But I know deep in my gut, in the marrow of my bones, this is the chance I’ve been looking for. This is what I’m meant to do.
I can’t look back.
I can only move forward.
I shove the hurt aside and leap at the chance.
When the call ends, I change the maybe I gave Presley to a no.
Then I leave, because it was just an illusion that we could make this work.
Her Prologue
Presley
* * *
Seriously?
A phone call?
A freaking breakup phone call?
After that night, that trip, the things he said . . . all I warrant is a few minutes on the phone?
Slumped down on my couch later that evening, I replay his parting words once more. I have to take this chance. Expeditions like this come around once in a lifetime. I know it’s crazy that I can’t say who it’s for or where we’ll be going, but trust me, it’s better than leading wilderness expeditions in Alaska. So much better, and it’s everything I’ve ever wanted. I feel this is what I’m supposed to do, what my dad would have wanted for me. I hate that I have to do it like this, because I’m crazy in love with you. But I can’t make this work, and I need to leave tonight. It’s the only way. I’m sorry.
Now he’s on his way to the airport, jetting a million time zones away to trek . . . somewhere. Maybe the Himalayas. Possibly Africa. He won’t say. He just goes.
But I have plans too, Hunter. I have goals and dreams, just like you. You’re not the only one who wants things.
Though right now, what I want most is to burrow into this couch, build a blanket fort, and cocoon in my apartment for a few weeks.
Except . . .
What the hell?
I won’t let him derail me.
I sit up straight; take a deep, fueling breath; and remind myself of my dreams. When I start my new job tomorrow, it’ll be the first step to becoming the best curator ever. Soon, my name will be known in Paris, London, Tokyo. My taste will be unparalleled. I’ll leverage it and write an incredible insider account of the greatest art forgeries of all time. It’ll vault to the top of the best-seller list, and then Christie’s or Sotheby’s will woo me.
I’ll be the queen of the art world.
Ha. Take that, Hunter.
He’s not the only one with blue whale-sized dreams.
So it’s time to do exactly what he’s doing. Make a clean break. To do that, I need a bona fide, foolproof plan to move on from the man you maybe kinda thought might have been “the one.”
I pick up my phone and call my friend Truly. “What is the fastest, most efficient way to get over a guy?”
Her answer gets right to the point. “Archery. Want me to find you a class?”
“Yes.”
Six months later, I’m a markswoman. At the archery range in Soho, I draw back the string, poised. A half year of practice has shaped my arm into steel. With lasers in my eyes, I put the target in my crosshairs and let the arrow fly.
It hits the center of the target with a satisfying thwap.
“And that’s how you score a hole in one.” I blow on my fingernails.
“It’s actually a bull’s-eye,” Truly deadpans. “But sure, hole in one works.”
I shimmy my shoulders. “It feels like a hole in one.”
She smiles. “Oh-so-good?”
I stare at the ceiling of the indoor range, considering her question. “Yeah. I’d have to give it a ten on a scale of one to ten.”
She smiles her approval, tugging her brunette ponytail tighter. “And on that scale, how high do we rate the officially-over-the-ex factor?
“Ex? Who’s that?”
“Well done.” She tops the praise with a slow clap.
“Thank you. Thank you very much.” I take an exaggerated bow. “In fact, I don’t even remember his name.”
She pumps a fist. “Yes! I knew my crash course in moving on would work its magic.” She rubs her palms together, cackling like a witch. “Now, if we can just conjure a rebound man for you.”
I stare at her like she just proposed we shoot the rest of the arrows while blindfolded and standing on tiptoe. “I might be over him, but I’m not interested in a rebound.”
“Why not? Rebounds are fun.”
“I’m sure they are, but for now, I’m a woman on a mission, climbing the ladder. My boss loves what I’ve been doing with the collections. My goal is to work my butt off so I can nab a promotion in a year or two, and before you know it, I’ll take over at the Met.”
“Goals. Work it.”
“It’s a good thing I have zero distractions.”
She studies me intently, as if she’s going to make a pronouncement. “That means you’re at one hundred, then.”
I shoot her a quizzical look as I reach for another arrow. “One hundred for what?”
“On the one-to-ten scale for being over your ex. You made it to one hundred, girl, and the scale doesn’t even go that high.”
“I’m an overachiever.”
I work my way through the rest of the arrows. Some skid across the floor, some graze the edge of the target, and a few more land close to the center. All remind me that I’m over that man.
I take aim once more.
When I started archery, I used to think of him. I thought of our promises, of our non-promises, of the hope he gave me, of the hope he dashed.
Now that’s all in the past, exactly where that mountain man will stay.
I don’t even know where he is.
The North Pole? Chile? Siberia? Who knows? Who cares? He couldn’t even tell me. Top secret expedition, whatever.
With the way that man wants to explore the world, I’ll probably never see him again.
Except I do see him. I see him splashed all over the news the next month when he saves the life of a billionaire businessman during a blizzard in Antarctica. Some tech genius from India who wanted to climb the Seven Summits. That must be the man who hired him and swore him to secrecy.
