Stay (Dunham series #2) (51 page)

Vanessa pursed her lips. “I talked to Annie.”

Eric started. “Uh . . . ”

“She quit her job when she left Omaha so she’s not
tied up at the moment— So, well . . . ”

“You want
Annie
to be my campaign
manager?”

Vanessa shrugged. “Sure, why not? She’s savvy like
that. Shares our politics. Attractive. Wants to take her career in
a different direction. Still wants to get away from her mother.
Solves our problem. Solves her problem.” She paused. “If you say
okay, she’ll move to Jeff City and start there, since we’ll be in
Missouri for at least the next ten years or so.”

“I don’t know if I can trust her around you.”

“I like, ah, real penis. Particularly yours.”

Eric burst out laughing and shook his head. “So
whose idea was that?”

“Justice’s. She got tired of Annie moping around
about, uh . . . ”

“Rafferty.”

“That’s it. And . . . I empathize completely. Been
there, done that. Running a campaign should be a good distraction
and who knows? Maybe she’ll meet somebody else.”

“Well, what the hell. And Vachel?”

“Funny thing. Vachel and Eilis have somehow become
best friends forever and he’s decided he wants to learn how to run
a company. So . . . we’ll start with Whittaker House, then see
where that ends up. Whether we stay here or move to Jeff City next
fall, he decided he didn’t want to leave Whittaker House until he
goes to college, which . . . I think is wise, all things
considered.”

Eric shook his head, completely exasperated. “They
had this all figured out, didn’t they?”

“They think they’re very clever.”

Vanessa stared at him for quite a while, studying
him. She reached out, laid her palm gently on his face, caressed
his cheek with her thumb.

“What?”

She flashed him a smile of unabashed joy, her
turquoise eyes shimmering with unshed tears. “You’re going to come
home with me tonight and you aren’t going to leave me.”

He watched her and remembered far back in the past
when a little girl had looked at him with hope and pleading. Then,
she had wanted a kiss on the cheek, maybe on the lips. Now,
tonight, she wanted—

“I’ll never walk away from you again, Vanessa,” he
whispered, vowed, there in the middle of their church. “I’m here.”
He pressed a soft kiss of promise against her lips. “To stay.”

* * * * *

More?

theproviso.com

&

theproviso.com/stay

for vignettes, outtakes, faqs, stats, and more

on all the characters from
The
Proviso
and
Stay
.

* * * * *

THE PROVISO

Book 1 in the Tales of Dunham

Giselle Cox & Bryce Kenard

Sebastian Taight & Eilis Logan

Knox Hilliard & Justice McKinley

Knox Hilliard’s uncle murdered his father to marry
his mother

and take control of the family company.

Now, he and his cousins Sebastian and Giselle

are on a quest for justice and to restore Knox’s
inheritance to him.

None of them expect to find love along the way.

Available in print and digital at
b10mediaworx.com
.

* * * * *

MAGDALENE

Book 3 in the Tales of Dunham

Mitch Hollander & Cassie St. James

A MORMON BISHOP

AN EX-PROSTITUTE

A MAN WITH A VENDETTA

Coming April 24, 2011

MAY 2007

I didn’t go into prostitution because I was
desperate; I did it because I was bored: Bored of my hausfrau
existence, bored of my husband both in bed and out, bored of my
ingrate daughters who don’t (yet) understand what it means to be
the sacrificial lamb in the nuclear family setup and that being a
wife and mother can be its own category of prostitution. They will.
And I’ll laugh.

I was never the stereotypical whore with a heart of
gold, which seems to be used as point and counterpoint: If you’re
pure in heart, being a whore is tolerable, forgivable even; if
you’re just a mercenary bitch who likes sex and, moreover, getting
paid for it, it’s the unforgivable sin. Ultimately, however, I had
to choose my clients on their ability to pay my exorbitant prices
and leave the good sex to my carefully selected lovers.

I didn’t quit prostitution for some sort of wish
fulfillment of born-again virginity; I quit because I was bored.
Fucking for money involves a certain amount of acting ability and
while I’m a very good actress (thus, a very good whore), it takes
some amount of concentration that is not usually conducive to
having a real orgasm.

With a healthy bank account, one ex-husband whose
current partner sports genitalia similar to his, four grown
daughters, and my forty-third birthday on the horizon with
professional ennui setting in, I had to find something else to do .
. .

* * * * *

About the Author

Since before Moriah can remember, she wrote stories
in her head to put herself to sleep at night. Unfortunately, they
grew like kudzu and took over her neural path-ways until, around
age fourteen, she had to start putting them on paper before they
choked out everything else. She’s been writing ever since, with the
exception of a five-year sagging middle—er, uh, hiatus—during which
a lot of stuff happened. The trouble started when she woke up one
morning in 2007 with the solution to a plot problem that had
plagued her since 1995 . . .

[email protected]

www.moriahjovan.com

www.twitter.com/MoriahJovan