Imperfect Love: Signed, Sealed, Delivered (Kindle Worlds Novella) Page 12
“Am I going to get arrested for this?”
“Not if I can help it,” said Olivia, locking eyes with her reassuringly before she pressed through the reporters hoping to cut the cops off or at least slow them down.
Just then, Zach burst through the stately glass doors of the Javits Center and in an instant, all of the reporters and cameramen and photographers parted for him like the Red Sea once had for Moses. They hushed as well, anxious to get good soundbites. The only noises were the gentle hum of traffic, Olivia quietly charming the police, and the pounding of Abby’s own heart as she watched with baited breath as Zach neared her, one determined step after the next.
His tight green eyes looked round with a nervous mix of hope and apology, his entire expression open as if every part of him was poised, terrifying as it was, to accept her reaction, whether she needed to scream or cry or tell him off or, just maybe, forgive him because she still loved him and nothing could change that.
Looking up into his eyes when he reached her and blind to the press who were now crowding in on them, she breathed, “What if they don’t renew your contract now?”
“Then they don’t renew my contract,” he said easily as he searched her eyes.
“But what about your career?”
“What about us?” he countered.
She felt her spirit lift, but it still didn’t compute. “I can’t believe you risked your entire career. I would’ve never said anything, Zach. I—”
He stepped in close and it took her breath away. “I can’t believe I didn’t do it sooner. I don’t need to be single to be a good actor. The Christian Network is hardly the beginning and end of my career. They’re done controlling me. I don’t want their contract, not if it means I can’t be with you. I don’t want to be apart from you, Abby. Not ever.”
“You don’t?” she asked as Zach slipped his hand into the front pocket of his slacks.
“The past two days without you were the hardest I’ve ever had to get through and I once kicked smack in a Mexican prison.”
She laughed and felt her eyes mist over with tears, but they were nothing compared to the ones that blurred her vision when Zach’s expression turned serious as he looked down at the black jewelry box in his hand.
As he lowered onto one knee, his eyes didn’t leave hers. “When I had a moment alone with your father that night, I asked for his blessing.”
He opened the box, presenting a glimmering diamond ring, and Abby’s hands flew to her mouth to muffle the gasp that had popped out of her.
“Abby Gallagher?”
Tears of joy were streaming down her cheeks now and she was already nodding her emphatic answer, but he asked formally.
“Will you marry me?”
“Yes!”
He scooped her into his arms, cameras flashing and entertainment news reporters finally shouting every question they could think of. But Abby was deaf to them. The world had disappeared. There was only Zach and her and what would surely become their happily-ever-after.
It was.
As eager as they both were to get hitched, there was no need to elope and they spent the next six months carefully planning what ultimately became an extravagant, fairytale wedding, one which Abby’s entire family attended along with the second, Tate & Cane one she’d developed throughout the months, quickly working her way up from assistant to junior associate to associate while Zach enjoyed his time off from acting, fired his entire team of ‘people’ only to quickly replace each position with reputable individuals who agreed that acting was an artform and would never suggest PR stunts. They were above it, and so was Zach.
The best part about the stunt and resulting scandal, aside from the fact that without it Zach and Abby might never have found one another, was the redemption story that naturally followed. America sure did love a comeback and by the time they returned from their honeymoon in Belize, Zach’s new agent had a film role all laid out for him that, in the agent’s words not his, ‘screamed franchise’.
“Franchise, Zach! Franchise!” his agent blared through Zach’s cell phone so loudly that Abby could hear him as she set her tote on the kitchen islet, having discarded her carry-on luggage the second she’d gotten home to the penthouse suite.
A deep, rumbling laugh spilled out of Zach as he set his own luggage beside the elevator door and shifted his cell phone from his right ear to his left.
Abby loved that sound.
“It’s a done deal?” he asked, meeting Abby’s interested gaze.
His agent had calmed down a little and when Zach realized she couldn’t hear the man, he relayed the answer, mouthing, “All I have to do is sign and it’s happening.”
