by Sionna Fox
Rogue Passion
Chelsea M. Cameron
Zoey Castile
KD Fisher
Sionna Fox
Robin Lovett
Rebecca Vaughn
Jeanette Grey
About This Book
The political becomes intensely personal in these seven brand new romances, featuring characters who love as passionately as they #resist...
Contents
The Girl in the Picture
About This Book
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Also by Chelsea M. Cameron:
About the Author
Acknowledgments
The Suit and the Doll
About This Book
The Suit and the Doll
Thank you!
Also by Zoey Castile
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Nature’s Heart
About This Book
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Thank You!
Resources
About the Author
Fight Fire With Fire
About This Book
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Author’s Note
Also By Sionna Fox
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Schooling Her
About This Book
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Also by Robin Lovett
About the Author
A Safe Place
About This Book
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Taking Aim
About This Book
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Author’s Note
Also By Jeanette Grey
About the Author
Acknowledgments
The Girl in the Picture
Chelsea M. Cameron
When a picture of her at a protest march goes viral, Saylor Talbot is inundated with interview requests. She meets with one particular journalist, Echo Nguyen, and sparks fly. They’ll have to keep things above board, at least until their professional relationship is over. But can they hold off until then?
1
I never wanted to be famous. When kids in my class wrote stories about wanting to be singers or actors or politicians, I wrote about living alone on an island with a hundred puppies and kittens. My ambitions have changed since then, but not by much.
Perhaps I was born under the wrong star, because famous is what I am, at least for the moment. In this age of instant news, I’ve become a blip in the news feed. A big blip.
I honestly don’t know what it was that captured people about the image. Was it my rage as I yelled down a man in SWAT gear? Was it my fist raised in the air? Was it my sign calling out the fifty-three percent of white women who voted for a complete monster? Was it the way the wind had caught my bright maroon hair? I didn’t know.
I went to the protest with a small group of friends, and then we’d gone to a bar after to have a few drinks and celebrate with the energy we still had from the protest high.
“Hey, you’re on Twitter,” my friend Meghan said, showing me her phone screen.
“Whoa. I look kinda scary,” I said.
“Yeah, you do. You look great. I’m totally retweeting this,” she said. Meghan was a popular blogger so I knew what would happen if she shared the original picture. Many times before I’d asked her not to share things in case they went viral. This time I shrugged and let her do it, just this once.
A few hours later I started getting DMs. Like, a lot of them. And my follower count had gone up by a few thousand.
“Meghan, what did you do?” I asked, as I panicked and tried to find out what was going.
“Uh, I might have tagged you?” she said, looking a little sheepish.
“You did what?!” My voice shattered the sleepy lull in the bar and people turned to stare.
“Why, Meghan? Why would you do that?” I looked at my other friends, but no one would meet my eyes.
“Because they wanted to know who you were. So I tagged you so someone else wouldn’t take credit.” I banged my forehead on the table. A concussion was looking pretty good right now.
“I don’t want credit,” I said.
“Huh?” Meghan asked. I lifted my head.
“I don’t want credit. Undo it.” Even as I said that, I knew it couldn’t be undone. I was out there now. People knew. They were seeing me. And they were asking questions.
“I can’t,” she said. “I’m sorry. I didn’t know it was going to blow up that fast.” I gave her a look.
“Meghan. You literally do social media for a job. What did you expect?” She threw up her hands.
“I’m sorry! I’m sorry! You never know what’s going to catch people’s attention and what isn’t! It could have been a corgi on a skateboard or something.” I tried to hold back a smile and failed.
“A corgi on a skateboard would be adorable. But that’s not the point. I’m going to become a meme and then I’ll never hear the end of it. You know I’m not big on attention from strangers.” Compliments from people I liked? Give them to me all day. Strangers? Never ever.
Meghan sighed.
“But at least it’s for a good cause? And not for like, driving your car into a fast food drive thru because they didn’t make your sandwich right.” Okay, that would definitely be worse than the predicament I was in. I was slightly mollified. This was totally going to blow over.
I hoped.
* * *
It didn’t. My Twitter blew the fuck up and I was fielding hundreds of media requests. If I’d wanted to, I could have been on national television (on several stations) by the next morning, but I declined. They were still going to run stories about me, but I just wasn’t going to be involved. A small part of me felt guilty for not taking the media attention and using it. Then another part told me that another white woman didn’t need to be the face of the movement, and that was the voice that I knew in my heart was right.
