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Delores Watkins nursed a large cup of steaming black coffee between two large, brightly-manicured hands. The rays of the rising sun dawned through the office window behind her. They tinged the back of her large brown bouffant hairdo like an orange halo, and glimmered off the backs of her earrings.
A green box suddenly appeared on her computer screen. She cursed softly and fluently, put her coffee cup down, and gingerly placed a headset on her carefully-coiffed hair.
“Hello?”
Brad William’s voice was already running, non-stop, on the other end. She rolled her eyes up toward the ceiling.
“Stop. Stop, Brad. It’s too early. What? No, slow down.”
She lifted the cup and took another sip, frowning.
“So, she did call you. Congratulations.
“You promised her you’d do what? Now wait a minute. Yes, it’s good; it has the potential to be – yes, yes. But you represent the Ledger. I can’t just let you go running off to the most prestigious auction house in the country without–”
She took another sip.
“Yes, I was implying that. And posturing will get you nowhere.
“I never said no. But we’re going to have to talk to Dapper Dwayne and do a little legal CYA before I’ll even think about letting you call the auction house.
“I don’t care.
“Cry me an ocean, Brad.
“Okay, you’re lucky that I don’t can you for that. Remember that there are plenty of other guys who’d be glad to—
The little box disappeared from the screen, and Delores rolled her eyes and removed the headset. Her assistant entered the room just then, saw her face, and looked at her quizzically. She shrugged and smiled.
“It was Brad on the phone,” she explained.
The young woman grinned, and put a folder on her desk. “Oh. What is it this time?”
Delores took another pull from the coffee cup. “Oh, nothing.
“The kid may have the biggest story of the year – that’s all.”
Back at Uncle Bob’s Amish Motel, Brad Williams was coming to much the same conclusion.
He sat on the edge of the motel bed, wearing nothing but a pair of boxer shorts. He held his head in his hands, and his mind was racing.
Delores was infuriating, but upon mature reflection, he had to admit that she was right to be cautious.
Because he couldn’t be.
He had the mother of all feature stories. All he had to do was reel it in. Once they’d cleared the legal stuff with Dapper Dwayne – and he was convinced it was just a formality – he was going to have a hand in one of the biggest and most historic auction sales in American history.
The story was sure to go viral, especially if he could get that girl to change her mind about the picture. She was just made for the camera.
He allowed himself to picture it. That gorgeous face would sell the story instantly on social media. Every man in America would be seeing that face in his dreams, and every woman would be trying to recreate it with makeup – in vain.
He closed his eyes and conjured it up in his mind: the tiny curls just below the little cap, the smooth, placid brow, the light, perfectly arched brows. The huge green eyes, so effortlessly seductive in their beautiful innocence. The delicate nose and the plump, pouting lips that have haunted him since they’d first met. What would it feel like to be kissed by those lips?
He shook his head slightly, and forced himself to focus.
Of course, there was one big hitch. He’d promised not to take a photo of her face. He still had no idea why he’d promised her that. Probably, it was because she turned him into a babbling idiot.
He fumbled over the nightstand for a cigarette. He lit one, inhaled deeply, and stretched back out on the bed.
It must’ve been the thought of her lips on the other end of the line. Or that voice. He closed his eyes, remembering it. Her voice was smooth, and soft, and so gentle and feminine that it distracted him from what she’d actually been saying.
No, mostly he remembered – no names, no pictures, no appearance at the auction house, and no visits to her home from anyone else.
He took another drag from the cigarette.
Of course, he couldn’t keep all those the promises he’d made to her. He felt a flicker of guilt about it, but he couldn’t. He might as well just give up on the story, and he’d stuck his neck out way too far for that. He’d given up too much for that.
When he’d opened Jemima’s letter, and a 200-year-old document, signed by George Washington had fallen out on the motel bed, it had taken every last atom of will power for him not to take it and cash in. He still didn’t understand completely why he hadn’t. It would’ve been technically ethical to accept – she had given it to him, after all.
But somehow, he couldn’t. It was as simple as that.
Maybe it was the idea of taking money from a woman. And not just any woman – a young, gorgeous woman that, he had to admit, he wanted to impress.
Maybe it was ethics. Maybe he didn’t want to think of himself as a creep or an opportunist. Maybe he wanted to make his own money.
Or maybe he just liked doing things the hard way. It was the story of his life, after all. It was why he was going to die poor, and probably young.
Delores’ disgusted face popped into his mind, and he sputtered smoke as he tamped the cigarette out. Another of his bad habits.
And he had plenty. What was more, he was tired of being a good boy. He had just ruined himself and turned down a fortune, out of some quixotic idea of being his own man. Well, now that he was guaranteed rocky sledding for the rest of his life, he might as well steer the sled himself.
It was time to return to the real world.
He couldn’t stay away from Jemima, not if he wanted the story. That decision was as simple as his decision not to take the money. He’d be risking everything, but without Jemima’s picture, the story was going nowhere anyway.
Somehow, he had to get her to let him take a photo, and it wasn’t going to be easy. It was against her religion, for one thing. She didn’t know him, for another. He got the definite feeling that she didn’t trust him and, possibly, that she might even be frightened of him.
Of course, that was because he hadn’t exactly been Mr. Smooth so far. He had done everything wrong when it came to gaining her trust.
And that was a first.
He frowned at the ceiling. He didn’t like to admit it, but that gorgeous redhead threw him right off his game. His decision to hide in the bushes at her house definitely hadn’t been well thought out.
Which brought him to his reason for that choice: her volcano of a father. Her very mountainous, very fiery, very rumbling old man.
If the red giant caught him anywhere near Jemima...? Brad closed his eyes, and had a sudden vision of himself flying through the air and landing ingloriously, and in great confusion, on his rearward parts.
He had to get Jemima away from her father, and preferably from everybody else as well. And once he did – well, she’d laid down a lot of conditions over the phone, but he was confident that he’d be able to change all that, if he could just get alone with her.
At least, that was how it usually worked – when he applied himself.
He sprang out of bed and made for the shower.
