Romance MF: A Suspense Story With A Dark Hidden Secret (romance short story, suspense romance, romantic short stories, adult romance Book 1) by Carol Lawson Page A
Authors: Carol Lawson
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went to the gym three times a day, four since he’d been upgraded to the finance division and taken up kickboxing. He was skinny, but it was an athletic type of skinny, one that could easily be underestimated under the stiff crisp business suit he had to wear on a daily basis. Underneath he was wiry, hardened. He had hoped that kickboxing would help to alleviate the unease he had started to feel – he had become too domestic. What had happened to the eager college kid that had dreams of traveling and exploring and learning new languages?
“I’m stifled,” he said out loud, hitting the power button on his laptop.
It was more than that. He had fooled himself into defining who he was by what he did. A bloody accountant. It seemed so pathetic to think aloud. At the same time, another part of him grappled with the notion that at least he was an adult – he had a good job, and good pay. He felt equally stupid for hating his lifestyle, one which others would have died to have.
“What’s wrong with me,” he murmured again, pulling on his coat and heading for the reception area and the elevator.
The secretary behind the desk, a petite girl named Lucy, smiled at him with too much makeup as he passed by. She was always the last to leave. She had been working here before him, and yet she was always happy. Why can’t I be like that , he wondered.
In the elevator he caught his reflection in the mirrored wall. He was tall, around 6’2 if he stood up straight, and a healthy sheaf of black hair combed elegantly and naturally over the top of his head. The sides he’d shaved close, trying to emulate a picture of a model he’d seen in a business magazine in the accounting firm’s lobby. It made him look suave, neo-corporate. Another way of trying to stand out in this cookie-cutter factory of numbers, he smirked.
His dark brown eyes trailed over his reflection and he rubbed the side of his hawkish jaw, felt the day old bristles of new growth coming in on his cheeks. His eyes seemed harder than he was used to, denser. As if the weight of his job and his life had been spent tightening him, compressing him into something sharp and unforgiving. That was accounting, for you.
There has to be something more, he wanted to say.
2.
Shane slackened his tie again as he turned on the ignition in his Toyota SUV and pulled out of the office’s parking lot. He hit the GPS map on the dashboard and typed in “Cabin”, and a pre-programmed route blipped onto the screen.
He didn’t have anyone special, no family within a thousand miles, and now, he realized, not really any friends either. He had colleagues, but nothing beyond that stiff association. Work had taken up too much of his life. He checked the map again and took a right onto the freeway that headed west out across the bay.
That’s why he’d decided to get out of the city this weekend. One of his uncles, a former accountant in the same firm at a different branch, had a cabin somewhere west of Port Angeles that faced out on the strait. It seemed like a perfect place to get away, just by himself. A chance to be alone and let all the things that had been churning in his head for the past month sublimate – I need some objective distance , he agreed.
It wasn’t just about the hum-drum domesticity of life and work, or the fact his thirtieth birthday was less than a week away. He need a change, even if it was just the scenery. Some time and solitude to make sense of his own life up to this point.
He hit the stereo and the CD started to play a static version of Somewhere Over The Rainbow as he maneuvered onto a turnpike and started to follow the
“I’m stifled,” he said out loud, hitting the power button on his laptop.
It was more than that. He had fooled himself into defining who he was by what he did. A bloody accountant. It seemed so pathetic to think aloud. At the same time, another part of him grappled with the notion that at least he was an adult – he had a good job, and good pay. He felt equally stupid for hating his lifestyle, one which others would have died to have.
“What’s wrong with me,” he murmured again, pulling on his coat and heading for the reception area and the elevator.
The secretary behind the desk, a petite girl named Lucy, smiled at him with too much makeup as he passed by. She was always the last to leave. She had been working here before him, and yet she was always happy. Why can’t I be like that , he wondered.
In the elevator he caught his reflection in the mirrored wall. He was tall, around 6’2 if he stood up straight, and a healthy sheaf of black hair combed elegantly and naturally over the top of his head. The sides he’d shaved close, trying to emulate a picture of a model he’d seen in a business magazine in the accounting firm’s lobby. It made him look suave, neo-corporate. Another way of trying to stand out in this cookie-cutter factory of numbers, he smirked.
His dark brown eyes trailed over his reflection and he rubbed the side of his hawkish jaw, felt the day old bristles of new growth coming in on his cheeks. His eyes seemed harder than he was used to, denser. As if the weight of his job and his life had been spent tightening him, compressing him into something sharp and unforgiving. That was accounting, for you.
There has to be something more, he wanted to say.
2.
Shane slackened his tie again as he turned on the ignition in his Toyota SUV and pulled out of the office’s parking lot. He hit the GPS map on the dashboard and typed in “Cabin”, and a pre-programmed route blipped onto the screen.
He didn’t have anyone special, no family within a thousand miles, and now, he realized, not really any friends either. He had colleagues, but nothing beyond that stiff association. Work had taken up too much of his life. He checked the map again and took a right onto the freeway that headed west out across the bay.
That’s why he’d decided to get out of the city this weekend. One of his uncles, a former accountant in the same firm at a different branch, had a cabin somewhere west of Port Angeles that faced out on the strait. It seemed like a perfect place to get away, just by himself. A chance to be alone and let all the things that had been churning in his head for the past month sublimate – I need some objective distance , he agreed.
It wasn’t just about the hum-drum domesticity of life and work, or the fact his thirtieth birthday was less than a week away. He need a change, even if it was just the scenery. Some time and solitude to make sense of his own life up to this point.
He hit the stereo and the CD started to play a static version of Somewhere Over The Rainbow as he maneuvered onto a turnpike and started to follow the
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