I’m guessing Mr. Billionaire is pretty damn glad he nabbed Hunter for the expedition.
Even in spite of my desire to excise him from my life, I can’t stop watching the reports. I can’t turn away from the story of his bravery, how Hunter—a last-minute addition to the crew, the reports say—fearlessly saved this man’s life on a dangerous peak in a vicious, unexpected storm.
Call it luck, call it good fortune—call it the best hire of Vikas Winters’s life.
My heart squeezes, and my throat tightens, and I don’t want to feel this way. I don’t want to feel a damn thing.
I stop reading the reports. I turn off the news.
But that only works short-term.
Because that rescue catapults him to the spotlight. Within a few short years, the man who saved the billionaire philanthropist’s life becomes wildly famous, hosting an adventure series. And I have to see his stupidly handsome face on billboards and posters slapped up all over my city.
The insult of his obnoxious omnipresence, this modern-day Magellan with nerves of steel, smacks me square in the jaw one day when I walk into a bookstore to pick up a Valentine’s Day gift for my sister’s kids and spot in the front of the store a giant cardboard cutout, looking all square-jawed, intense, and scruffy-sexy, promoting shelf upon shelf of his brand-new hardcover. Seriously? The man leaves me a few days after our Valentine’s Day trip, and now the universe picks right before the same holiday to serve up his two-dimensional face here of all places?
I grit my teeth as I pick up a copy of the book, give it my best whatever eye roll, then set it down.
I’ll just do my book shopping online, thank you very much. Especially since my own book was never even carried in bookstores.
Sigh.
Thankfully, Hunter Armstrong fades into the background once more, where I can ignore his existence.
That is until the day I learn it won’t be a bookstore endcap or a five-story-tall Hunter staring at me, but s
omething much worse.
1
Hunter
Present day
* * *
My father used to say every man should own three things: a watch, a pocketknife, and a tuxedo.
I agreed with him on the first rule, since punctuality is key. As for a pocketknife, I don’t leave home without one. But a tux? Seems like a luxury.
Yet, at this moment, twenty-six thousand feet above Queenstown, New Zealand, I’m glad I listened to the old man. The penguin suit has come in quite handy during the last few years, and it looks damn good.
Who am I kidding? It looks fantastic, and the ladies will love it when I share these photos later today.
Correction: when my assistant shares the photos on my social media feed.
From my chair at the tiny dinner table suspended forty feet below a hot-air balloon, I slice another bite of the eye fillet of beef, then chase it with an asparagus tip. “I give it a B-plus,” I say to my dinner companion and good friend Trevor. Then I blink—I haven’t graded food in, well, ages.
“C’mon, man. I slaved over a hot stove to make this meal.”
I laugh, rolling my eyes. “As if you even cook anymore.”
“Hey, I cook when I have to,” Trevor remarks. “I.e., when we’re stuck in the wilds of some jungle and I have to roast bugs on a campfire or something.”
I point to the three-course meal prepared by a chef for our stunt. “But is this better than fire-roasted bug?”
“Now that you mention it, it is,” Trevor says dryly as he tucks into the chocolate mousse. “Even though, let’s be honest, it’s chilly AF up here.”
“Try igloo temperature. That’s colder than the South Pole.”
“And you would know.”
“You too.” Trevor’s been with me to the end of the world and back. When we finish—quickly, I might add, because freezing temperatures suck balls—we tug our oxygen masks back on.
After we do a little prep work, we’re ready to get the hell out of the sky. “Please fasten your seat belts, ladies. It’s now time for us to make our final descent,” I say in a smooth flight attendant tone.
“Let’s hope it’s not our final descent,” Trevor says.
“I’ll toast to that.” Especially since I had been damn sure a recent one was indeed going to be my last.
I signal to the pilot in the basket up above to pull up the table we dined on, then, with a silent thank you to Vikas Winters for giving me my first big chance, I shove away thoughts of that jump gone wrong.
There will always be imperfect jumps.
Today’s will be perfect, I decide.
I take the plunge, Trevor close behind.
Even after thousands of them, both as a paratrooper and as a civilian, it’s still exhilarating, this feeling of flying. I hurtle toward what looks like Middle-earth, savoring the mountains and lush hills as best I can with the ground rushing toward me at two hundred feet per second. But skydiving engages both your mind and your emotions—as you careen to the face of the earth at rocket speeds, cheating death, you have both zero time to think and all the time to ponder.
Mostly I feel as I hurl to the ground.
But once again, my mind drifts to regrets.
Really, I have none. I don’t believe in regrets. I’m doing exactly what I should be doing. What I want to be doing, and what I promised my dad I would do. And I’m damn glad Vik hired me ten years ago and swore me to secrecy about his attempt to scale the Seven Summits to raise money for pediatric cancer research, then smashed his fundraising goals when he nearly died.
Almost-death was quite good to my first benefactor.
And for me as well, it turns out.
But somewhere around five thousand feet, a different image fills my vision. Crystal-blue eyes, a wicked smile, a constellation of freckles.