Abby gave him two excited thumbs up.
Again, Zach laughed loudly in response to something his agent said, but this time he placed the man on speaker phone and asked him to repeat himself.
“I said,” he shouted through the receiver, “as soon as you get the contract I just messengered over, all you have to do is return it signed, sealed, and delivered.”
“Kind of like how I met my wife,” he said, but only to Abby. He’d tossed his cell on the couch and as he stalked towards the woman he’d spend the rest of his life with, a distinct sexual hunger smoldering in his intense green eyes, the faint, tinny sounds of his confused agent kept coming through the cell.
As far as Zach was concerned, the conversation was over. He wrapped his arms around Abby, feeling the length of her warm body against him—a sensation he thought he’d never get enough of—and crushed the hardest kiss against her plump lips.
She squealed, smiling, then her lips molded to his.
“I thought I’d worn you out in Belize,” she said in a kittenish tone.
His eyebrows shot up to his hairline and, looking down at her with an air of mock offense on his otherwise sexy face, said, “Never.”
“Never?” she playfully challenged.
Stripping out of his clothes while corralling her into the bedroom, Abby giggling the whole way, he teased, “If it takes a thousand times to prove it to you, then it takes a thousand times.”
She hoped so.
She hoped for many frisky years of love and happiness.
Maybe she didn’t have to hope.
Everything about Zach was a promise she could trust.
So, that’s what she did.
THE END
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY
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Mira Gibson is a playwright, screenwriter, and novelist. After majoring in Playwriting at Bard College, Mira was accepted into Youngblood, the playwrights group at Ensemble Studio Theatre (NYC). There, Mira's plays received developmental readings and workshops. Most notably: Daddy Soda (2009), Old Flame (2012), and Diamond in the House of Thieves (2012). Her one-act play The Red White and Blue Process received a commission from The Sloan Foundation. And her one-act play Old Flame won the Samuel French Playwriting Competition and is available for licensing via Samuel French Play Publishers. In 2012 Mira's first screenplay, Warfield was produced by Summer Smoke Productions. It is available on Amazon Direct. She lives in Oceanside, NY. Story is her life.
If you liked this story, please CLICK HERE to join my mailing list where you will be the first to know about new releases, discounts, and giveaways!
www.mira-gibson.com
MORE BOOKS BY MIRA GIBSON:
The Bridge & Tunnel Romances
BROOKLYN FLAME
MANHATTAN FLAME
FIGHTING THE FLAMES
The New Hampshire Mysteries
DADDY SODA (A New Hampshire Mystery, Book One)
ROCK SPIDER (A New Hampshire Mystery, Book Two)
TAR HEART (A New Hampshire Mystery, Book Three)
The Kensington Killers
COLD DARK FEAR (Series Prequel)
LUNATIC (The Kensington Killers, Book One)
CRA
NK (The Kensington Killers, Book Two)
MANIAC (coming 2018)
Crossover into Kindle Worlds
CALIFORNIA FLAME (Hope Falls Kindle World)
MOTIVE (Lei Crime Kindle World, coming November 2017)
REKINDLE THE FLAME (Hope Falls Kindle World, coming November 2017)
DECOY (Fidelity Kindle World, coming January 2018)
If you liked this story, please CLICK HERE to join my mailing list where you will be the first to know about new releases, discounts, and giveaways!
www.mira-gibson.com
REKINDLE THE FLAME
(A Hope Falls Kindle World Novella Coming November 2017)
~Excerpt~
Heartwarming.
There was no other way to describe the quaint town of Hope Falls, no other word to capture the storybook charm it exuded during the wintery and all-too-adorable holiday season.
When Jennifer had decided on doing Christmas solo, and she knew celebrating alone was a solid decision and quite frankly, much needed—more than needed, required, she had to get her thoughts together and her head on straight!—she could’ve never imagined how absolutely touching this little mountain town tucked away in the Sierra Nevadas would be. The intrinsic warmth of Norman Rockwell and the glow of Thomas Kinkade rolled into one home-and-hearth painting come to life.