I spent the next week dealing with the fallout from going viral. I nearly deleted my entire social media presence about five hundred times, but I wasn’t going to let this ruin my life. I just deleted all the media requests without reading them and blocked any people who sent nasty messages (of which there were mountains, mostly from white men. Imagine that.). After a few days, the tornado had quieted and most people had moved on to other things. By the end of the week, I was ready for it all to be over, and then I made the mistake of clicking on a message I’d gotten from a journalist, and before I could delete it, my eyes had scanned it.
I know you have been inundated, but your picture is important, and your expression struck a chord in me. I would really love to talk to you about what brought you to this moment.
I read it three times and then looked up the journalist. Echo Nguyen. She worked for a prestigious magazine that was
known for gripping human interest stories. I found her Twitter presence and she was loudly political and didn’t shy away from calling out crappy politicians or corporations. It also didn’t escape my notice that she was gorgeous. Like, really stunning. She had these brown eyes that were totally mesmerizing. I found myself staring into them as if I’d completely gotten lost. Then I blinked and realized that her being a knockout had absolutely nothing to do with interviewing me or being a good journalist.
I really needed to get it together. I hadn’t been on a date and hadn’t had a girlfriend in for-freaking-ever, and it was really bumming me out. Not that I had to be in a relationship, but I missed sleeping next to someone. Cooking breakfast on the weekends. Laughing at terrible movies. All of that stuff. My last relationship had ended amicably. We just hadn’t been right for each other. She’d changed and gotten into some new hobbies (including hocking a multi-level-marketing product to anyone who would listen) and I just didn’t see us having much in common anymore.
I scanned some of Echo’s articles and looked up her credentials. Columbia School of Journalism. Magna cum laude. Prestigious awards. Several high-profile celebrity interviews. She was the real deal. And she wanted to talk to me.
There was just something about her, and it wasn’t just that she was painfully hot. Her stories were raw and real, all ending on a hopeful note. She brought out the best and worst in people and then put it on the page. Could she do that for me?
I had said no to every other request, but somehow I found myself typing a reply to her asking if we could meet and talk about what her ideas were for the story. I didn’t want to negotiate via email or phone. Email was too impersonal and my brain checked out during phone calls. It was the absolute worst way to communicate. Never having to talk on the phone again would be one of my dearest wishes.
I sent the email and waited, refreshing my inbox every few minutes. Why was my heart beating so fast? It wasn’t like I was asking her out. This was a completely professional matter.
After a half hour of staring at my laptop, I shut it and realized that I needed to get myself away from the internet for a little while. Maybe a social media hiatus was in order. That would have been the smart thing to do a week ago when this whole thing started. Oops?
I’d run out of yarn on my newest crochet project, so I headed out to my favorite yarn store, which also happened to be where one of my best friends, Dana, worked. After buying some yarn and somehow saying no to a pile of yarn that I definitely did NOT need, I grabbed a coffee and croissant and went back to my apartment feeling completely refreshed.
I had an email.
It was so nice to hear from you. Yes, I would absolutely like to sit down and talk with you. I’ll be in Boston next week. What does Friday look like for you?
I worked in IT support at one of the colleges in Boston, and I always worked from home on Fridays, so I could definitely squeeze her in. I suggested meeting for lunch at a casual dining spot that was close to the T station and very public. Just in case.
She wrote back immediately and accepted, so I added it to my calendar and took a shaky breath. I was just going to talk to her. This wasn’t the story. I wasn’t agreeing to anything yet. The door was wide open for me to back out, and that was important. When we met, I was going to ask her if I could have approval of the story before it went to print. That probably wasn’t regular protocol, but this was my life. I didn’t need a shitty article following me around for the rest of it.
2
I was utterly distracted for the rest of the week leading up to the meeting with Echo. I hadn’t told any of my friends what I was doing, and it was hard not to ask for advice. I usually told them everything, but I had the feeling Meghan would tell me to do it for my “brand” and my other friends would tell me it was a huge mistake. I didn’t want or need advice. I needed to figure this one out on my own like a grown-ass woman.
