The typical late-January weather made her long for spring. She skirted Pioneer Square, empty of the tourists that would flock there in summer. She loved this part of Seattle, the buildings all graceful relics of the past. Her car crossed Yesler Avenue, the original “Skid Row” where logs had been skidded down to the water, milled and shipped away to provide lumber for the world. As she drove, she puzzled over her encounter with Jarrett Corliss. Why had she been so taken in? The way he looked in a towel was undeniably sexy. What woman wouldn’t think so? But she ought to know better.

      While stopped at a red light, the idea suddenly hit her. Of course! It was the perfect way to get people back into the stadium: sex appeal. She would scatter one or two good photos of the pitcher in tight jeans or a well-tailored Rainiers uniform around town on billboards or in the local magazines. Women would come in droves to see him. Some of his teammates might have the same sex appeal. She knew her little brother would love the idea of strutting his stuff for the camera. Fill the ballpark with women, and the men would quickly follow. The picture of Jarrett wrapped in a towel merged with the players acting like little boys. Pieces of a commercial started to fall into place in her head. The light turned green. Samantha hit the accelerator and sped toward her office.

      Chapter Two

      Samantha rushed in out of the rain and walked briskly to the elevator. The brass hand in an arch above the doors pointed at the number ten, slowly dropped to nine, then stopped. She waited, staring at the ornate brass curlicues on the door in front of her without actually seeing them. Her mind was still on the commercial for the Rainiers. A few minutes later a soft chime sounded, and the doors opened. An old man in a burgundy uniform with gold braid carefully held the door for her to enter.

      “Hello, Ted.”

      “Good afternoon, Miss James. A fine day we’ve got, don’t you think?”

      Samantha grinned at the elevator operator. “With rain and wind like this, you can say it’s a fine day?”

      “Oh, well, it’s Seattle. If this isn’t a fine day, then it’ll be a while before we have one.”

      Samantha laughed. He was right. With all the rain in Seattle, they had to appreciate days when it only drizzled. Ted pulled the door closed and shifted the lever to “up.” With a clank and a slight wheeze, the ancient elevator rose slowly to the twelfth floor. The Smith Tower, the oldest high-rise in the city, had its quirks. This elegant brass relic of an elevator was one of them. But Samantha loved the old building. Much taller skyscrapers rose all around, but they seemed like polished, characterless monoliths in comparison. Since 1913, the tower had outlasted both developers that coveted the land it occupied and earthquakes that tried to shake it down. Now, quirks and all, it was an intrinsic part of the Seattle skyline. It was also the perfect home for Samantha’s company.

      The car jerked to a halt, a foot above the twelfth floor. Ted patiently shifted the lever up and down, joggling the car closer to the same level as the floor. Samantha waited just as patiently, though she would have been happy to hop down the short distance. The elevator was Ted’s pride and joy, and Samantha respected his need to do his job perfectly. He opened the brass gate and waved Samantha on her way.

      “Thanks, Ted.”

      “My pleasure, Miss James. You have a good day.”

      Walking down the short hall, Samantha opened the door into her corner of the advertising world. On the front end, Emerald Advertising looked like any other business. Muted rose paint on the walls and furniture upholstered in navy and plum greeted the visitor, an image of tasteful yet understated affluence. At the large mahogany reception desk, phones rang quietly and were answered graciously. The lighting was also subdued, soft. Two equally inviting conference rooms, one large and one small, lay directly behind the reception area.

      If Samantha knew anything about her business, it was that packaging made the product. Her clients had preconceived ideas of how a successful ad business should look, how it felt, smelled and worked. So, she gave them glass walls, a touch of brass and chairs with ample padding: the plush trappings where deals could be made in comfort.