Outside The Lines:: Third Person Narration Read online

  Outside The Lines: Third Person Narration Edition

  by Bella Love

  http://bellalovebooks.com

  © 2014 by Bella Love

  ISBN: 978-0-9895498-2-0

  Cover image: iStockphoto

  Cover Design: ViknCharlie; edits by Jess Lewis, Author’s Life Saver

  All rights reserved.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, brands, media, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

  The author acknowledges the trademarked status and trademark owners of various products referenced in this work of fiction, which have been used without permission. The publication/use of these trademarks is not authorized, associated with, or sponsored by the trademark owners.

  This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you’re reading this ebook and did not purchase it or receive it directly from the author or a library, then the author may not have received any payment. Consider purchasing at a vendor where the author will be assured of payment. Thank you for respecting artists’ work!

  This edition of Outside The Lines that is written in third person point of view, where the hero & heroine refer to themselves as ‘she/he/they.’ This is a traditional style of storytelling, enjoyed by many people.

  But this story first ‘showed up’ for me in what’s known as first person point of view, where it’s as if the story is being told by the characters, and the characters refer to themselves as ‘I/me/us.’

  You are reading the third person (he/she/they) edition.

  If prefer you first person (I/me/we), you can get that here!

  Chapter One

  JULIETTE JAUNTIE STARED up at her competition. “You’re joking.”

  “Do I joke?” the competition said.

  Johnny Danger, owner of Danger Enterprises, a name you’d think would send the clients running, but somehow brought them in in droves, stood on the other side of Juliette’s desk, handing over a stack of files.

  In the dim December twilight rolling through the office window, he looked like a glacier coming out of the fog. He loomed.

  Admittedly, by anyone’s measure, it was a stretch to call Johnny Danger her ‘competition.’ They were barely in the same category of ‘accountant.’ Johnny was as remote and dangerous as a mountain peak. He wore thousand dollar suits, flashed a million dollar smile, and had eyes like cold cash, glittering green. His name fit.

  He was a hotshot, a powerhouse, a phenom, a professional iceberg, pushing across the tundra of the accounting world, crushing the competition as he went, picking up wealthy, influential clients for his boutique accounting firm like rocks stuck to dirt.

  Juliette, on the other hand, was an upstart taking aim at his success. Not that he knew about that part, or would much care. But she figured, if you were going to take aim, aim high. And at a large target.

  And she didn’t like how he strode into her office, late on December twenty-third, standing there looming like he owned the place. Dumping work assignments on her desk as if she were some underling.

  “Tomorrow’s Christmas Eve,” she said by way of protest. He said nothing.

  “And then Christmas,” she added pointedly.

  He let one eyebrow slowly rise.

  She shifted her gaze to the pile of files he’d laid on her desk, then pulled them across its shiny smoothness, blotting out the shine as they came. Who needed shine? She had files.

  There were an awful lot of them.

  “I’ll need your report by Monday,” he said.

  She looked up sharply. “Well, I— Monday? That’s three days away.

  “Two, actually. I need it first thing in the morning. There’s a meeting. Between your client and mine.”

  She frowned. “I didn’t know about that.”

  He smiled. “I just scheduled it.”

  She sat back and folded her hands across her stomach. More protest. He didn’t seem to notice, so she said, “Kind of late notice.”

  “Kind of big client,” he replied coolly.

  He was right. Much bigger for her than for him. Johnny dealt with the cream of the crop. Juliette dealt much closer to the bottom of the financial barrel, although they’d had one brief, indirect encounter in the past. A client of hers had briefly and foolishly considered suing one of Johnny’s firm’s clients, and had asked Juliette to look over the financials that formed the basis of his suit.

  She did. The client quickly rethought. Also, moved, after he received a professional, emotionless, and slightly terrifying letter outlining the possible outcomes of such a suit, signed by one Johnny Danger, accountant and lawyer. How nice for him. And his clients.

  Juliette admitted it: sometimes she got stubborn with perfect people. So she sat back and folded her fingers together over her lap.

  “I’ll have to check with my client,” she told Johnny coolly. “To be perfectly clear on everything.”

  His eyes met hers over the top of the files. “Your client wants a second opinion on the divorce valuations. You’re the one she hired to do it. You requested these docs. I’m delivering them. There’s a meeting Monday morning. Is everything perfectly clear now?”

  She narrowed her eyes. “Almost. What’s the rush?”

  “They want the divorce finalized before year’s end. They’re meeting on Monday. Your report needs to be in by then.”

  “And you came all the way down here, to bring me files?”

  A faint shrug. “We’re in the same building, Jauntie.” True, the same building. Thirty-eight floors apart. His gaze sailed over the office, which didn’t take long, since it was about as big as a janitor’s closet. “Do you do a lot of valuations here?”

  “A specialty.” Everything she did was a specialty. “It’s part of Mergers and Acquisitions.”

  His gaze slid back. “Where’s your M&A department?”

  She pushed with her feet. Her chair trundled a few feet to the left. “Here.”

  A smile curved up a corner of his mouth. This time, his gaze sailed down her and left a trail of chills in its wake. “So, what’s the problem? I hear you like a challenge.”

