Lead: Gently Hers Book 3

By Goldie Wright

Ayane Sato likes to boss men around.
Daniel Shepherd likes to be bossed around.
Those two facts have cost the both of them relationships. But when they meet, an undeniable heat sparks between them, and Daniel follows Ayane's gentle lead.

Lead is a novella of 18k words, and a standalone book of the Gently Hers series.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Goldie Wright
• Release date: Jun 25, 2019
• ISBN: 9780463514283

Goldie Wright

Goldie Wright lives in the US. Fiction writing is one of her many pursuits, but she has also been known to stargaze and spend far too much time on the internet.

Book preview

LEAD

BOOK 3 OF THE GENTLY HERS SERIES

Copyright 2019 Goldie Wright

All Rights Reserved

Published by Goldie Wright at Smashwords

Smashwords Edition License Notes

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your enjoyment only, then please return to Smashwords.com or your favorite retailer and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, items, and events are either the product of the creator's imagination or have been used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual people, living or dead; events; items; businesses; or places is purely coincidental.

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1

The sweatpants would have to go, that much was clear to Ayane Sato. They were mourning wear for her breakup, but the breakup had been over for three months. Three months and two weeks, if she wanted to really think about it, which she didn't.

So she had to ditch the sweats. Working from home meant she could get away with not wearing real clothes, but she had to have some standards. She poked around online shops looking for comfortable stuff that she could actually wear without looking like a sack of potatoes. Maybe she could even wear them outside when she dashed down to the lobby to check her mail. That wouldn't say I give up as much as her current outfit did.

Searching for sweats that didn't look horrible led her down a rabbit hole of workout clothes. Who had declared that there could be so many different types? It wasn't fair. She agonized over outfits to the point that she started reading reviews for them, which led to reading about the things that went with them, things like running shoes.

Ayane had never been a runner, but not out of laziness. She walked as often as possible, rain or shine. Especially rain. She lived in Seattle, after all.

Some of the shoes in the online shops looked cute. Maybe she could trying running. Curious, she spent hours learning about running, then jogging. The second seemed easier. And exercise was supposed to make people feel better emotionally as well as physically. She could do it. Might be nice, going outside to a park. And it'd be less embarrassing than a gym where she'd constantly be comparing herself to other women.

She set the idea aside until she had finished up her work for the day, and got herself to the nearest sporting goods store. Dressed in stuff she could wear publicly, of course. She could have just bought things online, but it was time for her to get out of her apartment. Working from home didn't mean she could never leave home.

The clothes were the easy part; she found nice ones almost instantly. The shoes were the problem. Shoe shopping was the worst. It didn't matter that they were jogging shoes, she always had trouble with footwear. What looked nice on her feet in the store inevitably turned out to be a bitch to walk in, or ugly in daylight, or useless when the sidewalks were wet.

She burned twenty minutes trying to figure out which pair would be the best for her. Looking up the info on her phone wasn't any help since there seemed to be about zero reception or Wi-Fi in this store, somehow, which was mind-blowing. How could there be no connectivity in a city in this day and age? Did this store have a cellphone jammer?

Her problems hadn't ended there. Plenty of employees seemed to mill through the aisles until the second that she stepped toward them. They scattered like gazelles into the racks of sportswear and tables of yoga pants. So she resorted to squinting at the various shoes and trying to remember what she had read about cushioning and stability. She didn't remember much without an internet connection, which sounded like a bad metaphor for the current state of humanity.

After what seemed like an ice age, someone said, You look like you could use some help.

Oh, yes, thank God.

She spun around to her savior, and found herself face to face with a fellow customer instead of an employee. He was a white guy in his forties or so. Good-looking, lean in the way that habitual runners were.

Long used to the necessary aloofness of people in cities, friendliness made her wary. But this man's smile looked sincere, the skin around his eyes creasing just so. He had on activewear, his running shoes had seen a little use, and he was a definite silver fox. Her pervert radar wasn't going off, either. He didn't have on a wedding ring and his gaze stayed on her face. There wouldn't be any harm in talking to him.

And if she didn't get help from someone, she'd be stuck in this place even longer than she'd already been. Finding her voice again, she said, Help would be nice, thanks.

Sure thing. He flashed a new smile, one that wasn't obnoxiously friendly. Yeah, definitely not a pervert. Have any idea of what you're looking for?

It was sweet of him to think that