What's Left of Her by Mary Campisi

Playboy’s College Search during her sophomore year, selected for September issue. Favorite color, pale pink. Favorite food, McDonald’s French fries dipped in a chocolate milkshake. Gag!
    And then there was the other reason, the one even she didn’t like to think about. What if she told Uncle Walter the truth and he didn’t fire Eric? What if he decided Eric’s little indiscretion shouldn’t interfere with the company, and continued on as though nothing had happened? Uncle Walter loved her even though he never said it. But the company was his whole life and she did not want to be pitted against it for his allegiance, mostly because deep down, she feared she might lose.
    So she pretended her divorce fell under the blanket of ‘irreconcilable differences’ ranging from I didn’t like the way he squeezed the toothpaste to marriage was too intimate a relationship for me.
    “Alex?”
    “What?” She looked up, pushed the past away. “What?”
    He was studying her, his blue eyes intent behind his glasses. “I know I screwed up, but I’m not giving up on us. I won’t quit until I have you back.”
    “Eric—”
    A knock on the door cut her off. Walter Eugene Chamberlain, CEO of WEC Management, poked his head in and said, “Well, should I call Armand and tell him to chill the champagne?”
    “Tell him two bottles,” Eric said, grinning.
    “He agreed to everything?”
    “Yes,” Alex said, avoiding Eric’s gaze. Her uncle wasn’t interested in anything as inconsequential as an old man’s sentimental fondness for a tree.
    “Good. Very good.” He smiled, a sliver of upturned lips, and settled himself in the chair next to Eric. “This is going to be a phenomenal addition to Krystal Springs.”
    “Preliminary projections indicate revenue will almost double once the ski lodge is in place,” Alex said. “Krystal Springs could be our most profitable venture yet.”
    Her uncle’s smile spread, bit by bit. Talk about development and rate of return could do that to him. When he smiled, which wasn’t often, his thin lips pulled across his face in a slow, calculated manner, as though at sixty-four years of age, he still wasn’t comfortable with the exercise. He was a handsome man, his skin golden from hours spent on the green, his pale blue eyes sharp, his silver hair neat and tapered from weekly trims, his nose long and straight, his body, tall and erect. Walter Chamberlain was like a father to Alex, fitting the role with more ease and right than her real father, who, with each passing year became less reality and more of a scattered memory, torn with gaping holes. She had nothing, not even a picture to remember him or her mother by. Only memories that faded and an old chipped mirror they’d given her when she was eight, a few days before they died.
    “I want you to run the numbers again, use an eight percent rate of return, see what that does,” he said.
    Alex jotted a note on her legal pad. “I’ll get it to you this afternoon.”
    “And I’ll have Sylvia make lunch reservations at Emilio’s,” Eric said, standing. “With two bottles of Dom Perignon.”
    When he left, Uncle Walter stretched out his legs and sighed. “Ah, Alex, there’s nothing like the thrill of a good deal pulsing through your veins to keep you going.”
    She smiled. “I think any deal, good or bad, would keep you going, Uncle Walter.”
    His mouth twitched. “True, but you aren’t much different than me, young lady. You love the chase as much as I do.”
    He was right, of course. She did enjoy the challenge of finding locations for WEC resorts. It was like putting together a thousand-piece puzzle of an ocean where three quarters of the pieces were blue, a slightly different shade perhaps, but still blue. Selecting the ideal site was a lot like that, at least initially. There was only one major criterion, the same one for every project—the location needed to be within a one-hour proximity to a metropolitan area. Once Alex