Read Accidentally Amish Online
Authors: Olivia Newport
Accidentally Amish
© 2012 by Olivia Newport
Print ISBN 978-1-61626-712-4
eBook Editions:
Adobe Digital Edition (.epub) 978-1-62029-018-7
Kindle and MobiPocket Edition (.prc) 978-1-62029-019-4
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted for commercial purposes, except for brief quotations in printed reviews, without written permission of the publisher.
All scripture quotations are taken from the King James Version of the Bible.
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. Any similarity to actual people, organizations, and/or events is purely coincidental.
Cover design: Müllerhaus Publishing Arts, Inc.,
www.Mullerhaus.net
Published by Barbour Publishing, Inc., P.O. Box 719, Uhrichsville, Ohio 44683,
www.barbourbooks.com
Our mission is to publish and distribute inspirational products offering exceptional value and biblical encouragement to the masses.
Printed in the United States of America.
Dedication
For Caleb and Cana, luminous in my life
So many bits and pieces come together to make a novel. Thanks go to Rachelle Gardener, my literary agent, who first pointed out a newspaper article about the Amish settlement near Westcliffe, Colorado.
One of my uncles has spent years on a quest for information about our family history. He was the one who first turned up information about Jakob Beyeler, which made me curious enough to weave a historical thread into the contemporary fabric.
I found Diane Klopp by clicking an Internet link of indeterminate reliability. At the other end of the link, Diane had a copy of a hard-to-find book and gladly supplied missing research details about land grants and property descriptions in Berks County, Pennsylvania. As it turned out, she knew the land well, having grown up on a farm that adjoined the Byler property of my ancestors.
Thanks go to Lorene and Julianna Hochstetler, representing descendants of the Hochstetlers whose family history quite likely intersected the Bylers’ in some way. Their comments on an early draft mattered.
And of course thanks go to the Barbour team for seeing what this might be and making it possible for so many to read.
H
is kiss was firm and lingering as he cradled her head in one broad palm.
“Annie,” he murmured as he took in a breath. His hand moved to brush her cheek. He kissed her again.
Annie’s stomach churned while her lips went on automatic pilot. Kissing Rick Stebbins was nothing new and, frankly, less exciting every time. But in the moment, it seemed the safest choice among miserable alternatives.
She pictured where her blue Prius was stashed in the parking lot behind the modest glazed-brick office building. A small red duffel lay on the passenger seat and a compact suitcase on the floor. The denim bag she had carried since high school, on the desk she was leaning against, held her laptop in its padded case. Car keys hung from a belt loop on her jeans. Her cell phone was in a back pocket.
Annie Friesen was ready.
Rick would never admit to what she suspected. More than suspected. She was no lawyer, but she knew it would take more evidence to make an accusation stick.
And Rick was a lawyer.
Her
lawyer. Her intellectual property lawyer. If only he had not slipped that extraneous document between the pages of the last contract awaiting her signature in triplicate. Whatever she thought she felt for him dissolved with that test of her attention to detail. He was the one who failed. She would sign nothing more from Rick Stebbins.
Rick took another breath. The air he exhaled on her neck was hot, and his fingers moved down to the front of her neck, toying with the gold chain resting on her collarbone.
I am so out of here,
she thought, and ducked her head to avoid further lip contact. She stroked his tie before putting her fingers lightly on his chest and pressing him away gently.
“I have work to do,” she said, “a meeting tonight. I told you about it.”
“You can be late.” Rick put his hands on her elbows.
She had seen him when he did not get his way—the weight of his hand slamming the desk in frustration, the set of his jaw, the frenzy of work that ensued. This time Annie did not plan to be anywhere in sight. He would calm down once he accepted that his plan would never happen. And then they would be over.
Annie shook her head and squirmed out of his grip. “You’re the one who said I have to protect my copyright at all costs.”
“Isn’t that what you pay me to do?” Rick asked. “Are you sure I shouldn’t be with you tonight?”
To Annie’s relief, he did not move toward her again. “I want to try the civilized approach,” she said. “Barrett and I have worked together a long time. Surely we can still talk to each other.”
“He’s adamant the new program was his idea. He even retained his own counsel.” Rick laughed. “I guess he doesn’t trust me any more than he trusts you.”
“Our relationship has been no secret to anyone working here.” Annie picked up the denim bag and slung it casually over one shoulder.
But it’s over now. That was your last kiss, buddy.
“Don’t sign anything I wouldn’t want you to sign.” Rick raised his dark eyebrows at her.
