She straightened, leaned in to bite gently him on his lower lip, and pushed him away. She took some deep breaths for a bit, staring at him. “Stop! I can’t make decisions like this when my mind is all lust-clouded.”
“When we get married, it won’t be lust!” But he grinned when he said it.
She reached for his hands and held them again. Her long fingers touched each finger of his hand, raising them up and then dropping them, caressing the line on the side where the brown gave way to a pinker hue.
“Give me a little while, okay, Len? Give me a while to know you again, to see if my head will ever fit on straight again. I mean, look at you!”
“Your kale-hating pastor will vouch for me.”
“My kale-hating pastor barely knows me.”
“You need to come to a church where your pastor knows you. In every sense. As soon as possible.”
He took his hands away from her and pulled her into his lap. He wrapped his arms around her and leaned his head into her hair, taking a long deep breath. He’d forgotten to smell her the other times. She still smelled like shea butter. He took another breath. And there it was, the jasmine. Something in his chest loosened, and something in his eyes started getting damp. He tried to ignore the other something in his groin.
Kim started wriggling around. “Leonard, I'm a grown woman now. You can't just manhandle me. And I can feel that! Come on, dude! We're in a church!”
“If you'd be still, Kim, it'd be easier but also…” He started kissing her again. He hummed a little as he pressed kisses all down her throat. “I am my beloved’s, and my beloved is mine. My delight is in her.”
She slipped her hand up to cradle his cheek. “You wish your delight was in me.”
“Yes, I do. We gotta go, Kim. Even if we were married, we can't have sex in the sanctuary.”
“I haven't said yes yet, have I? I was so worried and then you took me by surprise.” She slipped off his lap and stood up, pulling him to his feet. She looked up at him and the spare light through the window shone in her hair, giving her a diaphanous crown. “Reverend Leonard West, Master of Divinity, I love you. I still love you. Even though I didn't want to, looks like I'll always love you. And I’m willing to try to trust you and Jesus with that love.”
His eyes glistened, and he pulled her into his arms for a long embrace. They walked out of the sanctuary hand in hand.
THE END
THANK YOU!
Thank you so much for reading!
This is my first published work, but I have more stories planned about people of conviction pursuing justice and finding love. Sign up for my occasional newsletter to keep up to date.
I would love to hear from you! Visit my website, find me on Twitter and Facebook, or email me at [email protected].
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Jane Lee Blair has degrees in sociology and English, a pastor husband, four children, and a crumbly brick house in a Midwestern city. She loves reading, gardening, crocheting, and Twitter.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Thank you to Emma Barry and the rest of the authors in this anthology for letting me tag along.
Thank you to Miss Bates, Emma Barry, Zoe York, and Stacey Agdern for pivotal feedback and encouragement.
Thank you to T and B for reading it and only making one “You know Black people” joke!
Thank you to my Blair sister-cousins for reading the last version and catching things I would’ve missed. Grandma B would be proud.
Thank you to my long-suffering family: sorry about all the late meals. Kids, I promise I’ll write a story you can read soon.
Thank you to Noelle Adams for writing the Willow Creek series and showing me there was a place for my real life in Romancelandia.
Scripture quotations are from the ESV® Bible (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version®), copyright © 2001 by Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved. May not copy or download more than 500 consecutive verses of the ESV Bible or more than one half of any book of the ESV Bible.
PERSONAL DISASTER
AINSLEY BOOTH
ABOUT THIS BOOK
Marcus Dane left the tech world and joined the National Park Service a decade ago. Now an intrepid reporter has tracked down the park ranger-who-could-have-been-a-billionaire and, even worse, she has a theory that could blow his quiet life to smithereens. He needs to send her packing. But he’s already tumbled head-over-heels in insta-lust with her flippy ponytail and smart mouth, and he just can't seem to let her go.
AUTHOR’S NOTE
What follows is the third story in my Billionaire Secrets series. Each story can be read as a standalone, but if you are curious at the end of Personal Disaster and would like to read more, Jake and Toby’s books are both available now. Read more about the series at my website, www.ainsleybooth.com!
CHAPTER 1
Marcus
WHOEVER SHE IS, the stacked brunette with the perky ponytail and open-toed sandals peering in the windows of my office isn’t from around here. Which is a shame, because I like perky ponytails.
The sandals are an interesting choice in the Rocky Mountains, but to each their own.
I don’t like industrious outsiders who drive halfway up a mountain to find me, though.
And I don’t need to make it easy for her now.
I was already moving pretty quietly on my return to the cabin, but I make sure my steps are silent as I stop a few yards from the porch.
“Can I help you?” I ask in that probably not, but ask your piece anyway voice that usually sends people running.
She straightens and turns around, a polite smile on her face. “Perhaps you can. I’m looking for Marcus Dane. Do you know him?”
Like I’m your stereotypical bearded mountain man who knows everyone in the national park, but couldn’t possibly be the guy she’s looking for. She’s right on the former point, and too bad for her, very wrong on the latter.
