Surrender (Balm in Gilead Book 2) Read online

  Surrender

  Noelle Adams

  They are business partners--and sometimes friends. They aren't supposed to fall in love.

  Ever since Vivian's lifestyle blog, Faith and Fabulousness, became a huge success and a profitable company, her life has been consumed by her work and each new creative initiative. Her job takes everything she has. She has no room for romance in her life. So certain feelings she's been having for her business partner, Jeff, will have to be ignored. She relies on Jeff to make her company function, and she can't let this growing attraction distract her from what's most important.

  When Jeff's ex-wife walked out on him two years ago, he resolved to never again give his heart to a woman who doesn't want it. Now he's having to remind himself of that resolution every day. Vivian might be irresistible to him--but she's also ambitious, complicated, and emotionally unavailable. She's never going to want him for real. And the intimacy that grows between them during their week-long company retreat on the Outer Banks isn't a promise of forever.

  He doesn't want to risk his heart again, so he really needs to stop kissing her.

  Surrender is the second book in the Balm in Gilead series, a spin-off from the Willow Park series about couples who fall in love in a physical and spiritual rest center on the North Carolina coast called Balm in Gilead.

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.

  Copyright © 2017 by Noelle Adams. All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce, distribute, or transmit in any form or by any means.

  Contents

  One

  Two

  Three

  Four

  Five

  Six

  Seven

  Eight

  Nine

  Ten

  Epilogue

  Excerpt from Retreat

  About Noelle Adams

  One

  Vivian Harper scanned her computer monitor, searching for a good image.

  When she found a cute photo of a pair of stylish heels in an unusual shade of orange-rose, one sitting upright and the other fallen over on an aged, oak-planked floor, she pulled it up, wrote out two quick sentences, and pinned the picture onto one of her boards.

  She was scanning for another good image when a voice came from the doorway of her office. “It’s time to go home.”

  She didn’t need to look over to know the slightly dry voice belonged to her business partner, Jeff. “It’s not even eight yet.”

  “It’s eight forty-two.”

  Surprised, she peered down at the time in the corner of her monitor and discovered Jeff was right. She hadn’t realized it was so late. “I’m almost done here.”

  Little red notification alerts at the top of the screen showed that more than a hundred people had already saved her last pin to their boards.

  Jeff walked in, looking tired and slightly rumpled with his messy, light brown hair and five-o’clock shadow. He’d taken off his suit jacket early that morning, but he still wore the red-and-gold-striped tie.

  He always wore a tie even though she’d told him a million times he could wear anything he wanted. The rest of the staff—including her—wore less formal attire to the office, usually unique and stylish. Today she was wearing red capris, a boatneck top with horizontal black-and-white stripes, with designer heels and a vintage scarf. But Jeff never wore anything but suits and ties—bought, Vivian suspected, at discount outlet stores.

  Not that it mattered. He was still adorable with his loosened tie and his sleeves rolled up haphazardly.

  “What are you working on?” he asked, moving around her desk so he could see her screen.

  “I’m pinning.”

  “You’re on Pinterest! For Pete’s sake, Viv, why are you wasting your time?”

  “You know that a presence on social media is imp—”

  “I know that, but your time is way too valuable for you to be doing it. Grace can be doing that. Hell, one of the interns could do all that messing around with pins.” He spoke the last words like they were describing a strange and mysterious disease. Then he muttered under his breath, “For Pete’s sake.”

  Vivian tried to keep her expression composed as she kept scanning for images, but her lips wobbled slightly.

  “What’s so funny?” Jeff demanded, slouching down into the chair next to her desk with a resigned sigh.

  “Nothing.”

  “Tell me.”

  She darted a quick look over to him. “You do know that you’re the only real live person I’ve ever met who uses the expression ‘For Pete’s sake,’ don’t you?”

  Jeff frowned at her.

  She snickered. “Mel and I were talking about it this afternoon.”

  “It’s a normal expression, isn’t it?”

  “If you’re a friend of Beaver Cleaver maybe.”

  Jeff maintained his frown, although his brown eyes were glinting with a matching amusement. “My mom used to say it.”

  “I’m sure she did. It’s just one more irresistible feature of the Jeff Owen package.”

  Jeff rolled his eyes at her. “But seriously, you can’t be wasting your time on social media. You’re already in the office fourteen hours a day. You need to delegate.”

  Vivian quickly wrote out a couple of sentences and pinned one more image to a board before she lowered her hands and leaned back in her chair, turning more fully toward Jeff. “I know. I’d like to. But Grace doesn’t do the pins right.”

  “I’ve seen what she does. They look fine.”

  “Most of the images she picks are okay, but what she writes about them is not. Faith and Fabulousness is supposed to be about a Christian approach to culture. I don’t want our Pinterest boards to turn into covet factories.”

  Jeff’s lips parted as he thought that through.

