Surrendered: A Collection of Five Works Read online

  Surrendered

  A Collection of Five Works

  By Lucas Arnault

  Surrendered. A Collection of Five Works by Lucas Arnault

  Published by Bell&Kor Publishing

  92 Grove Street, New York, NY

  © 2015 Bell&Kor Publishing

  All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be reproduced in any form without permission from the publisher, except as permitted by U.S. copyright law. For permissions contact:

  [email protected]

  Cover by Ezekiel Krane.

  CONTENTS

  ▪ Synopsis

  ▪ Witness To Love

  ▪ Monkey See, Monkey Do

  ▪ Vitoria’s Secret

  ▪ The Sun Sets

  ▪ Surrendered

  SYNOPSIS

  Witness to Love

  Jessica has been living her life shut off from the horrific events of her past, afraid to come out of her shell, afraid to truly feel. Then one day, she meets Nick Marino, a handsome, charming man with secrets of his own. Together they are magic - but will their pasts come back to haunt both of them..?

  Monkey See Monkey Do

  Matt Marlin is a successful architect without a desire to have children in his life. When 4-year-old Madison runs into his unexpecting arms, he has a choice to make. Turn away a sweet, curly-haired little girl and her gorgeous caretaker, Jesse or change his attitude…

  Vitoria’s Secret

  Vitoria’s romantic past had not only affected her emotionally, it had spilled over into her professional life. It was time to start fresh. Only once she relocated to the picturesque town of her dreams, she realized her feelings from the past could never escape her…

  The Sun Sets

  Katie Young is riding the waves of success from her debut novel and is taking an escape to a beach cottage to write a second. With her agent breathing down her neck, she figures a week alone will give her time to think and create. But on the first night she sees a man emerge from the water. When she meets Alex Hammill she is unendingly drawn to him, he brings out something in her that she’s never had before, not to mention how incredibly gorgeous he is. He seems to feel the same connection with her as well and in a matter of days the two have formed an unexplainable bond. But even Alex doesn’t know who he truly is…

  Surrendered

  Kim Harding lived a very normal life until one day; everything came crashing down on her. After losing her brother, Marcus, in the military, she was introduced to his best friend, Devin, in the waiting room. Kim found out that Devin had promised Marcus that he would look after her when he was gone. By the time they started to get to know one another, Kim began to notice that Devin was almost just like her brother. Realizing that caused her to panic…

  Witness to Love

  Chapter 1 – The Interview

  Jessica Ellis took one last hurried gulp of coffee, nearly spilling it on her light cotton dress in the process, and then set her favorite coffee cup down on the kitchen counter, still half full. The cup was one her mother had purchased for her as a young ‘tween during a visit to Disney World, at a time when the adorable little pixie Tinkerbell had wholly captured her imagination.

  Today she just didn’t have time to linger over her morning coffee, because she had to be at work early to prepare for interviewing a prospective new employee. Having moved to the small town of Burridge in Southwest Florida four years ago from Pennsylvania, Jessica had quickly risen to become HR manager at Southwest Tours, a booming business which specialized in guiding tourists to some of Southwest Florida’s less hyped and less visited attractions.

  Business had been so good for the last year or two, that the time had now come for a modest expansion, and Jessica had convinced her boss, Harland Butler, to hire someone fulltime to carry out the duties of marketing the company and its services for tourists. Her own business background told her that in order to stay competitive in the fierce battle for tourist dollars that Southwest Tours would have to be promoted not just locally, but far beyond the borders of the state. She could probably have filled the role herself, except for the fact that she was just too busy in her role as HR manager, especially since the company now boasted a workforce of 48 fulltime employees.

  She fished around in her purse for car keys, then before she left her one-bedroom apartment at Tanglewood Place, she stopped briefly at the hallway mirror to make sure she wasn’t about to step into the outside world with some gross wardrobe oversight or makeup gaffe.

  Freshly washed and dried, shoulder-length brunette hair – check. Stylish granny glasses, a la John Lennon (another hero) – check. Minimal blush, evenly distributed over healthy cheeks – check. Barely detectable swipe of Pink Rose lipstick, top and bottom – check. Beautiful smile, completely free of lipstick – check. Mila Kunis-pretty face – check. Appealing dress, attractive figure, still appropriate for business setting – check. Everything in order.

  She closed the door behind her, walked down the single flight of stairs, and quickly strode to the 3-yr old metallic blue Honda Accord, waiting for her in the parking lot. This would be an interesting day.

  As she pulled into her personal parking spot, just 100 feet or so from the glass-panel front doors of Southwest Tours, she could see her closest friend at the company, Lauren Evans, already walking toward her with a smile.

  “Good morning, Girl! How was your weekend? Frank and I took the kids for a drive to Clearwater to see my folks – had a nice time at the beach.” Lauren stopped on the sidewalk, waiting for her friend to exit the car and join her. “We hooking up for coffee around 9-ish?”

  Jessica shook her head. “No, sorry, not this morning, Lauren. Today I start the interviews for our Marketing guy, and the first one is at 9:00. I don’t expect it to go much longer than an hour though, so maybe we can meet at the cafeteria sometime after 10 if you’re free.”