  She tapped the files. “This isn’t a challenge, Johnny. It’s suicide.”

  He smiled, not in happiness, but more like baring his teeth for an attack, which came in successive, persuasive waves. “Why?” he said silkily. “I hear you’re pretty good.”

  Juliette was taken aback. He’d heard? All this hearing about her was unnerving. She was below radars, it was her secret weapon. Stealth accounting.

  But of course Johnny Danger had noticed, because he noticed everything. The power of his attention was like a laser beam. When he was watching you, you knew he was seeing you. Hearing you, thinking about you, smelling you, for all she knew. Like a wizard.

  Once he’d seen her in the building’s gym at three a.m. He’d been coming out, she’d been going in, clutching a sixty-ounce mug of coffee in one hand and a bag of peanut M&M’s in the other. She stopped short. He glanced over, head bent as he towel-dried his hair, and her whole body lit up, as if his gaze was a spotlight. Wearing loose grey shorts and black trainers, he looked all male, sweaty and hot and, well…hot. He glanced at her coffee, her M&Ms, then swept his gaze down her body and gave her the faintest smile and nod, then moved on, wordless as a glacier.

  While behind him, she’d stood, frozen, lit up like a Christmas tree.

  “You didn’t have plans for tomorrow or the next day, did you?” he asked.

  For Christmas Eve and Christmas? “No,” she said curtly. How did he know that?

 
The silky smile dropped away. “You’re not scared, are you?”

  “Ha.”

  Her, scared, of numbers? She attacked numbers. Numbers were her prey. She was fearless when it came to numbers, fearless enough to be sitting at her desk at nine p.m. the day before Christmas Eve, alone in the building but for Johnny Danger and Sam the security guard down in the lobby. Fearless enough to take on the valuation of one of the most well-known judges in the state on behalf of his soon-to-be-ex-wife over Christmastime, having no family or friends of her own to disappoint by her absence. She was practically heroic.

  When it came to numbers.

  Danger gave a clipped nod. “So, tell me, is this going to be a problem or not?”

  In a weird way, she appreciated his no-nonsense attitude about her lack of plans for the holidays, which implied a lack of relationships for all the days before and after. He probably understood. He’d probably spent a lot of holidays alone in his climb to the top. He was probably spending the holidays with one of his business associates, calling them ‘friends,’ pretending it was good enough. He probably knew just how Juliette’s holidays were going to go. Which meant….

  Which meant she was like him. Might turn out like him. Admired and glacial. At the top of the pile, all alone.

  A cold chill rippled through her.

  She touched the edge of the uppermost file. “Well.”

  One of his dark eyebrows went up.

  She raised one of hers back. “And if it were a problem?”

  Grimness emanated from him like a fog. “Then you can let Mrs. Billings know you aren’t available. I’m sure she’ll find someone else.”

  Someone else to handle the valuation in the divorce of the presiding juvenile court judge Donald ‘Buck’ Billings and his wife, the wife who was Juliette’s very biggest client? From whom flowed not only money but the possibility of referrals?

  She pulled the pile closer. “Over my dead body.”

  He smiled at her again, slowly. Some people considered him handsome. She considered him predatory. And handsome.

  “That’s my girl.” He turned on his heel and strode out.

  “I’m not your girl,” she called after, but there was no reply.

  She glanced out her fifth-story window, with its oblique view of the downtown corridor, and its direct view of the trashcan-strewn alley below. Tiny lights twinkled in storefronts across the street and windows of the apartments above, muted by curtains and the shifting silhouette of people who had somewhere to go and someone expecting them. Someone who they’d argue with and disappoint in some crushing way, then kiss goodnight and wake up beside the next morning, ready to try again.

  Good thing she didn’t have to deal with that, she consoled herself brightly. Then she slumped in her chair. It wasn’t a terribly consoling thought.

  She reached out, flipped on the desk lamp, and pulled the files toward her.

  Johnny was right, she did like a challenge. On paper. She challenged herself with numbers every day and most nights, corralling them to march obediently down the page in neat, manageable lines. She’d been in training for those lines since kindergarten, when the nuns would rap her hand if she colored outside them.

  It seemed reasonable at the time.

  She worked almost non-stop through Christmas Eve and Christmas Day, sleeping on the small cot she kept in her office for those (frequent) occasions when she realized, about three in the morning, that there was no point in going back to the empty apartment at all. She worked and drank coffee and ordered Chinese takeout in peace, never inconvenienced by the petty interruptions of people calling to ask where she was or why she was running late. Two days late.

  She reflected grimly that if she died in her apartment, it could be weeks before someone discovered her body. And then, who would water her little African violet?

  She needed a milkman.

  At nine p.m. on Christmas night, forty-eight hours after beginning, she returned the files to a neat pile at the edge of her desk, right back where they’d started from.

  A chill moved through her. There was an unpleasant, metaphor-like nature to that thought.

  Drifting up from the streets below came the sound of a car door slamming, and calls of people to one another. Someone laughed. Christmas night. People spending time with family and friends. Except Juliette. And Johnny Danger of course, who was out there somewhere, spending time with business associates, calling them friends.

