Channel 20 Something (28 page)

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The 20 SOMETHING series continues in Book 2, STILL YOURS. Out September 2014. Book 3, STILL ME, is due in October 2014. Details forthcoming on
Amy’s website
and in her
newsletter
.

In Book 2 of the 20 SOMETHING series, STILL YOURS, you’ll experience Mara’s story. Here’s a sneak peek:

Twenty-two-year-old Mara Neely knows who she is and what she wants—she’s an ambitious young TV news reporter with a taste for himbos—beautiful dumb guys who don’t even tempt her to get involved past wham-bam-thank you-sir. When she takes a new reporting job in Providence, it’s a great step up career wise, but it’s also a little too close to home… and to him, the only guy who’s ever tempted her to let go and love someone.

To billionaire web entrepreneur Reid Mancini, Mara was like a rare comet— beautiful, exciting, and impossible to hold onto. Now she’s on his television screen and back in his life, and this time, he’s got a surefire plan to catch a star and make her fall.

Read on for the first chapter of STILL YOURS…

They say this is the time of our lives for figuring things out, and I guess that’s true. I have figured out a few things in the year since I graduated from college: pink lipstick looks like clown makeup on TV, the one thing guys can’t resist is a girl who doesn’t want them, and you never truly get over your first love.

It was impossible
not
to have thoughts of Reid Mancini now that I was back in Rhode Island. In the five years I’d been gone, he’d proven he was not someone to be overlooked, taken lightly, or easily left behind.

“Can that Senator Wolfe talk or what?” Sheldon asked across the small pizza parlor table. “Did you see that Mancini dude’s face? Why’d they even ask him to talk at the State House if Wolfe never shut up to let him get a word in?”

“I don’t know,” I mumbled, watching my favorite photographer inhale the last few bites of his lunch. I really didn’t want to talk about Reid’s face. Or his body—long and lean and powerful in the perfectly-fitted, obviously expensive suit he’d worn during the legislative hearing this morning.

Our news director had assigned us to do a package on the hearing for the six and eleven p.m. newscasts. Its purpose was to advise the lawmakers about policy changes that might attract more businesses to set up shop in our tiny state, and as one of Rhode Island’s shining stars of industry, Reid had been invited to share his input.

The press releases had started flying fast and furious as soon as the reclusive internet entrepreneur had agreed to speak at the hearing. All four stations in Providence and seemingly every newspaper in the state had responded by sending crews to cover the rare event. A couple of Boston TV crews had made the hour drive, too, just to get a glimpse of the creator of the web’s hottest social media site, StillYours.com.

“I mean, the guy
never
talks on-camera,” Sheldon continued, making the enthusiastic hand gestures he couldn’t seem to speak without. “That was our best chance at a sound bite. And you know all Rob is gonna want in the package tonight is words of wisdom from the Tech Titan. I’m gonna have to scroll through about two hours of
blah blah blah
from the senator to get to the good stuff.” He leaned back in his chair, satisfied with his enormous lunch, and wiped his fingers on a paper napkin before balling it up and tossing it onto the red-and-white-checkered tablecloth.

“I can edit it, if you want,” I offered.

“Dude—would you? I have two more shoots today before I could even start editing. That would be awesome.”

“No problem,” I said. The two of us gathered our paper plates and greasy napkins and stood, preparing to leave the mom-and-pop restaurant and get back to work. I snatched the ticket off the table before Sheldon could reach it.

“No, Mara. Come on. I think I owe you, like, four lunches by now.” But he was smiling.

“No. I owe
you
. Do you have any idea how great it is to go out on stories and not be the reporter
and
the photog? You make my job easy. Besides, I’m a
rich
reporter.” I winked at him, and we both laughed at the absurdity of my statement. “And you’ve got a wife and three kids. All I’ve got is me.”

He made another attempt to grab the ticket, which I hid behind my back. “You can get the next one,” I said.

Sheldon sighed and threw his hands up in defeat. “Okay. Thanks. Did I ever mention you’re my favorite reporter?”

“Maybe a couple of times.” I grinned at him. “When your belly was nice and full.”

