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CHAPTER ONE
AUSTIN
I open the door to my bedroom and sigh in relief, kicking off my dress shoes and unfastening my tie. I am so over these corporate holiday parties that come with the C-suite territory. I mean, sure, they’re “parties,” but what that really means is that I keep a suit on from 7 a.m. to close to midnight, and I eat party food that gives me indigestion, and I avoid the dance floor like the plague so a whole slew of skimpily-dressed girls don’t try to pull me onto it with them.
Because I know damn well it’s only because I got promoted to chief operating officer six months ago.
What those girls see when they look at me is the Reese family business and the Reese family money. They see the prestige and the income and the opportunity to make it theirs, if only they can get me interested in them.
They don’t see the hard work that goes with growing my grandfather’s modest sporting-goods firm into a national company, and keeping it profitable. They don’t see that it was a tough decision my dad made to rebrand from Reese’s Sporting Goods to On the Mark Sports, and to expand into franchising along the East Coast while staying headquartered in small-city Rivertown, Virginia. They don’t see how much it matters to me to serve our customers well while doing it as efficiently as possible.
They used to fool me. One of them fooled me enough that I almost asked her to move in with me. I met Camilla at a Chamber of Commerce party a few years, actually, and she was bright, attractive, and fun to spend time with.
That is, as long as I spent money on her, she was fun. But the more hours I worked, the more I longed for evenings relaxing at home with a beer, or hanging out with friends with pizza and a streamed movie. I wanted to just be myself.
Camilla wanted to hit the clubs most weeknights, after a fancy dinner at La Maison or The Library—me paying, of course. She wasn’t interested in hiking the nature trails I love. She pulled out all the stops at the Valentine’s Day charity gala, wearing a red sequined dress that showed off her body, and then pouting when I didn’t give her jewelry.
But the last straw was when we wound up arguing over which sofa I should buy for my apartment (with Camilla rooting for the $10K designer option in navy velvet, and me wanting a sturdy, resilient family-style, floppable version at a tenth the price). She pulled out the “you’re rich, why do you care how much you spend” verbal weapon, plus “you don’t care about what I want” tears, and that was just it for me. I was done.
That was eight months ago, and I’m happier without her.
I’ve made it into my early thirties without finding that special woman, and these days I have so little time for socializing that I’m starting to think I might never find the right girl for me.
I unload my pockets and shuck off my suit jacket. I’m glad this was the last of the December events before Christmas. I’d like to have my evenings back, so I can maybe make it to the gym or actually watch some Hulu for once.
Normally after one of these events, I’d just go home to my downtown apartment, but Mom promised me Saturday-morning waffles and bacon tomorrow morning before I go back to work, and I’m not gonna pass that up.
I unbutton my shirt, ditch the cuff links, and crumple onto the couch for half an hour of downtime before I go to bed. I’d watch TV, but that might rev me up and make it hard to sleep. Instead, I find myself looking around my childhood bedroom, tired but not sleepy, wondering how the hell my parents found time to get married and have even one kid, much less the four of us.
My gaze rests on the digital picture frame Mom gave me for my birthday. I managed to load some pictures from my college days at Virginia Tech, and my days pursuing my MBA at Cornell, but most of the rest are images that Mom loaded for me, old pics from my childhood and teen years.
I’d like to see some friendly faces right now—people who like me for myself, not for being what Rivertown Living Magazine called “one of the most eligible bachelors in town.”
So I pick the frame and flip it on.
There’s a shot of me with my college buddies Jude and Elliot, wearing our Hokies gear for a basketball game.
There’s a shot of me with grad-school friends Marie and Perry, after a day on the ski slopes.
There’s a shot of my family together: Mom, Dad, my older sister Philippa, my younger brother Porter, my younger sister Aurora, and me, grinning from stand-up paddleboards at Love Lake. Pippa’s deeply involved in the clothing design aspect of the business, and Porter’s a financial whiz, so he’s been crunching numbers for On the Mark for a few years now. Rory flatly refused to work in the family firm, and now she has her own dance studio, doing what she wants.
I love keeping On the Mark running, but sometimes I wonder if that’s what keeps Mom and Dad overly invested in finding me a spouse, especially since Pippa married her college sweetheart and presented the family with two beautiful kids in short order, all while choosing puffer vests and bike shorts and the colors for the new spring line. Porter’s planning to propose to his longtime girlfriend this Christmas.
Rory is deeply into living her life on her own terms. And that’s a good thing for her, but I see the merits of having someone to share my days with.
There’s a shot of me at ten, making a snowman with our neighbors’ granddaughter Belinda, and I chuckle at my memory of that day—how happy I was, and how much fun we had, making snow chairs and sledding and then coming inside for hot chocolate jam-packed with marshmallows..
Damn. Sometimes it would be nice to be a kid again.
The next morning, I’m chowing down on bacon and homemade waffles with blackberries (my favorite) when I happen to look out the kitchen window at the neighbors’ house.
I see her.
The woman hugging Bill and Betty Carter, our elderly neighbors, has to be Belinda.
And has she ever grown up. That silky long chestnut-brown hair, those long legs…that amazing rack…
“Close your mouth, Austin, you’re letting in flies,” my mom says, teasing me. “What are you looking at?”
