Prologue
Prologu e
I give up.
And I give up.
I pace several yards up the highway and back again, holding my cellphone up in the air like that extra foot could make a difference.
My lion's mane of ginger curls is loose because my hair clip broke this morning and my ponytailers are buried in the bed of the truck.
When the tractor trailers go by, the curls whip across my face.
Not too far from me is a wall of trees that conceals a vast swamp, and I'm hoping a gator will crawl out and drag me back.
Instead, my ankles are getting chewed up by fire ants.
I nearly flop myself down in the grass, but I have just enough self-preservation to remind myself that in all likelihood, I will see tomorrow, and I don't want tomorrow to come with fire ant bites in my vagoo.
Instead, I return to the truck and stare at the hood helplessly for several minutes.
I don't bother opening it. I don't know a ton about motors, but I know enough to know that this is it.
This is the end.
I have nothing.
My nose burns, but no tears fall. When a car finally does make its way to the shoulder, I half-fear, half-hope it's going to run me over because my stupid ass was standing in the shoulder.
The chunky black Volvo eases onto the shoulder in front of me, stopping forty yards ahead.
It pulls all the way onto the grass, which makes it look marginally less intimidating, but despite being a Volvo SUV, which sounds very soccer-mom in my head, it's .
. . yeah, intimidating. Even more so when the driver's door opens and a muscular man in a professional black suit and aviator glasses gets out and opens the door behind him.
He reaches his hand in and helps out the passenger in the back seat.
The woman who appears is older, perhaps her 60s, in subtly fashionable pumps with red soles and a conservative yet couture business suit.
The sort of thing you'd see on a ready-to-wear runway in Milan.
Her hair is an expertly frosted bob and her make-up gives her a refined but approachable visage.
She somehow makes the surrounding nightmare of central Florida highway vanish, and she looks just as at ease approaching me on the uneven asphalt as I imagine she would in a 50th floor boardroom.
I can't help but meet her in the middle.
"You seem to be in a spot of trouble, my dear," she says once we're close enough that she doesn't have to raise her voice.
I gesture helplessly to my truck. "I'm . . . a mess," I admit, deflated. The truck is really just the proverbial straw breaking my already overladen back.
She smiles so kindly that it feels like she's just lifted every single straw, every pebble, every log, every boulder off my shoulders. "Come along dear," she says with an extended hand. "We'll get you all taken care of."
I was raised on stranger danger. I don't like talking to cashiers.
I shy away from bell-ringers at Christmas and will pay twice as much from a pizza place that has online ordering to avoid talking to the more affordable place on the phone.
But all I can eke out as I slide my hand into hers is, "I don't know you. "
"And that's the last time you'll ever get to say that to me, because I'm Jane."
"Ione," I offer.
"Ah, a goddess. It is wonderful to meet you, Ione." She slides a business card into my hand. I only have a moment to see that it's a solid matte black with a thin gold frame and the letters BBHH Inc embossed on it, no additional details, before she's gesturing for me to return with her to her car.
"Why are you helping me?" I ask as I follow her.
"Don't you know? It's Christmas!"
I don’t have Unyielding set up for pre-order yet, but in the meantime, I highly recommend checking out A Hotwife’s Holiday Studs! It’s a short erotic read that features several of the characters that will be featured in BBHH: Consummate.