C.L. Donley's Blog

Retirement Announcement

So perhaps some of you have noticed that I’ve been MIA the last few months (I can’t believe we’re almost halfway through March. Where has the time gone!). Basically, I’ve been considering semi-retirement for awhile. After the feedback from Work Wife I started considering a move to clean romance, complete with a different pen name (which will remain mysterious– just in case!) I felt like I could better serve that audience with the kind of stories I was interested in telling. But that all changed when I had a spiritual encounter with God around the end of September.

I didn’t realize it’d changed at the time, but by the time I was getting ready to launch Spellbound, and I saw that the book just wasn’t coming together, I suspected that I was done telling these stories.

Now, that doesn’t mean that I’m going to remove my catalog or anything (at least I don’t think it does). And maybe I’ll realize my clean romance dreams in the future (I mean it’s free money practically for me haha). But as of right now, I can say confidently that the energy and enthusiasm I once had for writing romance has all but left. Fitting since it was God who gave it to me in the first place. The Lord giveth and the taketh away, I suppose.

I still have a 53K-ish Spellbound manuscript just collecting dust which sometimes sits well with me and sometimes doesn’t. I’m thinking of making a few tweaks to it and just releasing it exclusively to you guys for free. Though keep in mind that it didn’t get released for a reason. There are some things about it that simply do not live up to the standard I know C.L. Donley readers have come to expect.

But as a mailing list freebie? It’s alright I guess, lol.

Not that I’m saying, “Here’s my trash book for you subscribers!” Of course, there are some elements to it that I think are great. And I think it would be a fitting way to thank you guys for your support. If I do decide to post it, I’ll let you know when it’s available!

So, I hope this hasn’t been too cryptic. In essence, though I might be back in some form (and I hope I still have your permission to let you know if I am), the C.L. Donley catalog is done, and the pen name is retired. Some of you have been around since I was in my little apartment, recently separated, and wondering if I could possibly support myself by writing stories. That was only five years ago but it’s been a rich, productive five years.

I would be remiss if I didn’t end this with a personal plea: find Jesus. He is the hero we are all writing about.

With gratitude,

C.L.

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Spellbound: Out Christmas Day– Now Available for Pre-Order!

So, much to my surprise, it looks like I’ll be squeezing another release out this year just in time for the holidays! It’s called Spellbound and while it is clearly sports-themed, it is technically a paranormal romance. I think. I did surface-level research on it, not gonna lie. But I’ve had this story in my head for a few years now and while it might seem like a departure on the surface, I think most of my readers will quickly find that it’s typical C.L. Donley style.

It’s actually a melding of two book ideas. I’d had this tiny idea of a guy who starts dreaming of this girl and then meets her in real life. It’s been done before, I get it. But I didn’t have much else beyond that premise, and I doubted I had enough of a concept to make an entire book out of it so it was just sort of in the back of my mind. A little while later, while doing research on Rich Little Poor Girl, I’d come across a few resources that inspired this Friday Night Lights type story which I really liked, but had the same problem where I felt like it wasn’t enough for a whole book.

So when my brain hollered out, “why don’t you just smush those two concepts together” I was like:

If you’re paying attention, Rich Little Poor Girl was three years ago. So this book has been in the pipeline for a while. And this year I finally felt like it was time to take a crack at it.

So the story starts out following our hero Colin Schaeffer, a star quarterback who plays for Omaha and has been having a recurring dream about a woman he’s never met. Eventually, he meets her, a physical therapist by the name of Kaya Simmons. The sparks are immediate, as well as the questions, the implications, and the unforeseen challenges. Once they meet, which is pretty early in the book, the rest of the story follows them as they try to navigate being a couple with this overarching sense of destiny hanging over their heads.

Colin and Kaya

I went back and forth on the inspiration for Colin’s character, but Kaya’s was pretty much always Kelly Rowland. I really wanted a classic all-American football player look that could also convey vulnerability/underdog/everyman vibes and what can I say I love Matt Saracen, lol. If I were to compare this to an existing book in the catalog, I would compare it to… maybe Halcyon. It’s one of my more original stories, even though the concepts may be derivative. It doesn’t follow any particular trope and the emphasis is on, as always, the emotional journey of the characters.

So yeah, while it’s more of a romance with a slight magical realism component, personally I’m a bit intimidated by the genre to consider it a paranormal or even an urban fantasy. Hence why I haven’t used a different pen name or anything. And I don’t know if you can tell, but I’m trying not to give too much away here, haha. It’s sort of my take on a Twilight Zone love story, but at its heart is a story about the concept of two people being made for each other and if circumstances change who we are or reveal who we are– a common theme of mine.

Enjoy!

Spellbound: Sneak PeekChapter 2

The sound of creaking wood lets him know he’s dreaming. Not just creaking wood, but the sound of bare feet hitting the floor. That’s the combination that lets him know he’s dreaming the dream again.

It’s the same dream he’s had since he was a kid, and the only thing about it that’s changed over the years is how it makes him feel.

The first time he ever dreamed it, he was six years old. In the dream, he was a grown-up.

At that age, being an adult was like being a unicorn. It was far off, unattainable. That fact alone was enough for him to never want to wake up.

He remembered the ornate circular window filtering a bright morning orb of sunshine into the room like a spotlight. It landed on the rough white blanket he was sleeping under that was like a giant hospital bandage in his memory. That along with the skeletal wooden slats, horizontal along the walls let him know that he was in some kind of attic. But he was in a bed.

He somehow knew there was a girl. Running the sink in a bathroom, he could hear.

She came out in a shirt that barely covered her legs, legs that were brown. In fact, all over she was brown. All of her except the white shirt she wore that had a single word scrawled across it in a cutesy font.

She tugs at the hem of a shirt that she knows is not big enough. At least, that’s what he thought at the time. It took a few more years of having the dream before it occurred to him that maybe she was cold.

But the first time he had the dream, when he was six, the one thing that tore his attention away from all the strange details in it was sitting up, looking down, and seeing his limbs underneath the covers. Stretching so far down like two narrow tree limbs that they seemed to touch the edge of the bed ahead.

The legs didn’t look quite right. Basically, they looked like his own current legs, only elongated as if he were some sort of cartoon character. But he was six, and his mind did the best that it could.

I’m big, he would marvel. It should’ve woken him up immediately, so stark was the realization of him still dreaming. But lovingly it would linger a little, right before he gently woke up.

“I had that dream again, bro.”

He’d told one person about the dream by the time he was 17. His high school friend and fellow Union teammate Ian Chambers.

He wasn’t sure why he told the most random person about one of his most treasured secrets. He supposed he wanted a random person’s opinion. Wanted to say it out loud to someone he knew wouldn’t dismiss him, or try to humor him.

Once he became a teenager he relished the recurring dream, which still floated to him once in a while. Once a year, twice, he couldn’t be sure. He just knew it was never enough times. He could give three shits about being big in the dream then. At that point, it was all about catching every glimpse of the half-naked girl coming out of the bathroom and heading over to his side of the bed.

It was then that he was able to notice more details. The soft, mature tone of her melodic voice. He was able to see the water droplets on the inside of her shirt where her body was still wet in places. The shirt read “flirt,” incidentally, and was pale pink, not white.

She was the perfect body type he could tell. Her hair was parted in the middle and cut into a short bob with cute bangs that framed her oblong face. If she hadn’t pulled the hem of the shirt down to cover her legs, warping the front of it he could’ve seen the outline of her tits. But he was sure they were perfect too.

“Bruh, you don’t even know any black women,” Ian Chambers crudely observed. Colin knit his brow in confusion. It was a general statement that was just untrue enough to puzzle him.

“I know plenty of black girls,” Colin assured him. “Brandi. Taylor, Shay’s gorgeous—”

“Cheerleaders don’t count,” Ian shot back.

“Why not?”

“Bro, I’m talkin’ about black… women.”

Ian was black and Colin could only guess what he meant by that, since Ian himself was the middle in a big family of brothers and little sisters, and yet somehow managed to never share the same space with a single black girl in their high school. Conspicuously so, rounding the corner just as they were leaving, or never discussing them even if they were mentioned by name. Either Ian was in some way protective or wanted to distance himself from the association entirely. Or maybe secretly dressing up as all of them, who knows. Whatever it was, he was committed. Besides, it didn’t matter.

“Well, that’s the thing— I don’t think I’ve met her yet. I mean, I know I haven’t.”

“You think it’s a premonition?”

Colin gave his friend an admiring look for the accurate word.

“It has to be.”

“Why does it have to be?”

“Why else would I be dreaming about a woman I don’t even know? Since I was six?”

“Wait, you met her when you were six?”

“No, I mean I’ve been dreaming about her that long.”

“And in the dream y’all are doin’ it?” Ian confirmed. Colin’s pants stirred.

“No, I mean… maybe we were, but I think I’m like… just waking up.”

“And she comes out the bathroom naked? In an attic?”

Colin felt a strange mixture of zeal, joy, and jealousy to hear someone else talk about it. It made it real. He better not even think of jacking off to her.

“She’s wearing a shirt,” corrected Colin.

“That’s it?”

“Jesus, Ian,” he said with frustration. Only because he didn’t know that for sure and he didn’t want to say that because it would just lead to another question like, “what do you mean you don’t know?” and the thought of it pissed him off. He wished he could know for sure.

“Hey, you brought it up,” Ian reminded him, tossing up both his open palms. “So is that why it took you so long to lose your virginity? You think this is like your future wife or something?”

Colin fought an eye roll, even though Ian was right.

He wanted this girl to be the one. The only one, the way it felt in the dream. He wanted it all to make sense as soon as possible. He still maintained senior year was a perfectly reasonable time to lose your virginity, however.

“Probably,” Colin shrugged. “I think maybe we’re soul mates or something,” he casually tossed out, testing his friend, ready to laugh along if need be.

“Think she’s somewhere dreamin’ about you too?” Ian asked insightfully instead.

At that, a shiver went through him and he coughed to cover it. “Maybe.”

“Do you even like black women like that?” Ian remarked in some kind of disbelief. It was over-emphasized as if to betray distaste but again Colin detected something protective in it.

“I like that one,” Colin assured him as he laced up his cleats.

The day his mother died was the day he began to associate the dream with bad omens. It’s strange losing your mother when you’re on the verge of not needing her anymore, in the way that sons need their mothers. A queer sort of anguish. He wouldn’t say that he was a mama’s boy, but he also wouldn’t say that he was the kind of son that took his mother for granted. At least he didn’t think he was.

He’d always been closer to his father who was like the sun. Football was the moon. By day, his father guided him. To football. And by night, when it was dark and quiet and he was alone, football guided him.

But his mother, he supposed, was maybe the stars, or the wind, or the tides. His mother also knew all the equipment down to the jock strap. His jerseys were always clean, his transportation from practice to tournaments always punctual, the snacks she brought always tasty, her feeble shouts from the stands always supportive, strangely formative. Never the expectant “that’s how you do it!” from his dad, who always expected greatness from Colin and always got it.

But it was because of his mother’s, “shake it off, shake it off,” that he always heard, whether what’d just happened was good or bad, that he was who he was.

Maybe his mother had been the moon. And when he witnessed his dad fall apart, he knew that for him, she had been the sun.

It was an away game, six hours from his alma mater but only about 45 minutes from his family home in Omaha.

If only he’d had time before the game to drive home. If only he’d told his mother to tell his sister Janna to fuck off, so that she would’ve skipped their previously scheduled nail appointment. So that she could ride with Dad instead of taking her car on wheels with almost no tread during a snowy night, and wouldn’t be rushing to get to a shit game they were going to end up losing. Of course, his not playing could’ve had more to do with that than their opponent having the home advantage.

He would never know. All he knew was that right after kickoff he was being pulled out of the game within the first scrimmage. And when he looked at his coach’s devastated eyes— and then his younger brother’s catatonic face next to his father’s crumpled frame there on the sidelines of the field— it took about ten full seconds for his frustration to die down, for his invincibility to wane.

For the first time in a long time, something was wrong. Really wrong.

He wished there was some hospital to go to, some ambulance to run down. Some brief period of hope that there was one last thing he could say to her. But there wasn’t. She was already gone.

He was frighteningly jealous of anyone who got to have those hours before the game, those minutes. His father, his brother, those nail technicians, anyone on the road that night. Even his sister got a few before she’d called Dad, who was already in the stands.

But Janna also had to watch their mother’s life slowly drain away as she begged her to hold on, so it was an irrational ember of resentment he could never let surface.

That same night Colin had the dream.

He hadn’t wanted to see her that night, this girl from whenever. But he’d had no choice. The familiar sounds of a creaking wooden floor began and out she came, prancing around in her sleep shirt, greeting the day and him with that formidable smile.

This time he didn’t try to change anything, didn’t try to notice any clues, he just succumbed, feeling awash in love for this stranger about whom he knew nothing, except that the two of them had no secrets.

He watched the dust play around in the spotlight of the sun where it hit the tribal embroidery of the white blanket, waiting for consciousness to take to subtly take him away. This time, he wouldn’t take it for granted. “Goodbye,” he whispered, his own voice waking him in the soft dawn.

When he was a senior in college, every attic apartment he saw advertised caught his eye. Even though he was in a long-term relationship with a girl at the time that he thought could be the one. But he couldn’t bring himself to propose to her, and she wasn’t waiting around.

By then the dream had made a complete change of association in his mind. The dream seemed harmful and intrusive. It was starting to pose a threat to his actual happiness.

He found it hard to commit to anyone, not knowing if this person would ever actually cross his path, replace the hole that the loss of his mother had left. Whenever it seemed like he was getting a grip, the dream would come back to him, as if to warn him not to.

Once he went pro, the dream came back less and less. He would sometimes be on the verge of forgetting about it entirely until he’d be dreaming he was in the middle of some press conference naked, running down an endless corridor in some nameless stadium. Then the sound of creaking wood and bare footsteps along the floor would make his heart skip, everything would go dark, and then suddenly there it was, just as vivid and immovable as ever.

Having dreamed it roughly a thousand times, every detail memorized, he found that he noticed the most when he wasn’t looking for anything. He noticed his own feelings in the dream, that if he could get himself out of the way and let the dream play out, there were some already there. A deep familiarity that he’d never felt. Not so much of him knowing her, but of her knowing him. There was a naked level of acceptance that had always been there, that he’d taken for granted over the years and now craved, and it made him wake up weeping.

“Maybe the dream isn’t about a person. Maybe it’s your inner… I don’t know. I’m just saying, maybe the dream is just about you.”

“I’d agree with you, but… you’d think some part of it would change by now.”

He was having lunch with Samantha Myers, his former fiancee turned media agent and best friend-in-law. Samantha once thought she was in love with Colin, until she realized he wasn’t in love with her. She couldn’t figure out why. Not out of vanity, but because she didn’t understand why a man like him would simply keep her around as if out of fear.

Samantha wasn’t particularly attracted to her current husband Matt, but when he worked up the courage to steal her away from Colin, all that changed. And when Colin put up exactly no fight to stay angry at either of them, their relationship turned fully platonic. It wasn’t until Samantha had moved on and taken him on as a client that Colin even worked up the courage to tell her about the dream.

“I gotta say, this is the weirdest thing I’ve ever heard maybe ever. You should talk to a therapist.”

“Maybe you’re right.”

“I mean at this point, it’s like your brain is torturing you or something, right? You gotta find out what this is.”

“It’s getting a lot less frequent. Last night was the first time in a couple years, maybe.”

“Still. I mean it gives me the creeps.”

“The creeps? Really?” wondered Colin.

“Yeah,” she insisted. “Like, what if she’s some murder victim or something? Like Sixth Sense?”

“Holy shit, Sam.”

“Sorry, you know how I am. Too much ID channel,” dismissed Sam with a jostle of her briefcase. “So you ready for Monday or what?”

“Wake up ready, go to sleep ready.”

It was something Colin said a lot. He was starting to notice it getting less and less true but he didn’t know what that meant, so he pretended it meant nothing. If it was about his football career, he had to ignore it. For his own sanity.

Sure, the love of the game had taken a few blows since going pro, gaining an image, a lifestyle. But there was nothing else in the world he could do, and he was determined to do it until they kicked him out. He was simply surprised he was still here, that they still wanted him. Homegrown or not, there were younger, flashier players out there.

“SportsCenter’s doing a segment on the dream team. Probably have a crew out at the facility after practice.”

“The ‘dream team,’” Colin scoffed. “Did you come up with that?”

“I don’t know who came up with it.”

“I don’t have to talk to ‘em do I?” he whined.

“Since when have you ever been camera shy?” Sam ribbed him through a bit of her strawberry salad.

“I’m not but I don’t like that Misha chick they always send to sneak attack us with contract questions.”

Samantha shook her head. “It’s not that kind of segment. Thirty minutes, tops. Talk to them about Victoria House if you want.”

Victoria House was a charity that taught college kids the dangers of driving drunk. He sort of fell into doing it. Sam said he needed to find a cause to care about, he didn’t have one, so he picked this one and named it after his mother, who was technically killed by a drunk driver.

But in his mind, a sober driver would’ve probably leveled her anyway given the conditions that night. The booze might’ve saved their own life. He saw the van, the roads.

She simply shouldn’t have been driving that shitty van. Alone. And he didn’t know how he could’ve known that better than his own father, the one who was the most incapacitated after.

“Even I’m not dumb enough to expect Sports Center wants to hear me talk about charity work for 30 minutes.”

“I didn’t say the segment would be 30 minutes, I’m saying they need 30 minutes of footage. If you and Matt ham it up I’m sure they’ll just use that.”

“Jesus,” he muttered.

“Hey, you want it all to stop, just say the word,” Sam threatened good-naturedly.

“Yeah right,” he smirked. “What would you do without your star client?”

“Probably be better for my marriage,” she muttered with wide eyes.

“Speaking of which, Matt thinks I should shop around.”

“Oh he does, does he?” she chuckled.

Colin shrugged imperceptively. “I’ve been thinking about it a couple years myself.”

Sam said nothing, only furrowed her brow as she rummaged through another choice salad bite. “‘You never told me that.”

“No, I wouldn’t. Not until I had to.” He could count on Samantha to catch his drift. She did. She made a face like she was impressed.

“Well, no time like the present,” she said with imposed self-imposed casualness. “You want me to put some feelers out?”

He didn’t answer yea or nay, he just sighed. “This absolutely positively cannot get out.”

“Trust me, I know. I negotiate your salary, remember?”

Samantha’s phone warbled and she picked it up without excusing herself and began talking. Colin dropped a Benjamin on the table as Sam climbed out of the booth and he followed behind. He nodded to a couple of rubbernecked guys leaning back on their bar stools before escorting Sam out the door.

Spellbound is now available for pre-order exclusively on Amazon. Also in Kindle Unlimited!

The post Spellbound: Out Christmas Day– Now Available for Pre-Order! appeared first on C. L. Donley Books.

Work Wife: Now Available for Pre-Order!

The spark for this book was really simple and unassuming. I may have been reading a lot of fake dating tropes at the time, I don’t really remember anymore. But I had a ghost of an idea floating around for years about an office romance and I decided to marry the two ideas, which isn’t anything new either. What appealed to me was the same thing that always does when approaching these tropes: how can I root this in some sort of reality? What could make two people really do this in the real world?

I didn’t intentionally set out to create this sort of “on trend” chick-lit cover but it’s simple, straightforward, really fits the light beach read tone of the book and, you know, eye-catching and all of that.

The book is about a woman who doesn’t know how to tell her boss of six years that she’s accepted a position elsewhere. When she finally does tell him, he refuses to accept her resignation and instead proposes marriage. Yaaaay “The End,” right? Not so much.

Jonathan and Anita: So adorbs! <3

Guys, I am so obsessed with my mental casting job. It might be the most accurate depiction of two characters in my mind in the history of ever. How. cute. are. THEY. I look at those two pictures and I’m like, “omg, that’s THEM.” I can’t describe them any better to you than these two people, in these two pictures.