What he wanted her to sign was precisely the problem.
Annie opened her office door, stepped through, and waited for Rick to follow. She locked it behind him and concentrated on breathing evenly. No one would think twice about seeing them together at the end of the day leaving the building that housed Annie and Barrett’s small company.
They were more than successful. The first financial security software program Annie wrote, which Barrett marketed, sold rapidly. First, small credit unions bought it, then large ones, then conventional banks. Before long, a firm specializing in serving the financial industry recognized their program for the gem it was and bought them out. Annie was twenty-seven and had more money in her bank account than her parents had seen in all their working lives—or would ever see. She and Barrett decided to open another company and see if they could do it again, this time with a program that used store discount cards to track grocery inventory movement according to customer shopping habits and product placement. They also served a number of local companies with website design and custom software. These clients provided a working lab. Sometimes the problems she solved on a smaller level became just what Annie needed to get past a glitch in the bigger project.
Annie just wanted to write software. She was happy to see Barrett get rich right along with her. He was brilliant with the marketing and sales side and had earned his share of the fortune.
But Barrett wanted it all. He couldn’t write software to find his way out of his gym socks, in Annie’s opinion, but now that she was on the verge of a breakthrough, he wanted to squeeze her out of the latest deal.
And Rick was helping him. Annie was sure of it. She couldn’t prove it, but that didn’t mean she was going to lie down and let it happen. She merely needed a few days where she could think clearly and make a plan to fix this mess.
Outside the building, she pushed the button on her clicker, and the lights on her car flashed.
“Call me later?” Rick’s brown eyes glimmered in familiarity and suggestion.
“It might be late.”
More like never!
“It’s never too late if it’s you.”
Aw. He can say the sweetest things. Not.
Annie let him peck her cheek and then walked briskly to her car while he seemed to saunter toward his on the other side of the lot. She navigated out of the maze of look-alike buildings in the complex and pulled out onto Powers Boulevard, a north-south arterial. Early on a mid-July evening, the Colorado Springs sky was still a stunning blue. The rush-hour traffic that glutted Powers in late afternoons had thinned—as much as it ever thinned on Powers—to midweek moviegoers, diners, and chain-store shoppers. Annie whizzed past one shopping center after another, a progression that also thinned and gave way to industrial complexes.
She glanced in her rearview mirror and glimpsed Rick’s bronze Jeep two lanes over and six cars back.
Maybe she should hire a private eye. Or another intellectual property attorney. Someone who had a clue what to do. But she could do nothing with Rick Stebbins hovering over her every move, waltzing into the office at his whim, and making plans for them every night. A room in a bed-and-breakfast in Steamboat Springs awaited her, but she had to slip off Rick’s radar.
Barrett was waiting—supposedly—and Rick was following. He was not even going to wait for a report from Barrett, apparently. Annie may have been trusting and naive up to this point, but she was not going to walk into a trap now.
Would he hurt her? Annie did not intend to risk finding out.
Heart racing, she turned right just where Rick would expect her to turn and headed west around the south edge of the city. A few seconds later, his Jeep slowly made the same turn. If she deviated from the predicted route too soon, Rick’s suspicions would go into high gear. And if she made the wrong turn, she would hit a dead end. Neighborhoods of Colorado Springs were not tidy little squares on a grid. They were full of curves and angles and cutoffs and one-way streets and dead ends. Annie had grown up in this town and had been driving her own car for almost ten years. At the moment, she wanted to slap herself for not being sure where these side streets would take her.
Annie jerked the wheel to the right and swung into a sedate neighborhood of lawns and front porches, as if decades ago builders were determined to recreate the Midwest in the high desert climate. She couldn’t squeal her tires without raising attention, but she pushed over the speed limit as much as she dared.
A moment later, Rick’s Jeep appeared. Was it her imagination, or was he following more closely?
Annie tapped on the GPS and glanced at the map showing her location. Rick had a system, too. It would take some doing to outsmart him.
She had to try.
Moving generally in the direction Rick would expect, Annie varied her turns, making several maneuvers in quick sequence as if she were knowingly zigzagging across town. The area was coming back to her now. In high school she had a track teammate who lived down this way. Annie used to come down here on weekends after she got her first car, her first real independence.
Think! Where is that place you used to go?
The Jeep narrowed the distance behind her. Annie pounded the steering wheel. Her phone sang Rick’s tune, and she ignored it. A moment later, it announced a text message. She refused to look, instead making another sharp turn into a hotel parking lot.
