Meet Your Mate (A Good Riders Romance Book 1)

by Floyd, Jacie

  “A dead poodle? What does that mean?”

  “I don’t know.” Carly got up and opened the fridge, scrounging around for a container of yogurt. “I thought it was one of those expressions adults use that don’t make sense unless you understand the context. Maybe she said wet poodle. He was about as exciting as a wet poodle.”

  “Did she say “wet noodle?”” The description didn’t flatter Carl, but at least it didn’t border on necrophilia. Or bestiality.

  “Wet noodle! Yes, that’s it.” At that, Carly must have caught a glimpse of Annabel’s disapproval. “Eewww. Believe me, that’s a lot more than a girl wants to know about her father. Please, don’t feel the need to confirm, deny, or share similar confidences.”

  Annabel had no intention of doing so. Her thoughts reeled wildly away from the direction the conversation had taken.

  “You know I love you, Anna. I can’t imagine my life without you, but…” Carly bit her lip and dropped her gaze before finishing in a rush. “One thing I always wondered is why you married him. He was crazy about you, in his own quiet way, but I don’t know what you saw in him.”

  Many people had been surprised about the mismatch in their ages, but it hadn’t seemed odd to her. “He gave me so much, honey. A home, security, love, all the things I lacked after my parents died.”

  “But did you love him?”

  “In some ways, I did.” Annabel smiled at the thought of her husband’s many fine qualities. “I admired his intelligence, his gentleness, his dependability. He really needed me in his life, and I liked that.” She’d found the idea fulfilling at the time, but she’d given up a lot of herself to please Carl and make the marriage work. And she hadn’t realized until last night how much had been missing. “And if I hadn’t married him, I wouldn’t have you in my life.”

  “I’m glad you were happy with him, and for purely selfish reasons, I’m glad you married him.”

  Annabel pulled her into a hug, pushing away pointless regrets at the same time. “Me, too, honey.”

  “But Max, now.” Carly awarded Annabel with an impish grin. “He looks like a complete stud. He’s got a sexy smile and a great butt. And I love how he follows you with his eyes. I thought from the way he looked last night when he saw you in that dress that he wouldn’t be able to keep his hands off of you.” She waited expectantly, but Annabel’s tongue remained glued to the roof of her mouth.

  Carly shrugged. “Of course, if you say nothing happened, I believe you, because you never lie. But I hoped you’d have someone special in your life.”

  “I have you in my life, and you’re special.”

  “That’s not the kind of ‘special’ I mean. I’ll be leaving soon, and I wanted you to have someone you could count on besides me.”

  “Well, I appreciate the thought, sweetie. Really I do, but I don’t need a man in my life to be happy, and Max would only be a temporary fix at best.”

  “Yeah,” Carly said, laughing. “But he’d be good for some excitement.”

  “Until he’s gone.”

  “Gone? Where’s he going?”

  Annabel lifted her cup for a sip of stone cold tea. She returned it to the saucer with a clink. “News people tend to move from market to market. It’s not a very stable lifestyle.”

  “Oh, shoot,” Carly huffed. “I hadn’t thought of that. Where would he go after here?”

  “New York, maybe.”

  “New York! That’s great! You should go, too. There are plenty of career opportunities in New York.”

  “Sure. Documentary companies there are dying to give high-budget projects to unknown women with nothing more to recommend them than having been an also-ran for a local media award.”

  “You have more to recommend you than that.” Carly shook her head. “The only thing keeping you from trying is you.”

  “That and the desire to keep a roof over my head.” Although her current roof required about twenty grand she didn’t have to get it reshingled before the next deluge.

  “All right, maybe that plan’s too aggressive for you. Max and New York are big leaps for someone with your timid nature, but I’ll keep thinking. Maybe I can scout up someone more suitable for you. The new boys’ soccer coach is built like a Greek statue, thirty, and single.”

  Timid nature? Ouch, that hurt. Especially after her recent progress. Of course, Carly hadn’t seen Annabel in her trench coat last night, eluding a criminal and aiding in his capture. And she wasn’t at liberty to mention anything about it yet.

