A Cautious Plan: The Shady Pines Series

By Dover Kincaid

Allison Becker was raised on abuse and anger. She carries this anger with her through college and an assortment of jobs. She is determined to pull herself up from the ashes, to be independent, and to avoid the trap her mother was in—married to a controlling drunk who slapped her and her children around.

Mark Moore is a successful businessman who is tired of working twelve hours a day, seven days a week. He spent eight years in the Marines. After the service, he worked hard, paid attention, and took advantages of all legal and barely legal opportunities that came his way. Now he owns the largest liquor and beer distributorship in the Southeast. He is also tired of living his life alone, just hooking up with a woman for sex and then having to shake her loose if she gets clingy.

They meet when Allison starts a fight in Mark’s bar. He is intrigued with her beauty and wonders about the chip on her shoulders. She likes what she sees on the surface and is willing to have a physical relationship with him, but she is waiting for his true colors to show.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Dec 4, 2018
• ISBN: 9781984569394

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Copyright © 2018 by Iris Ray.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, names, incidents, organizations, and dialogue in this novel are either the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Getty Images are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Getty Images.

Rev. date: 12/03/2018

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Contents

Acknowledgements And Dedication

In The Past

Chapter One Allison The Wallflower

Chapter Two Allison Unchained

Chapter Three Allison And Kyle

Chapter Four Kyle Goes To Art School, Allison Graduates From College

Chapter Five Don’t Mess With Allison

Chapter Six Allison Pays Her Debt To Society

Chapter Seven Allison And Frasier

Chapter Eight Allison Gets The Ax

Chapter Nine Allison Meets Mark

Chapter Ten Celebration

Chapter Eleven Car Show And Home Base

Chapter Twelve San Croix And Story Time

Chapter Thirteen The New Job

Chapter Fourteen Battered And Bruised

Chapter Fifteen Becoming A Couple

Chapter Sixteen Marks Has Issues

Chapter Seventeen Allison And Mark Get Married

Chapter Eighteen Time Marches On

Chapter Nineteen Changes At Work

Chapter Twenty Allison Goes Ballistic

Chapter Twenty-One More Changes At Work

Chapter Twenty-Two A Bachelorette Party

Present Day

Chapter Twenty-Three Feds At The Reception

Chapter Twenty-Four What Are The Charges?

Chapter Twenty-Five Protecting Allison

Chapter Twenty-Six Containing The Situation

Chapter Twenty-Seven Research On Ralph

Chapter Twenty-Eight Fred And Toni Finally Talk

Chapter Twenty-Nine Southern Gentleman Lawyer

Chapter Thirty Mark In Hiding

Chapter Thirty-One The Interview

Chapter Thirty-Two Allison And Mark Reunite

Epilogue

About The Author

Acknowledgements and Dedication

This book is a stand-alone story’ but if you have read either of the other two books in the Shady Pines Series (Beyond the Plan and Without a Plan), you will be acquainted with many of the characters in this book.

All characters in this book are fictional. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental. North Industries, Myrtle Street Bar, Southeast Liquor and Beer Distributors, InfoMasters, Raven Enterprises, and Global Software Partners are purely fictional. The other businesses like The Art Institute of Atlanta, Two Urban Licks, Chateau Elan, etc. actual exists, or did at the time of the writing of this book.

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This book is dedicated to my gal-pals in Atlanta, Los Angeles, and Dallas, and to all women who have fought their way out of a bad situation or have known a friend who has. This book is also for the lovers of romances where people aren’t perfect but are perfect for each other.

I continue to thank my friends who have offered encouragement, ideas, advice, and other types of support. You know who you are, and I respect your rights to privacy by not naming you here. After all, our families and other friends would be surprised to know some of the erotic things our minds conjure up when we turn silent and smile wryly.

Warning: This book contains graphic sexual content.

IN THE PAST

Chapter One

Allison The Wallflower

Allison’s father was a mean bastard. Allison had learned at an early age to stay out of his sight as much as possible. He had back-handed her across the room so many times she sometimes wondered if she had brain damage. She thought that might be why she got so angry. Sometimes she had to scream into her pillow or use her brother’s old baseball bat to beat on the trees in the backyard until she was exhausted.

Allison knew she was lucky, though. Her father’s preferred targets were her mother and her younger brother, Kyle. He also went after Robert, her older brother sometimes, but when Robert hit puberty and shot up to six feet and bulked up for football, her father left Robert alone. The only time Robert got in the line of fire was when he was trying to protect their mother, Kyle, or her. Unless he was really drunk, Allison’s father was smart enough to go after them only when Robert wasn’t home.

Allison’s father, Bill Becker, worked at a boxboard plant in Austell, a small city just west of Atlanta, Georgia. He was only 5'6", but he was muscular even in middle age. His hatchet face and arrogant swagger were enough to make most people avoid him. He had cowered his children from an early age with his loud, nasty voice; and he was quick to punch, kick, or backhand them for anything he considered unacceptable. His wife, Martha, was slight and suffered her own abuse at Bill’s hands. Because she didn’t have a high-school diploma and had no job skills other than as a cashier at a local grocery store, and because he said he would find and kill her, she was afraid to leave him. By the time their oldest son had reached the age of thirteen, Martha was a ghost hovering in the background whenever Bill went after one of the kids.