A lot of my advanced readers have said that they appreciate that both characters are in their mid to late 30’s and that the heroine is slightly older than the hero. I didn’t think that this is the first time I’d ever done that but apparently it is. It’s fun, it’s sexy and profesh and to me, it’s an easy read. It’s different from the formulaic approach in that instead of outside circumstances colluding to force these two characters into a situation for our amusement, it’s more about the emotional implications that come when two people decide it for themselves, but don’t tell anyone else. Anyway, here’s a sample, so you be the judge!

New Release Sneak Peek: Work Wife: an AMBW Fake Marriage Romance

Anita doesn’t know how she’ll tell her boss of six years that she’s quitting. But when she finally does, Jonathan Jantzen, owner of Phoenix Capital proposes a counteroffer that Anita can’t turn down: marriage. Will the spontaneous gesture spell inevitable disaster? Or will Jonathan’s instincts for investments prove him right in the end?

Chapter 2

The tepid marriage proposal had come as a surprise. Poor guy. I got the feeling he was slightly serious. He might even be unluckier than me in love.

Romantically, the whole of my 20’s was a train wreck I still wasn’t ready to talk about. These days, the worst thing I ever had to worry about is some blind date getting re-scheduled into oblivion. Usually because of work, but still. At least I wasn’t an attractive single millionaire white-ish guy in his early 30’s. Thirst traps everywhere.

The only relationship I had known about was a woman named Yolanda whom he seemed to be pretty serious about if the receipts were any indication. But she had eventually moved on. I couldn’t be sure, but she seemed to have used him up like a cheap rag and then discarded him when she was done. Either that or she simply found Jonathan too hard to live with.

Yolanda seemed like the type of woman that cared more about how a man made his money than the fact that it was there. And to some, investing all your time into professional cleaning just wasn’t sexy enough. It got him through doors, but not many exclusive tables. Something about paying janitors six figures screams “not one of us.”

One relationship was enough to knock the fight out of him, apparently, because he never got back on the horse. Not even a rebound. And I would know, I had his appointment book. In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised if I inadvertently knew the most about him, simply because I knew his career inside and out, which took up most of his time.

Hell, maybe he was serious about the proposal. In a strange way, it was a compliment, just not the kind that would inspire my lifelong devotion. It meant that I’d been good at my job. And from an eccentric success story like Jon, it was flattering.

But I knew not to get sucked into that. I’d gone through enough to know that “comfortable” was not relationship goals.

The following week was hectic, due to our canceled dinner the week before. Jonathan’s correspondence was again frenetic and standoffish, as it had been before Tuesday nights were established. But when I showed up on the following Tuesday he acted as though nothing was different.

Gnocchi. Except for the fact that the gnocchi had been store-bought. Childish as it was, a small part of me couldn’t help but take it as a vindictive passive-aggressive gesture.

“Margot sent over the financing details for the SFP deal,” I told him.

“Why? She can close it herself.”

“She says you asked her to.”

“I did, that didn’t mean put it back on my plate,” he argued.

“I said she sent you what you asked for, not that she was waiting for you to get back to her.”

“Oh. Well, I may not get to it. You could probably look at them,” he said, chewing.

I furrowed my brow. “What am I looking for?”

“Anything that could keep them from signing with us.”

I widened my eyes. “If relaying messages is going to result in me doing extra work…”

He nodded, wordlessly stabbing his gnocchi. “Fine, I’ll look at them. That’s what Tuesdays are for, right?” he replied, as though reminding himself.

“Right,” I said.

The gnocchi was good. But I knew if it had been from scratch it would’ve been melting. Especially since the chanterelle truffle sauce was from scratch. It was like lathering a year-old twinkie in homemade buttercream frosting.

“So, I was thinking about what we were discussing last week and I’ve changed my mind. I actually think the idea has merit,” Jonathan offered.

I squinted, my mouth in a downturned gesture.

“The idea about… me quitting?”

“No,” he snorted with considerable mirth. “No that’s still a terrible idea. I’m talking about the idea I brought up. About getting married.”

As he said the word “getting married,” I looked down and saw my perfect bite of gnocchi, Italian sausage, and sauce in perfect 4k definition as it stopped just short of my mouth.

“What?” I replied.

He frowned. “You don’t have some secret boyfriend you haven’t told me about, do you?”

“No,” I answered in a mocking tone.

“Okay good. So let’s lay this out. Like any other project.”

“Like any other… you’re assuming I’ve said yes to this.”

“No, I’m not. That’s why it needs to be laid out.”

“Laid out?”

“Yes, stop repeating after me.”

“Isn’t it more like… you propose and I say yes or no?”

“Traditionally yes, but in that sense, I already proposed yesterday and you said no.”

I nodded slowly, glad that he was at least following along. “Right.”

“And today is my rebuttal.”

I flinched subtly. “Your…” I stopped myself from repeating him again. “That’s not a thing.”

“You’re 38 years old, right?” Jonathan began anyway, his renowned bedside manner on full display. “Let’s say you quit your job, move an hour away to be a wage slave for a company that doesn’t actually need you…”

“Wow.”

“And let’s say you meet someone right away. As in, the exact same day the plane lands. That’s still what… six months away? You’ll turn 39 within that time. You meet, hit it off—”

“I know where this is going, I’m a black woman, remember?” I laid down my knife and fork and picked up my napkin. “You’re saying I could take my one in five chance of getting married, go through door number one right now and marry someone who is successful, attractive, who I’ve grown close enough to know that I probably won’t try to kill or vice versa, and who’s actually asked or…” I took a breath, “go through door number two, with an unknown amount of variables, account for time spent going through all the phases, potentially to not even work out, lose out on a valuable baby window, etc., etc.”

He cocked an eyebrow, impressed. “You did a way better job than I was going to. You make it sound like a no-brainer.”

“Jonathan, I’m not going to marry a guy who admitted to proposing just because he doesn’t want his life to change. That’s taking ‘marriage of convenience’ to a whole different level.”

“Honestly, ‘Nita, you insult me.”

“Really,” I laughed. I was enjoying this absurd rabbit trail. Another one of Jon’s occasional bouts of humor.

“Obviously, I don’t go into marriage lightly. I’m a guy that knows what he wants, I’ll have you know.”

I laughed more, taking a sip of wine. “And again, I am flattered. Truly.”

Jonathan just stared at me flatly, looking insulted.

“Whatever you end up doing, you’ll be working. A lot. And men your age aren’t going to be into that. If they’re any good.”

Men “my age.” The age gap instantly went back to motherly status.

“And what does that make you then?”

“This is different.”

“Ah.”

“You and I, we’re a partnership.”

“Uh-huh.”

“A well-oiled machine.”

“Right.”

“We spend plenty of time together as it is. And when we’re not together, we’re in constant communication. You always know where I am. Hardly anything would—”

“Do not say ‘nothing would have to change.’”

“Why not? It’s true. I mean, I take it from your response you’re looking for a change of pace? I’m willing to arrange that. I already let you take time off whenever you want.”

What has time off got to do with you proposing marriage? I wanted to ask. But if it wasn’t obvious to him, I wasn’t going to let him turn me into the crazy one. Luckily, he started his own guessing game.

“You don’t find this job fulfilling enough?”

“Frankly, no.”

“No?”

“No,” I insisted with zero hesitation. “I’m not working at my full potential. We both know that. Meanwhile, you are.”

“So you can’t just work alongside a successful businessman, you have to be all Sex and the City? Samantha Jones, is that it?”

“You have the cultural references of an old gay man, why is that?”

“You’ve found me out.”

I cut my Italian sausage in grinning silence. “Can’t we just change the subject? Please?”

“Only on the grounds that you genuinely consider my appeal. Because it is, in fact, real.”

“Your rebuttal, you mean.”

“I like appeal better now.”

“Okay. I will,” I said in hopes that he would shut up.

“I mean it, ‘Nita. I know a fair amount about you, I think. The little you share.”

“You do.”

I found myself qualifying the statement. He was quite good at seeing people, that was true. An observer. Thoughtful. But he was like that with everyone.

“I could take you to a ballgame, get down on one knee, and get our faces on the jumbotron if I thought a traditional proposal will sway you, but I don’t think it would.”

“Right again.”

“You’re a practical woman, who deserves the world but only needs about three things. But woe to the man if you lack any one of those three things.”

I was quiet. When Jonathan was on a reflective, poetic tare I liked to just sit back and listen. Besides, this one was about me.

“Marriage at its core is a practical necessity. A person needs love to survive. It simply makes sense to pair up. Two is better than one, as the Good Book says. That way everyone is loved. And marriage ensures the safety of that love, so that each person can focus on the finer points of thriving. Romantic love, erotic love, while fanciful, is overrated. And can spring up in a variety of circumstances.”

I wondered if this philosophy was a direct result of his romantic history, however tragic, or if he always held this belief. If the latter, I started to understand a little better why the wedding got called off. The thought felt a little sinister and my mood clouded over with unearned guilt.

“I stayed up until 3 am last night finishing the latest Outlander novel, so, needless to say, I do not agree,” I said.

“How was it?”

“Exquisite.”

“From what I recall, wasn’t that a forced marriage?”

“From what you recall?” I laughed. I couldn’t help quoting him, he was being so unintentionally hilarious. “Outlander, Sex and the City. How did I not know that you had such a breadth of chick stuff?”

“I don’t, but I have all the premium channels.”

“Oh, dear Lord.”

“What can I say? I grew up in the 90’s a little. Soft-core porn is still my jam.”

“It’s not soft-core— you know what, we’re getting off-topic. Which was supposed to change.”

“Ask yourself this: is love finding every checked box on your carefully curated list, and then loving that person for existing? Or finding a not-so-perfect guy who would spend weeks learning a broad Scots accent for your own pleasure?”

My mouth turned up while my nipples hardened of their own volition.

My boss just brought up my pleasure in a conversation and I was about to pretend like that wasn’t a new threshold for us.

“Are you saying you would do that?” I asked, taking a sip of wine.

I heard his amplified voice within the curve of his near-empty wine glass as he answered with a purposefully gruff and delayed “Aye.”

Jon had to be tipsy. He was trying to be funny, of course, but surely he knew that we were officially talking about sex now if he was bringing up James Alexander Malcolm Mackenzie Fraser in any context. He was really serious about this.

I shook my head in awe, determined not to laugh. But the silence was too strange so I snickered.

“Something tells me the future Mrs. Jonathan Jantzen, wherever she is, would take issue with this proposition of yours.”

He gave me a peculiar raised eyebrow, one that I couldn’t begin to decipher as he studied the next bite of his food. He shook his head once, as if reflexive.

“The future Mrs. Jonathan Jantzen is merely a concept at this point. Meanwhile, my very real assistant is here right now and threatening to leave.”

Okay, so my notice was making boss crazy. Or practical to a fault, one of the two. Desperate was also an option.

I took another sip and then gave him a slow nod. “I have to admit, you have successfully pitched this frankly absurd idea with some real credibility.”

“I’m feeling good about it,” Jon answered.

“Are you ready to talk actual business now?”

“Oddly, I am,” he nodded. Delete Created with Sketch.

Later that night I couldn’t get our conversation out of my head. And I couldn’t stop smiling. What a moron. All that romance reading was clearly pickling my brain. And my vag.

I laughed to myself in the quiet confines of my apartment all that night. I hadn’t even so much as breathed unprofessionally in front of Jonathan for fear of losing his respect and trust. And now he was proposing that we mix business with pleasure forever? It honestly felt like a trap.

But the obvious, vaguely misogynistic strategy of marrying me just to keep me close was drifting further and further out to a sea of emotional irrelevance as “woman brain” slowly took over.

My hot wealthy boss wanted to marry me and I’d never have to work again.

For God’s sake, Anita, get a fucking grip.

The concept of Jonathan as a man unfolded before me like an origami flattened back into a simple piece of paper with many folds.

Jon as a husband was easy. He practically was already. Now that I found myself considering him as a love interest— honestly, it wasn’t fun. It was daunting.

It wasn’t even particularly romantic, which I kind of liked. It gave me a little thrill, not unlike the job offer I got. In fact, it was a hell of a counter-offer.

In a way, it was the next natural promotion. Was I ready for the permanent challenge as his personal match as well? With full access to his resources?

In theory, the answer was a hesitation-free “hells yes.”

I began to dissect him, examine him in a way I’d never allowed myself. In a way he must have anticipated I would. And I had to admit that, knowing Jonathan, he’d probably been doing the same about me. Perhaps even earlier than tonight.

Obviously earlier than tonight. A sickening feeling hit my gut for some reason. I swallowed.

I hadn’t really let myself think of his hotness and honestly, it still wasn’t safe. Until now, I only let myself notice his strangeness. The fact that he cooked pasta noodles every week but never pho. He was always casual on pasta Tuesdays. Four-eyed and wearing at least two shirts— a loose button-down with a t-shirt underneath. Wisps of pre-mature gray peppering his short mane, more and more each year. His eyes sleepy and uninterested. Sometimes his skin looked pallid and his features seemed off and too big for his face.

But in an expensive suit, all of the nitpicking faded. And on those days, I just let the full effect of the pressure to look good enough to be working alongside him bear down on me.

The speech about love had begun digging its tendrils into my brain, unflowery as it was. Because it meant that he’d understood what marriage was when he asked it of me, what he believed it was his job to do, which was to love me unconditionally. So that I could thrive. Or maybe I added that.

I couldn’t get past what he’d said about learning the accent (which was pretty good already, by the way. Granted, I’d only heard one word but still). Not just the proposition itself, it was more what it represented. He was saying he would do whatever was in his power to make me happy. And even though I didn’t know that about him, I knew it was an undeniable truth. Because I’d seen him do it for people he hadn’t proposed to.

And he’d also used the word “pleasure” while I sat across his kitchen table. I hadn’t forgotten that. The whole thing really started to put into focus what he’d so casually offered.

Damn him. He did know me. I loved an opportune situation. And Jonathan was probably the only man in the world right now that I trusted not to string me along. That alone was enough to sway me.

If I got married right now I could hit the ground running. It was entirely possible that I could marry Jonathan and still pursue my career. Hell, finish my law degree, even.

Even if he wasn’t up to letting me quit, I could hire my own assistant. I wouldn’t be starting a family in a panic. Jonathan the Dad? Oh, my fucking stars.

I had a brief vision of playpens and Jon on the floor of a carpeted room, eye-level with a baby laying on a colorful blanket. He was wearing a suit though. And the baby was white. Damn, maybe I couldn’t picture this.

He’d probably want to get married at the Club, so that’s one decision already made. Perfectly elegant, classic, as intimate or not as you want. Nothing a Harvard grad liked better than an excuse to stunt on his alma mater. If I’d told him yes tonight, I could probably have the Club penciled in by tomorrow.

Butterflies attacked my stomach as I was in the middle of brushing my teeth. Looking in the bathroom mirror, I suddenly gripped both sides of my head and groaned. Marry Jonathan? What the hell was I saying? I was actually considering this?

And what about him? Could I love him by the same standard? Unconditionally?

This was all moot anyway. I still hadn’t told him about the time I lost track of the company card and had to get $15000 worth of fraudulent charges cleared before the next month’s statement came in, and I still didn’t know when I’d be ready to tell him.

I doubt he’d be in such a rush to even keep me employed, let alone marry me if he knew about that. The plan was to turn in my notice, go on to be a very successful… whatever I’ll be, and you know, drop him an email in ten years like, “hey ‘member when I was working for you and I had irritable bowel syndrome for about three weeks?”

Besides that, the fact that I wasn’t exactly a spring chicken was the giant elephant in the room. Didn’t he deserve someone younger that saw what I saw? Were the odds too great for us both to have the fairytale separately? Jonathan’s odds were far greater than mine. I couldn’t tell if he simply didn’t know that, or was too frightened to try something better.

Damn, I never thought about that. Maybe he was fairytale phobic now.

The more I thought about it, the more I started to second guess that the conversation even happened. Surely he hadn’t had all this in mind when he’d proposed this. Which only begged the question, what did he have in mind?

At 2 am I still showed no signs of sleeping. Obviously, I wouldn’t be able to rest until this got resolved.

So I got out my phone and texted Jonathan, who luckily was usually awake around this time.

I figured I’ll aim for the fences, and when he says no, I’ll be free. If he says yes, then… holy shit.

I started typing:

Me: So I can’t sleep. I’m currently milling over your proposal appeal.

Boss: Oh?

So cute. Or was I losing my mind already?

Me: I have terms.

Boss: Let’s hear it.

Me: I want a big ass wedding.

Boss: Doable.

Me: I want at least one child within two years.

Boss: Naturally

Me: And no pre-nup

My finger hovered over the “send” button that looked like a paper airplane. I hit it, watching my words appear on the screen that we could both see.

He saw it right away which means he hadn’t put the phone down yet either. His response came back quickly.

Boss: Well, well. Look who came to negotiate.

I smiled. I wondered if he was smiling. As I responded I noticed he wasn’t typing at all.

Me: Hey, I’m not the one digging for gold here, this is your hair-brained idea. I need some kind of guarantee that you don’t intend to “fire” me if this doesn’t work out. And in the event it STILL doesn’t work out, I’ll need compensation.

A slight pause, then a quick response.

Boss: Fair enough.

Me: And one more thing.

Boss: What is it?

Me: I’m going to accept the position with the company. If this crumbles within six months, I take the job. And you’re on your own.

A much longer pause. I noticed my heart beating wildly.

Boss: What if it crumbles after nine?

Me: If it’s going to crumble at all, I’ll know within six months.

Another gut-wrenching pause. I decided to close out the screen and put the phone down on the nightstand, in an attempt to make the response come faster. It worked.

Boss: And if it does, you’ll get half of everything.

Me: I won’t do that.

Boss: But you could.

The cynicism broke my heart a little.

Me: If I’m going to bet on you, then you can bet on me.

“Typing…” the screen read. It seemed to go on forever.

Boss: I’ve got quite a bit more to lose, don’t you think? Potentially half of everything I’ve worked for in exchange for six months of marriage potentially?

Me: Hey, if we break up and stay married in name only forever that wouldn’t bother me either.

Me: But like I said I won’t do that to you and even if I did, I too have worked for it as you so accurately pointed out last week.

He sent me the expressionless emoji with no mouth. Not sure what he meant with that.

Boss: Once again, you have a point.

I smiled, biting my lip as I typed.

Me: So it’s a deal?

There was a flurry of typing that suddenly stopped and didn’t resume again. Finally, a short response.

Boss: It is.

Well. That was easy. Jonathan had always been a gem to work for.

Damn. I just negotiated my own marriage, the most literal sense of proposing ever. No manic confessions of devotion. No undeliverable promises, just mutual agreement. This was happening.

Something in me rested. Like sitting down after an impossibly long day on your feet. I had a vision of Jonathan proposing to me in front of the jumbotron. It was so awkward I had to stop. My phone warbled.

Boss: So this “big ass wedding” is happening soon then.

Me: Relatively. I have a few ideas don’t worry.

Boss: You’ll want an engagement ring, I trust.

Me: You trust correctly.

Boss: When should we go shopping?

Me: I’ll put it on your schedule.

Boss: Sounds good. Do that for everything.

Me: Oh, I will.

I found myself still smiling.

Me: Be aware that I might wake up tomorrow morning and realize that this is all a terrible mistake.

Boss: I’m aware.

Me: Shall we let our relations in on the ruse?

Boss: There is no ruse, Anita.

I saw he was typing so I figured there was a long tirade in my future.

Boss: We don’t have to go out of our way to tell people what we’re doing.

Boss: Nor do we have to go out of our way to pretend it’s something it isn’t.

Boss: This will be OUR marriage that we construct.

I liked that answer.

The only problem was, I didn’t feel comfortable asking for the one thing I wanted, which was the love story. Not the steady, abstract kind. Not the one I knew Jonathan could provide me, and I didn’t take that for granted.

But the immediate, swirling, reckless kind? Passion? I didn’t quite know if I even deserved it anymore. And on top of what he’d already agreed to, it felt a bit galling to demand it.

Jonathan was not the love of my life, that much I knew. But after our collectively dismal track records, I had to admit that such a thing isn’t a guarantee in life. Especially for workaholic, “high value” types like us, let’s face it.

He did say he was willing to learn a fake accent for the sake of my pleasure. Or at least, he’d alluded to it. And stupidly enough, that intrigued me.

