It Happened One Week by Joann Ross

window office and fancy Italian-leather chair—would need any advice?”
    The soothing touch felt too good. Too right. Amanda backed away. “At this point, I’d take advice from the devil himself.” Realizing how snippy she sounded, she felt obliged to apologize yet again.
    “Don’t worry about it. People say things they don’t mean under stress.” Which he knew only too well. Dane had found it enlightening that the temper he’d developed while working for the Whitfield Palace hotel chain seemed to have vanished when he’d bought the inn, despite all the problems refurbishing it had entailed. “How about me?”
    “How about you, what?”
    “How about me subbing for your kayak guy?”
    Remembering how he’d taught her to paddle that double kayak so many years ago, Amanda knew it was the perfect solution. Except for one thing.
    “Don’t you have work to do?”
    Dane shrugged. “It’ll keep.”
    “I wouldn’t want you to get in trouble.”
    “Why don’t you let me worry about that, contessa? Besides, we all kind of pitch in where needed around here.”
    That was exactly what Reva had told her. And Amanda was grateful enough not to contest that ridiculous name. “Thank you. I really appreciate your help.”
    “Hey, that’s what we’re here for.” He grinned and skimmed a dark finger down the slope of her nose. “Service With a Smile, that’s the motto at Smugglers’ Inn.”
    The knot of tension in her stomach unwound. It was impossible to worry when he was smiling at her that way. It was nearly impossible to remember that the man represented a dangerous distraction.
    Relieved that she’d overcome the first hurdle of the week, and putting aside the nagging little problem of what she was going to do about the rest of the scheduled adventure exercises, Amanda returned to the conference room and began handing out the challenge-team shirts.
    “What the hell are these?” Don Patterson, the marketing manager, asked.
    “They’re to denote the different teams,” Amanda explained. “Reds versus blues.”
    “Like shirts versus skins,” Marvin Kenyon, who’d played some high school basketball, said.
    “Exactly.”
    “I wouldn’t mind playing shirts and skins with Kelli,” Peter Wanger from the computer-support division said with a leer directed toward the public-relations manager, who was provocatively dressed in a pair of tight white jeans and a red jersey crop top. Her navy suspenders framed voluptuousbreasts that, if they hadn’t been surgically enhanced, could undoubtedly qualify as natural wonders of the world.
    “Watch it, Peter,” Amanda warned. “Or you’ll have to watch that video on sexual harassment in the workplace again.”
    “Oh, Peter was just joking,” Kelli said quickly, sending a perky cheerleader smile his way. “It doesn’t bother me, Amanda.”
    That might be. But it did bother Greg. Amanda watched her superior’s jaw clench. “Amanda’s right,” he growled. If looks could kill, Peter would be drawn and quartered, then buried six feet under the sand. “Just because we’re not in the office doesn’t mean that I’ll stand for inappropriate behavior.”
    It sounded good. But everyone in the room knew that what was really happening was that Greg had just stamped his own personal No Trespassing sign on Kelli Kyle’s wondrous chest.
    “Talk about inappropriate,” Laura Quinlan muttered as Amanda handed her a red T-shirt. “My kid’s Barbie doll has tops larger than that bimbo’s.”
    At thirty-six, Laura was a displaced homemaker who’d recently been hired as a junior copywriter. Amanda knew she was struggling to raise two children on her own after her physician husband had left her for his office assistant—a young woman who, if Laura could be believed, could be Kelli Kyle’s evil twin.
    Secretly agreeing about the inappropriateness of Kelli’s attire, but not wanting to take sides, Amanda didn’t answer.
    “I can’t wear this color,” Nadine Roberts