They lived in a three-bedroom ranch style home in a lower middle-class neighborhood. Because this was a neighborhood where both spouses worked full-time, some worked two jobs and money was still tight, adults tended to keep to themselves in the little time they had at home. The kids generally played together, but Allison and her brothers stayed away from the other kids so they wouldn’t have to explain the black eyes, bruises, and limps.

Allison was tall for her age, but by the time she was in high school she had learned to slump and hide in the background. Her clothes were awful because her father never let her mother buy her anything that wasn’t too big and too dull, or anything close to pretty. She kept her hair short so it was harder for her father to use it to drag her around. When Allison was sixteen, she got a part-time job as a cashier at Ace Hardware. She walked from school to the hardware store as they were only four blocks from each other. However, her father picked her up each night because it was three miles to their house. Occasionally, her father forgot or was too drunk, so Allison just walked home. Allison preferred to walk home. She hated it when her father came into the store to pick her up. He said he wanted to make sure she wasn’t ‘slutting it up’ with the guys who worked there or with any of the customers. Sometimes he said things like that loud enough for others to hear. She was afraid the manager would get tired of her father’s disruptive visits and would fire her. She knew if she was fired her father would blame her.

Allison hated her mother almost as much as she hated her father. She blamed her mother for their situation because she wouldn’t leave their father. Her mother would never explain why she wouldn’t leave. Even with a swollen lip from a punch or sore ribs from a kick, she wouldn’t leave. Even after her father beat her or one of her brothers, her mother wouldn’t leave. Allison could never forgive her mother for being so weak.

Allison loved her brothers with her whole heart. Robert was their protector when he was around; and she tried to protect Kyle when Robert was at work, practice, or at a game. When Robert was a senior in high school, Allison was a junior, and Kyle was in the seventh grade. Robert was a star football player; he was being scouted by several SEC schools for a full scholarship. On the night before the coaches were to arrive to see him for themselves, Allison’s father tied one on and went after her mother with a broom handle. Robert intervened and as they struggled, all three of them went down hard. Robert’s collarbone was broken. He never made the scouting practice. Five months later, on the day after he graduated from high school, Robert joined the Army. He didn’t want to leave Allison and Kyle behind, but he said he would save some money quickly so they could come and live with him. There were enough domestic dispute reports on file that he was sure no court would refuse to give him custody. Fifteen months later, Robert was killed in the Middle East.

Chapter Two

Allison Unchained

At the time Robert was killed, Allison was dealing with a different problem. At seventeen, at the beginning of her final year in high school, she was walking home for work one evening because her father was drunk and had forgotten to come pick up her. She was abducted by two men who raped her, and then dumped her back off at the same spot where they picked her up. She never saw their faces; they had taped her eyes shut and bound her hands with duct tape. She knew she couldn’t tell her father because he would say it was her fault. She couldn’t tell her mother because her mother would be of no help, or worse, would tell her father. She couldn’t even tell Kyle. She snuck in her house, took a shower and scrubbed herself raw, and tried to forget it happened. She took one of her father’s guns with her from then on; at some level hoping the guys would appear again, but they didn’t.

Several weeks after the rape, she realized she was pregnant. She went to a free women’s clinic where a representative helped her get a judicial bypass that allowed her to get an abortion without informing her parents. Unfortunately, she developed an infection and wound up in the emergency room. The doctors were able to clear the infection but told her she would probably never be able to have children. When the emergency room doctor witnessed the vile way her father spoke to her when he came to the hospital to pick her up, he told her father that Allison had a severe case of endometriosis, which caused the infection. Her father simply said, I figured she was pregnant or had some filthy female disease, as he roughly pulled her with him out the door.

Before the rape, Allison had never dated because of her father. But afterward she changed. Her increased anger had twisted something inside her. She maintained her perfect grades at school, but she started using the money from her part-time job to buy tight jeans and sweaters, makeup, and cheap jewelry. She basically dared her father to say or do anything about it. She also told him to leave Kyle alone. There was something in her eyes that frightened her father. When she told him she would kill him in his sleep, poison his food, or just shoot him, he believed her.

Allison let her auburn hair grow long, and she found that at 5'8", with long legs and 125 pounds of curves in all the right places, she was a knockout. She had gotten birth control pills from the free clinic, and she started dating; she became promiscuous. She thought if she gave guys permission to have sex with her, it would somehow replace the memory of her helplessness during the assault. She also turned mean. She still took her father’s gun with her most places, but she also learned how she could hurt a guy with her hands, knees, elbows, and teeth if he tried anything she didn’t like.

When she graduated with a perfect 4.0 GPA and almost perfect SAT scores, she was the salutatorian of her class, she received a scholarship to Georgia Tech, and she decided to stop being a slut. The scholarship paid for her tuition and books and for the worst dorm on campus. She found a crappy apartment far enough away from the campus to dissuade classmates who knew her from high school from just dropping by hoping to get lucky, and she found night jobs to maintain her crappy apartment. She worked as a