That’s what it was, too, what it really felt like being here. Home and hearth. The feeling had enveloped her the second she had started along Main Street, scarf wrapped tight, hat snugged on, mittens soft and cushy. She felt like she was home. Even though she couldn’t have been further away from the Japanese countryside where she’d been born or the harsh and hardened city she’d been living in since she was six years old, Queens New York, Jennifer felt—no, she knew!—that she belonged here.
That she belonged with him…
Stop it, Jennifer!
Pulling herself together mentally after yet another close call wasn’t easy.
Okimotos didn’t fantasize! They practicalized! And booking a flight to Hope Falls for the holidays had been a practical, Japanese-grandfather-degree-pragmatic decision! If she hadn’t used the sky miles she’d earned over the course of the year, then…
True, but she could’ve flown anywhere…
Flustered, she insisted mostly in her head but grumbled a bit out loud too, “Practical, that’s all!”
Except that it hadn’t been and the lie she’d been telling herself in that regard was wearing thinner than her favorite ‘Netflix and chill’ panties.
She stopped herself once again with a cautionary reminder. There would be no thoughts of panties or matching bras or big warm hands wrapping her slender waist.
Ugh!
Snowflakes were coming down, big and fluffy. The blanket of crystal white snow shimmered from the twinkling lights of the storefronts Jennifer passed as she made her way to her favorite coffee shop, Sue Ann’s Café, and good thing it was her favorite because in a town as tiny as Hope Falls there were basically no other options unless you counted Brewed Awakenings but it wasn’t within walking distance and if memory served her correctly, it also wouldn’t be open at this hour. A quarter to ten in the evening wasn’t late by New York City standards, but for a sleepy little off-the-grid town it was long past closing time for the majority of stores on this short strip.
She made a concerted effort to take in some deep breaths and let the invigorating sting of the cold, night air snap her out of deep, lustful thought, and back to her senses.
A canoodling couple spilled out of the Twin Cinemas, the ruggedly good-looking guy pulling his date in for a hasty kiss, the girl giggling and eating it up. Jennifer hopped aside so there’d be no love-blinded collision. Up ahead, a cluster of hollering teenagers, ice cream cones in hand, skipped out of the local ice cream shop, Two Scoops. Jennifer made a mental note that the place was open and continued on down the snowy sidewalk, Sue Ann’s glowing café now in her sights.
The thought of yanking the frosted, glass door open and stepping inside filled Jennifer with excitement that bordered on downright anxiety and it wasn’t because the scent of cinnamon buns, angel cakes, and coffee would surely hang in the air. Ever since she’d unpacked her suitcase at the Mountain Meadow B&B earlier that afternoon, tucking her clothes in the dresser and setting her oil paints and small stretched canvases on the desk, she’d had a heightened and unshakable intuition that she could, and very likely would, run into the one man who had taken up residence in her head and occupied her thoughts for the past year and a half.
Kody Knowles.
This was where he lived. Hope Falls. And when she met him all those months ago during her two-week tenure teaching painting at the First Inaugural Hope Falls Summer Art Camp, her world had been turned upside down and inside out in the most delicious and unforgettable ways possible.
Again, she forcefully denied her reasons for choosing Hope Falls this Christmas, swept her long, jet black hair over her shoulders while holding her head high, then stepped out of the blustery cold and into Sue Ann’s warm and oh-so-cozy café, the bell above the door jingle-jangling as she entered.
As she approached the counter with absolutely no sense of urgency, her cheeks began to thaw and she tucked her mittens into her coat pocket, her eyes discretely scanning what few patrons were seated at the eclectic and endearingly mismatched tables and sofa chairs that lent an overall homey feel to the place.
She let out a rocky sigh of relief mixed with a hint of disappointment, having discovered that the man who she’d been trying and failing not to think about—correction, obsess over!—was not in fact present.