Thursday night I couldn’t sleep. My nerves were completely shredded. I couldn’t put my finger in precisely why I was flipping out, but I needed to stop and get some damn sleep or else Friday was going to suck.
Spoiler alert: I did not get much sleep, and woke up bleary and grumpy on Friday after I’d completely slept through my alarm. I needed to get a few things done before I met Echo, and it was just not going to happen. I had my breakfast at my desk and sucked down double my morning coffee to try and wake me up, but I was still irritated about my lack of sleep. At least being busy with work distracted me from being nervous about the meeting. The only downside was that I got so into one project that I only had a few minutes to get myself presentable and rush to the T to meet her.
I’d planned on having a list of questions prepared, but that didn’t happen, and I was five minutes late when I arrived and found her sitting at a table for two near a window that overlooked the street. She stood when I approached (of course she would know it was me; she’d seen what I looked like online), and smiled.
My heart stopped for a second and I tripped on my own feet, stumbling toward her and nearly bowling her over. Great first impression.
“I’m sorry,” I said, trying to compose myself. I’d dressed up in the kind of outfit I wore when I went to a job interview, because I figured that I should look nice for this and not like I’d just rolled out of bed. I’d even tried to do something with my hair, twisting it back from my face, but leaving it to curl down on my shoulders. I’d refreshed the color before the march and it was still holding strong.
“It’s so nice to meet you,” Echo said, and I still couldn’t stop staring. It was as if I’d met her before and was struggling to place her. Although, I was positive that if I had met her before, I would have remembered it. As I suspected, Echo had dressed in business casual, with a gauzy purple top, white blazer and khaki pants. I scanned down to her feet, and found, to my surprise, that she was rocking Chucks with a subtle glitter rainbow on them. Huh. Interesting. Maybe she just liked rainbows, or maybe she was queer.
I would definitely feel much more comfortable with a queer writer handling my story, but I didn’t want to come out and ask, because that was both rude and invasive. I’d just have to wait and see.
“It’s nice to meet you,” I said, and I realized she didn’t shake my hand, which was nice because I wasn’t fond of touching strangers. We sat down and then a waiter came over to give us menus and water.
I stuttered as I ordered a Coke with lime and Echo got the same. I didn’t know if that was some tactic to make me feel more at ease or if that was what she really wanted. I was completely out of my element here.
Silence stretched between us as we both scanned our menus.
“The gnocchi here is really good. So is the lobster mac and cheese.” I had picked a restaurant that I knew well enough so I wasn’t surprised by an unfamiliar menu.
“Oh, sounds good. I love lobster. It’s nice to be in New England to enjoy it.” I glanced up at her face. Seriously, wow. Her skin was tan and so completely flawless, she was either a sorcerer with makeup, or it was just naturally that good. Or both.
“Do you, um, travel a lot?” Goodness I was terrible at small talk. Completely terrible.
“Yes, all over for the past two years. I’ve gotten burned out, though, so I told my editor that I’m staying in New England for now, except for a few trips down to D.C. and out west. I couldn’t completely give up travel.” Wow, she was even more impressive in person. Maybe this had been a bad idea.
I was contemplating how I could extricate myself with grace when the waiter came back to take our order. We both got the lobster mac and cheese and decided to share a bruschetta appetizer.
“So,” Echo said when we didn’t have menus between us, “what made you respond to me?”
I had to bite my tongue so I didn’t say something like “you’re really attractive.”
Instead, I said, “there was something about your pitch, and I looked you up online. You know what you’re doing and you do it really well. There’s a vulnerability t
o your writing and I can see that you care about the people you’re interviewing. At least that’s how it comes across. Either you care, or you’re damn good at pretending.” I hoped she wasn’t insulted.
She ducked her head to hide what I hoped was a smile.
“Wow,” she said, looking up and showing me that yes, she was smiling, “that’s quite the compliment.” Her cheeks were an adorable shade of pink. Why was I always so distracted by beautiful women? It was a curse. I cleared my throat and tried to get my head to focus on the matter at hand.
“I meant it that way,” I said. Silence grew between us, but Echo broke it by shaking her head a little and then glancing at her phone.
“Now that we’ve got that out of the way, are you sure you want to do this? I don’t normally ask that question, but I don’t want you to go into this without your eyes wide open.”