  “It’s a fine line, but we have to hold it,” Vivian continued, “or we might as well close down the whole enterprise.”

  “Okay. Okay. I get that. But the answer isn’t for you to do everything. The answer is for you to train Grace so she can do it better.”

  “I know. As soon as I get some time, I plan on doing that.”

  “Then it will never get done. You’ll never have extra time. You need to make time for it now so you don’t have to do everything forever.”

  “Yeah.”

  His eyes were serious now as they held hers. “Don’t tell me yeah like that. Tell me you’ll do it.”

  She experienced a little inkling of resistance—as she always did when it felt like he was trying to control her—but she pushed it aside.

  Jeff was her partner—they were sixty-forty partners in Faith and Fabulousness, with her holding the controlling interest. He wasn’t an employee. He was allowed to have a say in the company and give her his opinion even when it was different than hers.

  Plus she knew he was right.

  “Okay. I’ll work with her on it. After the retreat.”

  Jeff nodded. Since their company retreat was in two more days, he could hardly argue that she needed to do it before.

  Instead of leaving as she thought would be reasonable, he reached over and dragged her cute wicker inbox over toward him on the desk. Then, without asking, he started culling through the stack of papers.

  She sat and watched him, thinking he was both annoying and incredibly attractive despite his fuddy-duddy fashion sense.

  A flicker of curiosity crossed her mind about when he would start dating again. His wife had walked out on him more than two years ago, and the divorce had been
finalized a year ago.

  Despite his stubbornness and occasional bossiness, he was a sweet, old-fashioned guy. Surely he would want to get married again.

  She couldn’t help but wonder what kind of woman he would choose.

  She was tempted to ask, but she didn’t. She had a feeling he wouldn’t appreciate her intruding on his personal life.

  They were close because they were partners, but even back in college—where they’d met—they’d never been intimate friends. It was more like their life paths fell in line with each other perfectly, traveling in exactly the same direction.

  “Okay,” he said, starting to organize the papers in her inbox into three stacks on her desk. “Some of these shouldn’t be on your plate at all. Who gave you all these book proposals?”

  “I asked Garrett for them. I wanted to see what’s come in.”

  “Well, Garrett should have narrowed them down a lot more before he passed them on to you. It’s ridiculous for you to look at some of this garbage.” He shook his head. “The Gospel According to Gardening.” He started to drop the clipped papers into the recycling bin.

  Vivian leaned over to reach for them before they could fall into the bin. “That could be an interesting concept.”

  “There’s nothing interesting about that proposal.”

  After skimming the top sheet, she sighed and released it back into recycling.

  “Garrett needs to narrow it down to a few of the best. I’ll talk to him.” Jeff had been working while she was looking at the proposal, and he’d now organized her entire inbox. “Okay, these are the only things you should do tomorrow.” He patted one of the stacks. “Then this stuff can wait until you get back from the retreat. And this other stuff shouldn’t be on your desk at all.”

  She tried to take the last pile from his lap, but he held it out of her reach.

  “No,” he said. “Someone else can do this stuff.”

  “But I like to—”

  “I don’t care what you like to do. This company can’t run without you. What would happen to all our jobs if you have a nervous breakdown from stress and lack of sleep?”

  She made a face to show she wasn’t happy, but she didn’t object any further.

  Thirteen years ago, during her first year of college, she’d started a blog so she could ramble on about her thoughts about fashion, travel, food, books, and decorating from a Christian perspective. Slowly she’d gained a following, and the blog had become more and more popular. Seven years ago, she’d teamed up with Jeff, who’d been talking to her about the blog’s potential since college, and they’d turned the blog into a profitable company. It was far more than a blog now. They had an online store, published a line of books, and put their name and brand behind a wide variety of cultural products.

  She’d still just be doing a blog if it hadn’t been for Jeff. She knew culture, and she had a lot she wanted to say about how Christians could be “in the world” but not “of it.” But Jeff was the one who understood business and made the whole enterprise run.

  They now had a staff of six full-time employees and a revolving set of four or five interns. They had a stylish office suite in Raleigh, and she was making more money than she’d ever dreamed was possible with her particular skill set.

  None of it would have happened without Jeff.

  He was standing up, holding the stack of papers he’d stolen from her inbox against his chest. “You know, if you’d relent and do all your work online like the rest of us, I could organize everything for you before it ever got to you.”

  She shook her head. “I like to read on paper. I like images online and words on paper.”

  “Luddite.”

  She narrowed her eyes at him. “And just think about where the recycled paper industry would be without me.”

  “Out of business,” he said with a chuckle, leaving her office. “Don’t work too late.”

  “Same to you.”

  Jeff always chided her for working too late, but he almost never went home before she did.

  ***

  A half hour later, Vivian finished answering the most pressing emails in her inbox and was about to turn off her computer when she got a Skype alert.

