Read Online Fate Intended (The Coulter Men Series Book 3) by Elizabeth Seckman - Free Book Online Page A

until the bottoms of each one was in a perfect line. “Though I did have your emails. They were the highlight of my day. I wanted to write and ask you if you’d go out with me when I got home, but I could never work up the courage. Fortunately for me, you crippled yourself and gave me the perfect opportunity to feel like a hero and get up my nerve.”
    “Courage? To ask out me?” Jane laughed. “I’m not scary.”
    Trip shook his head in disagreement. “You are to me. I’ve spent my whole life as a techno geek. I have my mother to blame for setting me up with Olivia—she was my mother’s intern her first year in congress.” Trip frowned. “No, a guy like me doesn’t approach girls like you.”
    “I think you are filling my head with that sugar talk again.”
    “Not sugar talk. It’s all truth.”
    “Really? Well then, Mr. Coulter, this may not be a wise thing to say, but….” Jane leaned across the table and whispered, “I’m not one to invite competition, but every lady in this place…and I think that man back in the corner…took notice of you.”
    “You think?” Trip leaned back in his seat and scanned the room. “Well, let’s see…now that I have options….”
    Jane kicked him under the table.
    Trip laughed. “I’m content right here.” His grin was broad. “Though that guy…he looks like he’d be a big spender.”
    Jane couldn’t help but giggle. “You are bad. A bad, bad man.” She took another sip of wine as she thought of something else to talk about. “So, what is this new job?”
    Trip drained his glass and poured himself another. Rubbing a hand across his chin, he said with a shrug, “I sort of do security for people, mostly cyber stuff. I, you know, help people who have problems with, um, security.”
    “So, you hunt down people who break into other people’s computers?”
    He shrugged. “Something like that.”
    Jane picked up her own glass, drained it, and poured herself another.

Chapter 7
     
    Dinner finished, they strolled out of the restaurant and were greeted by an unseasonably warm winter evening. The lights of the city twinkled as buildings were slowly draped in Christmas trim, and the air smelled not of exhaust and concrete, but of crisp air and freshly cut pine.
    “It’s so nice tonight.” Jane paused on the sidewalk. “Eddie says it’s not usually this warm in December?”
    “No, usually below freezing by now, but the cold will get here. Real soon.”
    “Simply perfect.” Breathing deeply, she asked, “Walk with me?”
    “What about your foot?”
    She shrugged. “It’s fine.”
    “If you’re sure….”
    Jane didn’t answer. Instead, she gave his arm a tug and off they went.
    Without thinking or contriving, she wrapped her hand around the crook of his arm. It wasn’t until after she did it that she questioned her action. Her apprehension was short-lived when he smiled at her, giving her hand a squeeze and allowing his fingers to linger on hers.
    Strolling along together, they shared stories, and before she realized it, they had gone several blocks and were standing within a hundred feet of the iron fence of the White House. Car traffic slowed as the night wore on and the foot traffic was sparse compared to the bustle of the day. The park across the street was nearly empty, so they had no trouble finding a bench to settle on. It faced the glow of the white-columned edifice of freedom.
    “Amazing, isn’t it?” Trip asked.
    “It’s beautiful. You know it was first called the Presidential Palace? I like White House much better. I don’t know why, but I don’t like palace.”
    “Too regal for a nation of mutts?”
    “Mutts?” Jane laughed.
    “Yeah, I’m English with a bit of Irish and German…a mutt. A mixed breed.”
    “I’m a mutt, too. English and Russian.”
    “See?” He gave her hand a pat. “Now you’re in America—where mutts belong.”
    Jane laid her head against his arm. “You ever wonder what’s going on in