Scent of a Woman

"YOU'D HAVE TO CASTRATE me before I'd spend the week on board a snobby cruise ship with a bunch of prissy perfume lovers," Adam Burns barked into the cell phone he thought he'd turned off the night before. Sun pierced the blinds of his luxury hotel room even though the hands on his old-fashioned alarm clock showed the time to be six-fifteen in the morning. Since moving their corporate headquarters to New York from Los Angeles two years ago, his family had rented half the penthouse floor of a midtown hotel for living quarters. His younger brotherAdam's co-vice president at Burns Inc.had a suite three doors down. Despite their physical proximity, Joe had woken him with a phone call demanding Adam take his place on a cruise halfway around the world. "Castration is going to be a real possibility if you don't haul your ass out of bed and get on that plane. I can't go and Prestige Scents damn well needs a representative onAlexandra's Dream." Joe, the smoothtalking one in the family, had been scheduled to fly to Athens this morning for a fragrance conference on board a luxury Mediterranean cruise liner. "I spent last night in the ER by myself nursing broken ribs after a Jet Ski accident. Neither you nor dad picked up your freaking phones." Ah, Adam thought. Maybe his cell phone had been turned off last night. He must have switched it back on when he plugged it in to charge. Guilt pricked his conscience straight through his hangover as he pried his eyes the rest of the way open. A half-eaten room-service tray lingered by the couch while a handful of coffee cups remained on the cocktail table around an overhead projector he'd brought in yesterday afternoon for an impromptu meeting. He had to quit this breakneck pace. He didn't mind the business, but his personal life was such a disaster he'd been ducking all his cell calls for the past month. "How many ribs did you say were broken?" Head still swimming from a friend's bachelor party the night before, Adam regretted staying out so late. What right did he have to toast the guy's upcoming nuptials when he wasn't even sure he believed in marriage? Long-term romantic commitments were too fragile to withstand real life in his opinion, which was why he limited himself to women who were looking for the same no-strings relationships. Or at least, that's what he used to do when he had time. Lately he'd been working fifteen hours a day to keep his father's vast network of business interests afloat. On the rare chances he had for some R and R, he pursued fun with as much ambition as he pursued a fat bottom line. He'd been in relative hiding for the past couple of months to duck a persistent female, so he'd jumped at the chance for the all-male company of the bachelor party. Hell, he'd gone to school on a football scholarship. Darts and pool were his idea of a good time. "Three ribs," Joe repeated for emphasis, clearly annoyed at his brother's slow mental processing. "But the busted leg and the painkillers are the more pressing reasons why I'm not getting on that plane today and you are. Your Jet Ski female admirer is a maniac on the water, bro. I'm not standing in for you with her ever again, no matter how important she is to the company." Adam didn't argue the point. He'd been trying to duck the up-and-coming actress for months after she'd gotten the wrong idea about their relationship, but the situation was sticky, since she was the face of Prestige's newest perfume. "You still there, Adam? I'm faxing you over my notes on our goals for this cruise. There's a major Dubai-based retail account up for grabs that you need to secure before Dad retires and sends all the Burns Inc. companies into a tailspin." It had been a running theme for the past six months: get their businesses in order before their father retired. Jack Burns might overcommit himself in every area of his lifesometimes to the dRock, Joanne is the author of 'Scent of a Woman ', published 2007 under ISBN 9780373389612 and ISBN 0373389612.