CHAPTER 5
AUSTIN
A few weeks after the wedding, it was late October and I was back in the office after returning from another weekend at Merrick Meadows. I couldn’t believe how fast things were changing there. The place was really starting to come together from one visit to the next.
All those new farming implements they’d ordered had arrived and they were hard at work with the hayloft, which was actually already starting to resemble a bunkhouse. Public tours had commenced over weekends for locals who had been dying to see the site where the oil had been discovered and they were also in the process of constructing a new barn after having purchased another herd of cattle for the dairy farm.
As I’d expected, Jess had been making things happen, and not only that, but she’d announced over family dinner that she and Slate were pregnant. I had a pep in my step this week, knowing I was going to be an uncle.
And the best damn uncle the kid could ask for.
That little boy or girl was going to need someone to balance out all the farming influences, after all, and I was that person. I mean, what if the kid takes after me and wants to move to the big city?
I grinned to myself in the breakroom, hitting the button on the espresso machine, and I daydreamed about taking the little guy or girl under my wing while I waited for the caffeine kick I needed to start the day.
As I imagined having my niece or nephew coming to visit and falling in love with the Big Apple, I looked around the pause area on our floor, noticing that the committee in charge of morale had been busy in here. Faux leaves in fall colors had been wrapped around pumpkins on the counters and wreaths had been hung on the doors.
There were even turkey figurines and cornucopias resting on Thanksgiving-themed table runners, and candles in glass lanterns were scattered everywhere. Seeing it made me smile even wider. Nobody did Thanksgiving like New Yorkers—not even the locals of Firefly Grove—and the kid was going to love being in the city for the holidays.
“What are you smiling about, Merrick?” my colleague and biggest competitor, Tate Donovan, asked, leaning up against the coffee bar. “Did you get laid last night?”
I gave him a stony stare, the grin fading fast, and I shook my head at him. “I have a lot of work to do. Can’t shoot the shit right now. Sorry, Donovan.”
I never indulged Tate if I could help it. He was an insufferable prick who thought he was the big man on campus and refused to acknowledge that he was not, in fact, an alpha. He tried real hard and he thought it was working, but in reality, it was just sad.
Grabbing my coffee as soon as it was done, I nodded at him and tried to leave, but it was never that easy with him.
“Because I did,” he said, ignoring my obvious dismissal and following me through the open-concept area toward my private office at the firm. “You should’ve seen the tits on her, man. Top tier. Perky and real, I might add. Look.”
He pulled out his phone, unlocked it, and scrolled to something before he held it out to me. I pushed the device away after I caught a glimpse of what he was trying to show me.
“Did she let you take that?” I asked.
He smirked. “Of course, she did.”
“Not to show to strangers, I’m sure. Put it away, bro. Don’t be an asshole.”
He rolled his eyes at me. “Don’t be so uptight, Merrick. You have to live a little, man. This is Manhattan.”
“Sure.” I stopped when I reached my door, pushing down on the handle but not opening it just yet. “It was enlightening talking to you, Donovan. As always. Do yourself a favor and delete that picture, alright? It’s going to get you in trouble.”
Instead of responding, he cocked his head at me, a flash of excitement in his eyes. “You should come out with us sometime. With your job, your height, and those all-American boy looks? Women probably throw themselves at your feet. Don’t waste the opportunity to score. We’ll help you out if you’re a little shy.”
I ground my teeth, but thankfully, I was saved by Mindy, the firm’s receptionist, before I was forced to respond. She was also my personal assistant part time, and I’d learned that she disliked Tate almost as much as I did, which made her a ray of sunshine in my book.
She sashayed over to us and gave him a look that would make the devil shrink away. “I have your schedule for the day, Austin. Let’s go.”
As she deftly put herself between him and me, he blew out an exasperated breath and left, and I grinned as I finally opened my door. She followed me in, walking beside me, and we crossed my office to my desk while she rattled off my to-do list.
“Right, so I had ‘ being called pretty by a complete asshole ’ on your calendar for this morning, but you seem to have taken care of that already, so I’ll go ahead and mark it as done.”
I laughed. “He did call me pretty, didn’t he?”
She winked. “You have all-American boy looks, or haven’t you heard?”
“I heard him, alright. I think I’ll just take the compliment and move on.”
If anyone had the all-American boy looks, it was Tate himself. Standing at over six feet tall, he was just an inch or so shorter than me, blond haired and blue eyed. I shook my head, wondering why he was always after me to go out with them, but then I really did move on, setting my coffee and my phone down on my desk before I glanced at Mindy.