  When she saw it was her parents, she took a moment to check her face, making sure she looked decent. Then she put on a cheerful smile and pulled up the call.

  “Hi there!” she said when she saw both of them in the video image reflected back at her. “How are you?”

  “We’re doing just fine. We’re in Belize right now,” her mother said.

  “I thought you were in Mexico City.”

  “We just flew down from there today. We’re going to be working with a church here for the next two weeks. They’ve set up a temporary medical clinic and need some help with it. We just heard about the opportunity, so we came right away.”

  Vivian’s parents had retired from full-time ministry five years ago, but they were anything but retired. They spent at least half their time on short-term mission trips and service projects all over the world.

  “Is it the same church in Belize you worked with two years ago?”

  “Yes. In the same village. The pastor called us and told us about the clinic and some of the needs they have, so here we are.” Her mother always did the talking on their Skype calls. Her father was a man of few words, but he always smiled and nodded after everything her mother said, so she knew he was participating in the conversation.

  “That’s great,” Vivian said. “I’m glad you were able to get down there.”

  “How are things with you, Vivian?” her mother asked.

  “They’re good. Really good.” Vivian felt a little flutter in her chest as she added, “Our latest book—the one on shoes—has been on the USA Today best-seller list for two weeks.”

  She saw her mother glance over to her father with a particular expression. Then she said, “That’s wonderful, dear. I guess a lot of people like that kind of thing. Shoes.”

  Vivian felt a familiar sinking feeling at the implication of that remark. “It’s really not as trivial as it sounds,” she replied, holding on to her smile. “The book is really on the gospel in culture.”

  “Of course it isn’t trivial, dear. I’m glad you’re able to entertain people with that.”

  Her father nodded his agreement.

  Then her mother added, “Did you hear about your sister’s latest community service project with the kids at her school?”

  The lump in Vivian’s throat was old, familiar. From the beginning, her parents had always believed all she did was “entertain” people in a trivial, superficial way. Her sister was the principal at an inner-city mission school in Milwaukee, and her brother was a doctor working with poor villages in the north of India.

  And Vivian blogged about shoes and gardens and the recent trends in fiction.

  She didn’t come out of that comparison looking good.

  She finished the conversation, trying to push down the feelings of not being good enough. As they were wrapping up, her parents both told her they loved her and were praying for her.

  “I love you too,” she said with one last smile. “I’m praying for you too.”

  Then they said goodbye. Vivian closed down Skype and then shut off her computer.

  Then she sat staring at the blank screen for a minute.

  She wasn’t sure how long she’d been sitting when a familiar voice came from her doorway. “Time to go home.”

  She turned her head and blinked at Jeff. “Yeah. Right.”

  Jeff came over, turned her chair to face him, and then grabbed her upper arms to lift her up. He was a few inches taller than her, but her heels made up some of the difference. “Time to go home,” he said again.

  She let out her breath and smiled at him. “I was just leaving.” She got her red purse out of the bottom drawer of her desk and turned off the antique lamp on her desk.

  “I’ll walk you home,” Jeff said.

  “You don’t have—
”

  “I need the exercise anyway. I’ve been at my desk all day.”

  Vivian lived in an expensive apartment, about half a mile from their office suite. Jeff had a house in one of the Raleigh suburbs, so he always drove to work.

  They walked down three flights of stairs and out onto the sidewalk without speaking, and then they turned in the direction of her apartment.

  “I heard you talking to your parents,” Jeff said, sounding casual, idle, like he was just making conversation.

  “Oh. Yeah. I guess I had the volume too loud. Sorry.”

  “Didn’t bother me. How are they doing?”

  “Fine. They’re in Belize now. Working with some sort of health clinic with a local church.”

  “They do a lot of that kind of thing, I guess.”

  “All the time.” She felt exhausted and strangely depressed, which wasn’t really like her. She was normally an upbeat, optimistic person. Everyone said so.

  “Do you always put on your game face before you talk to them?”

  She stared at him in surprise. “What?”

  Despite her question, she knew immediately what he was talking about. She always prepared her expression before she talked to her parents—the same expression she prepared before she met with potential investors or fans of the blog.

  Her game face.

  It was a good way to put it.

  “You know what I mean,” Jeff said, speaking lightly, casually, as if he were just sharing a passing thought. He was by nature a serious, intentional man, so whenever he used this tone, she knew he was doing it on purpose. “Your game face. Your things-are-all-good-and-I’ve-got-everything-under-control face.”

  She gave him a little scowl. “How do you know what my expression was like? You weren’t in the room.”

  “I could hear it in your voice.”

  “You make it sound bad. It’s my normal expression.”

  “It’s not bad,” he said, slanting a quick look at her, as if checking to see what she was feeling. “It’s just not… completely real.”

  “Why shouldn’t it be real?”

  “The way you look right now is real.”