  “Or,” Annabel said, deflecting the suggestion, “I can decide what to do with my life all by myself.”

  “Yeah, right.” Carly shook her head and snorted, as if she found the possibility farfetched. She stood and stretched. “I’m going to take a shower, then head over to school for soccer practice.”

  “How long will you be gone?”

  “Back by two. How about you?”

  “I’m feeling lazy today.” Annabel yawned to emphasize the point. “Maybe I’ll just stay around here.”

  “Says the lady who thinks she can manage her own love life.” Carly left the kitchen with a parting shot. “You won’t find any available males if you don’t get out there and look.”

  Annabel knew that. She did. She just couldn’t handle it today. Dropping her head in her hands, she rubbed her temples and contemplated cleaning the kitchen.

  Out in the foyer, Carly’s footsteps paused halfway up the stairs, then stomped back to the kitchen.

  “Uh huh,” she said, with one fist planted on her hip and a bow tie dangling from the fingertips of her other hand. “What is this?”

  Annabel willed herself to stay calm. “Max’s tie. He hates wearing them and says he feels like they’re strangling him, so he took it off when we got here. I guess he forgot it.”

  “That makes sense.” Carly lifted her other hand from her hip and revealed a black dress sock balled up in her palm. “Does he feel strangled wearing socks, too?”

  Oh, God, busted! Teenagers were far too knowing these days to let a parent get away with anything. Annabel expected Carly to ground her any minute now.

  “I guess so.” She plucked both items from Carly’s grasp. “I’ll make sure he gets them back.”

  To Annabel’s vast disappointment, her phone remained silent throughout most of Sunday. And when it did ring, it wasn’t who she wanted to hear from. No calls, no texts from Max. Her phone worked both ways though. She debated calling him. A daring step for her, but she didn’t want him to interpret the action as needy, or desperate, or smitten.

  No matter how much she wanted him, they were still all wrong for one another. She could never be with someone who treated women as callously as he’d treated DeeDee, but then again… Now that she knew him better, she couldn’t picture him actually treating a woman that way. Rumors could be wrong. And DeeDee never actually said she was hung up on Max. Or that the baby was his. Maybe Annabel had mistakenly assumed those things.

  She stewed over it for a few minutes before pulling up DeeDee’s Facebook page to catch up on her recent posts. Loved her new job. Cute baby. Newly engaged. To her baby’s father, Jonathan Andrews.

  Ah ha! Jonathan used to work on the WKLK news team with Max. The guy had been married when he lived and worked in Cincinnati. That provided an explanation for Max not wanting to explain more about his relationship with DeeDee. Maybe he hadn’t really had one, just provided a smokescreen for the relationship between DeeDee and Jonathan. Or he loaned her a sympathetic ear when she needed one. Now, that made more sense.

  If the grapevine had been wrong about Max and DeeDee, it probably misfired about Max and the intern, too. Annabel would check it out later, but she felt more confident that it had been completely misconstrued.

  With the first objection swept away, she still wasn’t sure he was interested in her, or that they had any kind of future.

  After another fretful night, she put the sock and tie in her messenger bag and took them to work with her on Mon
day. She stuffed them in her desk drawer before anyone could see her mooning over them like an idiot. Occasionally, she reached in and rubbed the tie between her fingers like a lucky rabbit’s foot.

  A couple of times—or a couple of dozen times—she started to call Max, but each time she returned the phone to her pocket undialed.

  If she called him, he’d think she couldn’t resist him. He’d think she’d use any trumped up excuse to contact him. He’d think she couldn’t stop thinking about him.

  And of course, she couldn’t, whether she wanted to or not. His face loomed everywhere today. Not just on television, but in the newspaper too. This morning’s Enquirer blared its praise of his exposure of corruption in the city government. Key figures had been brought in for questioning. Arrests had been made.

  Still, she couldn’t forget she’d let him see her at her most vulnerable. Let him see her with her guard down.

  Let him see her naked.