I haven’t thought of her since . . . well, since one of my last prep jumps.
What the hell?
Maybe it’s because I graded a meal up there, and that was our thing. Not because I have regrets, not because she’s been shoving her way to the front of my mind. Not because I wish I had done things differently. Regrets are for other guys. I’ve lived a life without regret, and I plan to keep doing so.
If I’d stayed with her, I wouldn’t be here, setting a world record for the highest altitude dinner party.
At twenty-five hundred feet, I engage the parachute. It opens, mercifully, and then . . .
I float.
Ah, this is the icing, the cherry on top, as I drift down, down, down, drinking in the mountains, the water, and the lush landscape below me.
I land safely, my knees bearing the impact as my feet hit the ground. As they do, I salute my father, who’s somewhere up above. Moments later, my companion in all my adventures across the globe makes landfall too. I shake Trevor’s hand, and we smile for the waiting cameras.
Even though high-altitude fine dining isn’t the usual type of survivalist strategy we feature on Man Against the Elements, it’ll be great fare for one of our many specials. Those are softer shows where we execute stunts or raise money for charity using our show’s reach to spread the word.
When the photos are done, I find the woman who runs the fallen soldier charity we raised money for with the dinner and the jump.
“Thanks so much for your work setting this up,” I tell her. “I hope it did its job. And I don’t mean advertising the glamour of sky-high dinner parties.”
“You never know,” she laughs. “The hot-air balloon business in Queenstown might have a run-up in bookings. But seriously, this is going to raise awareness tremendously.”
“It’s the least I can do.”
Trevor and I head toward the car. We have a busy day of debriefs tomorrow as we plan for the next and final episode of this season, where the crew will drop me near a raging river and I’ll have to ford the rapids and then scale down a waterfall.
Before I reach the vehicle, my assistant races over.
Cammi is as perky as ever, her bright, cheery voice calling, “Great work today. Guinness has all the details, so you should be breaking Bear’s record by more than two thousand feet.”
“Bear Grylls?” I ask casually, as if I don’t know exactly whose record we just destroyed.
“Yeah, ever heard of him?” she teases.
“Hmm.” I scratch my jaw. “Not sure. It vaguely rings a bell.”
“Don’t worry. Your name will be more famous than his soon.”
“Soon?” Trevor asks, cutting in. “I’d say already.”
“And for that, I’ll keep you on payroll.”
He rolls his eyes, dragging a hand through his light hair. “You’re lucky I stay with you.”
“I am. Every man needs a sidekick.”
He flips me the bird, and we both laugh as Cammi reroutes the conversation. “I also wanted to let you know that you just had a phone call from someone named Daniel Highsmith. He said he has a project to discuss with you.”
“No idea who he is.”
Cammi clears her throat. “He thought you might say that, which is why he mentioned pretty early on that your mother said he should call.”
I jerk my gaze back to Cammi. “My mother?”
“Apparently she recommended you for something.”
“For a project?”
Trevor nudges me. “How very unusual of Mama Armstrong to get involved.”
“Yeah, what a shock.” This is the woman who will email the show’s producers with episode suggestions like, What if we showed Hunter having to survive a day at a spa? What if we showed him trying to survive teaching kindergarten? How about he tries to last for a full day of Black Friday shopping? That’s some kind of challenge.
Cammi laughs. “He said he has an opportunity he thinks you’ll be keen on. Do you want me to set up a time to speak with him?”
“Does the opportunity involve my mother trying to get me to lead a story time at the local library?”
“My vote is yes,” Tre
vor says dryly.
“Probably,” Cammi says with a shrug, shooting a smile at both of us.
“Send me his info,” I tell her.
That night at the hotel, I look up Daniel Highsmith, since my curiosity’s been piqued.
I learn about his auction house, the range of collections he’s curated over the years, and his background as a former professor of art and architecture at Brown University. He’s no slouch, even though his business seems to be riding more on its past than its present. But that doesn’t bother me, since his past is damn impressive.
I click on another page of search results, and I blink when I see the top photo.
Is that . . .?
Am I seeing . . . people?
My chest clenches at the sight of the woman next to him. Those eyes. The freckles. Those lips I once knew so well.
Regrets are for other guys.
In a heartbeat, I grab the phone.
2
Presley
The email lures me with its exclamation point.
It hints that this message contains such exciting news it demands the most exuberant choice in punctuation.
Re: The Forgers News!
Sitting up in bed, I take a deep breath, eager to see what delights await me from my publisher on a Monday morning.
I click open the email.
* * *
Dear Presley,
* * *
I hope this email finds you well. Attached you will find a letter regarding the remaindering – i.e. disposing of – the hardcover of THE FORGERS. We will be sending you a set of forty copies. If you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to ask. As set forth in the original agreement, we would also like to extend to you a onetime offer to purchase additional copies at the cost of $1.61 per copy, which does not include shipping. If you wish to place an order, please call our customer service department.
P.S. It’s Always Been You: A Second Chance Romance Page 2