Greer MAY 22, 2011

I KNOW I DON’T HAVE time to date is sort of the refrain of my journal. But it isn’t an excuse, like my mother says it is. It honestly isn’t. It’s just that my life is so full right now.

But today was different. Today changed everything. I’m in Manhattan for the week to help Daddy, and I was rushing from a meeting in SoHo all the way back to Michael’s for lunch with a publisher who was interested in my writing a memoir. Me! I mean, I’m twenty-seven years old. What do I know?

I figured they wanted a McCann family exposé, which is laughable. If I’m not going to grant an interview—which I never have—I’m obviously not going to write a book about all my deep, dark family secrets. But that’s not the point.

The point is that I was running late, my driver was stuck in traffic, and I grabbed a cab. I paid the driver, dashed out, and a full half hour later I realized I’d left my phone in the back seat. My stomach sank. With thousands of cabs all around this city, how would I even attempt to find it? I was trying to focus on what the young, fresh-faced, and slightly nervous editor was saying about spreading my message of female empowerment and greater good to the world—I liked that a lot, by the way; I might have been wrong about the family exposé thing—and all I could think about was my missing phone. I was going to have to spend my afternoon going to the Verizon store, waiting in line forever, shutting my old phone off, getting a new one.

But I needed to be at a family foundation meeting that afternoon. I had some pet projects that I wanted to be funded this quarter, and they wouldn’t get done if I wasn’t there.

Even though I’m usually levelheaded, I could feel myself begin to panic, mostly because my phone was the keeper of everything. What if all my numbers weren’t backed up on the Cloud? What if I lost pictures and messages? What if someone found my phone, hacked into it, and stole my identity? I was about to say, I’m so sorry. I’m going to have to run, when I felt a tap on my shoulder.

I turned around and there was a man standing over me, the light from the plate-glass window streaming behind him, making his handsome face radiant and otherworldly. He was tall but not too tall, with sandy blond hair that was tousled but not sloppy. Blue eyes twinkling, he smiled at me with the straightest, whitest row of teeth.

I stood up, though I’m not sure why, and he said, “I think this might belong to you,” in the most swoon-worthy Southern drawl I’d ever heard.

I was so relieved I threw my arms around his neck and said something super cheesy and embarrassing like, “Chivalry is not dead! Knights in shining armor do exist.”

He smiled, showing off this adorable cleft in his chin and saying that his mother raised him right.

“She did,” I whispered, forgetting that I was in a restaurant, that I was supposed to be talking about a book. “Wait, how did you find me?” I asked. This was great but also probably some sort of major security breach I couldn’t let happen again.

“Your dad called, I answered, and he told me where you were.” He grinned again. “Nice guy.”

“Let me buy you a drink to thank you,” I said impulsively, suddenly feeling something I never felt: shy.

He shook his head. “How about I buy you dinner to thank you?”

“Thank me? For what?”

“For leaving your phone in that cab so I’d have to come find you.”

His name is Parker Thaysden. He is from North Carolina, which my mother will absolutely despise. He went to Princeton, and he’s brilliant, but he doesn’t know it. He’s in marketing, which my father will love. Now I’m looking at my watch every five minutes waiting for him to call. I can’t even think straight. And I’m dreading getting on that plane back to Palm Beach tomorrow because Parker isn’t in Palm Beach. I’m already figuring out how I can work in New York more and he can take long weekends in Florida. And, just like that, maybe I have time to date after all.