Stuck in the Cabin (Exiled Dragons Book 8) Read online

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  Stuck in a Cabin

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  Stuck in a Cabin

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  Stuck in a Cabin

  Exiled Dragons Book 8

  Sarah J. Stone

  Copyright © 2017 by Sarah J. Stone. This book is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is entirely coincidental. Names, characters, businesses, organizations, places, events, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

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  Other Books in This Series

  Exiled Dragons Box Set (Books 1-5)

  Seeking the Dragon (Book 6)

  Journey to India (Book 7)

  Chapter One

  “I’m going to need both of you down here for a few days to help me finish fleshing this project out,” Mr. Johnston told them on the phone. They glanced at each other across the table in disbelief, but it was Neil who spoke first.

  “You want us down where, sir?” he said into the speakerphone sitting between them on the conference table. They continued to look at each other with a sense of dread from where each sat on opposite sides of the large marble monstrosity their boss had decided was the image he wanted to put out there to his clients when he met with them here.

  “Gatlinburg, Tennessee...at my cabin,” Mr. Johnston barked, apparently annoyed that they weren’t already aware of his location. Of course, they had no way of knowing where he was, nor was there any reason that they should, but it was par for the course for him to feel that he was so incredibly important that everyone was constantly aware of his whereabouts.

  “Sir, not to be disrespectful, but you know that Christmas is five days away, and I have out of town family that I was planning on flying out to see,” Stephanie said tentatively. Normally, she was very driven to succeed and would have done whatever he asked of her, but this was bordering on the unreasonable.

  “Yes, sir. I have my sister coming in from out of town so that we can travel together to my folks’ place,” Neil tossed in, seeing his opportunity to not be the only one resisting this ridiculous last-minute push that he knew for a fact could wait until after the New Year, as the client was on vacation out of the country and wouldn’t even be looking at it before then. Mr. Johnston was one of those men that always felt everything had to be done right away, even if there was plenty of time.

  “Oh, I’m sorry. I thought I had the two brightest young marketing people in my organization on the phone. You know, the sort of people who are willing to go above and beyond to succeed, not like those slackers that just show up and wait for a paycheck to fall in their lap. I would have pegged the two of you to already be on your iPads making flight arrangements before I finished,” he snarled on the other end of the line.

  “No, sir...I mean, yes, sir. You do. We are. We will. Um, we’ll work it out,” Neil stammered.

  “That’s better. I need you here no later than tomorrow, so pack your long johns and get the first flight out,” he said, ending the call abruptly.

  “He’s out of his mind,” Stephanie said, her voice crisp and on the edge of anger as she tapped at the screen of the tablet lying in front of her.

  “Well, look at that. We finally agree on something,” Neil said, tapping away at his own tablet.

  “All right, well, we don’t have time to waste. It looks like the nearest airport to Gatlinburg is Knoxville, and it’s about thirty miles away, so we’ll need flights and a rental car. I’ll get those booked while you go talk to that cranky executive assistant of his and find out where this forsaken cabin is located. I’ll text you the flight info when I have it. I’m going to go clear the next few days off my calendar and go home to pack,” she said.

  Neil sat looking at her. She knew he did not like it when she took charge and issued anything that sounded like an order at him. Rather than wait for some snide reply, she grabbed her things and hurried out of the small conference room where they had been previously directed by Della, the executive assistant from hell. Stephanie knew that talking to her was going to be a royal pain, and that is why she had delegated it to Neil instead. He could use his bullshit charm on her like he did all the other women in the office.

  On her way back to her own office, she contemplated how awkward this was going to be for her. Mr. Johnston was intimidating for anyone, but especially for her, and now she was going to be stuck in a cabin with him. She was surrounded by power hungry men, all eager to grab the same accounts from one another. Advertising was a very cutthroat business, and Neil was her biggest rival at their firm. Both in their late twenties and eager to move up in the firm, they were polar opposites when it came to just about every aspect of both their personal and private lives and butted heads constantly.

  Stephanie was a street smart New Yorker, born and raised in Queens. Being taken seriously as a young female in the advertising industry wasn’t the easiest thing in the world, and she found that she had to work twice as hard to stay one step ahead of the competition. She had gotten to where she was as a junior ad executive by keeping her eyes and ears open and never letting an opportunity pass her by. Though there had been coworkers who were drawn to her good looks rather than her talent, she had no time to play that game. It didn’t suit her career ambitions, and it would be frowned upon my management.

  Neil was one of those men who was talented, but his abilities were exceeded by his special way of charming the pants off anyone. Whereas Stephanie was all business, he had this energy about him that instantly put people at ease. They looked into his deep blue eyes, neatly trimmed dirty blond hair and disarming smile and felt they could trust him with anything, including all their advertising needs. What he lacked in organization and foresight, he easily made up for in good ole boy charm, courtesy of his roots in South Carolina.