  “Oh that’s right – you have those interviews. I forgot about that. Any interesting prospects?”

  “Well I had a chance to look over some resumes on the weekend, and nothing really stands out to me among the first three candidates I was looking at. Hopefully someone makes a better impression in person, or we may end up checking with our staffing buddies over at Pro Personnel.”

  “Jessie! Why are you always working on the weekend? Don’t you ever have any fun, Girl? You are too young and too movie-star to be moping around Tanglewood all weekend, and not letting all the Florida guys enjoy your company!” This last was delivered with both a teasing tone and a note of seriousness as well, punctuated by a smile and a giggle. It was a fairly frequent topic of conversation between the two, most of the time resulting in Jessica becoming mildly annoyed with her friend’s persistent efforts to thrust her into the dating world.

  Jessica made a face, and stuck her tongue out at her match-making friend. “I don’t have time for your ‘Bachelorette’ thing today – I need to sit down and take another look at this first resume, so I can at least appear to have prepared for the guy.”

  “Sorry. I’ll leave you alone. I’ll look for you after 10 then, ok? Have fun with your interviews!” The two walked inside together, with Jessica veering off to the right where the four manager offices were located, and Lauren going left toward the labyrinth of cubicles which dominated the first floor of the three-story building.

  Once in her office, and seated in her very comfortable leather chair, Jessica opened her briefcase and retrieved the stack of resumes she had first consulted over the weekend. She found her 9:00 resume and began pouring over it again. Glancing at the wall clock, she saw that it would be another half hour before he arrived, so she still had time to formulate some appropriate question
s.

  Nicholas Marino - Italian? Degree in business administration. Two prior jobs, sales and marketing. Salary a little higher than Southwest Tours could afford – could be a deal-breaker. Not married, recently moved away from New York to Florida. Graduated from University in 2008, which should put him at about 30 years old. Nicholas had some possibilities.

  A few minutes before 9:00, Jessica noticed through her office doorway that Jean Martin, the receptionist, was escorting a gentleman in a business suit from the lobby toward her office. Even from a distance, it was easy to see that Nicholas Marino was a six-foot stack of handsome, immaculately attired in a gray business suit and perfectly arranged midnight blue tie. He had luscious dark hair, and the olive skin common to many Mediterranean peoples. Whatever Jean was saying to him at the moment caused him to smile, and he flashed a dazzling row of pearly white teeth that would’ve made a dentist envious. Jessica had to catch her breath, being slightly taken aback by his overwhelming good looks.

  “Watch yourself, Jessie,” she said inwardly, “Keep it professional.”

  “Jessica, this is Nicholas Marino, and he’s here to talk to you about the Marketing position with us”, said Jean Martin, “I’ll just leave him with you for now, and you two can get right to it.” As she backed out of the office, out of Marino’s sight, Jean popped her eyes wide open, and gave Jessica a mischievous little grin. Seeing all this, Jessica had to make a serious effort to ignore it all, and maintain her best poker face as she sat down again to begin the discussion.

  “So, Mr. Marino, why exactly are you interested in joining our little company?” she began, offering a polite smile.

  Seated comfortably in an armless chair, directly facing Jessica, Marino smiled easily and responded with a slight Italian accent, “I had a feeling that would be your first question. The truth is, I applied for work at several places, and I’m hoping to find work with one of them quickly, because I just moved here from the north, and I need to find a job as soon as possible. I know the local tourist business is on a high right now, and I did take a look at Southwest Tours before applying. I think you’ve shown some good growth over the past few years, and I wouldn’t mind being a part of that.”

  “Yes I see that you recently moved to Florida. What prompted that – what made you want to move down south?”

  “There really isn’t any one major reason. I just felt that I was in kind of a rut living in New York, and my life wasn’t really going anywhere. For maybe the last two years or so, I just kept getting this feeling that there wasn’t anything more for me there – that I would have to find the missing pieces of my life somewhere else. I don’t have anything bad to say about New York; living and working there was fine for the most part, but I just started feeling that I needed to look somewhere else for the next phase of my life.”

  Jessica nodded in understanding. “I see you have a Master’s Degree in Business Administration, which might be something very helpful here at Southwest. What about your sales and marketing experience, with – let’s see, what were those companies?”

  “The first job after college was with a retailer, Burns Brothers, and two years later I joined a digital marketing company which offered their services to small businesses.”

  “Right. Well, I am most interested in the second job, with the digital marketing company. What were your duties there?”

  “I worked with clients to help them plan strategies for increasing their brand-name recognition online and for promoting their products and services. It was a mix of educating them to some extent, and then developing some specific campaigns to carry out their objectives. Very interesting work, and I enjoyed the collaboration.”

  “I see. Let’s say I come to you, and I tell you that my company is battling it out with several competitors in the area, and we’re not quite sure how to go about increasing our market share. We need to get our company name known outside the local area, so we can bring in customers from all over the country. What are some of the things you might recommend to me, if I were your client and you were strategizing with me about getting a leg up on the competition?”

  “Well, the first thing I would do is ask you if you are making good use of the social media”, he responded quickly, “and if you aren’t, I would work with you to put together a strategy for making regular posts to get your company name out there.”