“Not sure anyone really knows Marcus Dane.”
“That’s what I’ve heard.”
Well that’s not good. “Are you here on official business or…” I leer at her, because it’s both effective and fun. When was the last time I got a good leer in? College, probably. “Something more personal?”
Sadly, the leer I’m so proud of doesn’t send her shrieking for the hills. She gives me a bland look and hands over a business card. “Business, Mr. Dane. Nice beard, by the way. Killer disguise.”
I sigh as I read the card. Her name is Poppy Lisowski and she’s a journalist. Her card lists a few different places she’s been published. I recognize The Washington Record, and I think Poindexter is a blog I’ve heard about on the morning news.
So she’s not here about anything good, then.
“It’s not a disguise,” I say slowly, taking my time so I can figure out something, anything more about her. “It’s just my face. Which you looked at and appeared not to recognize, and since I was just about to take a coffee break, Ms. Lisowski, I thought I’d better find out if your reason for being here was more important than caffeine.”
“Do you use Twitter, Mr. Dane?”
Ah. That kind of question. I take a deep breath and cross my arms over my chest. “That’s none of your God damned business.”
CHAPTER 2
Poppy
THE BEARD definitely helps him look pissed off. It’s close-cropped, so I can see the hard cut of his jaw as he grits his teeth. He’s clearly uncomfortable with being hunted down, and part of me feels bad—just for a second—about poking this particular bear.
It’s not like I don’t have sympathy for the ideals he claims to protect. It’s just that the truth is more important than political ideology.
I take a deep breath and try again. “Do you know Toby Hunt?”
“We went to college together.”
“And you have visited him in San Francisco recently.” Not a question. I’ve done my research.
“Technically he l
ives in Palo Alto, not San Francisco.”
“Thank you for confirming your close relationship—”
“Go away, Ms. Lisowski. Nothing good will come of your nosing around here.” He drops his hands to his sides, and the muscles in his shoulders bunch and roll, big and strong.
How big and strong he is doesn’t matter in the least. I shouldn’t notice that he’s super tall, either. I’m not short, and he dwarfs me. So it’s not the smartest idea to march forward and get right into his space, but that’s what I do. I pull out my recorder, and ignoring the obvious shake in my hand, I turn it on. “Would you repeat that on the record?”
He leans in, his brown eyes sparkling for a split second before he shutters his gaze and directs his voice to the mic. “Go. Away. Ms. Lisowski.”
“And the threat?”
“I didn’t threaten you.”
“You said nothing good will come of me nosing around here.”
“Mighty big stretch to call that a threat.” He shrugs. “But sure, I said that. On the record and everything.”
“What do you mean, nothing good?”
He straightens up and props his hands on his hips now. He’s constantly in motion, this park ranger. This rebel. This likely resistance leader. “What do you think you’re going to find here, little one?”
I roll my eyes. First he tried to perv on me—which totally didn’t work—and now he’s being condescending? “You need to work on your scare tactics.”
He grins unexpectedly. “But you are little.”
“Not to most people.”
“Ah.” He winks. “Well, Poppy. I think you’re going to discover I am not most people. Now, I’ve decided this conversation isn’t more important than caffeine, so if you’ll excuse me, it’s my coffee break.”
He brushes past me and heads into his office.
That’s his prerogative, but I wouldn’t be a half-decent reporter if I left it at that. Also, there’s no way I’d be able to justify my flight to Colorado.
I’ve got two options. I can chase after him and keep asking him questions he doesn’t want to answer, or I can wait him out.
I like door number two.
I plop my butt down on the porch outside his little log building and pull out my phone. I wonder what Mr. Alt Park Service is tweeting about right now?
They’re all the same, these alt accounts. Morally outraged, full of righteous indignation. Half of them shams to drum up extremist rhetoric and disguise the rapid dismantling of the bureaucratic state. The other half are preaching to the choir. That story has been written. It’s inspiring for the liberal base, and intriguing for journalists—for a hot minute.
But now what he’s tweeting isn’t nearly as important as where he’s tweeting from—this particular account gave a couple of subtle and accidental clues in early tweets, right after the election, that point to this group of national parks west of Denver—and how he’s doing it without getting caught.
Also, given the connections I’ve discovered in his background, who has helped him along the way.
Marcus Dane has some very wealthy friends.
Are the rules different when you’re besties with billionaires?
While I wait for him to tweet, or not tweet, because maybe I’ve pissed him off and he’s going to try and throw me off his scent, I pull up the dossier I’ve compiled on him.
I can’t concentrate on the words, though. There’s no maybe about the pissing him off part. I’ve definitely gotten under his skin. I pushed a little too hard.
Besides, I don’t need to go over the dossier again. I’ve memorized every single word in it.
Marcus Dane went to MIT, where he met and befriended Jake Aston and Toby Hunt, when they were ordinary young men with extraordinarily big dreams.
Reading between the lines, it would be easy to assume that Marcus was a third young man with equally big dreams, but the career that followed belied that hypothesis.
