Chapter One
Mia
In case of death …
Why was I doing this?
My eyes narrowed at the questionnaire and information documents that had been sent to me yesterday via bicycle messenger, as I tried to figure out why the hell I’d said I wanted to do this.
Because you need it?
Maybe. Although, right now, everything was feeling like a lost cause.
It’d all started two nights ago during a commercial while I was having trouble sleeping.
I was sitting in bed, looking over the layout of the new wedding barn we were adding to my favorite hotel that I owned, The Grande Belezza. It was my idea to pump up our wedding appeal since it was a gold mine already at the hotel. The two ballrooms were booked out almost a year in advance, so this more upscale barn would attract people who wanted a rustic yet elegant venue instead of a ballroom for their reception. I wanted to love this project. I wanted to feel passion for it like I had when I first came up with the idea. But passion was lacking in my life. I honestly felt neutral about everything, which sounded as bad as it was.
Nevertheless, my brain just wouldn’t shut off enough so that I could fall asleep, so I gave up and started working while the TV was on for background noise.
“Are you feeling uninspired?”
My head jerked up to look at the commercial that had suddenly caught my attention.
Yes. Yes, I am.
“Have you lost your passion for life?”
I might have wiggled in my bed a little, trying to straighten up more so that I could hear and see the TV better. Definitely feeling a loss of passion.
“Has food lost its appeal? Has the sun dimmed on your everyday routine?”
My head nodded vigorously. I hated this feeling, and this commercial was acknowledging it. Made me feel like this was a normal thing that people went through.
“Then, you are ready for Inspired! A six-week life-changing experience!”
I listened with complete attention as the commercial man told me about a program where you signed up to have a constant life coach for six weeks, who was supposed to help you turn your life around. All you needed to do was call now to request the paperwork and sign up. A life coach would come and assess you, and—boom—you’d be back to kicking ass and feeling inspired by life again.
My fingers were dialing the phone number as soon as I could.
Clearly, it’d been the madness of a desperate woman because, sitting here now with these papers before me, I wondered if I had truly lost it.
You essentially were signing up for someone to come in and tell you what to do to help fix your life. You had to do everything they said, too. If that life coach thought you needed to lay off the cookies and candy at night, well, guess what you’d be doing?
I was a bit of a control freak who even had problems handing off tasks to my assistant and others who worked for me because I knew I could do the best job out of all of them. I was the youngest CEO in the hotel brand industry, with eight properties under my belt.
I’d gone to good schools and had a real proper internship with a guest speaker who had seen that fire, that passion, I had for the hotel trade. He’d retired and sold me my first hotel. Two years after, I’d completely paid off my loan for the business, and then four years after that, I’d managed to turn his once-very-nice hotel into a mega-million machine. Combine that with seven other properties—three I’d bought and turned into magic and four built to my specifications—I was doing pretty good.
Until last August.
I had no logical explanation for my decreasing mood and feelings of life. I was successful, I had money, and I had family who loved me. I had everything I could want right now. But I still felt like I just wanted to throw it all away even though that was a stupid thought.
Screw it.I was tired of this feeling, and I was ready to fix it.
My rushed hand scribbled my perfected signature across the line at the bottom and then put the papers into an envelope.
Once the envelope was licked sealed, I called the number for the messenger to retrieve the documents from the front desk below. My ever-waiting assistant took it down to the desk, and I trudged back into my office to work.
Six hours later, I was sitting in my personal suite in the very same hotel where I had my main office at my hotel The Grande Belezza in Tampa, Florida. I loved this hotel so much that I wanted to live in it.
I stared at the empty contents of my fridge despite having a staff that would keep everything in my house stocked and tidy. I hadn’t found the will to give them control over everything. So, I was gazing into the evidence that I needed to call someone because I couldn’t even take the time to go grocery shopping.
“Let’s see, Mia. Shall we have week-old takeout? Molding cheese on the end piece of bread I have left? Oh, I spy some yogurt!”
I reached to the back of my giant fridge and grabbed ahold of my salvation. Then, my eyes descended on the expiration date, and my shoulders fell.
I’d hit a new low.
Two months past being expired.
A knock on my door did little to take me out of my dive down the rabbit hole of self-loathing, but I threw the expired food away and walked to see who it was anyway.