Would I have passion in time? A more lasting kind?

Will you be expecting sex? I found myself asking. Convulsively I swallowed, waiting for the answer.

Boss: I’ll be expecting whatever terms we negotiate.

I sighed. Did I have to do everything? Of course, I shouldn’t want to outsource this part of the agreement.

Me: Let me sleep on it.

Boss: Let me be honest. You said you wanted a baby within two years, so yes, I assumed that sex would be involved. No need to be sterile about it.

“Oh my God, what even is this,” I whispered to myself in bed.

Boss: Let me say now that I would prefer to wait until sometime after the wedding. But I understand if you want to test-drive me before buying.

I let out a little laugh. I couldn’t force the mental image into my mind with all the booze in the world. It was buried deep within a locked vault I’d been building since I started the job. So I was more than happy to put that off if he was.

Boss: You didn’t put any stipulations on fidelity. Purposeful?

Oh shit. I completely forgot about that. Such a world-class negotiator. I almost doomed myself to lifelong cuckold status. Or him to a lifetime of missionary with me, I couldn’t quite gauge what would be worse. I vainly attempted to cover my tracks.

Me: Obviously for the six-month period that will be necessary. If we make it past that we can revisit the topic.

It was actually a pretty good plan in my view. In six months we’d know just how loose we’d want this thing.

Boss: Really??

Oh God, what was the extra exclamation point about? What did I say?

Did I want to have sex with Jonathan? And only Jonathan? Forever? Would he want that?

Me: Like I said. Tomorrow. I’ll let you get back to it.

Boss: Fair enough.

Boss: I’m really glad you said yes, btw.

I felt a little storm in my middle.

Me: I am too. I think.

I put down my phone, lay in bed, and looked at the ceiling fan as I let out a deep sigh.

“What?!” I exclaimed to myself with hysterical laughter.

Work Wife is now available for pre-order exclusively on Amazon. Also in Kindle Unlimited!

The post Work Wife: Now Available for Pre-Order! appeared first on C. L. Donley Books.

Special Thanks to Team Gramara!

So, I took a poll in my Facebook group to see if anyone was interested in reading the whopping 300 words I had so far of my super top secret Leftovers With Benefits sequel and while the feedback was minimal, I did promise to post it if I reached 40 members. Well now that I’m at SIXTY, I’ve just gotten around to posting it and brace yourselves– I’ve added a bit more to it and managed to double my word count. We’re talking 700 words, people. Don’t read it all in one sitting! All kidding aside, thanks so much for reading, and please accept this small token of appreciation.

Kenya blew visible, hot breath between her hands as she got back in the car, waiting for her gas to finish filling up. She indulged in the comfort of the heated seats and the burst of hot air from the vents as she listened to the Webster playlist hooked up to her Bluetooth. She had a bad habit of keeping her car running while pumping gas, but she was grateful for it today, as temperatures were rapidly dropping this afternoon. Early for this time of year.

Besides, ever since Chloe was born the running car had been her primary crib. So it certainly wouldn’t be the last time Kenya had to choose between a shortened nap or a gas tank explosion. She glanced in the rearview mirror at the peaceful, motionless toddler behind her in the back seat.

Yeah. It probably made her a bad mom, but she chose explosion every time.

Once the gas nozzle clicked, she hesitantly hopped back out into the chilly air, her phone beeping rapid-fire notifications as she did so. Distantly she wondered who could be texting her like that, knowing within nanoseconds that it wasn’t Kevin. Even if he was being run over by a car in real-time, he wouldn’t send her three rapid texts in a row.

She quickly replaced the nozzle and hopped back into her car, checking her rearview to see if she remembered to replace the gas cap and close the small metal opening. She had.

She looked down at her phone again. Three messages in total, all from an unsaved number that she recognized all the same. Like the back of her hand.

Cecil.

She hastily unlocked her phone, curiosity getting the better of her. If she’d thought about him at all in the past three years, she would’ve known immediately it was him. But she hadn’t.

What bullshit could he possibly be bothering her with? And why did he still have her phone number saved? And why hadn’t she changed it yet?

She hoped they were short enough that she didn’t have to officially open them, thus notifying him back.

Look at u, the first one said.

Cold as shit, pumpin your own gas, the second one said.

Ur new nigga cant pump the gas for u? smdh, the last one said.

Obviously, the texts meant that he’d driven by and seen her just now. If he’d been some abusive mastermind whose actions still tortured her psychologically, she may have done a quick paranoid scan of her surroundings.

But alas, he was just a dumbass that’d wasted seven years of her life. So instead she chuckled. A little unconscious smile bloomed as she read. Because it was so dumb and petty and not worth the energy it took to answer. And it made her so, so thankful to be rid of him. And thankful that he was virtually incapable of doing anything to make her miss him.

But she had to admit, it was funny. He used to make her sides actively burn relentlessly. He was a comedy genius. It got him out of many a jam.

It also meant he was in town for some reason. Probably mom-related. Last she’d heard of it he was in Texas. Indeed with Lindsey’s sister as it was later confirmed. Her family was still here too as far as she knew so maybe it was for her.

But Kenya was already tired of wondering about it. She considered giving him the dignity of letting him know that she’d seen the messages, but in the end, she thought better of it. It would only encourage him in some delusional way. She opened the messaging app and pressed her finger on the messages in bold until the phone vibrated to attention, giving her the option to download, delete, or block messages from this number.

She searched herself. It wasn’t that blocking seemed harsh, but it did seem drastic. Blocking meant that she somehow saw him as a threat and he wasn’t. At all. And he likely wouldn’t do it again. In three years neither she nor Kevin had ever run into their exes, despite being somewhat still connected.

She settled for the middle ground, clicking on the small icon in the corner that looked like a trash can. Then she put the car in drive and made the short trek home to start dinner.

The post Special Thanks to Team Gramara! appeared first on C. L. Donley Books.

Finding Camille: Now Available for Pre-Order!

So, while the concept for this story was sparked by an original idea, the setting is basically a Mad Men rip-off, lol. I’m exaggerating. It’s more like… an homage. Because I was obsessed with Mad Men, and after re-watching the entire series in helping me research this story, I realized that I’m still obsessed with it and I had to give it a proper homage. The creator, Matt Weiner, is in my top influences. From the Sopranos to Mad Men, his character writing and dialogue rule my life. So I got a little blatant with my Mad Men tribute, though I’m proud to say that you probably wouldn’t be able to tell without me letting you in on that.

Initially, I did start with the intention of copying and pasting that world, because I was very intimidated by the idea of doing a historical romance. In fact, I don’t know that I will ever do another. I needed a familiar place to start. The hero was going to be pretty Don Draper-esque as well, until I realized that the setting for my story was going to be about five years earlier than when the first season even takes place. Doesn’t seem like a long time, but I quickly realized that I was not going to be able to fudge those details enough to make that five-year gap work.

Then I had an aha moment: this story isn’t about Don. This story is about Roger. And that’s when the world-building started diverting and flowing into an original direction. But still… Mad Men is all over this, lol. I won’t give away all the easter eggs, but even the hero’s name is an amalgam of a Mad Men character.

I started this book back in 2020, when I was taking a break and just starting a bunch of storylines all at once to see if that would spark anything. I let it sit for a while before I picked it back up early this year. Personally, I think it’s one of my strongest books, but you know how that goes. Only time will tell.

I like this cover a lot.

For the longest time, this book was called “WWII Letters Book” and it seemed I would never ever be able to come up with a title. I was having an even harder time coming up with a cover concept that was going to be an adequate introduction to this story. So I was really glad when I came across this picture, which basically inspired the direction of the title, and I’m pleased with both.

Mr. Hargrove/Camille (hawt)

So for some reason, I was stuck on Jimmy Stewart for the hero. I have no idea when or why. I knew I wanted someone from back in the day to help me get into this vintage space (his heyday was actually a bit earlier than the time this book is set). I think he was someone whose hotness was downplayed for the sake of him being an everyman character (I mean look at him!), which so happens to describe Mr. Hargrove perfectly.

For the heroine, I was vacillating between Tessa Thompson and young Jada Pinkett Smith in my mind for a while, but I had this old picture of Ruby Dee saved on my Pinterest page, and every time I looked at it I got obsessed and vowed to use her. As much as I love the opportunity to mash up my mental casting with old stars and new, I couldn’t pass up the perfect excuse to use her. And it just added to the vintage vibe. Don’t get me started on how hard it was to imagine Jimmy Stewart in my mind, not being from It’s A Wonderful Life talking all transatlantic. It was hard, but I did it.

I think readers will like it because it’s a pretty transportive, ambitious read, at least for me. It seems like it should be a nice little change of pace against what’s coming out in the same genre. As of right now, it’s in the hands of my ARC team getting closer to being the best version of itself. So I hope you like it.

New Release Finding Camille: Sneak Peek

It’s ten years after the end of WWII when Camille Winters accepts a position as the only colored secretary in the office at Hargrove and Chase, an advertising agency on Madison Avenue in the mid-1950’s. When the owner and senior partner Kenneth Hargrove takes a professional liking to Camille after seeing her potential, Camille thinks she’s finally found her niche, vindicated after pursuing her career rather than settling down. Mr. Hargrove uses his influence to find an old acquaintance from the war as a favor to Camille. But instead of the gesture bringing closure, the ghosts from the past suddenly come back to haunt her, putting her hard-won successful career in jeopardy.

Prologue

January 30th, 1943

My dearest Carl:

You must humor me, my dear. By now, I have learned that you are unable to write me back now. That I will never receive another letter from you. Not by your own will, but by that of God, since he has seen fit to take you home instead of reuniting us. Nevertheless, I have to do the only thing that is in my power to do, the one thing I have done for these many months, and that is to write.

And so, my lovely handsome Carl, I will take it upon myself to say goodbye. I do hope that your death was clean and swift, and gave you a sense of peace and purpose. It was a hope and a joy to have known you. Had I known that our love wasn’t meant to blossom, the first time I laid eyes on you at my lovely Donna’s wedding, I want you to know that I would not have done anything differently. I am forever glad that you parted the crowd to dance with little old me. You gave me the hope that a handsome soldier would be my future. And most of all, I am glad that I could be the one you carried in your heart while you were over there in the dirt. Thank you, my dear. The gratitude I feel is beyond belief.

Yours,

Camille

February 15, ‘43

To the fianceé of Carl Downey, Camille Winters:

My company just received a letter that was meant for Lance Corporal Carl Downey. The captain thought it fit to pass the letter along to me, as I was Carl’s closest friend and colleague.

It’s unlikely that you know me, but my name is 1st Lt. Stanley Whitman. I spent many a night in the trenches with your fiancé stationed here in the Pacific. We bonded side by side in battle, before we knew a thing about each other. In the quiet lulls, which weren’t scarce, we laughed and told hometown stories and made future plans out of desperate hope. He was by far the brightest light in our company. He was full of life and passion. As much as Carl’s death is a loss for you, it is an even greater loss for us, who relied on Carl’s effervescence to get us through this horrible war, and his humanity to remind us what we fight for.

I felt compelled to write to you and tell you that I am the one who opened your letter, and I’m not ashamed to tell you that it made me weep openly. Not only because of your expression of love and loss, but of strength and gratitude. You must understand that as much as Carl was the engine that propelled our company each and every day for thirteen months, you were the engine that propelled Carl. When one of your letters arrived, Carl gained a new lease on life. He greatly cherished your words and was most distressed when your picture went missing while we were stationed on the Augusta. When you managed to send him a replacement he was right as rain, and transformed into our fearless leader.

And so, I would like to thank you, Ms. Winters, for loving our Lance Corporal. After suffering such heavy losses that I will not bother you with, your letter arrived as though nothing had happened. And when opened it had the same heartrending affect on all of us. You are the secret to his legacy and bravery.

With respect,

Lt. Stanley Whitman.

March 4, 1943

Dear Lt. Whitman,

I can’t tell you how much it meant to receive your letter. Thank you so much for your kind words. When the Marines informed me that Carl was killed in battle, I felt an odd kind of floating, as if I had suddenly been severed from the ground and floated away like a balloon in the wind. It dawned on me that I did not prepare myself as well as some of the other mothers and sisters and wives who are also waiting for their beloveds to return. Perhaps because ours was such a new and fanciful love. It was all so sudden and fantastic. We met right before he left for Hawaii and he urged me to write to him.

I suppose I wasn’t entirely certain he was even real for nearly half of our relationship. He’d had to convince me of his adoration through letters, and of his desire to receive mine. Even still I remained paranoid that it was the drama of war that compelled him to remember me as more than I was.

So I found special comfort in the portion of your letter where you mentioned his reaction to receiving my pictures. He, of course, told me as much, but it has been my brief experience with Carl that he tended to warm everyone in his path with light as though he were the sun. I am happy to know that his adoration of me was apparent to those around him, even while the confirmation also rouses my unspeakable sadness and self-pity. I continue to hope and pray that his company returns home safe and unharmed, and full of stories of their beloved fallen friend.

Sincerely,

Camille

April 4, 1943

Dearest Camille,

I’ve included some personal effects of Carl and thought you might like to have them. They are trivial things here amid a war, so they will not last long: a hairbrush, razor, his grandfather’s timepiece, his favorite magazines. Our squad leader frowns upon carrying excess weight, but I did not see fit to throw them away.

With love,

Stanley W.

April 20, 1943

Dearest Stanley,

You are adorable! I hesitate to tell you that most of what you sent me is considered trivial for civilians as well. I’m sorry that they won’t allow you to carry remnants of your friends, but since I am not a man in war, I cannot judge the appropriateness. I was glad to receive the timepiece that seems to be a precious heirloom. I will endeavor to return it to his family. I’m sure they would be glad to have it.

P.S. In the time it has taken me to mail this letter, I’ve visited Carl’s family. I told them that I would pass on their gratitude for thoughtfully returning the family heirloom, even though it garnered many tears and anguish at the sight of it returning to them without its former owner. They urged me to have it, but the notion was so off-putting since I hardly knew Carl in the manner that everyone around me had, including you. It all reminds me of how fleeting life is and even moreso our love was. The letters were merely a promise of love, ultimately miscarried. It is as though I am forced to birth a child dead in its womb, and care for it until the grief of everyone around me has subsided. As it is, I feel like a charlatan, having taken such a place in his life in his passing. Still, I am grateful that everyone has humored me and recited the fantastic plans he had made on our behalf and apparently circulated beyond me. I hope that whatever else you find of Carl’s, you feel entitled to keep and that it brings you the solace needed to see this war to its hopefully swift end.

Your friend,

Camille

May 20, 1943

My friend Camille,

It was serendipitous timing that I received your letter when I did, because I have to admit that there was one thing I did not include in Carl’s belongings, and that was the cache of letters that he kept of yours. Perhaps I hesitated because I wondered whether someone would want their own words returned to them. Some of them I practically know by heart because Carl liked to often re-read them, as he was taken with your poetic way with words. They had a peculiar calming effect on him, especially amidst the bloody horrors that often turn men cold and apathetic of everything. He lamented that he didn’t have the breadth of attention to take the time to sit down, gather his thoughts and thoughtfully write to you as often as you did to him, but he was grateful.

It was your sweet soul, your idealistic hope of your eventual reunion that inspired him, and so it pains me to hear you speak of yourself the way you do, as if it were foolish to expect the future to deliver the things it promised. It is not you who are foolish but the world, that sees fit to deprive young men of the delight of companionship and the contentment that comes with a life well-built. Even now, it is hard to imagine that Carl will become the memories and myths of others. I predicted plain as day that he would be an old man surrounded by his children.

Forgive me for the dismal subject matter. You may have the impression that I have an unhealthy fixation on these topics, but I assure you that nostalgia has no place in our daily lives. We rarely have the chance to contemplate the men whose dog tags we recover. As I have no one in my life who would miss me if I was dead, it is a kindness from God to have received these few correspondences.

I hope you would indulge me taking those hopes that you so eloquently referred to in your letter to heart, by not taking offense to my keeping your letters. I also ask that you would allow me to hope to one day return the letters to you in person. It is my wish that by the time that ever happens, you will have caught the eye of some other great man who adores you, and the memory of Carl becomes a fond recollection that you freely share with joy. And also, that by that time the both of us are whole, and that letters between two mutual acquaintances return to its rightfully trivial place in the world.

Sincerely,

Stanley

June 6th, 1943

Stanley,

It seems I am not the only one who has a way with words. I hope someone has told you that you certainly have a long career ahead of you as a writer. By all means, if my letters can continue to carry purpose and meaning for someone else, then please keep them. I would also like to meet the recipient of such a hope, but I must tell you that the thought of receiving yet another correspondence, potentially about your death, gives me an irrational sense of apprehension! What if I find my letters are simply bad luck?

Camille

June 22, 1943

Camille,

Your letters could never be bad luck. In fact, I watched them first hand bring faith and verve to a hopeless situation. If Carl’s death were positively destined, he simply had no idea of it and I am convinced that is because of you. As it is, there is no one to receive word of my time here, and after reading your fears, I don’t think I would have the heart to have someone send word of my untimely death. But if by chance I make it home safely, do I have permission to pass on the happy news to someone who would receive it?

Stanley

July 8th, 1943

Stanley,

It would give me a great thrill to know that out of all of the dismal outcomes of this war that you have made it home safe, wherever that is, so please inform me when that happens. Also, I hope it is not too forward to suggest that in the meantime, it would be no inconvenience for you to receive letters of your own, you need only to ask. If one wants to receive a letter, one must simply write!

Camille

Chapter 1 (Present Day, 1954)

Camille Winters looked in the bathroom mirror of her Brooklyn brownstone, her evening routine abuzz with the excitement of the day to come. She always got excited the night before a new assignment, but that was because she was a bit of a square.

This wasn’t just any secretary’s job, however. This was Madison Avenue.

Working for Hargrove & Chase was the most exciting assignment she’d gotten in many years. And apparently, she’d been requested.

She wasn’t told by whom, which was uncommon. She supposed she could ask, but she didn’t get paid to ask. She got paid to do what she was told and do it well. She’d been working off of recommendations for the past five years, so that was nothing new. But this was the first time she’d been pulled off of one job to work another. Which meant the person who requested her was fairly high up on the totem pole.

But the buzz was even more than that, though she fought to ignore it. In her mind she was successful. But her body couldn’t lie.

She had a feeling that she had been requested by Kenneth Hargrove himself.

Bzzz bzzzz….

For one, it was the only explanation. He was the only person she’d met from Hargrove & Chase after all, briefly while on assignment at a car dealership where Mr. Hargrove had come in to buy a car for the family. He had been warm and doting to his children, a boy, and girl, each in their Sunday best. The wife seemed terribly frosty— odd but not uncommon.

She’d been used to seeing prominent people at the Cadillac dealership, so she noted him and his family the same way she would any VIP. He’d acknowledged her with a simple head nod and a faint grin when she seated them.

It wasn’t much, but it was by far her clearest and strongest connection to the company. Camille smiled in the mirror, re-acquainting herself with the story.

Bzz bzzzzzzzz…

The buzz was in no way sexual, but it may as well have been. In an industry full of sharks, commendation on her quality of work was the only kind she was permitted to enjoy.

Few men had given her something close to that type of buzz in her personal life. One even became her steady. Jeremy. And he was sufficient enough. But he’d objected to her working life, especially for that of white people, and that was that.

She had a knack for preventing disasters and streamlining existing systems, and only when it came to paperwork. She didn’t even know that was a job, and apparently, no one else did either since she had to carve one out for herself everywhere she went. No one minded until it came time to replace her.

Once she became consumed with her work, she was surrounded by industry titans in tailored suits day and night, which gave her less and less time to go out and find the buzz of that other kind.

In the beginning, a few of her bosses complimented her looks in passing. An attempt at open rapport, she assumed. Young women like to hear such things, was probably their reasoning. She always smiled politely, but it had the unfortunate effect of either getting her yelled at by her female bosses or re-assigned.

It took her a while to catch on. Being still unmarried in her late 20’s, she’d had to learn these female patterns the hard way. She had to assume they felt threatened in some fashion, which she tried not to dwell on. Catching the eye of some drunken white man with a sudden urge to experiment was her ultimate nightmare, not a dream come true.