After graduating, Marcus and Toby headed to California. But where Toby used seed money from Gladiator Inc.’s young CEO, Ben Russo, to start his own company, Marcus got a job as a software engineer.
A regular job.
Because Marcus Dane, best friend to billionaires, was a regular Joe—hypothesis number two.
But after a few years of chasing the tech 401(k) dream, he walked away from the suburban house and workplace-with-a-gym-and-smoothie-bar, for…
I glance around me.
Nothing, really.
Maybe everything.
Trees. Fresh air.
Painfully high altitude that sort of makes me faint, although that could also be attributed to the clash of wills with the bearded mountain man.
Freedom.
Hypothesis number three, should anyone still care about Marcus Dane after he disappeared up a mountain, is that he’s seen the inside workings of capitalist, tech-worshiping America, and he doesn’t like it. In fact, he hates it, and now that society has broken down to the point of chaos, he’s going to use whatever platform he can find to ensure the things that really matter to him—the environment, protection of the land and animals, water—have a voice.
No matter what official edict gets handed down from on high, Mr. Alt Park Service won’t be silenced.
As far as I know, nobody has looked at Marcus Dane but me. I’ve run the story in the loosest of terms past two of my favorite editors. Both were open to hearing more, but I needed to put this trip on my credit card because nobody is paying freelancers to hunt stories like this. Not in the heat of summer. Not when there are courthouses and law offices to stalk.
If I wanted to simply pay the rent, I’d join the stringers from MSNBC and CNN outside the Washington DC law firms and wait for the White House staffers to come to me. Most of them are a sympathetic look away from spilling their guts over coffee.
Except…
I want to pay my rent, but not by lunging desperately at low-hanging fruit.
I want to write a good story. Something I had to dig for, that nobody else has any idea about yet.
I want to expose a real truth, which is getting harder and harder to do these days.
If I do that, I’ll be able to land a job that pays the rent on a regular basis.
Teach a man to fish, they say.
Or in 2017…teach a woman to follow a wild hunch, no matter how high up a mountain it drags her.
CHAPTER 3
Marcus
I TIP my cup against my lower lip, but it’s empty now. I’d forgotten that as I sat and stewed over the fact she’s still outside.
Well, coffee break is over.
I pick up my phone and scroll through the search results that came up when I typed in her name.
Poppy Lisowski is quite the intrepid reporter. I have no doubt she knows everything about me. Where I went to school, who I’m friends with.
What my political affiliation is—registered independent, always have been, always will be—and how I like my pizza.
Extra pepperoni, green peppers, and onions. Always have, always will.
The thing about me that Poppy Lisowski doesn’t know is that those two things are equally weighted in my world, but I’m not sure I want to tell her that just yet.
I’m not sure I want her to go away.
I lift my cup again before remembering…
Ah, hell.
Duty calls.
I stalk to the door and swing it open. “I need to head out to check some day site permits. You want to come with me, Reporter Girl?”
Her back stiffens for a microsecond, then she scrambles to her feet. “Sure thing, Ranger Boy.”
I force myself to keep walking and not stop and give her a reaction to that. But I see her, and hear her.
I’ll only call her a girl again when I want to get a reaction.
A better man would take the warning completely and not do it at all, but where’s the fun in that?
We’ve got a three-hour slow climb up and down mountainsides in my truck ahead of u
s. We’re going to need to have a little fun.
“Where is the campground?” she asks as I steer down the lane toward the road that will take us back to the highway.
“Which campground?”
“The one with the day permits you’re checking?” She pulls a notebook out of her bag, and then the recorder is back, too.
I glance at it. “Do you want to get the spelling and everything just right for your story?”
She ignores the barb and waits for me to answer.
I don’t.
“I’d like to return to the question about your friendships with Toby Hunt and Ben Russo.”
Ah. Now she’s dragging Ben into this. I grunt.
“Mr. Hunt and Mr. Russo haven’t always seen eye-to-eye on political issues…”
Now it’s my turn to wait, but she doesn’t finish the rest of that thought. “Is that a question?”
Because if it is, she’s wrong. I don’t spend a lot of time thinking about the political contributions my friends make, but I know enough about their business interests and their personal realities to know that whatever money they donate, wherever they donate it, that’s no reflection on anything.
Not much of a reflection, anyway.
Fuck, I hate this shit.
“Are you aware—”
“No.”
“You didn’t let me ask the question.”
“Doesn’t matter. The answer is always going to be no. On the record. No, I’m not aware. No, I can’t comment on my friends’ lives. No, I haven’t discussed whatever it is you’re asking about with them. No, no, no.”
“Are you aware that Toby Hunt’s company is working on a double-encrypted Bluetooth solid-state memory device that can invisibly run in the background of a mobile phone? It will, apparently, mask the connection once it’s made. And apps can be installed on the device instead of the phone, making them invisible, too.”
Rogue Desire: A Romance Anthology (The Rogue Series) Page 31