Chapter One

Orion is a special kind of guy. He is a man's man, a ladies' man, the best man. And soon, although he does not yet know it, Orion is about to embark upon his most significant adventure. Orion is an Eagle Scout, which is a title held for life: "Once an Eagle, always an Eagle," as the saying goes. He is, in fact, descended from a long line of Eagle Scouts and, before that, from a long line of hunter-gatherers that goes as far back as anyone can remember. Orion is a man who is no stranger to high drama. In college, he was the captain of the ski team, a fearless downhill racer. It was during those formative years that he articulated his passion for a majestic beauty that moves in exquisite curves, and he developed thighs like tree trunks. In the summertime, he'd worked as a lifeguard at the local country club, where he was always prepared, although there was never much call, for deep-water rescues.

Orion is a different kind of guy—he is a nice guy who is used to finishing first. Yet he'd give you the shirt off his back if such an occasion would arise, and this must have been fairly common for him, since he always seemed to be wearing more than one shirt at a time in an outdoorsy sort of layered look. Let's just say that he was prepared to give you the shirt off his back and leave it at that. However, something needs to be said from the outset about Orion's habit of finishing first. It was almost as if nature had endowed him with such outstanding athletic prowess as to enable him to dash effortlessly across the most forbidding and inscrutable of landscapes as though he were gaining su