The idea that there could be some mutual attraction between her and her co-workers was to her an absurd thing. Not to mention unprofessional. Were any of them there to actually work??

So she trained herself to stop smiling at such compliments. For years she walked a fine line of looking plain but not unattractive. Unassuming but representative of the company. Placid but approachable.

Now she was nearly 30. In her old age, she’d become less of a threat to the younger white women at her assignments. She was good at her job, and people noticed. To her dismay, she’d grown a bit impatient with incompetence on all levels. Yet to her shock, this seemed to cause her working relationships to flourish.

More than her lack of feeling over being liked, her white colleagues seemed to enjoy her aggressive professionalism. The men found her stoic taunting hilarious. The women found her non-threatening, as she’d removed herself from any possible male competition with her bullish demeanor. She wore bright red lipstick whenever she wanted. When she started wearing pants to work, no one complained.

For her first day at Hargrove & Chase, however, her pants suit would stay in the closet. She wanted to exude professionalism tomorrow, rather than power. Her simple black fit and flair Dior dress with matching purse and gloves would do the trick. It was pressed and already hanging on the open closet door of her bedroom. She placed the last of the rollers in her freshly pressed hair and laid gingerly on her pillow that night. It was only 7:30, but she knew she would toss and turn, and she needed her rest if she was going to be fresh tomorrow.

She waited patiently outside the offices the next morning, 30 minutes before her first day of work was to begin. She scanned the wall of artwork hanging in the lobby. Artwork that was their previous campaigns, numerous and instantly recognizable. Name brands of household items, clothing, and hotel chains. She knew very little about an industry that clearly had a hand in her everyday life. It made her wonder what she could possibly be doing there.

Just then a young woman approached the receptionist’s desk. She looked over at Camille sitting patiently in the lobby.

“Miss Winters?” she asked, sounding surprised.

“Miss Caldwell,” Camille assumed in a mature voice, a deep velvety contrast to Christy’s cheerful squeak. She stood, ready to meet her open hand.

Christy Caldwell was to be her supervisor on this job. She was short and compact, blonde and blue-eyed. Her eyes perfectly matched her peacock blue dress, her blonde hair like a perfect pastry sitting atop her shoulders.

“Please, call me Christy,” she smiled. “You’re early!” she added, verbatim of every first meeting she’d ever had.

“If you’re on time, you’re late, Miss Caldwell,” Camille said without a smile. It was customary for Camille to comply with a supervisor’s request to use her first name only after the third ask and not before.

Camille followed Christy through the glass doors of the office and past the receptionist, who she could see out of the corner of her eye following their every move.

The front lobby at Hargrove and Chase hid from view the largest open office space she’d ever been in. The entire floor was theirs, an endless rectangle of corners and office doors.

“I trust you understand that this will be a temporary placement? Until the work is done?”

“Temporary placements are the only kind I take, Miss Caldwell.”

“Perfect. Let me show you to your office,” Christy said politely.

Office?

“I presume you mean my desk, Miss Caldwell.”

“Christy, please,” she blushed. “You’ve been at this longer than I have. I was told you have managerial experience. And some accounting.”

“Of course, but I’m used to proving myself. I’m certainly not here to replace anyone.”

“Nonsense, this is advertising,” Christy scoffed. “Everyone loves the madness, but no one’s competing to make sense of it. You won’t be in anyone’s way, I assure you.”

They followed one of two carpeted walkways down the middle of the lobby where there was an ocean of desks, mostly occupied. Nearly everyone stopped to look at the pair of them as though she were a well-dressed giraffe.

Nothing Camille hadn’t dealt with before. Her honey-toned skin in the context of white society created a mental puzzle that had to be solved right away. She pretended not to notice as she followed closely behind Christy until they got to a narrow hallway that diverted into three other directions.

Christy brought her to an abandoned windowless room with papers stacked to the ceiling on top of two desks shaped like an L. A typewriter with its cover collected dust in the corner. There were two doors on either side to make it accessible from two separate hallways.

Her very own office?? What was going on.

“What’s this?”

“This… is what we like to call A-L. Job bags, logo files, film, and negatives from all of our campaigns from 1935 to the present, up to L. And occasionally the supply closet for those secretaries too lazy to go beyond the front lobby.

“I see.”

“We waste hundreds of billable hours simply looking for previous work. Creative calls it the landfill. I endure it. I’ve even started to learn my way around.”

“And you need someone to organize it.”

“More than that. We need a liaison. Someone between Creative and Accounts to keep it all straight. So that all I have to worry about is Mr. Hargrove.”

“You’re Mr. Hargrove’s girl?”

“Correct. I report directly to him and you’ll report directly to me. Ideally, all the girls will come to you for all their daily needs, eventually. So? What do you think?”

“Well, Miss Caldwell…”

“Christy.”

“Well, Christy… I must tell you I can’t wait to get started.”

“Perfect. Your references were outstanding. They tell me you work just as hard as the boys.”

“Harder, I assure you.”

“Very well,” Christy laughed. “I usually take my lunch at my desk, so ring me anytime if you need me.”

“I take it Mr. Hargrove is rarely seen in the office?”

“Only for quarterly meetings or if he’s bringing clients to the conference room, of course. Rarely on this side of the building. Nothing you’ll need to be worried about. You’ll have a good view on the way to the Creative Director’s office, but other than that, no.”

Christy sighed, adopting an air of confidence. “You’ve been at this for some time, Camille, I’m sure I don’t need to tell you. Only speak when spoken to and all that. And that includes clientele. Refer guests to one of the girls and come directly to me with questions. The girls are easy to overwhelm.”

“Of course.”

“Also, I have to say you’re a bit overdressed. Surely they didn’t put you out front at Cadillac?”

Camille brushed off the backward-facing insult. She wasn’t sure, but she was confident Christy was referring to her being colored. She sometimes wondered if her lighter color was hindering her progress or helping it. It would definitely help her know better what white people thought they were seeing.

Perhaps if she were darker, she would stand out, be more of an anomaly. Would she gain more respect? From some, perhaps. And in turn, more abuse from others. She’d never been dark-skinned, but she had to assume, observing a few instances among friends and family.

She knew they assumed that she had an easier time fitting in simply because of her visual proximity to whiteness. But acceptance was just as capricious for her as it was for them, and sometimes even more unpredictable.

“The men were a bit more out front than the girls were, I’m afraid. They liked to see a potential sale before the door chimed.”

“I see. Well here, there’s no need to worry about… first impressions,” Christy smiled. “I’d feel awfully guilty if something happened to that beautiful dress, where on Earth did you get it?”

“Dior. One of my bosses’ wives handed it down to me,” Camille lied. “You needn’t worry about me, Miss Caldwell. As you said, I’ve been at this some time. I know how to blend in.”

“Thank goodness,” Christy sighed. “I’ve never had to have such a conversation before. I must say, I was dreading it. I had no idea how this was going to go. We don’t get a lot of negroes on the 16th floor who aren’t working the elevator.”

Camille let out a breath unconsciously when her suspicions were openly confirmed.

“I can imagine. But I’ve been doing temp work in the city for five years. I know how to be seen little and heard even less.”

Christy put out her hand for Camille to shake, equal parts guilt and respect.

“Welcome to Hargrove and Chase, Miss Winters.”

“Thank you, Christy.”

“You look stunning.”

“Thank you,” Camille smiled. Her hair was more professional than flirty in a pulled-back curly pompadour from her earlier interview. Her Dior could easily go from day to night. She barely needed the heavy coat on this oddly warm November evening.

“So do you,” Camille dared to add. Lawrence gave her a surprised chuckle.

Lawrence was tall, dark, and handsome just as her sister had promised, and had that bizarre problem attractive men sometimes have where they end up bachelors for far too long, paralyzed by their choices.

It was her first blind date in years but she was pleasantly optimistic. She was a little older now and knew what she wanted. Or rather, what she didn’t want. She kept her expectations at bay.

“Did you have any trouble finding the place?” he asked.

“Not at all.”

“You should’ve let me pick you up.”

Camille smiled. “Nonsense, I was already downtown. Why put you out?”

Lawrence was Donna’s idea, one of her three sisters. Donna was a toffee color, the darkest of all the girls, with reddish-brown hair that the rest of them envied. She got looks from every type of man there was and looked good in every shade of lipstick. She’d only been married a few years to her husband Anthony. Lawrence was Anthony’s co-worker at St. Mary’s Catholic Hospital.

“So, how did the interview go?” Lawrence urged her.

“You know about that?”

“Your sister tells Anthony everything. And Anthony tells me everything.”

“I see,” she smiled. “It went about how I expected. I got the job.”

“Good for you. Whereabouts?”

“Madison Avenue. An advertising firm called Hargrove and Chase.”

“I’m scared a’ you,” Lawrence crooned. Camille cracked a smile then shrugged.

“Just a secretary job, you know. Nothing they wouldn’t have another colored girl doing. Although I may be the first there, who knows.”

“Pay’s good?”

“Better than my last one.”

Lawrence leaned in a bit playfully. “Then that’s all that matters.”

“I’ll drink to that.”

“What are you having?”

“I’ll have a gimlet.”

He summoned over the waiter with a long arm and the nudge of his immaculate jaw, in an elegant fashion that made Camille re-evaluate him. He’d ordered for the two of them, which she hadn’t seen a man do ever. She didn’t know how she felt about it.

“Apologies if I rushed the order, but I came straight from the hospital and I’m famished.”

“So how do you work with Lawrence again?” she small-talked.

“I don’t actually work with Lawrence in a traditional sense. I’m not a medical technician.”

Camille turned her neck a bit in curiosity. “No?”

“No. I’m a doctor. A surgeon, to be precise.”

“Really?” Camille stopped mid-sip, intrigued.

She should’ve been smitten at that very moment. Should’ve been flattered.

A whole black doctor had agreed to go on a date with little old her? Plenty of beautiful girls fresh out of high school who would gladly pop out his babies out of sheer adoration.

Unfortunately, all she could think about was how much he probably worked and how he would eventually want her to quit working. They always do.

“Steak tips and chicken kiev for the lady?” they were suddenly interrupted.

“My, that was fast.”

“Looks good,” Lawrence dug in.

“Careful, it’s hot,” the old black waiter warned, careful not to stain his spotless white gloves.

“You seem shocked,” he noted.

“I’m sure you’re used to it,” Camille replied.

Lawrence gave her a gleaming smile as he used his steak knife. “I am. I must admit I was shocked when Anthony said his sister-in-law was not yet married.”

“I know spinsters have been in short supply after the war.”

He laughed through his bite and then retrieved a napkin. “I would have liked to find a wife while I was in my residency but the hours were grueling. Plenty of my class found wives but I found it cruel. You can’t even provide for the poor girl yet, let alone be awake at the same time. As it was, she never materialized so I had nothing to worry about.”

“You’re very candid, Lawrence.”

He finished a sip of his coffee. “You don’t like it?”

“No, I love it,” she smiled to herself. He observed it across the table, harboring one of his own.

“I think when you get to be our age, you owe it to the world to be candid.”

“Our age?” Camille raised an eyebrow as she performed her own surgery on her kiev.

“I told you Anthony tells me everything,” he muttered with a charming look.

Camille sighed in familial exasperation, rolling her eyes. Lawrence laughed.

“I would’ve found out eventually,” he assured her.

“You’re saying I look my age?”

“Not at all. Are you saying I look mine?”

Camille’s food was finally arranged well enough to dig in. She took a carefully coordinated bite of chicken, broccoli, and buttered rice.

“Everyone knows it doesn’t work like that on men. Of course, you must look your age, you’ve earned every ounce of it.”

“Men may be allowed to age more gracefully at first but in the end, the old woman takes the lead,” he argued.

“You think so?”

“Absolutely. The old woman rules us all.”

Camille’s prep had paid off. Within a few bites they were caught up. She piled the latest one on her fork.

“Only if she has children. Otherwise, her life is seen as a burdensome waste,” she opined.

“Well. I wouldn’t go so far as that. But I do admit it is a sight to see. An old woman, coming into this world as one. Now is three, seven. Twelve or more. My great grandmother has thirty-four grandchildren if you can imagine it.”

“Mine only has five, poor thing.”

“You don’t see yourself as burdensome, do you?” he asked, curious. She tried not to focus on the way he held his utensils, which also happened to be steady and regal. She knew surgery and eating steak were not the same. And yet.

“No. Not yet, anyway. I’ve always liked to earn my way. Perhaps by some miracle that will always be possible in some fashion. My mother thinks I’m mad, of course. She raised us all to be wives and mothers.”

“Anthony tells me you were once engaged. To an army man,” he casually interjected.

Camille chewed while she thought of the best way to broach the subject. “A Marine to be precise. Honestly, I don’t know what to call it. He proposed, that’s true. But we barely knew each other. I was certainly taken with him. We wrote letters. But he died about six months in.”

“I was drafted but they rejected me because I had flat feet. I felt like I’d gotten a second chance at life.”

Lawrence suddenly stopped cutting his meat as if he realized what he’d just said.

“…I’m so sorry.”

Camille gave him a shrug of absolution. “You weren’t wrong. At the time, we all expected it to be over within months.”

“It really was a massacre, wasn’t it?” he openly opined.

Camille’s gaze drifted to the candlelight dancing in the centerpiece. “Sometimes I can’t bear to think of all the brave men that war has yanked out of this world.”

“Not to mention an economic depression.”

“Was it bad where you were?” she asked.

“I was here. My father left us. To find work. It was a dark time. You?”

“My father has a lucrative job with the government. Land surveying, specifically. We had to hide how well we were doing.”

“One of the lucky ones.”

“Indeed. When my fiancee was killed it felt… morbidly overdue. So much tragedy.”

“All in a little over fifty years. Our century is doomed.”

Camille tilted her head. “A bit cynical for a surgeon.”

He huffed. “All of us are cynical. It’s General Medicine who are the optimists.”

“I suppose holding people’s organs in your hands can get a little dull,” she replied.

Lawrence looked up to see her diligently hacking at her kiev and couldn’t tell if it was sarcasm or not. After a bit of silence, he had to laugh.

“This date isn’t going very well is it?”

Camille smiled but didn’t directly answer.

“I honestly don’t know what people expect from putting together a date for two people that didn’t have a hand in choosing it.”

“To married people, everyone is one-half of a perfect match.”

“They didn’t do a poor job, to be fair. You’re probably the most handsome man I’ve ever been on a date with. And who wouldn’t want a surgeon in the family?”

“And you’re as beautiful as they said. More beautiful. Clever. Mature. Would you like another?”

Camille shook her head as she sipped her watered-down drink. “It wasn’t going as bad as you thought it was,” she quietly mused.

“But you admit it was indeed going badly,” Lawrence grinned.

“No, you’re lovely,” she smiled. “But I don’t think I have the heart to give you what you want. Nor do you for me.”

“You assume that you know what I want,” he said with a flirtatious state.

Camille felt heat between her thighs as she reached into her cigarette case. More than she’d felt in ages. “Got a light?”

“I don’t smoke.”

She retrieved her lighter and used it with a sophisticated air. It gave her time to properly assess him. She blew a cloud of smoke away from the booth before she began:

“You want to be a husband, as soon as possible. A father. You want to empty your bank account and buy her a house big enough that she can tend it by herself, maybe afford her a little help. You’ll come home late, and sporadically, but you will always come home. And she’ll always be there waiting. Grateful. Smiling.”

He sat back and wiped his mouth with his napkin, watching her take another drag of her cigarette. A nasty habit, but nothing looked sexier.

“You think it’s obscene,” he deduced.

“No no, I think it’s perfectly reasonable. If I were you, I’d want the very same.”

“I hope whoever she is, she’s built like you.”

Camille gave him an amused look as her cigarette tip glowed orange in her mouth. “My model is still being made faithfully. You must be looking in the wrong places.”

“P.S. 13?”

Camille laughed, tastefully balancing her drink and her cigarette in hand.

“You’re bad,” she teased.

“She even comes with a sense of humor,” he grinned. Somewhat mournfully. If she wasn’t how she was, he might’ve proposed this very night. “You never got engaged again? After?”

“I’m both light-skinned and uppity, Lawrence. I’m only going to get so many takers, especially in the city.”

“Light-skinned and uppity are the same thing, Camille,” he replied with a deadpan expression.

Camille’s smile curled unconsciously. She took another drag. “Where do you live? I’m not going to marry you but I would still like to continue this date.”

“Bronx. I’m not going to marry you, but I’d like to smear that lipstick a little.”

Camille felt a little shock to her middle, glad to be smoking right now. “I don’t know about that.”

“What would it take?” he asked in a low rumble.

Camille finished her drink in one gulp. “You’d have to do everything completely right from this moment forward. I don’t think you could manage.”

Lawrence gave her the intense gaze of a learned man with steady hands and concentration that lasts for hours.

He leaned back and said: “Let me at least try. Waiter? Two more please.”

Finding Camille is Now Available for Pre-Order only on Amazon.com! Also in Kindle Unlimited!

The post Finding Camille: Now Available for Pre-Order! appeared first on C. L. Donley Books.

Perfect Harmony: Out July 15th!

YA’LL.

So I came up with a book in the middle of writing another book, that will hopefully be out later this year. It’s a pretty ambitious book for me, a historical romance (WWII era so nothing too historical), and I’ve spent more time on that book than any other so I have high expectations for it. Well, it was supposed to be my next release but I got overwhelmed with it about 3/4 of the way through and started to look through my other WIP’s. Well, true to procrastination form, instead of finishing something else I decided to start a WHOLE OTHER PROJECT. Thankfully, my instincts were right because once I started on this particular grain it sort of flowed out and became one of my fastest created books (of late, anyway. My very first book came out in three weeks. Imagine me writing a whole book in three weeks these days :p :p :p).

So confident was I that I would be able to knock the rest of this book out that I set a release date… before I was done with the book. Yeah. I will never do that again.

I did it as an incentive to get another release out this year, and to capitalize on the Bookbub deal that I’d gotten earlier. I really wanted to get myself back in writing shape and with so much of it flowing out easily, I gave myself a month push. And yeah, everything worked out fine but… holy stress balls. NEVER AGAIN! I just have to come to grips with the understanding that I’m just not going to write at the pace that I started with. My kids are older and I being chained to my desk all day– especially during the summer (such a genius move :/) is just not feasible right now.

Some of you might’ve noticed that it didn’t even have a cover when I published it, and I didn’t have any inspiration for it for a while. And then for some reason, I went totally 80’s vinyl album with it. I wish I had some 80’s thematic element to tie it in. In fact, I tried to come up with one but unfortunately, I wasn’t able to appear as clever as I wanted haha. It just kinda came out like that and I love it:

Perfect Harmony: A BWWM Amnesia Romance

So the story centers around Harmony Rhoades and Ethan Hawthorne, who have been married for four years technically at the start of the story. Their marriage is only a legal formality so that Ethan can inherit his father’s money BUT… Ethan gets Amnesia, hijinx ensue. Pretty standard one-click romance material, lol. I didn’t have any particular picture in my mind of these two but I found these two who represent them well.

At any rate, this book was sort of a fun break away from my ambitious WIP and completely different in tone. I’d been wanting to do an amnesia romance for a long time and the inspiration finally aligned. I tried not to make it too boring, but it’s hard, lol. I know there’s supposed to be all these exciting characters and conflicts and explosions but for whatever reason, it always comes out like this stage play vibe with just two people in a room. I can’t help it. Anyone who finds that subtle, emotional style a refreshing break from the norm will, of course, like this book. I feel like I’m getting better at writing– or at least my own expectations are rising– so I’m super conscious of my writing matching those new levels, and I think I’ve done that here. A solid premise does most of the work, and I think that’s what I was able to achieve, using a combination of things that I’ve read and ideas that I had already and sort of merged.

Here’s an excerpt!

Perfect Harmony: Sneak Peek Prologue

For the big 3-0, Harmony Rhoades wanted to do the one thing she’d been afraid to do for the last 20 years: roller skate at the skating rink.

She’d loved it as a child. Even though she was terrible. Her sister, cousins, and even her parents were like natural-born swans. And it seemed like no matter how much coaching they gave her, she couldn’t improve.

