Freelance Love by Barbara Alvarez

her to the sofa cushion, where they
continued to kiss.
    ***
    Morgan finally came to her senses and began to push against Ian’s
shoulders.
    “Ian! I’m not ready to take it to the next level. She pushed
harder against Ian’s shoulders. “I’m sorry – I need to make sure this is the
right thing for me. I promise you, I’ll think about it, because I do find you
attractive.” God, I
want to take you to my room right now!
    Ian heard Morgan dimly through the roaring of the blood in his
hears. Feeling the palms of her hands against his shoulders, his mind put the
two messages together and he broke the kiss. Raising himself slightly, he
looked at Morgan.
    “Okay. You said you’d think about an ‘us?’ I’m holding you to
that,” Ian said in a throaty growl, made lower by the desire he felt for this
woman. He stood and pulled Morgan to her feet. “Call me when you’re ready to
talk. And, while you’re thinking, keep this in mind – a romantic relationship
shouldn’t impact our ability to work together. We’re relatively sane and adult
freelancers,” said Ian with a devilish twinkle in his eyes.
    Two hours later, Morgan had managed to get herself back to
normal, although her mind kept escaping and returning to their necking session
on her sofa. She sighed in frustration and grabbed a bottle of chilled tea from
her refrigerator. Drinking deeply, she gave herself a mental shake and
determined that she was going to return to her articles and either finish or
hit a specific word count. Sitting back down at her computer, she looked at her
article and immediately found several embarrassing mistakes. Printing the
document out, she redlined the mistakes and began making corrections.
Forty-five minutes later, she stopped writing and read what she had re-done.
Finding a few small errors, she corrected these. Finally, satisfied with the
first article, she saved it to her flash drive and moved to her second magazine
article. Just before she started typing, her cell phone rang. Looking at the
caller I.D. readout, she saw Rick Devins’ office number and grabbed the phone.
    “Hello, Rick? How are you? Do you have an update?”
    Rick laughed. “My daughter does the same thing to me! I’m fine and
yes, I have some potentially good news for you.”
    Morgan blushed. “I’m sorry, Rick. I’m just so tired of John’s
shit. He approached me at The Shed this week while Ian and I were working on my
articles. Began harassing me. I was going to call you, but I got so busy.”
    “Really? Did you call the police?”
    “Yes, and two units responded. They took a report and one of the
officers talked to John. Told him that what he was doing counted as harassment.
I may need something that legally requires John to stay away from me.”
    “Consider it done. I’ll have an order drafted and filed by week’s
end. Now, here’s my news – Mack is beginning to crumble. His approaching you
may have been one last gasp of bravado. He’s beginning to question everything
I’m telling him. He’s spoken to an attorney of his own, but hasn’t hired him –
I saw him at the courthouse when I was there on another case. They didn’t see
me, so I got a little closer and the gist of Mack’s questions, basically, were
whether you had a good case.”
    “And?”
    “The attorney he was talking to asked him several questions and
said that, yes, you do have an excellent case for defamation of character. Mack
asked him what that meant and what it could mean for him. The attorney told him
what defamation does to you, then said you have ‘several’ remedies available
that help you get your good reputation back. You should have seen Mack! If he
could have started crying, he would have.! He looked like a little boy who’d
just lost his favorite truck – his face got red, everything. I really had
to fight keep from laughing out loud,” said Rick with a smile in his voice.
    “Wow! Did he hire that attorney?”
    “You kidding me? If he’s looking