Sheldon looked up, over my head toward the front of the pizza joint. The smile on his bearded face grew wider. “You are not gonna believe who just walked in.”

I whipped around to see the front door, and all the air left my lungs in an audible whoosh. Reid Mancini. I turned back to Sheldon, my body stiff and suddenly chilled.

He was still looking in Reid’s direction. “I can’t believe a billionaire would come to Uncle Tony’s Pizza for lunch. Shouldn’t he be at, like, Capriccio or something?” he said, referring to a swanky high-dollar restaurant on the river near the city’s financial district.

I scanned the restaurant’s rear wall “Do you think there’s a back door to this place?”

Sheldon finally looked down at me. “Why? We should go talk to Mancini—maybe he’ll give us a sound bite about the hearing. It would be a total scoop. Rob will love us.”

My entire body clenched at the thought of walking over and speaking to Reid. I may have even winced. “I promise you—he
won’t
talk to us.”

“Yeah, well I know he doesn’t do interviews, but—” Sheldon’s eyes narrowed as he studied my face. “Hey, what’s the deal? You know him?”

I nodded, my lips tight. “We went to high school together. I can’t talk to him, Shel.”

“Okay… so I take it you weren’t friends.” His usually-jovial face contracted into a scowl, and the volume of his voice rose with his suspicion. “Wait—did he do something to you?” Sheldon’s spine straightened and his shoulders went back as he looked behind me again.

I grabbed his arm and whispered. “No. No. Keep it down, okay? I did something to
him
. And I
really
don’t want to see him any closer than from across the chamber of the State House.”

Now Sheldon’s face relaxed into his usual easy smile. “Oh, I get it. You broke his heart, didn’t you?” His tone took on a tint of admiration. “My little Mara—melts the legendary Ice Man and then leaves him cold.”

“Don’t tell anyone, okay?” I pleaded. “And get me out of here. Maybe if I walk behind you, he won’t see me?”

Sheldon shook his head, beaming. “So you want me to be your blocker? I gotta say I’m surprised to see this side of you. The fearless reporter, afraid to face her high school sweetheart.” At my murderous glare, Sheldon laughed and then pulled me behind his body. “Okay, Chicken Shit. But you can’t hide from him forever. Not in the smallest state in the nation.”

As Sheldon walked toward the front door, I shadowed him, staying close and trying not to step on his heels. I wasn’t sure where Reid had chosen to sit, and I didn’t want to know. I kept my eyes trained on Sheldon’s back like a greyhound after a mechanical rabbit.

“Mara?” A voice from my past, as familiar to me as my own, came from the side, near the service counter.

Crap
. He hadn’t taken a table after all, but stood near the counter with a white to-go bag in his hand. And he was looking right at me.

Sheldon stopped. I ran into his wide back then stumbled backward a couple of steps, dropping my purse and reporter notebook. I watched my belongings crash to the floor. Then I looked up again.
Oh crap.

There he was, Reid Mancini, right in front of me and far more beautiful than my memory or imagination had been able to grasp. In the five years since we’d last stood face-to-face, he’d changed. He still looked like
him
, wavy brown hair, Carribean blue eyes you could drown in, tall and athletic in that lean tennis player kind of way. But the years had sculpted intriguing new differences.

The youthful lankiness of his body had been replaced with a broader, thicker masculinity. All the boyish softness of his teenaged face had disappeared and left behind the more angular features of a full-grown man. The beautifully-shaped lips that had long-ago kissed me and driven me crazy were now set in a grim line, matched by the faint lines that whisked out from the sides of his narrowed eyelids as he studied me.

“Hi… Reid,” I wheezed like someone in the middle of an asthma crisis.

“You dropped your…” He motioned toward the assortment of cosmetics and personal items pooled at my feet.

“Yes.” I nodded then finally yanked myself out of shock and into action as he dropped to one knee on the dirty floor of the pizza place in his designer suit. It had probably cost more than I’d earn this year. “No! No—I’ll get it.” I tried to wave him off. “You’ll get yourself … dirty.”