  Even editing her latest project in her tiny but tidy office, her mind filled with images of Max in every pose from unaware to interested to aroused. And it was pointless to let her thoughts linger on any of those areas.

  His latest coup would probably cement the network deal. He’d be moving to New York any minute now.

  The Big Apple.

  Good for him.

  She’d dreamed of living and working in New York once upon a time. Carly’s recent prodding reminded Annabel of that forgotten goal and many other dreams she’d put on hold. A temporary hold that had lengthened from one or two years to a full dozen.

  Just because there wouldn’t be anything to tie her to Cincinnati after Carly left didn’t mean Annabel should give up the security of her low-paying, unfulfilling, dead-end job and sell her paid-for-but-in-need-of-a new roof home to take a long shot at achieving some vague and unpredictable dreams. Disheartened, she sighed and rubbed Max’s tie again.

  Maybe Carly was right. Maybe Annabel lacked the guts.

  An intern named Brittany, not much older than Carly, came in to drop off a stack of mail. Annabel usually took the time to encourage the girl’s interest in producing documentaries. The girl was nice, talented, too, but prone to gossip.

  “Too bad about the award,” Brittany said. “It would’ve been awesome to win. I was rooting for you.”

  “Thanks.” Annabel didn’t look up, uneager to chat today. “Maybe next time.”

  “I saw you on the news.” The intern headed for the door. “Fabulous dress.”

  “Thanks, I liked it too.” And so had Max. Annabel flipped through the mail, but stopped short. “Brittany, wait.”

  The intern stopped with her hand on the door. “Something I can do to help?”

  “Just something I was wondering about.”

  “Okay.” Brittany came back and leaned her hip against Annabel’s desk.

  “You go to UC, right?” She set the stack of mail aside. “Do you know a girl who was a news intern last year named, uh, I think it was, Miranda?”

  “The one that was fired? Sure, I knew her. She left school though.”

  Annabel hated to ask. She cautioned herself not to, but… “Do you know why?”

  “Why she was dismissed? Or why she left school? Same reason, either way.” The intern dropped her voice to a whisper. “She was into some heavy drugs. I heard one of the reporters caught her doing something stupid at work. Snorting heroin is the unconfirmed story. They say he tried to get her into rehab, but when he caught her with the same shit a second time, she was history.”

  “I’m sorry to hear it.” Annabel knew too many kids fell prey to drugs for too many reasons. Not just at-risk kids from the Challenging Destiny high school, but girls from Carly’s high school, from their neighborhood, and even their church. “She had a promising future.”

  “I guess.” Brittany chewed her thumbnail a minute. “Uh, Annabel, I hope she gets her life straightened out, but until she gets help she could really spell trouble. Are you thinking of hiring her to help you out here? In addition to me? Or in place of me?”

  “No, nothing like that. You’re doing a great job, but someone mentioned her to me the other day. I just wondered what happened. If there was something I could do to help her.”

  “No offense, but if she wouldn’t listen to Max, I doubt if she’d listen to you either.”

  Annabel went very still except for the chills running down her spine. “Max Williams was the reporter who tried to get her into rehab?”

  “Yeah, he’s kind of like a mentor for the interns there. He always does stuff like that to help people. Didn’t you know?” Brittany looked surprised.

  “I didn’t know.” But I should have.

  “I saw you went to the ceremony with him the other night. That was really cool. Doesn’t that mean you two are friends?”

  “We are, but he keeps surprising me.”

  “I’ll bet.” Brittany smirked, but then straightened. “Oops, I’ve got a class in half an hour. I need to deliver the rest of this mail then get over to campus. See ya.”

  Annabel leaned back in her chair and chewed her lip, distressed at how she’d misjudged Max all the way around. While she thought of ways to make amends, she reached for the stack of mail, adjusted it neatly, tapped the edges, sorted it by size, and then placed it squarely in the center of her desk. Obsessive straightening, an old habit of hers.

  One large canary yellow envelope stood out among the supply catalogs and industry mags. She flipped it over. The return address made her heart skip a beat. She ripped the envelope open and scanned the contents.

  Dear Ms. Morgan, We have recently reviewed your...

