CHAPTER 1
Virtue, New York was a small town to be a big break, but Sabrina Keep had a good feeling about it.
She'd visited twice before, both times on a mission for the company she worked for. She was the most-junior partner at Gladiator Architecture, but shewasa partner, and that was worth a lot. Only partners were asked to submit designs for what the firm referred to as 'legacy' projects, which meant buildings they expected to have exceptionally long lifespans and be important places within their communities. The Virtue train station, long-since closed, was one such legacy project. The state had an aggressive plan for reopening the New York Western Corridor train line, and Virtue intended to be ready for it. Gladiator Architecture had won the bid for redesigning the station.
Sabrinahad won the bid, and she still couldn't quite believe it. The weekend visits to Virtue had been worth it: she'd gotten the right vibe for the town's needs. And now, although she'd be checking in with the main office via online meetings, Sabrina was working out of Virtue for the next several months. Most firms wouldn't send somebody to be on-site for so long, especially for developmental plans, but that was one of thereasons Sabrina liked working for Gladiator Architecture. For their legacy builds, they wanted the lead architects on the ground to fully coordinate with the clients. In other words, everyone wanted it to be perfect, Sabrina most of all. This was a stepping stone to the rest of her career.
But it was also a chance to unwind from the big-city busy-ness of New York, and Sabrina had every intention of taking advantage of that.
Which was why she was currently sprawled on a bench in the small town's gigantic public square, soaking up the spring sun and generally feeling like she was living her best life. She had fallen in love with the ridiculously oversized town square as soon as she'd seen it, even though it had been barren with winter at the time. Well. The young trees, many of which looked recently planted to her professional eye, had been barren, at least. No leaves, not in December. But the square itself had been vibrant with life.
There had been a holiday market with dozens of local vendors, surrounding the world's biggest Christmas tree, which stuck up through the roof of a positively enormous gazebo that would have overwhelmed a smaller space with its sheer size. Kids of all ages—including some adults—had been rosy-cheeked and laughing as they played on a huge wooden playground that looked like Sabrina's childhood dreams come true. Snowball fights had accompanied snowman-building, and benches had been heaped with snow or brushed clear so people could sit. The wide town streets had bustled, shop fronts aglow with lights from within and Christmas lights along their facades. It had been so picture-perfect Sabrina had wanted to scream with delight.
In fact, she actually had, although only with her face buried in the pillow at her B&B, which sat right on the town square's corner. She'd stayed there the next time she came to Virtue, too,six months later, to see the town in summer and to find that her memories of the magnificent square were accurate: it was just as large and busy in the warm months as it had been in the winter. The slim young trees in the square were definitely new, and only offered a little shade, but Sabrina knew they would age into splendid crowns that would make the square even more welcoming. She'd spent days in town both times, wandering around, sketching, talking to the locals about the train station, and getting a feeling for what they wanted out of it.
Some of them very clearly didn't want the train to come back at all, but most of Virtue's residents seemed excited about the prospect. The town was undergoing a renaissance, she was told: it had always been a nice, safe place to live, but it was as if it had received a jolt in the arm sometime in the past ten or so years. Instead of drying up the way so many small towns had, it was finding its feet, and its people were proud, excited, and nervous about that.
Sabrina had taken all that energy home with her and spent weeks refining it into a design that she hoped captured Virtue's nostalgic past and its forward-facing vision. She'd written about her visits and how they'd inspired her. And in the end, almost a year later, she'd won the bid.
Now she was back in Virtue, waiting to move into the apartment she'd rented. It would be ready at the end of the month, just a few days away, but she'd been looking forward to returning to Virtue enough that she'd come up early to stay at the Jones's B&B again. They greeted her like an old friend, especially Emmy, who ran the front desk when she wasn't out exploring the world with her boyfriend. She was about Sabrina's own age, and made Sabrina feel entirely welcome in the bed and breakfast.
She was as happy as she could ever remember being. The sun was shining, the birds were singing, her job was going well—and her phone dinged with the ringtone that said someone in her college friends group had texted their 'The Girls' chat group. Sabrina took the phone from her purse and held it over her head, trying to block the sun with it so she could read more easily.
