His kid didn't want to take over the family business; I didn’t see what the big problem was. He had enough money that he didn't have to work for it. So what if his passion wasn't in mergers and acquisitions? Let him go off and become a professional flute player; why not? He'd never go hungry, and he'd be off his parents’ backs. Clearly, if Mr. Porter was being pushed to ask me for help, he was running out of options. The way he talked, he knew as well as I did that it was an unusual request.
"I could try, Mr. Porter, but I don't know how I'd be able to convince him."
"It's his," he said. "All of it. Everything his mother and I have done since he was born has been for him. Me coming to work every day has been so he has something when I am no longer there,” he said. I swallowed, a little shaken by his earnestness. "He's my real legacy, not this company. I built it so he can begin to build his own." I took a deep breath, realizing I was at a loss too. Where the hell would I even start? What had I just agreed to?
"I'll see what I can do," I said quietly.
"Thank you, Natalie. I appreciate your help." I nodded weakly. "You don't have to talk to him immediately. After I return to work, after his unofficial trial run, try saying something to him."
"Okay. I'll do that." He got up.
"Thank you, Natalie," he repeated. I said that it was alright and watched him leave the way he had come in. Whoa. Alone in my office again, it was hard to rationalize that that conversation had even taken place. He had asked me to talk to his son, like he was a troublemaker in school and needed a little guidance. Like he was selfish with his toys and made the other kids in daycare cry. Awesome. Just great. And here I'd thought that my babysitting days were behind me.
I couldn’t fucking wait.
If I didn't love my job so much, I'd feel bad about how relieved I was at the end of every day. I had about another hour on the road before I got home, but that was my own fault. I'd stop complaining about that one day, but today was not that day. I walked the hallway from the bathroom back towards my office. I was so ready to kick these heels off. They were new, nude pumps. They were only three inches high, but they hurt because I hadn't broken them in yet. Looking up, the sight of a man in a navy suit approaching startled me.
Cameron. I hadn't seen him all day. He was walking fast, or maybe he wasn't. He was tall, so maybe his long strides just made it seem that way. His hair was light brown, combed and slicked back from his face. Speaking of that face, he had the kind that could sell you anything. The kind you'd call pretty if it lacked the harder, masculine lines of his nose and jaw.
He was going to be my project after his parents got back from their vacation. The thought was laughable, but I’d given his dad my word. Was I going to... no. I turned into the copier room as he walked past me, waiting the few seconds it took him to disappear towards the elevators. We'd have plenty of time to talk later. I'd save it ‘til then.
Chapter Three
Cameron
My parents’ balcony looked out over the pool. The house was older than I was. They had bought the land together and built their home before I had been born. The guesthouse and the pool had been later additions, and I had gotten to see them go up. It wasn't everyone that got to find their dream home, let alone build it from the ground up. Being in real estate, my father knew a thing or two about houses. It might have been because they had put this place together themselves, or maybe it was just my bias, but nowhere had ever felt more like home.
They had a number of other properties dotted across the county, some rentals, and a place in Puerto Rico where they threatened they were going to move to when they retired, but I didn't think they would actually do it. My mom was too engaged with the community here after thirty years, and Dad wasn't going anywhere without her. The house, just like the company, was supposed to go to me once they were done with it. I hated the way that they did that: reminded me all the time that the day would come when they weren't around anymore. I wasn't a kid; I understood how the life and death thing went. We were all going out the same way, but it had just been the three of us my whole life.
Nobody wanted to believe that their parents were going to be gone one day. Maybe some people did, and all that meant was I had been luckier than them to have gotten Grayson and Evangeline Porter as my parents. Retirement wasn’t the end of the line, not by a long shot, but it was a sobering reminder that the line was getting shorter. I looked over my shoulder at them. The balcony's French doors were open, and I could hear my mom and dad talking from inside their closet. Their flight was at noon; I had volunteered to drive them to the airport in Salt Lake.
Mom was probably making my father go through his suitcase according to the list she had made of everything they would need. At some point, fed up with how bad he was at packing, she had probably made him let her do it for him. We had taken international trips every year until I had left for college. As an adult, with everyone a lot busier, they had been harder to coordinate, so we hadn't been anywhere with all three of us together in a few years. They tended to manage to do something for their anniversary each year, but a vacation like this—just because they deserved one—had been a long time coming.
"You don't need more than one swimsuit, Evie," my dad said.
"Yes, I do, and so do you," I could hear her saying as I walked back into their bedroom.
"Honestly, Evie, it's ten days. We aren't relocating." I walked over to their closet, going inside. You could get places as big as my parents' closet in Provo for a price in the lower hundred bucks a month. It was massive, with his and hers sides. Glass topped cabinets at the far end of the room held my father's watch collection and part of mom's jewelry. His open suitcase was on the floor, and an untidy pile of clothes he had pulled out of drawers and off hangers was on the backless sofa in the center of the rectangular room next to my mom's open suitcase.
"Everything okay?" I asked, taking in the scene.
"Just the usual," my mom said, pulling a dress off the rack and turning to me. "What do you think about this?" she asked, holding it against her body. It had a striking red and white floral pattern and came down to below her knees.
"It looks nice," I said.
"Can't imagine who you're trying to impress Evie," my dad grumbled, teasing her.
"You got me this dress, Porter," she said accusatorily. She called him by his last name, which was hers too, which had always been a little funny to me.
"Are the tags still on? I'm returning it." She rolled her eyes and took it off the hanger, folding it
to go into her suitcase.
"Don't be surprised if only one of us gets off the plane in ten days," she said, smirking at me.
"It's going to be me. Your mother's going to run off with a bronzed, twenty-two-year-old named Hercules." I laughed. It was hard sometimes to imagine that your parents had been with other people before they had gotten together and had you. I had heard the story of how they had hooked up a lot of times. Truth was, they almost hadn't gotten together. Right after college, my dad had been a pizza delivery guy to make some extra money while helping his dad out with the company; it had only been around at that point for ten years or so. One night, he had been working as usual and made a delivery to a house, ringing the doorbell. He had had to ring it three times before anyone showed up to get it, and when someone did, it had been Mom. She had been crying, makeup smeared all over her face, eyes puffy and red, and the way Dad told it, he had fallen in love with her right on the spot.
The next time there had been a delivery to her address, he had made sure that he had taken it. Apparently, the night he had first seen her, her boyfriend at the time had dumped her, and that had been why she'd been crying. The asshole had done it over the phone. She had ordered the pizza because she had been expecting him. That second time, he had gotten her name and stuck around long enough to ask her on a date, but she had rejected him. A coincidental meeting at a party a year or so later, and the rest had been history. I didn't know whether being able to joke about his wife leaving him for a young, Mediterranean Adonis meant their marriage was healthy or on the rocks, but I did know I had never seen two people better suited to each other.