A Small Town Spring (Rosedale Seasons #5)
Chapter 1
One
It’s spring at last and I am ready to spring out of the city for a weekend in the country.
I whistle to myself as I step into the mirror-lined elevator and hit the button for the garage nine floors below. I’m escaping the city as early as possible this fine Friday morning. There’s a little work in my LV shoulder bag, but mostly I’m going to Rosedale to unplug.
In the garage, I greet Mason the weekday garage attendant with a grin, which I temper when I remember his asthmatic grandson was in the hospital with bronchitis a few days ago.
“How’s Jaden?” I ask as he gets my key from the box.
“Doing much better,” he says. “They gave him a new inhaler, and it’s working.”
“Great news.” I take the key from his outstretched hand and walk to a nearby bay. I pay extra to keep my baby close enough to extract it myself. “Have a good weekend.”
“You too, Mr. James.” Mason’s old school—won’t call me Kingston no matter how many times I ask. It’s a remnant of old-style Manhattan manners I confess to taking pleasure in. It may be why I chose this building, Central Park-adjacent, complete with doorman and snooty neighbors. I myself am one of the snooty neighbors, even if my one-bed one-bath is one of the smallest apartments. Size, in this case, doesn’t matter. It’s a place to live during the week while I’m working at the Fenster Literary Agency, where I have sixteen children’s and young adult authors on my list and bring in more revenue than the next three best-performing agents combined. But it’s not home.
Home is where I’m headed once I stash my bag in the trunk of my gleaming San Remo Green BMW 8 Series. I’ve had the convertible for six months, but this might be the first day I’ll actually be able to put the top down on my drive to Connecticut. On a good day, it takes two hours door to door. Fingers crossed traffic will cooperate today. I’ve got a podcast loaded up, a green tea latte in my Ember travel mug. I’m ready to go.
I cut across the park and hook up with the Henry Hudson, my foot on the pedal nice and heavy as I accelerate for all of twenty seconds before I’m forced to brake for the inevitable logjam. I sigh. It’s the worst part of my bifurcated living situation. I could take the train, but it takes almost as long, and I need a car to get around Rosedale.
My podcast is interrupted by a voice alert that I have a text. I poke a button and a sonorous male British accent floods my car. It’s the voice I’ve chosen for my phone’s virtual assistant, who I jokingly call Jarvis. Jarvis reads out a text from Pete Blekitny.
“Dinner tonight at ours? Having a couple people over I want you to meet.”
I never say no to dinner with two of my favorite people. I’d love Pete and his husband, Jack Avery, even if they weren’t my highest-earning clients.
But I can’t make it too easy on them. I poke another button and Jarvis takes a memo for me. “Depends. What are we having?”
The return message comes as the Henry Hudson gives way to the Cross County. “Donovan and Beck are coming too, and they’re in charge of the menu.”
Beck is almost as good a cook as he is a baker, and even if he’s ordering food, he won’t put out anything less than a top-tier spread. “I’m in. Who are the mysterious guests?”
Instead of a text, I get a phone call. “I know you’re driving,” Pete says, his warm voice competing with traffic noise, even as slow as I’m going.
“Feels more like I’m parked on the parkway, but so it goes.” I sigh. “So, who do you want me to meet? Is this a ploy to set me up with one of Jack’s rich, handsome Texan cousins?”
“Nope, not a set-up. I’m wooing a local artist to join the Art Center board, so I need you to charm her.”
“I charm everyone,” I say, inching the car forward a few feet. The V8 engine growls with restraint.
“Yes, you do,” Pete agrees. “So come be your charming self.”
“What can I bring?”
“Just you.”
“I actually wanted to talk to you and Jack about something this weekend, so if there’s no opportunity tonight, maybe we can plan something for later on?”
“Sure—Cleo, stop—uh, gotta go. Cleo’s decided Daddy’s slipper is her new chew toy.”
“Which Daddy?” I ask.
“Jack,” he says, sounding distracted. “See you tonight.”
“Ciao,” I get in before he ends the call. I chuckle and flip back to my podcast. It’s a book podcaster interviewing an agent named Stephanie Collier. I’ve never met her, but she represents a lot of successful commercial fiction authors. I heard through the agent grapevine she’s not happy at her agency.
Leaving Fenster to set up under my own shingle is something I’ve been thinking about for a while. If I could get someone as established as Stephanie to join forces with me, it would send a clear signal to the publishing world that I’m here for the long haul, that I’m someone who wants to leave a legacy. I believe I could make a difference. Agents often have the least security in the publishing food chain. What if I could nurture new agents by offering them health insurance and other benefits while they’re waiting to land their first deals?
It’s not impossible, and I need a new challenge. I’m financially secure, can buy anything I want, within reason. I paid off my mom’s mortgage, helped my sister and her husband move back to Atlanta so someone’s there to make sure Mom goes to her doctor’s appointments after her heart attack a few years ago. I’m killing it both at work and in life, with friends who truly care about me.
The only thing I don’t have is someone riding in the passenger seat of my precious Beamer. No one to curl up next to in bed as I work through my infinite to-be-read pile. No one to be my plus-one to dinner tonight, where I’ll be surrounded by adorable unavailable gay men who’ve already found their forever person.