Reid ignored my protests and began to gather my things with his free hand. Oh, those hands. I’d always loved them. I’d studied them for what seemed like hours as a lovesick teenaged girl, running my fingers over the sun-browned skin, so much rougher than mine, admiring the raised veins running across the back and the well-developed muscle between his thumb and pointer finger. Not to mention what he’d done to me with those hands.
Crapcrapcrap.
Get it together, Mara.

He held the items out to me, and I snatched them with a breathless “Thank you”. Then Reid picked up my notebook and rose to his feet.

“You’re welcome. As you may have heard, I’m not above getting a little dirty when it’s called for.” He grinned at the reference to his reputation as a ruthless business competitor.

Several social media sites had tried to compete with StillYours.com, and he’d methodically defeated them, driving them out of the lost-love-reunited business one by one. Now his site claimed the distinction of having more than a billion registered users around the world. Apparently, reconnecting with former sweethearts was big business.

Reid did not immediately give the notebook back to me, but glanced down at what I’d written during the hearing. At what I’d written about him.

“Serious, soft-spoken, reserved,” He handed the pad to me with a quiet huff of a laugh. “You forgot cocky, aloof, and arrogant. Isn’t that what they usually write about me?”

“You’re not
that
arrogant,” I offered, eliciting a bigger grin from him. “I mean… sometimes people misunderstand quietness to mean…” My voice drifted off into awkward silence as I stared at his bemused expression.

“Yes. Well, thank you for the benefit of the doubt, I guess.”

I probably should have offered some sort of glib response, but my mind refused to produce anything other than a sort of confused awe at the reality of being so close to him again.

It was an experience I’d never expected to have. In fact, I had taken great precautions to ensure it would never happen, insisting on staying in during my rare visits home from college, and even asking that Mom fly to see me in Mississippi where I’d worked this past year instead of my coming here, where there was a slight risk of running into Reid at the airport.

As we stared at each other, the silence lengthened uncomfortably until Sheldon, whose existence I’d completely forgotten in the past three minutes, spoke up.

“Sheldon Santos.” He extended a beefy hand toward Reid. “It’s nice to meet you, Mr. Mancini.”

“Call me Reid.” My ex-boyfriend set his food bag on a nearby table and clasped Sheldon’s hand firmly. He gave him a cautious smile and glanced warily at the camera slung over Sheldon’s shoulder. “That thing’s not loaded is it?”

Sheldon’s face took on an affronted frown. “No, man. I wouldn’t do that. No legitimate photog would shoot you when you weren’t aware of it.”

Reid lifted a dark brow. “You’d be surprised what people would do with the right amount of motivation. I hear there’s a pretty good price on my head these days.”

“Forget what I said about not being arrogant,” I said, tilting my chin up to him and arching a brow.

Reid’s face broke out into a real smile, reminiscent of the ones he’d worn almost perpetually when we were younger. He gave me a deferential nod. “Well, naturally, I wasn’t suggesting that
you
wanted anything from me. I believe you made your position on that quite clear, Miss Neely. It is still Miss, isn’t it?”

“Yes. And I understand you’re single as well. How is it that the world’s most successful matchmaker is still alone?”

Reid’s refusal to do interviews combined with his immense wealth and celebrity-level good looks had caused the national media to pursue him relentlessly. And the fact that he was famously hard-to-get only fanned the flames—among the press and among women of all ages. My own friends had made lecherous comments about him whenever a long-distance lens managed to capture his shirtless image on a private beach or his tuxedoed form at some hoity-toity high-dollar charity event.

Reid smirked in response to my question. “Well, as you know, my business is devoted to
reuniting
true loves. And one must have
had
one of those to be reunited with one. So, I’m afraid it’s not of much use to me personally.” He gave a slight head nod and lifted his to-go bag from the table. His voice took on the same formal tone he’d used this morning with the legislators on the finance committee. “Sheldon, nice to have met you. Mara—welcome home. I’m sure we’ll run into each other from time to time professionally.”

And then Reid walked past us out the front door.

“Not if I can help it,” I muttered to myself, my face still burning from the casual insult he’d delivered in that nothing-personal tone of his.

“Well—that was interesting.” Sheldon blew out a loud breath. “I can see why you broke up with him. That guy’s kind of an ass.”