Whew!
Fortifying herself for the millionth time that day, reeling in her wild emotions and creative fantasies, she reminded herself, no berated herself, no screamed at herself like her mind was on fire, the bullet points of her reasoning, her very pragmatic, very sensible, very logical, very thrifty reasoning that had led her to the decision of having chosen this solo, Hope Falls, ten-days-of-Christmas, holiday trip. And it went a little something like this:
She had never taken a trip by herself. Ever. Never set foot on a plane without her mother or father (childhood trips) or with one of her two best friends as an adult. Well, more often than not, both best friends—Greer and Tasha, her highly talented, artistic other halves who seemed surgically attached to her hips… in the best way possible, of course. But still, even when she’d come to Hope Falls a year and a half ago to teach art, Greer and Tasha had been right there beside her. In a lot of ways, it was actually a virtual magic trick that she’d been able to sneak around, kissing and pawing and otherwise relishing every secret second with one 29-year-old, 6’2”, salt-of-the-earth man with big hands and a bigger heart…
Motherfrumker!
Again, she steered her thoughts in a rational direction.
Jennifer could’ve spent Christmas through New Years with her besties, and in the stunning and classy Hamptons for that matter. But Greer was madly in love with her boyfriend of two years, Hunter Black. And Tasha had been getting serious with her significant other, NYPD officer Kevin Wright, both of which boyfriends would be at the Hamptons house. As much as she loved her girls, the last thing Jennifer wanted to be this holiday season was a fifth wheel and a flat one at that, with her friends constantly trying to inflate her—don’t worry, you’ll meet the right guy soon!
She’d told the girls she had let her mother twist her arm about flying to the Japanese countryside to “get some culture and reconnect with her roots”. She’d also told her mother that the stress of this year had finally taken its toll and all she wanted this Christmas was to unwind with Greer and Tasha. When that hadn’t worked—the work ethic of her Japanese parents knew no restful holiday and Jennifer’s argument had been met with a beat of appalled silence followed by both Okimotos screaming into the line, watashitachi ga shinda toki ni gasumu! which translates to, we rest when we’re dead!—Jennifer pushed on to Plan B, explaining that she had a high-paying, joint
art show with her girlfriends coming up just after New Year’s and she had to bear down, nose-to-grindstone, and bang out some serious paintings. Though she hadn’t been able to see their expressions, Jennifer sensed through the line that both Akina and Hideshi Okimoto had softened, finally accepting their daughter’s sensible, logical, pragmatic, and perhaps most importantly, unromantic holiday plans.
“That’s not Miss Jennifer Okimoto, is it?” the café owner, Sue Ann Perkins enthused from behind the counter the second her round, maternal eyes landed on the shivering twenty-nine-year-old artist.
As Jennifer smiled through thawing cheeks that weren’t ready to fully lift, Sue Ann indicated the oil painting hanging on the wall behind her.
“Puts a smile on my face every time I see it,” she remarked in awe before shooting Jennifer a little wink.
At the end of the two-week period Jennifer had spent in this sleepy little town a year and a half ago when she’d taught art at the camp, she’d gotten so close with Sue Ann that by the time she had to leave for New York she felt compelled to gift the café owner an oil painting of Main Street that she’d painted during the quiet, summer twilight hours between art class and Kody’s nightly arrivals…
Nope! Not gonna go there!
“You got talent, girl, but you don’t need me telling you that. What brings you to Hope Falls? There isn’t a winter art camp I don’t know about, is there?”
As Sue Ann questioningly searched Jennifer’s eyes with a look that implied she already knew the answer, Jennifer tried not to read too much into what felt like a silent version of the Third Degree, and replied, “No, there’s no art camp. I just needed to get out of New York. It can be festive during the holidays, but lately I haven’t been able to breathe in the big city.”
“A girl can really breathe out here,” Sue Ann assured her, a sly smirk forming at the corner of her mouth. “We’ve got fresh mountain air.”