She got as far as learning to turn corners with relative ease before she’d had her first and final spill on the rink floor in fourth grade when she’d collided with a little white boy from her school. Somehow her teeth met his forehead and he had to have stitches.

From then on, if she ever went to the skating rink again it was to pretend she’d just gotten off the rink and skate around on the carpet, or stand at the ledge of the balcony, watching the swans glide by.

By the time she was in high school, her skating rink days were gone. But now, she was resurrecting them.

She thought for sure that the place would be abandoned, that she and her friends would have it all to themselves. But it turned out, there were more generations of skaters being made. And right now, she was watching her parents show them all how to do it.

“Harmony, you getting out on that rink again or what?”

“Yeah, no, I don’t know what I was thinking.”

“You said you wanted to skate!”

“I know that, but it’s been two decades since I went that fast while not sitting in a chair in a car.”

“You’ll get used to it, come on!”

Her twin sister Deja dragged her back on the rink when Marky Mark and the Funky Bunch came on. It was terrifying, as the walls sped towards her at what she perceived was breakneck speed, but with her best friend Kelly on one side and her sister on the other, she felt safer. Safe enough to scream the entire time that is.

Deja was the twin that was good at everything immediately. The kind of twin that was so different from her that people almost never confused them. She wasn’t sure how their parents managed so easily to make sure their identities were separately forged but she was glad they never had to break the news to each other that they needed to branch out from one another. Deja was a news anchor in San Diego, not too far from where Harmony lived in Oceanside.

She brought enough cake and party trays sprawled out for everyone, even strangers. And ate surprisingly delicious skating rink pizza and nacho cheez.

She took a contented breath, glad she went with the skating rink idea. She almost did a girls’ trip to some winery, but even after all those years of growing up poor, nothing seemed to hold a candle to cheap fun.

Besides, Deja’s birthday celebration this year involved a yacht so there was no use competing. She wasn’t rich, but she had a habit of landing rich guy friends who chased her around in hopes of landing her. Harmony had a feeling this one was going to get his heart broken too.

The best birthday gift to herself was getting to such a stable place in her life that hitting 30 was practically painless. She’d landed a promotion as a hospital administrator only a few years into her career. Great pay, benefits, and perks as long as her arm.

Sure she didn’t have love yet, but she had “like.” And the good thing about having “like” is that it ensured that her career would never be in jeopardy. Nothing kept her priorities aligned like “like.”

And yeah, the Ethan thing had been harder than usual last year. Weird. Had brought about strange delusions, but Ethan himself was good about helping her keep those at bay. It was the one thing she could count on him to do.

Weird, but after four years she was older now and it was almost over.

She picked up another piece of pizza that she barely wanted. Fuck it. Her boyfriend Simon loved her body and at 30, her stellar metabolism was still relatively intact. She had enough money in the party budget to take a bite out of every single pizza slice they had anyway without remorse.

She looked out at the big blue rink that was like some kind of ice planet, while skaters of every size and shape skitted along its surface. The older she got, the more she wondered if Gerald Hawthorne had been a genius. She couldn’t help thinking about him on what was technically her anniversary.

Suddenly she sensed the lobby doors to the place letting the bright light of the late afternoon in.

Through the narrow glass window, one could see a single party of one had stopped at the ticket counter to enter without paying. The rink doors opened, the crowd in front of it parted. In walked a gorgeous well-dressed man in preppy casual clothes, curly, longish blond hair, and stubble.

When she noticed the shift in attention behind her, Harmony looked over her shoulder to watch him slowly saunter into the food court area, looking around until he spotted her.

He found Harmony standing alone at the rink’s ledge watching the skaters go by. He acknowledged her but didn’t relinquish a smile. He leaned on the barrier with an elbow propped next to hers as she watched him.

“Ethan,” she exclaimed with a measured demeanor.

“Happy birthday, Harmony,” he said, holding a beautifully wrapped gift the size of a book.

She pivoted her neck suspiciously as she squinted. The last time she’d seen him was a little over a year ago, when he’d somehow caught wind of her having a boyfriend. He was suspicious that the two might be planning to gouge him. They weren’t.

“Thanks,” she said as she took the present from his grasp. “What are you doing here?”

“So rude. Can I at least get a hug?” he offered uncharacteristically with a smirk. He seemed to be in a good mood.

She cautiously granted him a side hug with a furrowed brow. He was taller than her by nearly a foot, wearing an expensive polo and carrying his sunglasses. He smelled hypnotic and she tried not to swoon.

“Okay, so… to what do I owe the pleasure of this carouse with the common folk, Mr. Hawthorne?”

He shrugged. “Just, you know. Keeping up with tradition,” he replied. “I’m a little offended that I didn’t get an invitation this time.”

“Ah, I see. So all I had to do to get you to show up all these years was not invite you?”

“You know what they say. A Hawthorne always disappoints.”

She nodded her head cynically.

He looked out at the rink for a bit and Harmony couldn’t help trying to savor the moment, no matter how long it’d been. The feelings were long gone, but the man was still a work of art. Not everybody gets to live near the Louvre.

She snuck a look at his profile, but not long. She suspected he was probably watching her watch him, and she didn’t want him having satisfaction of any kind.

She knew he wasn’t staying. Staying just wasn’t something Ethan did. She couldn’t even imagine him being at his own palatial home for longer than a few minutes. The white rabbit from Alice in Wonderland couldn’t even fuck with Ethan he was so elusive. She couldn’t conceive of where he actually spent his time.

“So… last year, huh?” he casually brought up, as though he’d come there just to make conversation.

“Yep. Is that what’s got you in such a good mood?”

He shrugged with a smirk. “I took some E before I got here. Old-fashioned, I know. Think about what you’re going to do with your earnings?”

She looked out at the rink, avoiding his eyes. “Not really.”

“Well, that makes one of us,” he said.

“Going into the porn business?” she teased him.

“You laugh, but that could be very lucrative for me. No, I’ll be investing in more… intangibles. Crypto, NFT’s, you know. Gotta maintain a certain quality of life.”

“Jesus, you and the crypto,” she rolled her eyes.

Ethan was unapologetically a trust fund baby. He did nothing and had no profession. His father Gerald had made his money the same way his father had made his money. Property deals, land leases, licenses, bonds, and later branding. Brushing shoulders and granting favors. Whatever the legal version of the WASP mafia was.

His father had made Ethan work for nothing, his deepest regret. The torment he put himself through over it used to torment Harmony.

Yet, Ethan didn’t seem to be beyond hope, from what Harmony observed of him. He knew how to make money, standard rich kid know-how. Hedge funds. It may have all been a careful facade but he certainly seemed capable.

“Too bad you couldn’t get your hands on my money five years ago, huh?”

“You mean my money?” she corrected him.

“I might’ve even let you keep the ring after all this,” he bloviated.

She knew it was just his weird way of goading her to hate him. She chuckled in disbelief, shaking her head towards him.

“You’re really hell-bent on making all this a win, aren’t you?”

“It is a win,” he insisted.

“Not for me.”

“Especially for you.”

She looked back out at the rink, thinking of his father, her shortest long-term care patient to date. “This isn’t exactly respecting his wishes.”

“He had no right to ask it of you.”

“Maybe, but… I know what he was trying to do. Sad that it’s not gonna turn out the way he wanted,” she lamented.

“The dead have no right to impose their desires on the living.”

“That’s not what he was doing and you know it.”

Ethan sighed a sigh of relenting. “I know you think I take some kind of perverse joy in being mean to you or something, but it’s like you literally can’t help but walk into it. Just because he couldn’t use one side of his body, and told you a few stories with the other half, doesn’t mean you know the man. Or us. He spent his whole life using his wealth to manipulate us. And tried to do the same in death.”

Jee-ZUS, what a bastard.

Mr. Hawthorne lost his speech when he suffered a series of strokes and was dumped into Harmony’s facility. He eventually gained some abilities back thanks to their rocking speech therapy programs, but he always had his notepad and pen in the grip of his hand— thankfully his dominant one survived.

She tilted her head with a “yeah right” look, attempting a moment of introspection.

“It’s okay to admit that you miss him,” she said.

Ethan shifted in visible discomfort. “As I said, Harmony, just because you took care of him doesn’t mean you know anything about how our family works.”

She put a hand on her hip, her patience with him waning. They were the ugliest family in the world probably and yet spent so much time insisting that everyone else keep out as if anyone would want in.

“Listen, if you’re just here to tell me what I don’t know about, you can just get outta here. Thanks for the present.”

He stopped and stared as if indignant. Finally, he relinquished a grin with a shake of his head.

“You’re right, you’re right. I wasn’t gonna stay long anyway, obviously, I just… wanted to say I appreciate you being a good sport and all.”

“Sure. Guess next time I’ll see you will be at your lawyer’s office?”

He nodded. “Probably. Truly, I hate that the old man had to drag an innocent person through all this… kabuki theater,” he apologized.

God, she hated his apologies. Whatever wealthy people meant by apologizing it was positively odious.

“Well, I’m glad that you’re finally willing to admit that I was innocent,” she said.

“I never accused you of anything.”

“You never defended me either, but whatever.”

“Look, my mom and sister are witches, alright? Dramatic, bored witches. I haven’t taken them seriously in decades, I didn’t realize you had.”

“Relax, Ethan, I’m over it. Plus, I know you don’t believe that. You can stop… buttering me up or down or whatever it is you came here to do. I’m not gonna fumble the ball at the goal line, okay? I want out of this just as much as you do.”

Something about the way she said that made Ethan want to fuck her. He had a sick fascination with women who got tired of him. Probably some Freudian baggage he had no energy to unpack.

He reached out and grabbed a strand of her black, carefully highlighted hair as she spoke as if he couldn’t help it. Harmony just figured he was rich and gorgeous and had no sense that someone might object to him putting their hands on them. And he had no sense of it because it was never the case.

“Never seen you with your hair straight,” he said.

An unexpectedly candid commentary. She was 100% confident that the Hawthorne’s knew no black people so the bar was low and she was impressed.

“Sure you have,” she replied as if hypnotized. For a split second, she hoped if anyone was watching that they all thought he wanted her.

“Then I’ve never seen it both straight and down. You should wear it like this more.”

She claimed her satiny strands back with a hand combing it to the side. “Make you more comfortable, would it, Ethan?”

For some reason, Ethan had more hair critiques to share with her than a gay hairdresser. “You look better with your hair away from your face like that,” he’d once said. She spiraled and wore nothing but buns and ponytails for nearly a year.

“You never know, Harmony. Maybe in another life…” he flirted.

Miraculously she managed to stifle a smile. “Oh God, Ethan, just stop.”

He continued, smiling. “I’m just saying, I hate being forced to do anything. Like, to accept invitations, for instance. But once this contract is up, well… who knows,” he continued, feigning sincerity. Which was oddly new. Typically whatever sexual tension he liked to drum up with other women in his spare time was off-limits to Harmony, who was more like an unwelcome in-law.

Perhaps something had happened in the four years they’d known each other. She wasn’t some thirsty, naive Rapunzel miscast anymore, hoping against hope for a one-in-a-billion rescue. She was mature. Jaded. By him. And he’d noticed.

She’d also lost her virginity by this point and couldn’t bear the thought of Ethan making fun of her boring, vanilla bedroom performance. As much as she might fantasize about his.

Luckily, he wasn’t serious. He had primed her for optimal sarcasm and she couldn’t let him down.

“There’s not enough Gardisil in the world to make me ride that diseased bologna pony,” was her response.

At that, he smiled big and her body warmed. His deep brown eyes twinkled. “Careful, Harmony. I might take that as a challenge.”

She couldn’t stifle her smile anymore. She had to look away to not be confronted by his gloating satisfaction.

“My boyfriend might take issue with that,” she warned him.

“Oh God,” Ethan rolled his eyes. Harmony snickered a bit against her will. She couldn’t resist having a private joke with Ethan, who’d been unimpressed when her boyfriend tried to stand up to him and his accusations last year.

“What’s his name again?”

“Simon.”

“Where is that loser anyway?”

“He’s not a loser and the answer is home. Girls’ night out.”

“Probably masturbating. Like a loser.”

It was Simon that informed her of her lackluster performance in the bedroom. “Beached walrus” was the vivid description he gave. She laughed of course, at first. He was her first real relationship, so she knew she had a lot to learn.

But then it wouldn’t stop. Which was weird because she’d learned a lot by now and was starting not to see what he was talking about.

But she figured it must exist because it was a persistent thorn in their relationship.

Harmony didn’t think of her boyfriend as a loser, though. But then Ethan kept saying it and she couldn’t help wondering in some small distant part of her brain how he knew.

“What do you care?”

“You didn’t tell him about the deal, did you?” he asked, paranoid. His ultimate concern. It brought her back to reality.

“No,” she flatly assured him.

“Good. Promise me you’ll dump his ass once you become a billionaire.”

“His odds don’t look good, I’m sorry to say,” she sighed in lament. Especially after today.

Simon had been the first man she’d ever felt truly comfortable and confident with. He was an artist. He made her feel sexy. But he had a jealous streak— not of other men, of her. And she knew deep down they could never survive a wider chasm between their financial situations.

She would soon have to bravely assure herself that there was something better out there for her. And with a billion dollars she could afford to really look. She just had to find a way to keep her serendipitous fortune lowkey. Which also sounded exhausting.

It was time for the neon lights on the rink. She was lost in dread thinking about her life changing so drastically in 11 months. She told herself it wouldn’t, but obviously, it would. Probably in a bad way, knowing her life.

She could always refuse the money. There was still plenty of time. But it just seemed so foolish.

“You still got less than a year to find the man of your dreams,” he reassured her over the music.

“I’m counting on the money to make him do something completely two-faced that will give me the courage to leave him.”

He shook his head vigorously. “Don’t. He’ll sue you. They always do.”

Geez, he was right. He seemed to be speaking from experience. Ugh. This seemed so far away four years ago.

“Honestly, I don’t want to think about this at all tonight. I took a look at my new tax bracket and I’m not looking forward to this.”

“A good accountant will take care of that. I’ll get you Herbert’s number. Remind me.”

She sensed their correspondence drawing to a close. “I definitely will. Next year,” she said.

“Right,” he nodded. “Well, I should get out of here,” he said predictably. He was likely counting the minutes until the appropriate length of time passed. To his credit, the time he spent with her outside of obligations seemed to creep up a minute or two every year.

Suddenly Ethan leaned down and kissed her on the cheek. The way he had at the justice of the peace. And it had surprised her then too.

Everything in her wanted to hold onto it like a lifeline. The second kiss in four years. Could she be wearing him down?

Ugh, just stop, you idiot.

“Take care, Harmony Hawthorne.”

“You mean Harmony Rhoades,” she sent at his back as he made his way out.

He gave her a killer charismatic look with a subtly raised eyebrow. One of a billionaire taking you into his confidence, if only for a moment.

“Wear it while you still can,” he grinned as he sauntered out.

Despite the fact that every woman there was gawking at him, he didn’t glance at a single one on his way to the door. He hopped back into his Lamborghini where it was waiting at the valet and he was gone.

She went back and sat with her friends who had apparently abandoned the rink altogether and came to sit and watch whatever was happening. She reached for a chicken wing nonchalantly even though she wasn’t hungry. Finally, her sister Deja spoke.

“Harmony… who in the name of emergency panties was that?”

A warm, unwarranted feeling of pride that she in no way earned came over her. She stifled a smile.

“My husband,” she said matter-of-factly as she tore at the tiny drumstick with her teeth.

She wasn’t supposed to say that, but she had less than a year left, so, fuck it. The contract was verbal.

Her friends instantly burst into whoops of laughter and gossipy tones while they high-fived each other, as though Harmony had been telling them a joke.

Chapter 1

Within minutes of her blowjob, Harmony was already pissed off.

Her boyfriend Simon had lain there in bed and looked at her, expectant. Then closed his eyes with a smile, head towards the ceiling. This was his way of asking for sex.

He knew that she hated when he initiated anything, so his solution was to not. He never put together that it was because he’d usually been such a profoundly inconsiderate human, not because she didn’t like subtlety.

Conversely, he didn’t like to just come out and ask for it, which she understood. But she wanted him to at least ask if she was even in the mood for it first, which he found lame.

He was certain that one magic day he was going to be able to transcend her boundaries with his mesmerizing sexual prowess. And every time he failed, his ego was covered in bruises.

Today, she had an excuse. And she reminded him as gently as she could.

“I’m still on my period a little bit Simon, I’d rather not.”

“That’s okay…can I get some head?”

She knew it was a mistake to give in to his requests for sex so often when she didn’t even want it, but she didn’t how to correct it.

How could she, if she didn’t even know that she had a problem like this until she was in a steady relationship? With a person whose whole sexual fulfillment consisted almost entirely of blowjobs?

In the moment, she just got overwhelmed with the dread of whatever future complication it would cause and gave in.

Simon hadn’t successfully turned her on since the first few months they started dating, and since then their sex life had been built on resurrection hope. At least for her. Since she’d made it her sole responsibility to turn herself on.

It’d been a month since Ethan’s unexpected visit and that was usually good for a few rounds— as long as Simon kept the talking to a minimum. But even that was starting to wear off earlier than usual.

There was nothing physically wrong with Simon. He was a good-looking guy with a good-sized dick. Tall, naturally muscular. A dragon tattoo on the inside of his arm.

But his selfishness in bed continued to take her breath away. She’d never talked to him about it beyond surface conversations. She simply didn’t know where to start.

Something to do with his upbringing, she was sure. His mother was a manservant to his father, and so was he and his two brothers. He said it had been traumatic, but she didn’t know why it took her so long to put it together that he never said he was going to do things differently. He’d been subconsciously waiting for his turn.

The moment he began caressing her shoulders—as she knelt in front of him on the pillow he’d so considerately put down for her knees—she felt her rage building.

She was in no mood to give him a pity blow, but he’d planned a romantic night in. He’d remembered her favorite food to order, and she wanted to be a good sport. But it still hadn’t made up for a year of pussy neglect, as much as she may have thought it was all water under the bridge. The pussy didn’t forgive. Or forget.

She felt his selfish hands lightly caressing her skin, his way of trying to do something nice. And yeah, if she were a newborn, maybe she would’ve appreciated it.

Instead, she froze mid-suck. When she froze, he did too.

Silence. He’d long stopped asking what was wrong if he didn’t absolutely have to.

He wanted her to keep going. She knew it, and she suspected that he knew that she knew it. She wanted to keep going because the sooner she did, the sooner it was over.

She started again on autopilot, varying her depth and speed.

The fingers on her skin came back.

Oh, dear God. Did he really think “back massage” was the way to go right now?

But it wasn’t even firm enough for that, was it?

Was he trying to choke her? She would’ve welcomed the effort, honestly.

“Can you please not touch me right now?” she asserted sweetly.

Silence.

“Oookay,” he responded in the semi-dark, clearly feeling emotionally assaulted.

She didn’t bother explaining herself, she just continued with the job. After a rocky start, she’d hit a rhythm that he seemed to be enjoying. His moans got more frequent, more urgent. Any minute now, I’m home free, she thought.

Suddenly he was bending over, reaching between her legs. And she nearly bit him. His dick vaulted out of her mouth.

“What are you doing?”

“I’m… trying to rub your clit?” Simon stuttered.

“I just said not to touch me, so I definitely don’t want that.”

“How am I not supposed to touch you anywhere?”

“Why are you even touching me at all?”

Simon looked confused. “Beg your pardon?”

“Are you touching me because you want to, or because you think it’s what I want?”

“I’m trying to turn you on.”

Like a blender? That’s not how it works, numbnuts.

“Okay, well, I’m trying to give you a blowjob.”

“I need more than just you sucking my dick,” he enlightened her, “I want to touch you too.”

Harmony was sure he thought he was being generous and sexy but all she heard was the fact that he couldn’t be content with a dick suck.

There was no possible way that he could actually be interested in her pleasure, since that required listening and concern for a separate person. There was simply no correlation.

Suddenly Harmony’s phone began ringing.

“Who the hell is that?” he wondered.

