Outside The Lines:: Third Person Narration

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….