Asta and I continued our pattern for the next few days. I worked long hours, tied to my computer or phone, fighting off daydreams of the blonde-haired, blue-eyed beauty from the store. The housekeeper would eventually call me for meals or snacks, and I would leave my desk. As we shared a meal, she recounted stories about her family or stories about my grandfather. Sometimes, she asks about my family back in New York.
It was a slow, monotonous routine that, most of the time, kept my mind focused on other things. Inevitably, Bridget and the three years we spent together occupied my mind.
She had been everything I thought I wanted in a partner. She was kind and beautiful and never demanded much of me. She understood that my focus had to be on the businesses as I learned more about my role as CEO. At every event, she had been the picture of grace and poise, giving everyone a glimpse of her dazzling smile. I had been so sure that she was it for me, that she was the woman with whom I wanted to spend the rest of my life.
The shrill ringing of my phone pulled me out of my thoughts. I sigh and set the paintbrush down before removing the noisy screen from my pocket.
“What?”
“That is always a pleasant greeting. It’s good to hear your voice, cousin.”
“Hello, Callum. I thought you were supposed to be on your honeymoon. Trouble in paradise already?”
"Not in mine, but I've heard there has been in yours."
I passed my fingers through my hair.
“There can be no trouble if there is no paradise. What is it that you want?” I bark. “I am in the middle of work here.”
"Okay, okay. No need to get so defensive. If I'm honest, I'm glad she is gone."
“Ha ha, very funny. Now tell me whatever it is you called to tell me, or I will hang up."
“I think you need to get married. You need a wife. And not a crazy woman like Bridget. Someone who can make your life better.”
Immediately, the woman I encountered at the store came to mind. I waited for several seconds for my cousin to start laughing or for him to tell me he was kidding. But I had to assume the man was serious when he did not.
“I’m hanging up now.”
“I’m just saying,” he rushed out. “My life felt like a total mess before I met Glorietta. Now, I cannot imagine anything better. It has changed everything for me, and not just personally. I cannot tell you how many business meetings and lunches have turned into talks about Glorietta and our recent marriage. I have even had a few older gentlemen tell me to my face that I won a bid simply because I was tied down, and they felt like they could trust a married man."
“This is ridiculous,” I bark out. “We are not living two hundred years in the past. Why does it matter if you are married or not?”
"It doesn't make sense," he agreed, "but my partners have mentioned it here and there, and I think it counts for something."
“Yeah, I’m hanging up now,” I tell him, annoyed at where this conversation had wound up.
“Just think about it and -”
I ended the call before he could finish his sentence. After how things ended with Bridget, the last I wanted to talk about was dating someone else, let alone getting married. I had seen how marriages ended. My parent's marriage was a perfect example of marrying someone you love, for them to betray you with a string of affairs. As far as I was concerned, I was better off never getting married.
Two days later marked the end of my second week in Norway, and I was no closer to fixing the mess back home than I was when I arrived. I had assumed the media storm surrounding me and my split from Bridget would have disappeared from the news, but it was not. The media likes to kick a person when they are down; taking a story and turning it in their favor to sell is what they do. I was annoyed.
Most of my meetings now consisted of doing damage control, reassuring my clients that things will come down soon, and reminding them that this is a tactic the media uses to make sales, which is true.
My phone dinged with another text message containing the link to yet another article about my relationship with Bridget titled "mysterious billionaire who broke her heart." I wanted to go back in time and never let myself fall for her.
Unable to sit at my desk and work any longer, I pushed the leather office chair back from the large mahogany desk and strode out of the makeshift office. The screen door slammed behind me as I walked outside, needing a distraction. Just as I decided to take a long hike through the mountain the lodge backs into, something at my feet tripped me. I stumbled but kept myself from falling face-first into the gravel beneath me at the last second.
I sucked in a second deep breath to quell my frustration and turned around to see what had gotten under my foot. A little ball of fluff sat, perched on top of the rocks, a pair of green glowing eyes staring back at me.
"Meow," the cat cried as if I had been the attacker in our clumsy introduction.
“What are you doing, sitting in my driveway like this? Don’t you have an owner somewhere?”
The feline didn’t respond to me, but his tail flicked out and wrapped around him like a shield. I looked for a collar, but with the huge tufts of tan and black hair, I could not find one. I stood there for a moment longer, looking down on this minor interruption, and tried to decide what to do. Eventually, I waved the cat off and turned back towards the trail ahead.
“If you made it here, you could certainly find your way home,” I called to the cat as I walked away.