“I don’t know.” She went over to her phone on the nightstand and sat on the edge of the bed.

“It’s like 2 am,” he lectured.

“Hello?”

“Is this Harmony Hawthorne?”

“Yes?”

“This is Shawna over at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center. I’m afraid there’s been an accident.”

Harmony sat up straight up as an arrow. “Oh no…”

Ethan.

She hadn’t even changed her name on her license, though that was illegal. If someone was calling her that wasn’t a government agency, addressing her by that last name, it couldn’t be about anyone else.

“What’s wrong?” Simon asked from the other end of the bed.

“Is it Ethan?” Harmony asked into the phone.

“Yes, ma’am. He was life-flighted here about an hour ago. Someone contacted the family, but it says here you’re his wife?”

Life-flighted??

“That’s correct. Is he okay?”

“He’s suffered some brain trauma and he’s in surgery right now to stitch up his leg, but everything looks good. He was thrown from the vehicle.”

“Holy shit.”

“He’s extremely lucky. We’ll need you to come down. He’s stable right now, but if anything changes we’ll need consent right away.”

“Of course. I’m on my way.”

Her world spun for a second, for reasons she couldn’t quite pinpoint.

In an instant, Ethan went from this bizarre complication on the fringes to the most important person in her life.

“What’s going on babe?”

What if he died? It seemed impossible. That anything would happen to him.

Would she inherit it all? Be paraded around as his widow and tied to this family forever?

She put a hand to her head with a sigh. “I gotta go to L.A.”

“What does he want now?”

“There’s been an accident. Ethan’s in surgery, I have to get down there before he wakes up,” she said from her bedroom closet.

She reached for the empty duffle bag on the top shelf, quietly picking a few things for a few days.

She didn’t know how long she would need to stay. She didn’t know how this was going to end but she needed to prepare, as much as she didn’t want to.

“Babe, not to be judgmental but you’re giving off serious Mammy vibes.”

“What?!”

“You’re hopping up in the middle of the night, in the middle of our lovemaking, to go care for some white people who have no relation to you whatsoever.”

Oh, if only you knew Simon.

“He’s got a traumatic brain injury for Christ’s sake, he could be a vegetable when he wakes up.”

“Well, I hope and pray that doesn’t happen. I’d never see you again,” Simon complained.

“Is this about me at all, or is this about you feeling like second fiddle?”

“Harmony, I don’t like it. I don’t like you leaping out of bed for some rich douchebag who’s never gonna look at you twice, no matter how many times you say yes to him.”

“Oh, I get it. You’re jealous of him,” she taunted him.

“I’d be stupid not to at this point.”

“Okay, so, maybe this is my fault for not making it clear when we got together that my relationship with the Hawthornes is complicated. But it does precede you, and will soon be coming to an end,” she said as she hiked her favorite pair of jeans up her thighs.

“Did they blackmail you? Some kind of weird Get Out type situation?”

Harmony let a stunned silence pass between them before responding.

“Okay, well. I’ll let you sit with that,” Harmony sighed diplomatically. “I gotta go.”

“Harmony, if you walk out that door, I don’t know if I’m gonna be here when you get back.”

“Simon, do what you gotta do, bruh. Seriously.”

“Seriously?”

“I don’t think I could get more serious.”

“Wow.”

“Yeah, wow. I got some driving to do so I’ll call you when I get there.”

“Don’t bother.”

Harmony packed up a few things and prepared for a road trip while Simon pretended to be asleep in their bed. Her bed.

She didn’t even whisper a goodbye as she closed the front door behind her and sighed. Damn. That was a bit too easy. But she couldn’t be worried about wasted time on a night like this.

She hopped in her newish Subaru Outback and started the 90-minute trek to LA. At nearly 3 in the morning the traffic-less highway shaved off another 25 minutes and she was back to that familiar county that felt eerie and Stepford. She’d only been a few times to see Ethan. His father had been the midpoint between them at Shady Acres where she worked. She got on the 10 and headed to Cedars-Sinai.

On the way, she got an unexpected phone call from Ethan’s mother.

She’d only spoken to Shannon Hawthorne a few times, but she had an unmistakable voice, at least to her. Upper crust, educated. Nearly trans-Atlantic. Smug. And it was all of those things. But it was also broken.

“Harmony?” her voice quivered.

“Mrs. Hawthorne.”

“It’s Ethan. There’s been an accident.”

“I know. The hospital called.”

“Did they?”

Harmony harbored a suspicious look in her car as she drove. “Yes… does that surprise you?”

“No, I just… didn’t know they had your contact information,” she explained.

“Well, I’m about 20 minutes away, are you there?”

“I am. He’s not quite out of surgery, so please hurry. In case something happens.”

“He’ll be fine, Shannon. I promise.”

“You can’t promise that dear, I think you know that.”

“I just mean I have a gut feeling. He’s gonna pull through.”

When Harmony finally arrived, there was a commotion just outside the doors.

An angry mob of men that looked to be greek or Arab, men of differing ages, with women holding them back uselessly with their arms were making a scene in the lobby.

In the middle of that was a solitary white woman dressed like it wasn’t three in the morning, wearing classic pearls, a yellow cardigan, and matching long capris with a chic silvery blonde bob.

It was Ethan’s mother Shannon and she was standing with the police or hospital security.

Whoever the other family was, they must’ve been richer than Ethan’s family, to allow them to even carry on in public this way.

“Doctor, she’s here! Oh, Thank God,” Shannon exclaimed, thankful to ignore the pressure-filled situation as she caught the eye of Harmony coming in. All eyeballs automatically turned towards her and she awkwardly glanced back as she pulled Shannon to the side closer to security.

“What’s going on?” Harmony asked.

“The Tamiroffs. Friends of ours, well… formerly now it seems. Ethan was inebriated. Or their son was, I don’t know. Maybe they both were. He was driving Ethan’s car when they crashed.”

“Oh my God, is he okay?”

“No, he is decidedly not okay,” she added, impatient. “He’s in the ICU.”

“Wait, who is? The driver or Ethan?”

“Mrs. Hawthorne,” a nurse interrupted them.

“Yes,” Shannon turned to her.

“Sorry…” she awkwardly continued, “are you the wife?”

“I am,” Harmony nodded, understanding. “Is everything okay?”

“Well, yes and no. There was some swelling in Ethan’s brain and the doctor thought it best to induce a coma to keep his vital signs steady while he fights infection.”

“Oh my God.”

“It’s not as scary as it sounds,” Harmony filled in, all the while getting a sick feeling of her own.

“Correct. He’s stable right now.”

“Any idea how long it will take to get him out of the coma?”

“Could be days, could be weeks. We’ll see what his progress looks like tonight.”

“Oh, Ethan,” Shannon lamented dramatically. “If he wasn’t already in the hospital I would strangle him!”

“Is it okay to see him?” Harmony asked.

“Sure.”

“Go. I’ll wait for Ivy,” Shannon directed her.

Harmony followed the nurse down the hallway to a large glass-paneled room where she could see Ethan inside, lifeless and with his leg in a long white bandage.

Even though she knew he was lucky to even be alive, it pained her to see his surreal broken state. She stood there, staring and staring. The nurse opened the room door, signaling to follow her inside.

“Let me know if you need anything,” the nurse let herself out. Harmony sat down in the corner chair, the surreal beeps of the machine dotting the quiet. She sighed, shaking her head.

“What the fuck, Ethan,” Harmony whispered.

Eventually, she saw Ethan’s mother and newly arrived sister from the window slowly approaching the room. Their significant others lagged behind.

Ivy was Ethan’s blue-eyed sibling. She looked like Kate Winslet in every emotionally draining movie ever she played in. She looked a little more 3 am friendly, in a blue hoodie, sweats, bloodshot eyes, and her hair in a messy low ponytail.

As soon as Ethan came into view from the walkway Ivy stopped, turning stiffly and hiding her face into her mother’s shoulder.

Harmony frowned. She and Ethan were also twins. Fraternal. She couldn’t remember if Ivy was older or younger than Ethan. She determined that her reaction was that of an older sibling. Between twins, those minutes matter.

If Deja was ever in an accident, that would probably be Harmony’s exact reaction. She would have an overwhelming urge to trade places with her if it meant not seeing her lying there.

Ivy finally made her way inside, oblivious to Harmony’s presence. Her teary eyes slowly filled with what looked like a mix of horror and anger. But it was the sadness in them that made Harmony look away, feeling truly out of place.

She caught the eyes of Ivy’s nerdy chic husband, a venture capitalist that worked in the valley and the only other in-law in the room.

Shannon’s boyfriend Charles lived next door and grew up with the family. Charles’ new role in their mother’s life was still as messy and awkward as it was before their father died, and they always made sure he felt it when they were around. He stood dutifully outside, looking through the glass.

Ivy knelt opposite Harmony at Ethan’s side whether there was a chair waiting there for her or not. Ivy’s husband trailed behind, rushing a seat from the corner up to her butt so she could sit. She was doing everything Harmony expected his mother to do and it made the family picture all the more clear.

“Which room is Mr. Tamaroff’s?” Harmony heard Shannon asking the nurse.

“He’s in the ICU, ma’am, so he’s in a separate wing.”

“Very good. Keep them as far away as possible, for the time being,” Shannon directed to the nurse, as if she were the hospital czar.

“…We’ll do our best, ma’am,” the nurse politely told her, clearly used to people like Shannon but no better inclined toward them.

“How long did you plan on staying, dear?” Shannon turned to Harmony.

Harmony tilted her in decision. “I don’t know. I’ve got one meeting on Thursday. Figure I can at least hang around until then.”

“Well, that’ll be nice. You’ll keep us posted then, won’t you?”

Harmony froze with confusion. “I… where are you going?”

“Venice. We’re meeting some friends and then going to the film festival.”

“I see.”

When she saw that Harmony might be daring to judge her Shannon elaborated.

“Ethan was supposed to come as well, but of course, he had to make the worst possible choice at the worst possible time. Were it any other trip we would just cancel, but… we were all looking forward to it.”

“Right. But now your son is fighting for his life in a hospital.”

“Oh, spare me your outrage, Harmony,” Shannon campaigned, unprovoked. “I just lost my husband four years ago. Your patient and benefactor, I should add. No, we weren’t on the best of terms but he was my husband. I know he told you we were all bloodsucking monsters—”

“He didn’t.”

“But the way you took care of him for six months was the way I took care of him for thirty years. He was a manchild. Who was plenty paralyzed before the stroke, believe me. But I loved him. And now my little boy’s in a coma and I don’t want to be angry at him about it. I’d rather be angry at myself, and I don’t want to change my plans. I need to get away. Freshen up, come back.”

“Oddly enough, I understand,” Harmony replied as Ivy joined the conversation, looking tired.

“Good. Come along, Ivy.”

“I’m staying.”

“You’ll do no such thing. We need to go.”

“We can at least leave tomorrow night instead,” Ivy reasoned.

“The Tamiroffs are here, and they’re not happy.”

Ivy harbored that Hawthorne look of quiet horror. “You said he wasn’t driving!”

“It doesn’t matter. If Zed doesn’t make it, they’re going to be out for our blood.”

“Goddammit, Ethan!”

“Harmony’s agreed to stay a few days.”

Ivy finally acknowledged Harmony with a look of indifference, born out of fatigue. 
“If he dies while I’m not here, I’ll never forgive myself.”

“Harmony, give Ivy your professional opinion.”

“Like, ‘bedside manner’ professional or ‘nurse to nurse’ professional?”

“The latter,” Ivy chose.

Harmony shrugged one shoulder with a far-off look, conjuring up a diagnosis. “The worst-case scenario isn’t death. It’s his brain being scrambled eggs when he wakes up. Or being kept alive by machines. But he probably won’t be dying.”

Ivy let out a heavy sigh of exasperation. This was hell. And it stretched out long and limitless.

“We could leave tomorrow night just in case, but I don’t think it will change anything,” Shannon offered.

“No, let’s just go. If Harmony’s here, he at least won’t be alone. I trust you’ll make sure he gets the best care,” Ivy deigned to ask for Harmony’s help.

“Of course. He’s lucky to come away with basically a busted-up leg.”

“Lucky? He’s in a fucking coma!”

“I’m just saying, he could be a lot worse. We won’t know until he wakes up, and that could be a long time from now.”

“Or never,” Ivy argued, the notion crumpling her face with emotion.

“He’ll pull through. I promise,” replied Harmony empathetically.

“One crisis at a time, dear. Why don’t you come stay with us tonight? We’re much closer than you are.”

“It’s an five extra minutes, Mother.”

“Still. Ermalinda can make you your favorite, she misses you terribly.”

“For the love of God, would you let that woman live her life.”

“Jerry gave her a boon when he passed, the least she could do is make you an eggy in the basket.”

After everyone left, Harmony made herself a bed with two chairs in the corner. She plugged up her phone to the charger and watched the lazy blue of the sky through the windows as the sun made another appearance.

She yawned. She’d spent years in hospitals but never knew what it felt like to be in the family’s shoes.

She turned her focus back to the man in the hospital bed. His right arm was eerily bruise and blemish-free, but that was the only part. It was suntanned and toned, the fine hairs on it beach blond.

It was already the longest she’d ever spent in a room with him, sadly. She looked beyond the bandages as best she could to his face. The purple bruising shone through the gauze. The ventilator splayed over his mouth, secured with tape.

He’s gonna be pissed when he wakes up, she thought. He’s going to demand an accounting of every responsible party. The hospital. The telephone pole. Gravity.

But he was gonna pull through. That much she knew.

She reached over and found his open hand with hers, feeling the soft puffy skin of his palm. She squeezed for the both of them and then gave it a soothing rub. An uncontrollable twitch surged through his hand and she smiled, looking back at his newly damaged face. Yeah, he was in there. Finding his way back.

She laid back and propped her feet up on the chair, prepared for an uncomfortable sleep.

Perfect Harmony is now available for pre-order exclusively on Amazon. Also in Kindle Unlimited!

The post Perfect Harmony: Out July 15th! appeared first on C. L. Donley Books.

New Cover, who dis?

So, I randomly came across the perfect cover for my most recent release, The King’s Vizier, and as much as I love the previous one, this one was closer to my original concept:

Plus, half-naked dudes sell books and that’s a fact. Y’all didn’t buy it in the usual numbers and I think it had a lot to do with the cover. The almighty algorithm lives and dies by your engagement. But it couldn’t be helped. The best thing about being an indie author is that I don’t have to rely on things being completely perfect before releasing. In fact, a lot of times the perfect choice won’t even manifest until I’ve made an initial one.

At any rate, I’m treating this as a re-release of sorts, and so the book will be free all day today, and maybe tomorrow if I’m feeling generous. It will henceforth be at its regular price of 2.99 because I just went back to it and yeah, it’s worth it. Even made a few lil’ tweaks.

So, I’ve never done this before, but I’m pretty jazzed about this next book that I’m working on. It’s an historical romance technically because it takes place 10 years after WWII. I think the cut off for contempory is ’65 or something? I don’t know. It is partially told through letters of the two main characters, who write each other during the war. The rough draft’s not quite finished. In fact, it doesn’t even have a title. I’m hoping to have it out by maybe… end of April? But don’t hold me to that.

At any rate, I thought I’d give you guys a little preview, so here is Chapter 1! There’s no cliffhangers or spoilers. Just a nice little introduction to the world I’m building. I’d like to get some of you guys’ feedback, questions and curiosities, if it makes you wanna hear more, or if you’re just like, “nah, this ain’t the time for it.”

Couple of disclaimers: I haven’t decided yet which branch of the military he will be in, but it’s between the marines and the navy right now. I also didn’t look up ranks or anything, so I have a note to go back and make all those correct, I just put what I thought sounded good or right or respectful at the time, so I can go back and fill in. If anyone knows off the top of their head and wants to save me some research on this or any other aspect of WWII, by all means. Otherwise it’s just me and the internet as usual.

So without further ado, here’s Chapter 1 of my as yet untitled next release!

January 30th, 1943

My dearest Carl:

You must humor me, my dear. By now, I have learned that you are unable to write me back now. That I will never receive another letter from you. Not by your own will, but by that of God, since he has seen fit to take you home instead of reuniting us. Nevertheless, I have to do the only thing that is in my power to do, the one thing I have done for these many months, and that is to write.

And so, my lovely handsome Carl, I will take it upon myself to say goodbye. I do hope that your death was clean and swift, and gave you a sense of peace and purpose. It was a hope and a joy to have known you. Had I known that our love wasn’t meant to blossom, the first time I laid eyes on you at my lovely Donna’s wedding, I want you to know that I would not have done anything differently. I am forever glad that you parted the crowd to dance with little old me. You gave me the hope that a handsome soldier would be my future. And most of all, I am glad that I could be the one you carried in your heart while you were over there in the dirt. Thank you, my dear. The gratitude I feel is beyond belief.

Yours,

Camille

February 15, ‘43

To the fianceé of Carl Downey, Camille Winters:

My company just received a letter that was meant for Capt. Carl Downey. The commander thought it fit to pass the letter along to me, as I was Carl’s closest friend and colleague.

It’s unlikely that you know me, but my name is Sgt. Stanley Whitman. I spent many a night with your fiancé stationed here in Germany. In the trenches, we dug foxholes and fetched the firewood and tried to sleep as comfortably as we could. In the barracks, we laughed and told hometown stories and made future plans out of desperate hope. He was by far the brightest light in our company. He was full of life and passion. As much as Carl’s death is a loss for you, it is an even greater loss for us, who relied on Carl’s effervescence to get us through this horrible war, and his humanity to remind us what we fight for.

I felt compelled to write to you and tell you that I am the one who opened your letter, and I’m not ashamed to tell you that it made me weep openly. Not only because of your expression of love and loss, but of strength and gratitude. You must understand that as much as Carl was the engine that propelled our company each and every day for thirteen months, you were the engine that propelled Carl. When one of your letters arrived, Carl gained a new lease on life. He greatly cherished your words and was most distressed when your picture went missing while we were stationed in the South Pacific. When you managed to send him a replacement he was right as rain, and transformed into our fearless leader.

And so, I would like to thank you, Ms. Winters, for loving our Captain. You are the secret to his legacy and bravery.

With respect,

Sgt. Stanley Whitman.

March 4, 1943

Dear Sgt. Whitman,

I can’t tell you how much it meant to receive your letter. Thank you so much for your kind words. When the navy informed me that Carl was killed in battle, I felt an odd kind of floating, as if I had suddenly been severed from the ground and floated away like a balloon in the wind. It dawned on me that I did not prepare myself as well as some of the other mothers and sisters and wives who are also waiting for their beloveds to return. Perhaps because ours was such a new and fanciful love. It was all so sudden and fantastic. We met right before he left for Germany and he urged me to write to him. I suppose I wasn’t entirely certain he was even real for nearly half of our relationship. He’d had to convince me of his adoration through letters, and of his desire to receive mine. Even still I remained paranoid that it was the drama of war that compelled him to remember me as more than I was. So I found special comfort in the portion of your letter where you mentioned his reaction to receiving my pictures. He, of course, told me as much, but it has been my brief experience with Carl that he tended to warm everyone in his path with light as though he were the sun. I am happy to know that his adoration of me was apparent to those around him, even while the confirmation also rouses my unspeakable sadness and self-pity. I continue to hope and pray that his company returns home safe and unharmed, and full of stories of their beloved fallen friend.

Sincerely,

Camille

April 4, 1943

Dearest Camille,

I’ve included some personal effects of Carl and thought you might like to have them. They are trivial things here amid a war, so they will not last long: a hairbrush, razor, his grandfather’s timepiece, his favorite magazines. Our squad leader frowns upon carrying excess weight, but I did not see fit to throw them away.

With love,

Stanley W.

April 20, 1943

Dearest Stanley,

You are adorable! I hesitate to tell you that most of what you sent me is considered trivial for civilians as well. I’m sorry that they won’t allow you to carry remnants of your friends, but since I am not a man in war, I cannot judge the appropriateness. I was glad to receive the timepiece that seems to be a precious heirloom. I will endeavor to return it to his family. I’m sure they would be glad to have it.

