title: Lightning Kills, a Love Story
author: Victor, Cindy
description: Annalise Tully, a teacher, artist, and marathoner, is running alongside Powers Lake to work off the stress of not being able to fulfill her widowed father's request to organize a family vacation, which no one else in the family wants. Obscuring this problem is a sudden t-storm and Annie seeing four teenage boys drinking beer. One is in the crotch of a tree, making him a likely target to be struck by lightning. Running to the boys, Annie trips over a snapping turtle they had turned on its back. After she berates them for this cruelty, all but one, the boy in the tree, grab and strip her and take off with her clothes and cell phone. Seeing her plight through a window, an elderly man comes running to her aid but slips and falls and can't get up. Annie yells for help, but to no avail until a younger man yells, "Dad " After seeing his father in the hospital and assisting Annie at his dad's home, Russell Spence, who owns resort hotels and was visiting his father, gives Annie clothes to wear and buys dinner to take to her house. They share life stories. Just as lightning strikes without warning, so does sexual desire. Russ asks Annie if she wants this slow or fast. She's not sure until they kiss. It's a perfect relationship until Annie learns that Russ is the surrogate father of the boy in the tree who watched the assault, and that the boy's mother, an attorney and lifelong friend of Russ's, will do anything she can to keep her son's reputation from being besmirched, even if she must destroy Annie's reputation.