“The winner of the New Entrepreneur of the Year award is… Trent Walker of Walker Accounting Services!”Applause rang out across the room at the MCs words. Trent stood and buttoned his jacket, making his way the few steps to the podium, imagining the clapping was as much for the fact that his award was the last one of the evening and everyone would be able to get the hell out of there as soon as he finished speaking. He didn’t plan to talk for long.            A beautiful woman in

Trent was asleep when Bree snuck into the bedroom. She could tell he had been exhausted when he’d gotten home because his suit was haphazardly tossed on the end of the bed and not hung on a hanger and placed in the “to be dry cleaned” section of his closet. She smiled and picked up his jacket, holding it up in hopes of catching a whiff of his cologne. It was there, but so was a faint scent of floral perfume. Assuming that had to be because Celia had been next to him all night long, Bree put the jacket down and tried not to be upset. Who knows whose cologne might be on her? She’d hugged every male member of her band that night--and some stage hands--and Hank. Deciding she was being silly, she headed into the bathroom to take a shower. Regardless of whose cologne may have collected on her, she definitely smelled of cigarette smoke and

They made it home. The trip had been excruciating, neither of them saying anything at all to one another, not a single word. It was as if they each understood the other’s position; I know there’s going to be shouting, and that doesn’t mix well with driving. As soon as she walked in the door, Bree slipped her heels off of her tired feet and sat down on the couch.            Trent hung his keys by the door and slumped into the chair next to her, his fingernails biting into the armrests. As Bree tried to decide how to phrase her first question, he said quietly, “I didn’t want to upset you.”

Bree sat down on her stool in the practice room and took a sip of her coffee, her eyes trained on the lyrics of the song they’d be going over next. It was a new one, something she’d written a few weeks ago and brought in for the rest of the band to collaborate on. She was really liking the way it was coming along. Every time they played the melody, they made a little more progress on getting the tune together. With some luck and determination, by the time they got ready to cut their new record, the song could be included. She thought it was going to be something special, along the lines of “Meant to Marry Me” and “Lead Me Home.”         

“This is a horrible idea. The worst one ever. In the entire history of the world, I cannot imagine one idea worse than this one.” Celia sat across from Trent in his office, her arms folded, her legs crossed, her face puckered.At the moment, he couldn’t even allow himself to snicker at her exaggeration. While he agreed that what he was about to do was a terrible idea, he could think of lots of other ideas that were worse, many of them involving wars that had killed thousands or millions of people. Or spread disease. Or polluted the environment. But she was right--of all of the decisions he’d been directly involved in, this one was pretty awful.