P.S. In the time it has taken me to mail this letter, I’ve visited Carl’s family. I told them that I would pass on their gratitude for thoughtfully returning the family heirloom, even though it garnered many tears and anguish at the sight of it returning to them without its former owner. They urged me to have it, but the notion was so off-putting since I hardly knew Carl in the manner that everyone around me had, including you. It all reminds me of how fleeting life is and even moreso our love was. The letters were merely a promise of love, ultimately miscarried. It is as though I am forced to birth a child dead in its womb, and care for it until the grief of everyone around me has subsided. As it is, I feel like a charlatan, having taken such a place in his life in his passing. Still, I am grateful that everyone has humored me and recited the fantastic plans he had made on our behalf and apparently circulated beyond me. I hope that whatever else you find of Carl’s, you feel entitled to keep and that it brings you the solace needed to see this war to its hopefully swift end.

Your friend,

Camille

May 20, 1943

My friend Camille,

It was serendipitous timing that I received your letter when I did, because I have to admit that there was one thing I did not include in Carl’s belongings, and that was the cache of letters that he kept of yours. Perhaps I hesitated because I wondered whether someone would want their own words returned to them. Some of them I practically know by heart because Carl liked to often re-read them, as he was taken with your poetic way with words. They had a peculiar calming effect on him, especially amidst the bloody horrors that often turn men cold and apathetic of everything. He lamented that he didn’t have the breadth of attention to take the time to sit down, gather his thoughts and thoughtfully write to you as often as you did to him, but he was grateful. It was your sweet soul, your idealistic hope of your eventual reunion that inspired him, and so it pains me to hear you speak of yourself the way you do, as if it were foolish to expect the future to deliver the things it promised. It is not you who are foolish but the world, that sees fit to deprive young men of the delight of companionship and the contentment that comes with a life well-built. Even now, it is hard to imagine that Carl will become the memories and myths of others. I predicted plain as day that he would be an old man surrounded by his children.

Forgive me for the dismal subject matter. You may have the impression that I have an unhealthy fixation on these topics, but I assure you that nostalgia has no place in our daily lives. We rarely have the chance to contemplate the men whose dog tags we recover. As I have no family and no one in my life who would miss me if I was dead, it is a kindness from God to have received these few correspondences. I hope you would indulge me taking those hopes that you so eloquently referred to in your letter to heart, by not taking offense to my keeping your letters. I also ask that you would allow me to hope to one day return the letters to you in person. It is my wish that by the time that ever happens, you will have caught the eye of some other great man who adores you, and the memory of Carl becomes a fond recollection that you freely share with joy. And also, that by that time the both of us are whole, and that letters between two mutual acquaintances return to its rightfully trivial place in the world.

Sincerely,

Stanley

June 6th, 1943

Stanley,

It seems I am not the only one who has a way with words. I hope someone has told you that you certainly have a long career ahead of you as a writer. By all means, if my letters can continue to carry purpose and meaning for someone else, then please keep them. I would also like to meet the recipient of such a hope, but I must tell you that the thought of receiving yet another correspondence, potentially about your death, gives me an irrational sense of apprehension! What if I find my letters are simply bad luck?

Camille

June 22, 1943

Camille,

Your letters could never be bad luck. In fact, I watched them first hand bring faith and verve to a hopeless situation. If Carl’s death were positively destined, he simply had no idea of it and I am convinced that is because of you. As it is, there is no one to receive word of my time here, and after reading your fears, I don’t think I would have the heart to have someone send word of my untimely death. But if by chance I make it home safely, do I have permission to pass on the happy news to someone who would receive it?

Stanley

July 8th, 1943

Stanley,

It would give me a great thrill to know that out of all of the dismal outcomes of this war that you have made it home safe, wherever that is, so please inform me when that happens. Also, I hope it is not too forward to suggest that in the meantime, it would be no inconvenience for you to receive letters of your own, you need only to ask. If one wants to receive a letter, one must simply write!

Camille

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Release Day! The King’s Vizier Out NOW

Merry Christmas everyone!! The only thing that makes a holiday more special is when it’s release day!

The King’s Vizier: Now on Amazon in Kindle Unlimited

To make it even more festive, The Book of Adam and Jo, Love on a Lark, and Leftovers With Benefits are also free today, so download a copy for a friend (is that a thing?) and give it as a VERY well-timed romance reading gift! Adam and Jo is a little heavy for 2020 probably, but hey! It’s free, right?!

Also, there’s a FREE diverse romance read giveaway featuring Jamila Jasper, yours truly and others going on until Jan. 4th, so check it out:

https://books.bookfunnel.com/interracial_2/wy00a5p96j

Happy Reading!

The post Release Day! The King’s Vizier Out NOW appeared first on C. L. Donley Books.

Love on a Lark: the FIRST first chapter

So I stumbled upon this old first chapter that I took out of Love on a Lark. It sets up Dario and I think I took it out because I thought that it dragged the beginning a little, and I was also mega-obsessed with the reveal of Dario being a total surprise. But I don’t think the reader cares as much as I did then, and now I don’t care as much. The characters are surprised, and that’s ultimately what matters. Now I’m thinking it’s more important that the audience is on Dario’s side, and the more information upfront the better. Sets up Lark very well too, I think.

I don’t know, what do you guys think? Should I add it back in or leave it as is?

Chapter 1

Adeptly, Dario buttoned up his dress shirt as he looked out across the city from the hotel room window. It was a stone’s throw from where he worked, and lately he was there so often he referred to it as “his hotel.”

He came often, but he never stayed very long.

He adjusted his tie, hoping by the time he turned around, Angelica was climbing out of bed and into the bathroom.

She was.

It wasn’t her first rodeo with Dario. He was a cold man. Ice cold, since his wife died ten years ago.

But then again, so was she. He had nothing to give. She hadn’t found that out until she tried to get close to him and found that it was impossible. And she was used to it.

Tonight, he was ending it.

They didn’t have a relationship, or at least, they weren’t supposed to. He only called her when he needed to. Now they had a standing appointment, every Wednesday.

Today was Thursday, however. He called her at home, and then hung up when she answered.

He didn’t even know her last name, because he didn’t care. At first. Now that they were comfortable, he wanted to know it, and that unnerved him. He was learning her and she him. A closed-off apparition of him, but still.

“Angelica.”

“Que?”

“This will be the last time.”

She stopped and stared in his eyes, clearly wanting to say many things, wanting to beg him, feeling the pain and wanting him to offer her refuge.

But she knew he wouldn’t, that he couldn’t.

Her eyes returned to normal, a coldness that he’d become accustomed to. Then, he watched them turn the slightest bit colder.

“Va bene,” she said in his language.

The fact that he felt dispirited breaking the news was a dead giveaway.

Angelica was starting to make him feel again, and he was apprehensive to let that go. Where would he possibly find it again?

He admonished himself. Why do you only want what you shouldn’t have?

She dressed as though she couldn’t stay another second, and it tore his insides. He leaned against the window ledge, his arms by his sides, willing himself to stay where he was as she clumsily gathered her things, her garment bag far too heavy for her. She was much too proud to admit she needed help at this point, and he too ashamed to give it.

It took some shuffling but she was eventually out the door. She’ll never know how he felt, how he was beginning to feel, and it would forever stay that way.

She’s incredibly beautiful, she’ll be fine, he assured himself, feeling queasy.

It was true. Angelica was incredibly beautiful. Statuesque, a former Olympian from Barcelona, now a flight attendant. A bit older than him. The age his wife would be now, were she still alive.

He liked older women. They were fun. Vibrant. Passionate. Mostly only wanted one thing.

He liked widows. They understood. Always. Especially if they were still in the throes of grief.

Angelica had not been a widow, however. She was married.

His first foray. At first, he liked it very much. So much so, that he thought he might become hooked. It was terribly wrong and dangerous. Convenient, on some level. Discretion could always be counted upon.

But she’d become attached. And so had he.

Perhaps not in a traditional sense, but he did not want to find himself attached to a married woman. Become a wrecking ball to two families, like his father before him. Angelica was lovely, inspiring even. He was grateful to her. But she wasn’t his, and it wasn’t right.

If he were to fall in love again, he would have to embrace the possibility full force, not live among the ruins, drinking from the same stagnant pool of the past.

He sighed. He felt himself breathe deep, inhaling optimism as he prepared to go out, again braving the elements of blind hope. It was a feeling still in its infant stages. He had a while before he would need to worry about coming across another woman that captured him like Alessia.

After an adequate amount of time had passed, he exited his hotel and headed in the opposite direction, back to his office.

This had become a routine. His double life crowded in on him. No one knew about his off-and-on intimacy habit.

As far as anyone else knew, he was a long-suffering widower with a teenage son. He didn’t care much for his own reputation, but he wanted desperately to spare his son his private heartache. He’d only had his mother six years. He didn’t want to deepen the wounds of motherlessness by parading his conquests around and letting them sleep on his wife’s side of the bed, the way his father had done to his own mother after they divorced.

When he got to the factory his secretary Lenora was waiting on him.

“We got a call from the hotel in Seoul that said they overbooked, but I was able to get you two rooms at the new luxury hotel right across from the venue.”

“Three rooms.”

“Como?”

“Three. The interpreter will need a place to sleep, no?”

“I’m on it, capo,” she sighed.  

“When will he be arriving, by the way?”

“’She.’ The day before you leave for Milan.”

“Signora Chambers?” he asked eagerly, “I thought her schedule wouldn’t allow?”

“It seems it has opened up.”  

“Good. She was my first choice.”

It was hard enough getting the boss to agree to venture outside of Italy for trade shows and add diversity to the supply chain. If he hadn’t found the one available interpreter who could speak Italian, Russian and Korean on such short notice, Dario likely wouldn’t have been able to get him on board.

This new hire had worked for the U.N. and had a mastery level fluency of seven languages. Only the best for the company. It just so happened that she was fluent in all the languages of countries that had the burgeoning entrepreneurs he was interested in doing business with. He’d lucked out hiring her and Monday was to be her first day of work.

“Is she attractive?”

“For your sake, I hope not.”

“You did not have the interview?”

“Perche? You made a fuss, the agency called and said she was available, va tutto bene.”

“This is what I get for hiring family,” he ribbed. His cousin Lenora made a face. His father used to say they were a family business down to the maintenance man.

“Have you got the list of our contacts?”

“Si. Park in Korea from SALVA. From there you will see Sergei in New York.”

“No issues with sanctions?”

“No. If you would’ve come up with this plan any earlier, you might’ve had to learn a thing or two,” she replied disapprovingly.

“Where’s the fun in that?” he shrugged.

Taking risks. Little to no room for errors. That was the cost of having control of each stage of the production cycle. But it was control that he’d fought for in the last seven years and control that he didn’t regret. Products now were cheaper to manufacture, better executed at a higher rate of quality, and it had been his ambition ever since he’d graduated with his merchandising degree so many years ago.

The CEO had notions of retiring and giving Dario more power. It was an inevitability Dario was prepared for. He was only there for appearances anyway at this point, but those appearances were still very important. Dario much preferred to excel in the shadows. But with his stagnant view for the future of the company, Dario had incentive to let the boss retire.

When Dario got home late that night, his mother and son were asleep on the couch.

Quietly he slipped past them into his own room. He sighed as he plopped on his bed in a heap. He was exhausted. He still planned to wake up early and get some work done while the offices were empty and the warehouse ran.

Only five days until Wednesday.

Wait… there would be no Wednesday reprieve.

He’d ended it with Angelica. And he would be in meetings all next week.

Merda. How could he forget already?

He was starting to go back on his newly devised love adventure. It was too daunting and of no use. He worked non-stop. Grief and professional ambition had sliced through his 30’s like a cake. Now he was 42. Still young, in his estimation, but he was confronting a part of himself that still felt angry, still felt robbed. He wanted more children, he admitted to himself as he lay in bed.

Dario only fell in love one way, and that was hard. It happened once and only once in his life. He used to feel bitter about it, as if cheated, when she died. The loss nearly blinded him with grief, not something he was willing to again endure.  

But the longer he lived, the harder the grief was to recall. More and more he could only feel fortunate to have had that, and started to wonder if lightning could strike twice.

On the other hand, he had a business to run. A son to take care of. The world needed him. He simply didn’t have time to fall for anyone, let alone fall apart if something happened to them. As exhausted as the whole business made him, he couldn’t fall asleep.

The next morning he tried to slip past his mother and son to no avail. They were already downstairs and eating breakfast.

“See, Nonna? I told you he came home last night.” his son Gino said.

“Buon giorno, famiglia,” Dario greeted them.

“Where are you going? Eat!” his mother furrowed her brow, gesturing with her arms.

“I can’t. I’m going in early.”

“Polpetto, you work too much!” his mother exclaimed.

“I know. But if I go in early, I will be done by tonight.”

“Papa, can I go out with my friends tonight?” Gino asked.

“Your friends can come to Nonna’s.”

“I can’t bring my friends there, papa. They want to hang out some place cool.”

“Your Nonna’s is cool.”

His son Gino scoffed and looked as though he were being tortured.

“You watch too much American TV, Gino. Besides, you’re hurting Nonna’s feelings.”

“I don’t mind if he goes out with his friends. He is young!”

Gino kissed his grandmother on the cheek.

“Make an appearance, and then go,” Dario decided.

“Thanks, Papa.”

“Mama, go home. We are fine here.”

“’Mama, go home,’” his mother mimicked him. “You hurt my feelings, piccolo!”

“Leave us be, Mama. Gino loves you too much to tell you himself.”

“Nonsense. The two of you would starve!”

“Your husband also eats, vero?”

“Eccome, he eats too much! But I worry about you, my bambino.”

“I waste my breath, but for the last time. Don’t worry about me, Mama, I’m fine.”

Dario took a bite of dry toast and headed for the door.

The post Love on a Lark: the FIRST first chapter appeared first on C. L. Donley Books.

The King’s Vizier: Now Available for Pre-Order!

So, this story has kind of a weird origin. I actually came up with it before I even started writing books. Now that I think about it, it isn’t that weird because I was pretty used to coming up with story ideas for no reason. What sort of started out as a kind of biblical allegory turned into something, well… not biblical. Basically, if I’d stuck to my original concept this would be a clean romance. Picture me doing that, LolOloLolOLol…

I started taking on the task of bringing the story into the world sometime at the beginning of this year. I took a few months off, because 2020, and pecked and pecked at it until it was done.

This book was a collaboration between my initial vision and the creative muse, and the results are… muddled. I had to take something that was a free-standing idea and fit it into this world that I had created. I took something that was a lot more fantastical and tried to root it in some reality.

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I just purchased my first ever professional book cover for this book and I’m pretty durn excited about it. I might even have to do a cover reveal and make a big deal. It looks like a historical romance, but I literally don’t care, because it’s so close to what I want to convey with the story and bridges both my initial concept and the final product so well.

This book is about a king who goes to America to find a girl that to be his queen, one who doesn’t realize that she has royal blood. It’s a common trope, but it has a little twist to it, and I do mean little. But the twist influences the romantic plot of the book.

[image error]The King’s Vizier, Gabby/Queen Asha, King Khoury

In my mind, the hero was an instant cast. I knew that the King was going to be of African stock, and as he was going to be my first black hero. So you should already know. You gotta go Idris for the titular character. Since it’s a bit of a love triangle, I wanted to pick someone just as regal and statuesque, so I picked Mahershala Ali for the king character. For the heroine, she had to be someone young and princessy, with African lineage who had a “hidden in plain sight” type of vibe. Basically a black “Princess Diaries” mood. I had one little picture on my “Book Inspirations” Pinterest page that I’d saved long ago that fit the bill. I didn’t know who it was, and I didn’t know if I’d find any more pictures of her. But it turned out she was a model named Senait Gidey from Ethiopia.

Overall, I think it’s a cute, fun read. One of my longer books, but to me, it has a bite-sized feel because of its simple plot and story.

New Release The King’s Vizier: Sneak Peek

King Khoury of Manaf has come across an interesting piece of intel: the Princess of Ashwari has been hidden in America for 25 years. If the story proves true, the King would be able to form alliances with the war-torn nation, not to mention finally secure himself a bride. All he has to do is get the Princess to go along with his plan, which may be a challenge according to his good friend Belkacem Al-Malwali, King of his sister country Ghassan. The King decides to rely on his trusted vizier, educated in the States, to plead the King’s case and vet the young girl to see if she is truly King Otieno’s daughter. Will they be able to convince Princess Asha to leave the only home she’s ever known, and be the Queen of both her country and his? Or will the burgeoning relationship between the Princess and the King’s vizier complicate matters even further?

Chapter 2

“Mrs. Holderman hold still!” Gabby clenched.

“Get offa me, you black bitch!” Mrs. Holderman screamed.

Woooosah, Gabby thought in her head as she and another nurse helped restrain a squirming Mrs. Holderman. They weren’t wrong when they said service hours were when the real education starts.

Mrs. Holderman was Gabby’s twenty-sixth patient at Sunnyside Nursing Home. She wasn’t the most advanced stage dementia patient, but she was the most unpredictable. When she wasn’t being the kindest, sweetest soul on the planet, she was raging about the smallest thing and spitting directly in Gabby’s face.

She loved her job, but if it wasn’t for the fact that Mrs. Holderman wouldn’t let a single other nurse take care of her, Gabby would gladly skip this part of the day. At least it wasn’t hard ‘r’ n-words this afternoon.

“All done Mrs. Holderman,” Gabby announced when her body was cleaned and her shot administered.

“Well, that’s a relief. No thanks to you,” was Mrs. Holderman’s semi-coherent statement.

“I better not find any more empty honey packets between those sheets. Dinner’s at the same time every night, you know that.”

“Leave me alone, corn pone!” snapped Mrs. Holderman.

Gabby and Sara, the other CNA, left Mrs. Holderman’s door cracked as they quietly left.

“Another hellish day,” Sara sighed.

“Honestly, I’ve had worse days.”

“You know, Vicki told me we’re not even supposed to be administering medication as CNA’s?”

“Pretty sure we’re not supposed to be scrubbing the floors or making the pancakes, but here we are,” Gabby shrugged.

“I can’t wait until I’m done here. I already know long term care just isn’t for me,” Sara rolled her calico gray eyes. Sara was a smooth medium brown, a shade class lighter than Gabby’s with fuller lips and a prominent nose. She didn’t know much beyond her family’s descriptions of their old life in Ashwari, but Gabby knew enough to know that had Sara been born there, she would’ve been a queen.

“Really? Hospital nursing’s way worse to me,” Gabby insisted.

“How can you say that?”

“It’s a nightmare. All those people coming in and out,” she said, their soundless blue and green scrubs and sneakers squeaking down the fluorescent lighted hallway.

“Yeah, but at most you’re only juggling six patients a day. Not twenty-six,” Sara argued.

“It’s non-stop chaos and you’re expected to keep up with it all.”

“Gabby, I swear, some of the shit you say. You just described your current position,” Sarah chuckled, grabbing a chart at the station.

“Yeah, but you get to know the patients here, you get to be part of their routine,” rallied Gabby.

“Which is the very reason why I can’t with this job. How am I supposed to learn how to do this if I’m doing the same damn thing every day?” Sara complained in a hushed tone. “I did the math, you know. I’m paying $153 a day to be here, and I feel like I haven’t learned anything but the basics.”

“There’s something to be said for mastering the basics,” Gabby defended. Gabby grabbed a clipboard and a cart, heading up the stairs.

“There’s also something to be said for coming across every possible scenario so that you can be the best nurse you can possibly be.”

“I hear that. I guess I just feel this is like, the most impactful.”

“And I think it’s the opposite,” Sara made her point emphatically as she divvied out meds in plastic cups on the cart.

“Well then, I guess we each got our shit figured out.”

“We do,” Sara agreed with a sassy tone. “Plus, I’m tryna get this money.”

“Listen, I’m not gonna complain,” Gabby said, half distracted. She checked off the patients’ names carefully, double-checking doses. “$15.88 to cook and clean is more than my mama makes to do the same damn thing.”

“Girl, if you’re still at this raggedy-ass place when we graduate, I’m gonna break your legs,” Sara threatened.