Not that she really had to read, because the first message was just a photo of her friend Mindy's flawlessly manicured hand with a ginormous glittering diamond ring on the expected finger.
Get ready to get your fit fab fun on, girls!the next message read.Vegas in three months! Here are the dresses I want you to wear! Bring your boys and be ready to celebrate!
A flurry of excited texts went flying back and forth from all the other women. Sabrina put in herOMG, congratulations!, and then dropped her phone on her face, because maybe breaking her nose would get her out of the wedding party.
It did not break her nose. It only hurt. And even if ithadbroken it, the wedding was in three months. That was long enough for a broken nose to heal. Sabrina checked the phone again, and sighed. It said what she thought it had:Bring your boys.
The rest of The Girls had boys. In fact, most of the rest of The Girls were married, leaving Sabrina the increasingly odd woman out when they got together. She wasn't exactly pining for a boyfriend. It just felt a little…judgy, when she arrived solo to everybody else's pair. And it wasn't like she didn'twanta boyfriend, either. She'd just been very career-oriented since leaving college.
Which had paid off in spades, or she wouldn't be here to oversee the development of her own architectural design. Ninety-five percent of the time, Sabrina had no regrets. That remaining five percent, though, could be hard to stomach. But the only way to solve it was to one, get out of the house for more than just work, and two, find a caring, kind, nurturing guy whowas prepared to be fully supportive of her career and be in on the groundwork of raising any potential kids.
It wasn't so much to ask, Sabrina thought. But she also might as well wish for a unicorn. So after a minute of wincing and rubbing her nose, she sighed and clicked through on the bridesmaids dresses, which…
…were exactly what she was afraid they would be.
Long. Straight-cut. Gold. Shimmery.Gorgeous, no doubt about it. The kind of thing that the other women would look great in, and could no doubt wear as a formal gown outside of the wedding.
But somehow Sabrina had drawn the short straw in her friends group. Quite literally: the next-shortest of the girls was five inches taller than Sabrina. The next-bustiestone was—well, technically Keana and Sabrina wore the same size bra. It was just that it looked like alotmore boob on somebody Sabrina's height. Andsheknew for a fact that she had a tiny waist, but she also had the hips to go with her boobs. The point was, she would look like a short squat gold fire hydrant in that dress, and the other women would be tall and svelte and sexy.
If she ordered hers immediately she could get it hemmed, at least, but nothing except a total reconstruction would make it suit her height and figure. And this was not a crash-diet-and-prayer sort of situation: Sabrina wasn't at all out of shape. She was just really, really curvy. "Me and Dolly," she said to the phone, and then, out of unfounded hope, texted Mindy privately:Any chance I can get away with gold and shimmery but a different cut for the dress? That straight line is going to look fantastic on your taller ladies, but it'll make me forget I have a waist!
Mindy actually voice-texted back with her bell-like laugh and a note of pleasant steel in her, "Don't be silly, Sabs, you'll look just as fantastic as the rest of the girls!"
Sabrina had known she would say something like that, but it had been worth a shot. She thumbs-upped the voice message, turned her phone off, and shouted silently at the sky. That mostly meant opening her mouth really wide and pretending like she was yelling her whole soul out while not actually doing so. It wasn't nearly as satisfying as actually bellowing, but she was in public. Starting to scream in the town square would probably lose her the train station bid as fast as she'd won it.
First things first. Move into her new apartment. Order the dress. Join a gym, because the bridesmaid gowns were sleeveless and Sabrina could at least have amazing biceps for the wedding, if not a visible waist.
Find a boyfriend.
No problem.
Three Months Later
After three months, the only thing Sabrinahadn'tfound in Virtue was true love. The apartment, the gym, the work, and the community were all everything she had hoped for. Well, mostly all she'd hoped for. There were definitely some people who were very unhappy about the train coming back to Virtue, although Sabrina didn't understand why. It was such a fantastic little town. She thought everybody would want to share it with the world.
