Chapter One
Cole
(Present Day)
When I was a kid, the mountains that closed in around our small town seemed to touch the sky.
But now, as I looked at them from the back of my hired car, they seemed as small as anthills.
I blinked, convinced I was seeing them wrong. The memory I held of my hometown was as clear as crystal, but now that I was back, there was a tug of war in my head, a battle between my memories and the realities that faced me. “Were they always that tiny?” I wondered out loud.
The divider slid down. “What was that, sir?” the driver asked.
“Nothing,” I sighed, sitting back on the sumptuous leather. Then I leaned forward again. “Do those mountains look big to you?” I needed to know if I was going crazy or not.
“Mountains, sir?”
“The mountains!” I gestured at the snow-covered landscape. Flakes danced in the air, swirling thick and fast. Though the sun still glimmered through patches in the dark clouds, I could feel the heaviness in the air. This was going to be a bad storm. “Those mountains, you see? All around us?”
Reckless Falls, New York was a reliable provider of white Christmases, and this year proved to be no exception. It was Christmas Eve, and the ground already had a good eight inches on it. Up in the mountains-turned-hills, it was probably a foot deep already, and the snow hung thick on the branches of the pines, making each tree look like it was dressed up for the holidays. The thought made me smile with unexpected nostalgia. There was nothing quite like my hometown to get you in the Christmas spirit.
The driver stopped at a red light in the center of town and looked out of his window. “Mountains sir? I see some hills, sir. Over there? And there also, right? Is that what you’re wondering?”
Hills. They were as small as they seemed then.
Something inside of me deflated and I felt a flutter of something unfamiliar in my stomach. I didn’t recognize it because I’d never felt it before, but at the same time, I started wondering...
Was I wrong?
Of course not. I’m never wrong.
“Hills. Of course,” I sighed. “Those are definitely hills. No question.”
That the mountains were small was only one disappointment. There was also the matter of there being absolutely no one out and about to see me arrive in this top-of-the-line car with my company-provided driver. Yeah sure, I didn’t really believe that there would be crowds out on the sidewalk, waving flags to greet the return of their hometown hero. That kind of shit doesn’t happen in real life. Unless you’re coming home from war. And while the corner office sometimes felt like a war zone, the fact was, my life was nothing people rolled out parades to honor.
On the other hand, though, my homecoming was probably the most important event this town had seen in months. Possibly years. Maybe just a banner across Main Street, “Welcome to Reckless Falls, Birthplace of Cole Granger.”
I’m not picky. That would have been enough. That would have been acceptable. I couldn’t help looking out the window. Just to check.
“Shit, they knocked down the IGA?”
“The what sir?”
I had no idea why I was so exasperated. “The old grocery store,” I barked.
“Sir, I’ve never been here before in my life.”
I leaned back in my seat. “Course not.” I settled in and pulled out my phone, busying myself with emails from the office to distract from the worryingly unfamiliar town that rolled by the windows. The little flutters of misgiving in my stomach became more intense. When the parcel of lakefront opened up, I convinced my board to let me handle the negotiations. After all, I knew this town. Crotchety old Mr. Melton would deal better with a hometown hero than he would with a stuffed suit from the city.
Never mind that I’d also become a stuffed suit from the city. Somehow. Not really sure how that happened.
Was I wrong about this deal? I couldn’t be wrong. I staked my reputation at the firm as some kind of real estate wunderkind. Cole Granger had an animal’s instinct when it came to sniffing out undervalued properties for development. At the Ledgerwood Properties Group, the New York City firm I had belonged to since I graduated with top marks from the Wharton Business School, I had been pushing to lay claim to properties upstate. The New York City real estate market was so overvalued, it was next to impossible to turn big profits. Big profits meant big bonuses, and I needed those bonuses to fund the lifestyle I had grown accustomed to.
When the Melton property came up for sale, I jumped on it. It was perfect, undeveloped waterfront in a growing vacation hotspot. Reckless Falls was already undergoing yuppification, moving from a low-key family vacation spot to sporting million dollar properties along the southern end of the lake. Melton’s Marina and Repairs was one of the last big pieces of waterfront left. Split it into parcels for condos and retail and we’d make a fortune. I truly believed that when I was sitting in my Manhattan office, dreaming about the deal.
“Let me handle this,” I told the board, smiling the megawatt smile that sealed all of my deals. “Listen, I went to high school with Mr. Melton’s granddaughter,” I told them, neglected follow up with exactly what my relationship was to Mr. Melton’s granddaughter. “He’ll remember me,” I said instead. And when it turned out that the old man had demurred, asking if he could send a family representative instead, I knew for certain that I was a shoo-in. “I’m a local, I know how these people work,” I encouraged the board. “Just send me upstate and I’ll take care of everything.”