  Oh, my! She pressed a hand against her flipping stomach and gulped several deep breaths before continuing. Her gaze scanned the incredible news quickly.

  Extraordinary talent... Limited class size... Willing to offer you...

  Oh,mygosh!Oh,mygosh!Oh,mygosh! She clutched the letter against her chest and danced a quick two-step around the cramped office.

  Over a year ago she’d sent audition footage and a resume to her hero, legendary cinematographer Lance Foreman. She’d never expected anything beyond a form rejection, but now she held in her shaking hands an invitation to attend Lance’s eight-week course at UCLA.

  Yes! She pumped her fist in the air and rocketed back and forth from one side of her small space to the other. Think of how much she could learn from him! The opportunity beamed brightly as the highlight of her fledgling career.

  And if she took the course, a little voice inside her head teased, she’d be in a much stronger position to go to New York, or anywhere else she wanted. Maybe with a recommendation from Lance Foreman himself.

  With her hand on her cell phone, intent on calling Max to share her good news, her desk phone rang. She jumped about a foot in the air.

  “You busy?” her boss asked over the pounding in her ears.

  Proving he didn’t have a surveillance camera in her office, as she’d often suspected. If he did, he’d know just how unproductive her day had been. Unless he considered obsessing over Max a good use of her time. Or gossiping with interns. Or celebrating offers from outside sources. She clicked on the screen that had gone to black. “Just editing this piece on local church steeples for the Historical Society.”

  “How’s that going?”

  She bit her lip and refused to tell an out-right lie. “Slowly.”

  He grunted. “Drop that and come down to my office.”

  “Yes, sir!” Being at Howard Lasting’s beck and call was just another one of the super perks that came with earning a paycheck. She felt a moment’s unease, wondering if her premonition about getting fired was about to come true.

  She moved through the no-frills production area to the less familiar luxury of the business offices where Howard held the monetary reins on the staff’s creative urges. His secretary nodded and waved Annabel into his private domain.

  “What’s up?” She dropped into the stiff-backed visitor’s chair opposite Howa
rd’s ergonomic marvel.

  “Too bad about the award.” He reached behind his desk and retrieved two bottles of Evian from the mini-bar.

  He held one in her direction, but she refused with a shake of her head. Whatever he wanted to say, she didn’t want to prolong the suspense. “I thought I had a shot.”

  “You did good work,” he acknowledged.

  “Thanks.” The unexpected praise surprised her and put her on guard for the upcoming discussion.

  He leaned back in his chair and flapped his tie. He always liked to pause for dramatic effect. Annabel leaned back and straightened her cuffs. Point, counterpoint.

  “I’ve been thinking about your place in the organization,” he said at last.

  “Ah.” Expecting the worst, Annabel gripped the arms of her chair. Both dreading the news and welcoming it. If she lost her job, she’d be free to attend Foreman’s class. She’d might have no other choice than to relocate. She could move to Chicago or Los Angeles.

  Or New York.

  Her pulse almost tripped over itself as she considered the possibilities.

  “I’ve decided to let you produce that motorcycle documentary you pitched me the other day,” he said.

  That jerked her back into the moment. “What?”

  “You’ve paid your dues here. It’s time to see what else you can do.”

  “Thank you.” She would have jumped through hoops for the opportunity a few days earlier, but now she felt a monumental lack of enthusiasm.

  Her mind actually wandered as he went over the details. Instead of basking in her triumph or employing some harmless flattery to get him to increase her budget, she thanked him for the opportunity. She made an excuse to leave his office, offered a casual, “Let me think about it,” and breezed out the door.

  She should have sang and danced her way down the halls as she returned to her office, but her feet dragged in a dirge-like shuffle.

  At her desk, she retrieved a Project Initiation Form from a file drawer and paused before filling it out. Normally, the formality of completing the form would have thrilled her to her toes, but not today.

  Now she had a really good excuse to call Max. Not just to share the news, but she’d need biker background and who better to provide it? Without stopping to consider, she pulled out her phone and selected the contact she’d been itching to press all day.