  He was usually the king of delegation, coming up with the great ideas and sweet talking assistants throughout the building into helping with the hard work. Stephanie liked to keep her projects close to heart, seeing them through from conception to finish with assistance only from those who possessed skills she did not have, like graphic artists and photographers. She often spent late nights at the office or bent over her old drafting desk at home in order to put the perfect finishing touches on an ad campaign she wanted to present to a client. Those hours would most often find Neil out drinking with friends and hitting on women at the local clubs while the moony-eyed women he had conned into doing his work for him were still stuck at the office.

  At the last minute, he would sweep in, pull it all together and make a glowing event of showing it to his client. It was infuriating how well that worked for him over and over again. In fact, it was even more frustrating that he often seemed to make what she had worked so hard on pale in comparison to his much rougher campaigns. They were pretty much even on their running record of who had won the most clients, but she needed to do better than that if she ever hoped to beat him out for the senior executive position that was bound to open up within months when Nelson retired.

  After booking two first class flights to Knoxville and reserving a rental SUV with built-in GPS for what she assumed would be a mountainside trek to the middle of nowhere, she finished up at the office
and rushed home to pack. She did her best to find the warmest clothes she had that weren’t too bulky so that it would make for lighter packing. Ski clothes were a consideration, but she decided that they would probably be stuck to Mr. Johnston the whole time and never be able to go. If she was wrong, she could always rent equipment. Having never been to Gatlinburg, she didn’t even know if there was enough snow for skiing this early in the winter.

  She had already shot Neil the itinerary for the trip, and he told her he had the cabin’s address to plug into the GPS. With everything set, she made quick work of the packing to be done and ordered in some Chinese for dinner. Afterward, she got everything shut down around the apartment and went to bed early in preparation for the dawn flight tomorrow. She tossed and turned for a while, wondering why they had been summoned and what Mr. Johnston was going to expect of them. Finally, she drifted off to sleep until the alarm went off early the next morning.

  Chapter Two

  After a two-and-a-half-hour flight in, a half-hour wait to get their rental and another half hour to drive into Gatlinburg, they were finally on their way up a winding mountain road to Mr. Johnston’s private vacation cabin. It took a good forty-five minutes just to get up there and, although the scenery was beautiful, Stephanie found it disturbing that it was in the middle of nowhere. Not much consolation was found in the fact that she would be alone in a cabin with her boss and Neil for three days either. She wasn’t concerned about any improprieties, but more bothered that she might be expected to do menial tasks like cooking and cleaning for the trio because she was female. They were both sexist enough to think that way. She was sure of it.

  One thing that could be said is that the cabin was absolutely beautiful. It wasn’t what she had expected at all. As a New York City girl, the word ‘cabin’ brought to mind those tiny little log shacks you see in horror movies and feel-good nature films. They had one bedroom, a fold-out sofa bed, a hot plate, and an outhouse, if you were lucky enough not to have to do your business in the woods nearby and bury it.

  This place was nothing like that. It was the size of a substantial house set against the side of the mountain. The rough knotted wood that made up its exterior seemed to be more for looks than strength, and Stephanie suspected she would find very strong support beams hidden beneath the rustic façade. A massive front deck contained a swing and built-in tables with benches as well as an area that jutted further out and contained a large, state-of-the-art gas grill and nearby outdoor bar. The large windows faced the rising sun, and smoke could be seen coming from the chimney as they pulled their things from the SUV and made their way to the front door, which Mr. Johnston was holding open for them as they approached.

  “There you guys are. I was beginning to wonder what was taking you so long,” he said sternly.

  Neil and Stephanie shot each other a look that silently begged the question of how he thought they could have gotten there any quicker. Knowing there was no need to point out how quickly they had accommodated them, they shrugged it off and went inside. He wasted no time in letting them know that their rooms would be upstairs and they could pick which ones they wanted shortly before launching into what he needed from them. It would seem that it had nothing to do with the project they had been working on with him prior to his departure from the offices in New York.

  “I met these guys in Sevierville, a town or so over, and they have a very lucrative business. I want to take it to the next level and get them out there for the world to see. They’ve been marketing it locally and by word of mouth. We need to put them on the global map. I promised them that we would make them an international sensation, but I need to show them some results before I leave here and they change their mind about how much they are willing to sink into a campaign to accomplish that goal,” he said.

  “Um, not that we mind at all coming up here to work on this with you, but why us? Wouldn’t one of the senior account executives been your usual choice for such an important undertaking?” Neil asked

  “Are you saying you can’t do it? Please don’t tell me I’ve flown two people up here that can’t cut the mustard on this,” he said flatly.

  “I don’t think that is what he is saying at all,” Stephanie quickly interjected, not even sure why she was coming to his defense, though it might be because it also reflected on her. “I think we were just caught off guard. We do appreciate your confidence in us to get the job done,” she told him.