The stuffy, white-haired board members had looked confused — collectively befuddled by the idea of moving their investments outside of Manhattan — but ultimately decided that I was right. So they voted to let the new guy, the kid as they called me, take care of this deal. If it went well, I could be start building a whole portfolio of properties. I started designing my business card in my head right then and there, Cole Granger, Director of Upstate Opportunity. I shook their hands and promised them there was a whole world out there, off their little neon island. A world that was ripe for exploiting.
Did I say exploiting? I meant improving.
And now here I was. Heading home for the holidays. I’d shake a few hands, slap a few backs and remind everyone how much they’d missed having me around. Stop by and see my brother, who still stubbornly stayed here, acting as caretaker for our family home even though our parents had fled to their Florida retirement home last year. Maybe hang around, see if I could get myself invited to a few Christmas parties. I knew Mr. Melton well enough to know that he wouldn’t take kindly to me just showing up at his front door out of the blue. But if I came home for the holidays and just happened to have time to talk business? There’s no way he could say no.
I leaned back in my seat again, feeling quite pleased with my plan. Getting Earl Melton to sign on the dotted line would be the best Christmas present I could ask for.
And then when we were finished and were sharing a celebratory beer, then maybe I could ask about Autumn.
Autumn.
Just thinking about Autumn Melton made the flutter in my stomach ramp up to an earthquake. She looked just like her name, all red hair and orange-y freckles, her bright blue eyes as clear as an October sky. And she was just as fiery too.
In the eight years since I left this town, I’d lived my life with no regrets. But that was because I had left my biggest regret back here, in Reckless Falls.
I was eighteen and stupid. So fucking far up my own ass about being the first in my family to go to college that I let my ego get in the way of love.
Autumn had too much dignity to beg me to stay. She waited for me to choose her.
And when I didn’t, she didn’t let me see her cry.
It was only by chance that I looked back and saw her eyes filling with tears and I’ve carried that picture in my head every day since.
I wonder if she still hates me.
Fuck it, I still hate myself.
Yeah, it would be a fucking mistake to track down Autumn. She probably left here a long time ago too. I never heard from her again after that day, so for all I knew, she’d joined the Peace Corps or maybe was doing that Teach For America thing she’d talked about.
I hoped she was okay.
I hoped she was happy.
But maybe it’d be best if I didn’t ask about her. There was no reason to open up that old wound. I was here for business, not pleasure. Although, if I needed pleasure there was always Brynn Reese, the pretty wild child with the flowers in her hair and loose attitudes about nudity and sex. She’d always been properly impressed with me and she probably still worked at her dad’s bar...
“Wait, stop here, please,” I called, purposefully derailing that train of thought with a sudden realization. “I need to run in to the liquor store.”
“Stop where, exactly, sir?”
I looked out the window. “Wait, isn’t Lolly’s Liquor Barn right there?”
“I see no barn, sir.”
“Shit. Did they knock it down?”
“Appears that way, sir.”
“Well, where the hell am I going to buy a bottle of something to help me deal with my brother?”
“I have no idea sir, I have never been here before,” he repeated. “There appears to be a convenience store up on the right.”
“Yeah, that’ll have to do. Fuck, nothing else is open? Christ, I forgot what a sleepy little shithole this place turns into in the winter.”
“Yes sir,” the driver replied. I couldn’t be certain if he was agreeing with my plan or with my assessment of Reckless Falls. I bristled at the thought that it might be the latter. I was allowed to make fun of this place. But no one else was.
“I’ll pull in here, sir.”
“Thanks... uh...”
“Langley, sir.”
This man had been driving me for the past six hours, but I only thought to ask his name now. I wondered why I noticed that and I wondered why it bothered me. It wouldn’t have back home in New York. “Want me to grab you anything, Langley?” I asked, hardly believing the words coming out of my mouth.
Langley looked like I had asked him if I should drop my pants and go running through the town square. “No, sir. I’m fine sir.” His eyes darted up to meet mine. “But thank you, sir.”
“Yeah, no problem,” I grunted as he opened the door for me and some weird little instinct made me duck my head just in case someone was driving by and saw me in some fancy-ass car. All the rest of the cars in the lot, all two of them, were modest sedans with snow tires and spots of rust around the wheel wells. I felt a tinge of embarrassment over my shiny luxury car.
Another thing I would never worry about in the city. There I wanted to be seen. I had an image of success to maintain and, as exhausting as it was, image was everything.
I inhaled sharply, taking in the smells of wood smoke and pine — the smells of my home in winter — before I shook my head to clear it and headed into the store.