  She would have to climb hard even to reach that low summit.

  She looked at the files again. Success.

  Her life, not so much.

  Ridiculous, she thought angrily, spinning her chair around. She had a life. A focused, hardworking life. If she didn’t do something, it was because she didn’t want to. For goodness sake, she was thirty-three years old with a good eye for color, a string of accounting acronyms after her name, and her very own, extremely small accounting firm. She could do anything.

  Except maintain a relationship. Or hold a conversation that didn’t revolve around accounts receivable. Or have a hobby. Or friends. She couldn’t even ski.

  ‘Didn’t want’ could grow a little thin if she looked too closely.

  She smacked the edge of her computer keyboard to wake it up, then sent emails containing her report to all the relevant parties. Then, for no clear reason, she dialed the number on Johnny Danger’s card.

  A woman picked up.

  “Danger Enterprises,” the woman said, smooth and controlled.

  “Oh, hi. I was just— I’m sorry, I was trying to reach Mr. Danger.” Juliette glared at the wall, feeling like an idiot. He’d probably made the name up to force people into saying something as inane as “I’d like to speak to Mister Danger, please.” As if he was James Bond or something.

  She loved James Bond.

  “You almost made it,” the woman said. “This is Roxy, his personal assistant.”

  “Oh, well, I’m very sorry to bother you on Christmas night. I thought I’d get a message.”

  “Not a problem,” his assistant replied in a polished, unruffled voice. “What can I help with?”

  “My name is Juliette Jauntie, and the Billings valuation is complete. Mr. Danger asked me to let him know when it was done. I already sent an email,” –thereby making this phone call technically unnecessary— “but I wanted to leave a message as well. He said it was important he get it before a meeting in the morning.”

  “Certainly, Ms. Jauntie. I appreciate your follow-through and I’m sorry he’s unable to take your call.”

  “Well, it is Christmas.”

  She gave a soft laugh. “That wouldn’t matter to Johnny.”

  “Of course not,” Juliette murmured, secretly pleased she’d nailed him so well.

  “He forwarded his calls to me because he’s having trouble with reception out on the boat.”

  Or, not so well. “Right. The boat.”

  “Okay, the yacht,” his assistant corrected with a laugh.

  Yes, because that’s what she was worried about, the terminology. Juliette shifted her glare to the window. “Well, you know how it is. I’d be out on mine too, but it’s in the shop.”

  A long, warm laugh came through the phone lines. “Funny, so is mine. I believe Ms. Marcuso specifically made sure hers was out in time.”

  “Good planning,” Juliette said vaguely. Marcuso… Marcuso…. The movie actress Andrea Marcuso? Johnny Danger was spending Christmas with a movie star?

  She felt suddenly, unaccountably numb.

  His assistant’s calm, competent voice came again. “I’ll let him know you sent the report and followed up with a call.”

  For some reason, her jaw was clenched. It was difficult to unhinge. “Thank-you. I just wanted him to know….”

  What did she want him to know? That the fact he had a life and she didn’t really pissed her off?

  Maybe Danger was only pretending it was enough, but dammit, at least he was pretending. Juliette wasn’t even doing that.


  She sat forward sharply.

  Maybe that’s how you had to do it. Maybe Johnny was onto something. Fake it till you make it. Go through the motions. Stop waiting until you were good at something before you tried it. How else were you ever going to know? Heck, maybe she was great at lots of things.

  Maybe it was time to at least try.

  “What was it you wanted him to know, Ms. Jauntie?”

  She looked around at the neat and orderly stacks of papers in front of her, the neat and orderly shelves of books all around her, the neat and orderly design of a life that was going nowhere.

  She desperately needed a life. A little messiness. Maybe a one night stand.

  For God’s sake, a hobby.

  Something inside her snapped.

  “Let him know the previous valuation was off,” Juliette announced, more loudly than was required. “I made some adjustments. And had some questions. They’re all in my report.”

  “Absolutely,” Roxy said. “I will let him know. He’ll be glad you called. Thank-you.” A pause. “For working on Christmas.”

  “Well, thank-you. I sure didn’t plan to.”

  “Johnny has a way of persuading people, doesn’t he?”

  “Doesn’t he?” Juliette agreed grimly. He was probably persuading Ms. Andrea Marcuso of something out on the ‘boat’ right now.

  For some reason, that made her face get hot.

  “Well, Merry Christmas, Ms. Jauntie,” his assistant said. “I hope you take some sort of post-holiday holiday after all this.”

  “Oh, I am,” she said grimly, getting to her feet. She noticed her hands were shaking. “I’m going…skiing.”

  “Oh, I love skiing,” his assistant enthused.

  “I don’t,” Juliette said in a voice of icy calm. “Do you have any tips?”

  Roxy was quiet a second. “First, don’t panic.”

  “Got it.”

  “The Tahoe area has some nice places. There’s a smaller town nearby, Destiny Falls. They have a nice resort, smaller, but usually less crowded. And lots of beginner slopes,” she added, showing great insight.