  “Well, I didn’t have a lot of choice. Nelson and Thompson both had family plans for the holiday, and Farding said he didn’t like the cold,” he told them. Once again, Stephanie and Neil shot a silent look at one another. Apparently, they were the only ones not allowed to decline this trip. Being subjected to such indignations was just part of being an underling waiting for a shot at the top. Both knew that they could be insulted by this or they could use it as an opportunity to shine.

  “Go ahead and hash out your accommodations upstairs. There are three bedrooms up there, so you can fight it out among yourselves. Get settled in and meet me back down here in five minutes,” he told them.

  “Wow, a whole five minutes,” Neil mumbled as they climbed the winding stairs to one side of the large lower den. Despite her usual disdain for him, Stephanie chuckled because she was thinking the exact same thing. All of the rooms were pretty much identical, with only the décor being different, so it wasn’t a difficult choice. They dropped their bags on the beds in their respective rooms and headed back downstairs.

  The rest of the day was something akin to torture, with Mr. Johnston barking orders at them and chastising them for every little misstep or suggestion that wasn’t up to par. They normally had a layer of management between them and the upper level of management that prevented them from getting the roughest end of his outbursts, but that wasn’t afforded to them in this remote cabin where they were forced to work so closely. After their long flight and trip up the side of the mountain, they were kept up to the wee hours of the morning, hashing out the details of a major international campaign with him.

  Adding to Stephanie’s annoyance was the way that Neil talked over her at every opportunity and sucked up to Mr. Johnston. Whatever ideas she came up with, he would quickly latch onto them and run with them as if they were his own. Since the end result was what Mr. Johnston was after, it made it seem as if he was right on top of his game, while she couldn’t get out of the starting gate. She was so much better at coming up with great ideas than he was, but she needed more time to flesh them out. His ability to seize the moment and take it to the next level was something she couldn’t deny was admirable, but still a pain in her ass and currently making her look bad.

  By the time Johnston finally decided they could put it to rest for the night, she was over whatever camaraderie she had felt toward Neil before they arrived. She felt disgusted by how the two men had bounced her ideas around, made them their own, and acted as if she had not participated in the process at all. On top of that, she was absolutely exhausted and was only going to be able to get about four hours of sleep, at best. Mr. Johnston wanted them up and working by seven so that they could get the rough work they had done polished up for the customer. He would present it from his tablet and pocket projector in their offices and they could work on a hard copy presentation after the customer had reviewed and accepted their proposal.

  Stephanie planned to get an edge over Neil by getting up a little earlier and starting before he was even out of bed. The good thing was that once they got this knocked out, Mr. Johnston was planning on handling the presentation by himself, so that would give her a few hours to crash again while he was in Sevierville with the clients. She slipped into her nightclothes and a robe, then crept down to the hall bathroom to brush her teeth.

  “How am I supposed to take you seriously at work anymore when you are running around in a pair of Happy Bunny pajama bottoms?” Neil said from behind her, causing her to jump visibly. She quickly finished brushing her teeth and told him goodnight, ignori
ng his jab and her sophomoric pajamas. At least the robe covered up the fact that she was wearing a matching t-shirt with a bunny and the word “whatever” beneath it. She hadn’t considered that she would be seen in her pajamas. Why she hadn’t realized it given the fact that she had thought they would be stuck in a much smaller cabin, she wasn’t sure, but now she wished she had opted for a different set of pajamas.

  Chapter Three

  The alarm on her phone went off way too early. She jumped up and grabbed her clothes, heading off to the bathroom to get a quick shower. It caught her completely off guard to find the door locked with sounds of the shower drifting out from behind the door. Damn it! He beat her to it. Now, she was going to have to wait for him to get a shower and then take hers. Hopefully, there would still be hot water. Then, while she was upstairs getting ready, he would already be downstairs hard at work and making her look bad…again.

  Stephanie stood in the hallway looking defeated for a moment and then had an idea. She hurried back to her room, skipped her shower, and got ready to go downstairs as quickly as she could. With her hair pulled up in a loose knot at the back of her head and just a smattering of makeup, she tossed on a pair of warm slacks, an off-white sweater, and winter boots. Looking into the mirror, she was pleased with her reflection. She looked casual, but capable, and the light colors brought out the warm glow of her olive skin, dark hair, and dark eyes.

  Wondering why she was even worried about how she looked to the two men in this house, she snapped out of it, grabbing the small bottle of mouthwash from her bag and swishing it around in her mouth as she rushed downstairs. Seeing that no one was down there, she quickly set her things up at the table and went to the downstairs bathroom to spit out the mouthwash and freshen up with what her mother used to call a ‘spot bath.’ She wanted to brush her teeth, but her toothbrush was in the bathroom where Neil was showering. Making do with a Q-tip from the container on the back of the sink, she left the bathroom and went back to the table to work.