I never used to care about that stuff—finding The One, the person who I’d joyfully sign up to be with for the rest of my life. I had fun in my twenties—New York City was a revelation after spending my childhood in the Atlanta suburbs. I slowed down some in my thirties—I got choosier about who I brought home once I bought my apartment. Too many guys saw my address and assumed I’d be up for some kind of sugar daddy arrangement. I’m not against being the bigger breadwinner, but I’m old-fashioned—I find a work ethic attractive.
And then I met Sergio, and I thought, well, this is close. He was attractive, smart, kind, and successful in his own right. He even had a dog. And we got along like we’d known each other all our lives. He was almost like… a brother. The sex tapered off, but we gelled in so many other ways, it didn’t seem to matter. But when he got the chance to take on a project in Seattle, it didn’t hurt as much as I’d thought it would to say goodbye. It felt as if we were returning to the relationship we always should have had—as good friends.
He’ll always be in my life, always be my friend. But since we stopped seeing each other, I’ve sort of given up on the idea of casual dating. I’m too old. It takes too much effort. And if I could be content with work and my shiny objects, with being able to jet off to Paris for a long weekend whenever I want or buy a new painting for my living room without checking with anyone else first, then I’d be golden.
But there’s a part of me that wants what my friends have. If only I could skip dating and wake up next to a handsome husband one day.
I know that’s not how relationships happen. I’ve helped my friends through their own romantic problems enough times to know that it takes work, it takes being vulnerable—it takes courage to end up with the person who’s going to be the perfect fit to ride around in my passenger seat.
So until a miracle happens, I’ll have to be content with driving solo.
The traffic ahead of me opens up and I hit the gas.
My cottage is just as I left it when I was last here. I’m in Rosedale about two weekends a month, sometimes more if I can arrange to work from home for a few days. I carefully ease my car onto the gravel driveway, then maneuver it onto the concrete slab next to the house. I kill the engine, imagining how fantastic it will be to one day pull into the same space, only for it to be a real garage. The previous owners poured the slab to build a freestanding one-car garage, but never finished the project. It’s been pretty low on my priority list given the amount of time I’m here, but I’d love to have covered parking for my beloved Beamer. Someday.
I unlock the front door. The scents of wood, honey, and lemon greet me. It’s not a huge house, but it serves me better than fine. There’s a guest room and bath, a small living room dominated by a green velvet armchair whose twin lives in my bedroom. A counter-height bar separates the good-sized kitchen from a modest dining area. The big bedroom suite in the back has doors to the back patio, where I keep a grill and table and chairs. Outdoor dining is doable six months of the year. It’s not quite warm enough for breakfast out there but give it another month.
I drop my bag and go straight to the wine fridge. Pete told me not to bring anything to dinner, but I don’t like showing up empty-handed. I pick out a rosé, optimistic that it will work with whatever Beck has in store for us.
My phone rattles with a notification from my sister, Lucetta. It’s a picture of my nephews, twin six-year-olds, their brown curls dusted in flour and their faces mottled by random purple splotches. Three words— making blueberry pancakes —are all the context I need. I grin, wishing someone could invent a teleportation device so I could pop down to Atlanta whenever I need a dose of nephew love.
A snazzy teleportation device would make traveling back and forth from the city easier, too. I crack my back, stiff after my extra-long car trip. It seems half the folks in Manhattan decided in unison to escape the city on this fine spring weekend.
By the time I check my email and message my assistant to make sure nothing urgent has come up, it’s nearly time to head to Jack and Pete’s. If Pete needs me to be charming, my threads might need an upgrade. I fell in love with this house at first sight when I was looking for a weekend hideaway from the city, but what really sold me was the bedroom suite’s closet. Do not underestimate the importance of a well-designed closet. Mine is a walk-in I’ve outfitted with recessed lighting, a floor-to-ceiling mirror, and everything from shoe cubbies to shallow drawers for my watches and cuff link collection. There’s an entire corner devoted only to ties. It’s a very Carrie Bradshaw closet, which I say with all due respect.
My love of paisley has become so well known that it’s now a bit of a cliché, and I find myself opting for different patterns lately. It’s good to have a signature—fedoras are also my tried-and-true—but tonight I feel like mixing it up. I keep my fine camel-colored wool trousers, tailored to perfection, exchange my plain white dress shirt for a lavender one in a nod to the changing season. A darker purple necktie is next, then—what the hell, I throw on a pair of purple spats. They’re snazzy and if I can’t splash out with my friends, when can I? I grab my current favorite blazer—a brown velvet number that still works despite the slightly warming air. It’s Connecticut in April, not the Caribbean. I leave my hair unadorned—I visited the barber yesterday and my locs are tidy. The longest ones brush my shoulders, but I gather them up in a thick handful and pull them away from my face with a sturdy black elastic.
I squint at the image gazing back at me, checking for wrinkles or any hint of gray in my hair. I touch my neck—is there an extra line that wasn’t there yesterday? Most days I’d say I look younger than my thirty-seven years. But suddenly I feel old and tired. I’ve pushed myself my entire life to get here. It was exhausting, if rewarding. It paid off.
I just didn’t anticipate ending up having to enjoy the fruits of my labors all by my lonesome.
Enough with the melancholy. I check my watch, grab my keys. The Beamer starts up with the push of a button, sounding sweet as a purring kitten. It’s a pity Jack and Pete live a mere half mile away. In warmer weather, I’d walk, but on this bright spring day, I drive.