“What’s next?” I asked
Her gaze flicked to the tablet in her hand. “You have a strategy session with Marty at eight. Then you’ve got a few hours for reviewing documents and amending Davidson’s financial statements. You told me to remind you that the final report has to be done by tomorrow.”
“Shit.” I squeezed my eyes shut. “I’ve still got about ten hours of work left to do on that. How many hours have I got?”
She glanced at the screen again. “Four, and that’s only if I cancel your lunchtime meeting with Mischa.”
“I can’t cancel that. He’s a senior partner and he’s been waiting for this meeting for a week. What have I got after lunch?”
“A one-on-one with a potential new client who’s looking for an investment opportunity. They sound pretty desperate, though. It also sounds like they’ve already knocked on every bank’s door and still haven’t gotten any bites. Whatever their business model is, I wouldn’t expect anything great. Do you want me to call and cancel that instead?”
“Yes, please do that. Anything else?”
She shook her head. “Not right now, but you better get to it if you want to get through your emails before the meeting with Marty. They were really piling up on Friday afternoon.”
“I only left on Friday afternoon.”
She grinned at me. “I know, but you left just after lunch. That leaves a lot of time for your inbox to get clogged up. I’ll call you ten minutes before Marty.”
“Thanks, Mindy,” I said as I sat down behind my desk, giving her a quick but grateful smile. “What would I do without you?”
“You’d still be talking to Tate Donovan right now.” She pumped her eyebrows at me before she left, shutting my door firmly behind her.
Once she was gone, I chuckled and hit the power button on my computer. She definitely was not wrong. I had no idea what I’d done before she’d been assigned to me, but I was eternally grateful for her organizational skills—as well as the occasional interference with Tate.
It boggled my mind how the woman managed to keep up with my schedule as well as that of her four children and her husband. She was always on top of everything, and I was just glad that her family shared her time with me and with the firm.
Speaking of which, I need to remember her kid’s birthday. Shit. When is it and which kid? Shaking my head at myself, I resolved to figure it out, but by then, my computer had started and I clicked into my emails. She’d been right about the amount of mail I’d gotten.
As I made my way through it, I responded to messages from clients, partners, and coworkers, making notes of the revisions that needed to be made to my presentations and reports, and providing feedback to the clients about their deals.
I lost myself in the work, completely in my element despite the fact that I had to be ruthless in this business. That was where my success came from—my ability to put it all aside for the good of my clients and the deals I closed on their behalf.
Mindy called soon after, giving me my ten-minute warning, and I got up, heading to the office of the senior partner I was helping to facilitate an IPO. His client was huge in the tech industry and the deal was worth billions. It was the first initial public offering I was working on that qualified as being a mega—also known as a unicorn—IPO, and I was fucking over the moon about it.
Later, as I was leaving his office, I got a call. I slid my phone out of my pocket and saw Slate’s name on the screen, answering immediately and remembering my earlier daydreams about his kid.
“Hey,” I said as I picked up. “I want you to know that I accept.”
“Accept what?” he asked laughingly. “I haven’t asked you anything.”
“No, not yet, but you guys want me to be the baby’s mentor, right? I can be the fun uncle at first, and then I’ll show them the ropes in the city when they get older.”
Slate cracked up laughing. “Sure, Austin. If the kid wants to be shown the ropes in the city, you can do it. That’s kind of why I’m calling, actually.”
“Really?”
“Well, sort of. I’m going to be over there this week and I wanted to find out if you wanted to grab a beer.”
“Always,” I said honestly. “Where are you staying? You’re welcome to come stay with me, obviously. It is your house.”
He chuckled. “Thanks, but I’m staying with Logan and Mira. I want to spend some time with baby Beau before he’s not a baby anymore and the only way I can really do that is if I’m at their place between the meetings I’m coming for.”
“That makes so much sense to me all of sudden.” I grinned. “You guys aren’t going to be using my room at the farmhouse for the baby, right? I can still stay in it when I’m there to spend time with my niece or nephew?”
“We built a whole guest house for that.”
“Sure, but it’s not the same. We’ll talk about it.”
He laughed. “Yeah, okay. We’ll talk about it. See you on Thursday?”
“Thursday, it is. Send my love to Jess and the baby. Bye, man.”
After he hung up, I spent the rest of the walk back to my office once again grinning about the fact that I was going to be an uncle, but as soon as I sat back down behind my desk, I got lost in the work again.
Life was good. My job was great. My sister and my family were finally truly doing well, and I was at peace with them and the decisions I’d made that had led me here.
I couldn’t imagine anything disrupting my harmonious existence.