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Of course, I’d been a different person back when Pop Honeycutt had given me that nickname. I’d been a soft, sunshiny kid back then, thrilled with the world and my place in it. For years, I’d watched Pop give a nickname—some funny, some sweet, some deep and meaningful—to every local kid who wandered into the General Store, then listened as my friends and even my big brother used their nicknames like a badge of pride… at least when my mother wasn’t around to insist that no firstborn son of hers would answer to the name Frog. When my turn hadn’t come, I’d been confident this was an oversight, so I’d taken myself off to town one summer afternoon, politely tugged on Pop’s sleeve, and asked him.
God, I couldn’t imagine what he must’ve thought of me, all messy white-blond hair, big eyes, and pre-Invisalign teeth, but the man hadn’t hesitated. He’d knelt down, grinned, and said, “Why, don’t you know, kiddo? You’re Mr. Important.” He’d tweaked my snub nose. “Knew it from the minute you were born. And don’t you forget it.”
I’d carried that name in my heart for longer than I’d ever admit. So what if my brother was Honeybridge’s golden boy? Who cared that I could never quite stand up straight enough to please anyone, or that I laughed too loud, or talked too much? I was Mr. Important, and don’t you forget it.
Much like when I took the PennCo job, though, I thought wryly, it might have been good if I’d asked some clarifying questions. Important to who? Important for what? And, crucially, important when? Because one would think it might have kicked in before I became a twenty-eight-year-old whose crowning achievements included being caught on camera doing Beyoncé’s “Single Ladies” dance at a Red Sox game during the national anthem and taking home the Honeybridge Swimming Marathon award for Team Wellbridge the summer the feral beavers had made everyone else too scared to swim.
Now, that might have been an Instagram-worthy moment, had I known about social media back then.
On that thought, I dug out my phone and opened the app. I hadn’t posted since last night, which wasn’t out of the ordinary, but I found I missed it when I went too long. I knew some people felt that curating their posts and spinning things to the positive was “fake” and created pressure to maintain a standard of perfection. For me, it was the opposite. In reframing my own life for public consumption, I reminded myself that things weren’t as bad as they sometimes seemed.
I ruffled a hand through my hair, positioned myself in front of the darkened window, adjusted my settings for a long exposure, and snapped a few pictures. In the images, I looked deliberately rumpled rather than bone-weary and sleep-deprived. The bright lights of the seedy truck stop we’d passed blurred into a beautiful neon streak in the background. Perfect.
“Turning business into a road trip! So ready for all the twists and turns the new year will bring,” I told my followers in the caption. “Where’s this year going to take YOU? #businessnomad #DrivingTowardSuccess #FocusontheRoadAhead”
Focusing was exactly what I needed to do.
While the view outside changed from city lights and truck stops to unrelenting darkness, I grabbed a seltzer from the refrigerator and dug into my assignment. I took the industry talking points Layla had provided and expounded on all of them, providing facts and figures to substantiate each one. I also drew up a fact sheet, a sort of layperson’s guide to sustainable textiles, that Thatcher could refer to when talking to reporters who wanted the scoop on Nova Davidson and might not understand industry jargon. And then I went a step further and started drafting some feel-good press statements to help out the communications people, which meant educating myself on PennCo Fiber’s history, our corporate mission, and the innovations we’d pioneered, especially since Layla had taken the helm. Though her contributions were often overshadowed by the moneymaker subsidiaries of Pennington Industries, there was no denying that research and development had flourished under her leadership, just as Nataly had said. I almost felt guilty for being annoyed with her at the meeting earlier.
Almost.
Because what I also learned, as I slogged through the pages-long sagas that PennCo had published as “press releases” in the past, was that this company had no idea what they were doing when it came to communicating their message to the world. Layla claimed the textile business was old-school, and she was right, but PennCo’s school was so old we were practically chiseling our marketing copy on stone tablets.
And it didn’t have to be that way.
PennCo was a company built on innovation, so why was Layla so against innovating our approach to public relations with social media? And maybe it wasn’t fair to lay all the blame at her feet—maybe that was my lingering bitterness and jealousy from the meeting talking—but even Nataly, who adored Layla, had admitted this was a blind spot.
The more I thought about it, the more keyed up I got, so that by the time six hours had passed and McGee pulled into a truck stop to take a driving break around midnight, I was so overtired and so unreasonably, incandescently bitter I was ready to storm off into the West Virginia night and call an Uber back to Manhattan. If this was what a career in public relations was all about, then maybe spending my life in front of the cameras as Trent Wellbridge’s dim but photogenic son was a viable option.
Of course it was at this moment that Thatcher poked his head out of what I could only imagine was his luxurious bedroom suite, probably woken by the sudden lack of road noise.
“Hey,” he croaked, running a hand over his face. “What’s going on?”
Professional, I reminded myself. Polite. Distant.
“McGee’s taking a break, and I’ve been working on the notes for your speech and some press stuff. I have some… concerns—” I glanced up. Thatcher had changed out of his suit and into a cashmere sweater and comfortable pants. He looked sleepy. Warm. Utterly lickable.
My dick throbbed.
I stood so fast I bumped my knee against the table, grabbed my phone and jacket, and headed for the door. “I’m concerned that I really need to stretch my legs,” I called over my shoulder as I ran down the stairs.
“Fuck,” I said into the dark abyss as I stomped across the parking lot despite my bruised knee, fueled by frustration and unwanted lust. My breath fogged in the freezing air like tiny storm clouds that disintegrated into the night air as quickly as they formed, and I wasn’t sure if I wanted to laugh or cry.
The buzz of my phone in my pocket startled me, and I immediately pulled it out. Only my family bothered calling instead of messaging, and I could use the distraction.
“Reagan! I feel like I haven’t talked to you all year!” my brother exclaimed, then dissolved into laughter at his own joke. “Get it? ’Cause it’s January first?—”
I groaned. This was not the distraction I needed. “Yeah, I get it,” I said shortly, stomping past the edge of the parking lot lights, hopefully out of earshot of the bus. “Unfortunately.”
“Uh… pardon me,” JT said after a long pause. “I must have the wrong number. I was looking for my brother, Reagan Wellbridge. Perhaps you’ve heard of him? Short guy, ridiculous eyes, uncanny ability to pretend nothing fazes him? Who’s this?”
I rolled my “ridiculous” eyes. “Fuck off,” I said without heat. “No one over six feet is ‘short.’ You’re just too tall.” I refused to explain that my ability to appear unfazed was proving unreliable when Thatcher was around. “Shouldn’t you be annoying your boyfriend at this hour?”
“Already done,” he said proudly. “In fact, I did it so well that just a minute ago, Flynn said, ‘Frog, my darling, you’re so annoyingly sexy I can’t concentrate on closing the tavern. Why don’t you wait for me at home?’”
“Bullshit,” I said, amused in spite of myself. “You forget I’ve known Firecracker nearly as long as you have. He said, ‘Frog, stop distracting me and go away,’ didn’t he?”
JT laughed. “Possibly. But he was kissing me when he said it, so I knew how to interpret his grumpiness. Love’s all about interpretation,” he said sagely.