  “And how would that help me exactly?” He flashed her a quick smile, “I think you are playing the devil’s advocate with me a little bit – but anyway, as I’m sure you realize, the social media can reach millions of people instantly. Much more effective than any kind of conventional advertising you could dream up. And once you get a lot of people talking about your service, they do all the advertising for you and just keep passing around the information between themselves, while you sit back and enjoy the free buzz. And on top of that –“

  It was right about here that Jessica zoned out. She completely stopped listening to what her handsome interviewee was saying, and unintentionally fell under the magnetic spell of his dark eyes, his chiseled jawbones, his endlessly gorgeous jet-black hair, and the soothing, melodic tone of his deep, baritone voice.

  Marino must have noticed the glazed look in her eyes at some point, and broke off from what he’d been saying, to apologize. “Oh, I’m sorry – I’ve been droning on about marketing, and I’ve put you to sleep. Forgive me.”

  “No, no, no! My fault – I was just making some mental notes. In terms of salary, Mr. Marino, I see that what you were making with Essex Marketing was about 5K more than we could offer you at Southwest. I mean, we might be able to come up a little, but – “

  “Money is not my most important motivator right now, Miss Ellis. I want to get established in this area to see if I can make it home. I live simply and have no extravagant tastes. I’m sure we will be able to agree about money if I’m hired.”

  “Well, that’s good to know, and I appreciate your candor, Mr. Marino. One last thing - are you staying somewhere nearby in town, or did you commute from one of the bigger cities? I’m just wondering how much of a drive you’d have, if things work out and you do come work for us.”

  “I’ve been staying at Tanglewood Place, on the edge of town. I have a nice one-bedroom apartment there, which is all I need. Getting back and forth would be no problem at all.”

  Inwardly, Jessica cringed. Tanglewood! How could he have been staying there without her noticing? She debated briefly about whether or not to tell him she was also a resident there, but discarded the notion on the grounds that this might be the last time she ever talked with him. She banished that thought almost as soon as it came to her, realizing that she already couldn’t bear to consider it further.

  After promising to be in touch with him soon, Jessica walked Nicholas Marino to the exit, and headed to the small company cafeteria, her mind a whirlpool of thoughts and emotions. She hadn’t stepped ten feet inside the cafeteria when Lauren ambushed her excitedly.

  In her most animated state, sporting her best Cheshire Cat smile and literally jumping up and down in place, Lauren exclaimed to her friend, “Oh my God, Jess! I don’t care what his qualifications are – you have to hire him! Don’t even wait – just call him back now, and tell him we need him!”

  Chapter 2 – Echoes of the Past

  There was no one else in line at the cafeteria, so the two women moved through quickly, pouring coffee so hot it was uncomfortable to hold the cup. Jessica sat down at the first table beyond the cash register, and gratefully put the cup down on the tile surface of the table. She had just a moment to distractedly watch the wisp of hot vapor curl above her coffee, then disperse into the air-conditioned atmosphere, before Lauren broke in on her thoughts.

  “Seriously, Jess – what did you think? Isn’t he the most gorgeous thing? Even if he can’t type a word, I’ll take him as my secretary.” Lauren sat down opposite Jessica with a smile, and continued to prod her friend. “So does he have a chance? Can we get him?”

&n
bsp; “Lauren, you know I don’t do the hiring – I just recommend to Mr. Butler.”

  “I don’t know any such thing”, her friend countered, “What I do know is that old Harland listens to everything you say, and that you practically own the company as far as he’s concerned.”

  “I have two more interviews today Lauren, so by the end of the day, I’ll have at least three candidates to compare. I’m hoping at least one of them stands out, so we can bring someone on board right away, and start promoting this company a little better.”

  “Yeah, but you must have some idea of his qualifications and how he presented himself today. You must have your own impressions. So what do you think? I’m not even going to accuse you of daydreaming about jumping in the sack with him”, she laughed mischievously, “but I know you were, weren’t you?”

  “Oh for God’s sake, Lauren! I wasn’t thinking any such thing, if you must know. Mr. Marino has a decent background, and I think he could probably help us with our marketing strategy. To be honest, I’m a little surprised he would even want to work for us, because I think we’re a lot smaller than the companies he’s worked with before. But I guess he just moved here, and he has to find a job right away. I can relate to that – if you recall, I was in the same boat about four years ago when I got here.”

  “Yes, I remember, Jess. Poor little orphan girl. So, how did he come across to you? Was he a good interview?”

  “He presented himself very well. I think he’s a good conversationalist, and I think he would have no trouble working with just about anyone. He’s well-educated, he’s well spoken, and I think he brings a lot to the table. There – you happy now?” Jessica added this last question with mock severity, hoping to end her friend’s inquiries on the subject.

  Later that night, in the privacy of her apartment, Jessica allowed herself to think the thoughts that she could not admit to earlier in the day. She was attracted to Nicholas Marino. Strongly. And that…could be a problem. She couldn’t just give in to her feelings and let herself fall for a man, just because he talked smoothly. And looked like a Roman god. And made her want to have his babies – damn!