Gabby felt a tinge of guilt leaving all the patients behind that she’d cultivated relationships with for the past six months. Who would take care of Mrs. Holderman while she was gone? She wouldn’t let the other nurses come near her.

“Here’s hoping Mrs. Holderman goes on to glory before I graduate,” Gabby sighed, knocking on the first door.

“My money’s on the other place,” Sarah muttered.

Gabby gave Sarah a smack on the arm as they politely entered the first patient’s room on the second floor. Delete Created with Sketch.

When their shift ended, Sara and Gabby parted ways across the parking lot, keys to the old gray Honda in Gabby’s hand. She’d finally convinced her parents to let her drive to school, work, and back. Her parents had been scared stiff to let her drive ever since she got her license.

In Florida, you were able to obtain a license as an undocumented immigrant, but that did not put her parents at ease who, even though they were legal, insisted on living life like a Tom Clancy movie.

At 25, she’d only been driving for three years, and before Uber that was embarrassing. You needed a car to get everywhere in Tampa. Her brother and sister didn’t mind driving her around, but having to rely on her younger sister— who was more popular and outgoing than she ever was— sometimes strained their relationship.

“Mom, I’m home!” Gabby announced from the front door. She couldn’t see her mom but she was most certainly somewhere in the house, wondering who’d just come from the front door if Gabby hadn’t just yelled it out. Her brother Faraj was on the couch watching the news of all things:

And in Washington today, White House officials met with King Khoury of Manaf to discuss diplomatic relations and the possible addition of a U.S. embassy to its nation. Manaf, border country to both Ghassan and Saudi Arabia, is one of only seven nations in the U.N. that does not yet have an American embassy within its borders…

“Since when do you care about current affairs?” Gabby teased.

“Shh…” was Faraj’s curt, distracted response. Faraj was older than her by three years and looked a bit like Peele from Key & Peele, but slim and slightly darker. At 28, he still wasn’t married yet, much to their family’s dismay. He must be here for dinner, Gabby deduced.

“Go help your sister in the kitchen,” her mother’s disembodied voice floated from the laundry room at the back of the shotgun-style house. “Your father will be home soon.”

“I’m hopping in the shower, I’ll be right there,” Gabby said to her sister on the way to her room.

“Convenient!” Mackenzie shouted from the kitchen, cutting up the last of the vegetables prepared to go into a boiling stew pot on the stove.

Gabby’s sister Mackenzie would be graduating high school this year. Going to the University of Central Florida. Gabby tried to let her happiness for her sister drown out her resentment and sorrow, and for the most part, succeeded.

Long before it was time for her to go, she’d been sending off for informational pamphlets from the universities of her choice. It was her own little obsession since she was thirteen. For her, college had been her jumping-off point, that catalyst that would take her out of her strict, close-knit community and get her noticed.

When she began applying, her parents finally caved and told her the real reason for their overprotective behaviors: that she was undocumented. Her life’s plans came crashing down in an instant.

There would be no college, no following her best friend Carmen to Florida State, no coming home on weekends and holidays. No finding a college boyfriend. No further education whatsoever.

That is, until Gabby bothered to do her research.

She offered to work for several years, save up enough money for community college, and go into a high demand field where there was an opportunity for an employer-assisted green card.

Thankfully, Florida was covered with such programs for nurses. Only then could she convince her parents that she was safe.

“Gabby!”

Before she could get on her pink shower cap with the purple flowers, her sister Mackenzie had come barreling through the door. Good Lord, she couldn’t wait until one of them finally left home for good.

“Mom wants to know if you invited Tek and Savaday to dinner,” was Mackenzie’s supremely un-urgent question. Savaday and Tek were two boys from their small Ashwari community that had formed in Tampa. The older generation was constantly trying to hook up all their offspring up with each other. And in a very boring turn of events, they’d mostly succeeded.

“What? Why would I do that?” Gabby echoed across the shower curtain.

“Mom says they’ve just pulled up.”

Weird.

“Savaday’s here to see you, not me. He gave up on me, remember?” Gabby sneered. “Maybe he’s here for you. Now that you’re 18 and all.”

“He better not be,” Mackenzie sucked her teeth. “Maybe he changed his mind. Why would he come here unannounced? Do you think he wants to propose?”

“Ew, get outta here with all that! And close the door, you’re letting in all the cold air!” Gabby huffed with her soapy eyes tightly shut.

Gabby was losing patience with her living arrangement, which troubled her because she honestly didn’t know what else she would do if she wasn’t living at home. Part of her didn’t even feel comfortable calling it “home” anymore. Ever since the truth about her illegal status had come out, her parents seemed more and more like strangers.

Even after they came to an agreement about community college, Gabby’s questions to her parents continued until it came to a head. She could no longer explain away the fact that she was illegal while her parents and siblings were not. How was it that she could not receive federal funding, that she would have to pay the out-of-state amount of tuition for a community college, and only get a non-compliant driver’s license?

The simple fact was that she must have been born in their native Ashwari, not here in America. And that the two people that raised her could not be her parents.

After the only shouting match of her life, her mother broke down and told her that they’d kidnapped her. But even that seemed like a lie.

Gabby stepped out of the shower, wiped off the mirror, and looked at herself with a sigh. She was now in her mid-20’s, and yet she still felt nothing like an adult. Unbelievably stifled. She distantly heard more than just her brother’s booming voice in the living room, but it hardly registered. She was too busy feeling overwhelmed.

The lifelong superstition and paranoia engrained in her made it hard for Gabby to even take the first steps toward legitimate citizenship without the threat of deportation.

While she was glad her parents allowed her to grow up without the burden of knowing her illegal status, she resented that they’d saddled her adulthood with it. Almost as if they didn’t have a plan. As if they’d been ready at any moment—

“Asha!”

Gabby jumped at the sound of her mother calling her by her Ethiopian name, which usually meant mortal danger. Or that she’d neglected her chores and Father was home.

But she resented the implication. She’d been at school all day and not yet home ten minutes. But she knew that she had exactly 3.5 seconds to show herself if she wanted to escape discipline.

“Yes, Ema!” she answered in Amharic, to show respect in lieu of her appearance.

She was still soaking wet, wearing her pink and purple shower cap, and couldn’t find something to cover up with fast enough. She settled on wrapping a towel around her tall, skinny frame and ventured barefoot out of the bathroom and into the hallway.

As steam barrelled out of the door and into the hall, Gabby could just make out the living room that suddenly seemed to be filled with an audience. Whatever her mother had beckoned her about, it wasn’t chores.

She hesitated, still trying to make out what she was seeing. Everything was deathly quiet and the air was that of reverence. Authority. She didn’t know who was here, but it sure as shit wasn’t Savaday. Or Tek.

Was it the police? Were they coming to take her away?

She stiffened. Oh no. Nononono.

If this were truly her last hour in this country, she would never forgive herself for forcing her parents to allow her more freedom.

She felt her mother grab her forcefully by the arms and pull her into the adjacent bedroom, which was her sister’s room. She slammed the door behind her and put her hand over Gabby’s mouth.

“Do…not… scream,” her mother said in a calm voice.

Gabby simply made a slow gesture with one hand as she furrowed her brow. Her mother removed her hand.

“What would I be screaming about, exactly?” Gabby asked.

“About who is here. About what I have to tell you.”

Gabby wrinkled her brow. “What do you have to tell me?”

Chapter 3

Gabby’s mother breathed as if vomitous, bracing herself.

“I am not your biological mother. And your father, he is not your father.”

“I know that,” Gabby replied unphased.

“Okay,” her mother nodded, not bothering to be surprised. She seemed as eager to air out the truth as Gabby was to hear it, which relieved her.

“I am… I was… your mother’s best friend,” she confessed, a solitary tear rolling down her cheek. “Your mother was like my sister. When you were a baby, she came here to visit us. And then she told us…”

Gabby’s “mother” couldn’t go on. She covered her mouth, tears streaming from her high dark cheeks. Gabby’s own eyes began to water. Whatever the truth was, it was bad. Worse than she could imagine.

“Ema don’t,” Gabby insisted, jarred by her mother’s emotion. “Just tell me who is here.”

She shook her head in protest. “You won’t understand. Until you know what happened.”

Gabby’s mood turned sober and dread blanketed her. Her heart thumped the more she entertained a new worst-case scenario.

“Are they here to take me away?” Gabby’s voice quaked.

At that, her mother actually nodded, which struck fear in Gabby. But oddly, her mother’s face was serene and smiling. Gabby’s breath quickened.

“Mom, what’s going on? Where are they taking me?”

“It’s good, mare. Listen to me. You cannot stay here—”

“Mom, please—”

“Your father and I, we have not told anyone about you. Not a soul. Our connection to Ashwari is dead. And yet, these men are here, do you understand what that means?”

“…No, I don’t.”

“It means that if they can find out, then he can find out,” her mother filled in cryptically. “The longer you stay here the more you’re in danger.”

“Who’s ‘he’? Why are you letting them take me?” Gabby began to panic.

The woman she knew as her mother was talking crazy. She wanted to hand her over to strange men. Would her father not fight for her?

Suddenly, she heard the unmistakable sound of him coming home.

“Baba!”

Gabby’s mom put her hand back over her mouth. Gabby began trying to squirm out of her grasp.

“Gabby listen to me!” she whisper-yelled over her struggling. “Your name is Princess Asha Gabrielle Otieno. Your father was King Otieno of Ashwari.”

When Gabby finally fell still, her mother removed her hand. Gabby stared at her and stayed quiet.

“My name is Gabrielle Ayenew,” she finally replied, confused.

“Your mother was Queen Aida Otieno of Ashwari. She came here to visit us, but when she got here she told me of her plan. She wanted to remain here, to seek asylum from your father, the King. When she could not get it, she left you with us and returned home. Where she died.”

Her mother? Was a queen?

Her actual mother had been here? In America?

And she left her?

“Why did she leave?” Gabby asked with a lump in her throat.

“Because the King expected her back.”

“Why? She would’ve been safe here. How would the King have even known to come here?”

“She told him plainly where she was going. That she was visiting family here, so the King would not try to chase her. And coming back without you bought her time. She was going to tell the King that we wished to keep you for a while. I assume that is what she did.”

“Stupid!” Gabby replied in Amharic. A tear of anguish fell. “No government would’ve let us go back there. Ashwari is in ruins even now. You said it yourself!”

“Harboring the Queen of another country would’ve certainly caused a war with your father in charge,” her fake mom explained. “Ashwari’s allies killed him! And now they back his traitorous army General, who betrayed him and staged a coup! And killed every living Otieno in the land!”

“Except us?” Gabby gulped.

“Except you,” her mother whispers, smoothing Gabby’s hair with her hands. “Do you know what this means, mare? You are a queen!”

A queen? Gabby’s brow knit even more and her eyes darted in confusion.

“I still don’t understand. Why are the police here?”

“Those men are not the police,” replied her mother.

“Then who are they?”

“Get dressed. I will let them explain.”

When Gabby finally emerged from her room in a black oversized sweatsuit from her sister’s closet, the hood hiding her hair, her mother frowned. Meanwhile, her father had a beaming smile of pride on his face.

Her siblings had also gathered in the living room and looked somberly in her direction as if they’d announced she was dying.

Finally, she laid eyes on the two black men sitting at the dining room table, elegantly out of place and impeccably dressed in long coats far too warm for a Florida spring. Both men eyed her intently before looking at each other in unspoken decision.

Gabby sat on the arm of the floral living room couch with arms crossed, waiting to hear the day’s bizarre events unfold. The man in the camel-colored coat spoke first.

“You are in the presence of King Ohaji Khoury, son of Kamau Khoury, King of Manaf. I am the king’s vizier. My name is Mazigh Chike. You can call me Max.”

Manaf… she’d heard the name of that country before. Recently.

Today, in fact.

“Weren’t you just on the news an hour ago?”

“We met with your President’s advisors this morning, so that is entirely possible.”

Gabby simply stared. She tried to recall that random nanosecond she’d stopped to watch the dapper figures walking across the White House lawn on the television, just before she got in the shower.

Both men were tall dark and handsome. And they seemed older, though they didn’t quite look it.

The king had a regal, West African handsomeness, but looked much too young to already be a king.

The vizier, Max, looked to be from another part of Africa. Perhaps Nigeria or Ghana. Tall even while he was sitting, and more built. He had a cleanly shaped goatee while the king was clean-shaven. His features were wide and full where the king’s were sharp and tight, including his dark gleaming eyes. Unassuming but much more imposing.

The king stayed silent, donning a severe, intimidating look. Max continued with his disarming black stare, a vulnerability meant to put her at ease. He spoke with the coiled, hyphenated trill of the Middle East.

“We’re here because we received news that the Princess Otieno, offspring of King Otieno, the former King of Ashwari, might be hiding in this country. And we believe you to be that offspring.”

“Okay,” Gabby simply replied.

“With your permission, we would like to test your DNA to make sure it is a match.”

“It will match,” Gabby assured them.

The king shifted in his chair, giving Max a look he was too busy watching her to return.

“If that is the case,” Max nodded patiently, then the king has a proposition for you.”

“The king doesn’t speak for himself?” Gabby asked.

She could only imagine the horror on her mother’s face behind her. Her father began reprimanding her in an Ashwari panic. Gabby quietly took her rebuke, half turning to face him.

These were not her parents. They couldn’t be her parents. The way they cowered so.

How had she missed it before today?

“…I’m sorry,” Gabby muttered, remorsefully. The king spoke something in Arabic to Max and it dawned on her that the King may not even speak or understand English.

“The king is interested in forming an alliance between your country and his.”

Forming an alliance?

With… Ashwari? With… America?

What the hell does that have to do with me? she thought

“I don’t understand.”

“Manaf is a prosperous country. Your father the King once sought an alliance with us, as well as his father before him.”

“Is Manaf one of the countries that let him be murdered by traitors? And my mother as well?”

Max lowered his gaze and spoke in Arabic as if translating. The king replied in measured, commanding syllables.

“Your father’s General lied to him, which in turn caused him to lie to my father,” the king replied through Max. “As a result, my father was killed in his own palace by traitors, shortly after your family was assassinated.”

Gabby swallowed, suddenly overwhelmed by the realities of countries outside the US.

“I still don’t understand what this has to do with me.”

“Your father and my father betrothed us to each other while we were very young,” Max continued to translate. “If you are the rightful Queen of Ashwari as you yourself believe, then I propose a marriage between us. Between my country and yours.”

Gabby shifted her weight on the arm of the couch, skimming her fingers across her brow in thought.

“So… if I leave my family, my home, my profession behind, to go with you to… Monat, is it?”

“Manaf.”

“Go with you to Manaf, and spend the rest of my life married to a strange man in a strange land, you promise to help a country that I have almost no connection to whatsoever, that’s not even the size of Tampa?”

“Asha!”

“No, Mom, this is crazy,” Gabby directed towards her. “Two Denzel lookin’ dudes come to the door speaking Arabic, and suddenly you’re willing to call me a queen and hand me off?”

The room was silent and Gabby sensed her parents’ embarrassment.

She was starting to doubt her confidence, but the growing frustration over her puppeteered life needed expressing.

“I can understand my mother actually being a Queen, like… that’s the only thing that you’ve ever told me that’s made any sense,” Gabby continued, “but let’s just pretend for a moment that I believe you guys are who you say you are,” she pointed with an outstretched arm. “I don’t have a birth certificate, I don’t have a green card or a visa, don’t have a social security card, don’t have a passport. And if I get caught leaving the country without it? I’ll be deported anyway. So, until you somehow manage to get me one or all of those things, I’m gonna have real trouble entertaining any of this.”

Max translated her rant in record time.

The king’s high, sable cheekbones raised and his laugh lines appeared like strings, his mouth in a slight grin. He huffed a little laugh and addressed her directly.

“If I do this for you, do I have your hand in marriage?” he asked in impeccable English.

Gabby shivered, feeling a bit sheepish. Every eye turned from the king’s black eyes to Gabby’s.

“I’ll… think about it,” Gabby squinted in disbelief. At the conversation, at the entire event.

The two men gave each other another wordless consultation that tonally seemed to amount to, “what choice do we have?”

Each of them raised from the table, the King giving her a nod as he headed for the door at a king’s slow pace. Max followed behind, buttoning his camel trench as his Majesty walked out without a word.

“We will be in touch,” Max faced the family with a slight bow.

“You must stay for dinner,” Gabby’s mother pleaded at the door. An Ashwari custom. Women of the house often pleaded for their guests to stay, whether they wanted them to or not, a familial sign of affection. In her case, she was probably serious.

“Another time,” Max politely grinned with his eyes. Neither of them took a second look at Gabby on their way out.

The entire family crowded around the large living room window as the pair walked back to the black SUV parked on their curb.

Gabby tried to stave off curiosity, but eventually caved and looked through the peephole at their departure. The king’s black coat floated in the wind as he got in on the driver’s side.

At least he was the kind of king that was willing to drive himself around town. She liked that. Delete Created with Sketch.

As the two men drove off back to their hotel in relative silence, the King finally caved.

“What?” the King asked, knowingly.

“Nothing,” Mazigh shrugged.

“You obviously have something to add.”

“You were charming.”

“I hardly said a word,” Khoury muttered.

“And it was charming,” Mazigh insisted. “It seems the intel proved to be accurate,” he broached the subject at hand.

The King let out a breath.

The information was exciting on its face. And then, there she was. Dressed like a commoner and making demands with complete confidence. She really was American.

But it suited her. Who she really was.

“Do you remember her mother?” the King asked.

“Vaguely. An Ethiopian woman. Also beautiful. She resembles her, no?”

He smoldered in thought. He remembered Ashwari’s Queen through the words of others more than remembering what she looked like. Everyone went on about her poise and supermodel looks, down to her tall, athletic body type. The princess obviously inherited that, but she had her father’s full lips and narrow eyes. And quite possibly his temperament.

“Perhaps. She certainly resembles the King.”

“In more than just the physical,” Mazigh smirked. “Shall I cancel the DNA kit?”

“Of course not. We’ll need the proof,” the King said.

“The girl has no country,” Mazigh raised his eyebrows, a victorious smile on his face. “This will be easier than we anticipated. Extraction could be done in a matter of hours.”

“Look into a visa for the girl.”

Mazigh adopted a quizzical look. “What? Why?”

“Because her requests are reasonable.”

“Not in the few days that we have.”

“We must improvise,” the King insisted. “We still need to conduct the exam and we need her compliance.”

“…Or we could take her now, and conduct the exam at home. It would pose no risk. She is clearly the Princess.”

“We stick to the plan,” the King nodded. “Belkacem warned me of the obstacles.”

“You rely on Belkacem too much,” Mazigh offered. “Only one of us has ever set foot in America before today.”

“And only one of us is King,” Ohaji shot him a look of warning.

Mazigh breathed through his nose as he chose his next words carefully. “Time is of the essence. If we give in to her demands we will be at her mercy.”

“We are at her mercy regardless,” the King reasoned. “Her mother’s friend has raised her well enough, but she has lived in fear of deportation. If I can grant her in a matter of days what her family hasn’t been able to in a lifetime, she will come with us willingly.”

“And if she looks you up on the internet in two days’ time?”

Ohaji answered with the hope of a man accustomed to forcing circumstances to adjust to his needs. “Let us hope she does not.”

“Eventually, she will find out the whole truth,” Mazigh warned.

“Of course. Hopefully, the three of us will be on a plane by then.”

His vizier’s silence overwhelmed the King again.

“You have more to say, Mazigh?”

“Simply that there are potential wives all over Manaf, your majesty. Younger than 25.”

“I want this one,” was his loaded response.

“The likelihood that she is still a virgin—”

“She is of royal blood. Which is worth a thousand spotless virgins.”

The silence of his vizier begged to differ, but he didn’t dare speak another word. Besides, he knew the King well enough to know his wheels were turning.

Mazigh was not “old-fashioned.” Marrying a virgin was simply the way of things. He would lose the respect of practically every man in Manaf if he did not.

He may be forgiven in this special circumstance. The King was positive that with her being raised across the world, he could keep her personal life under wraps. They stopped at a traffic light and a gentle rain started, pattering the windows.

“Find out what you can from the parents,” he finally said.

“How would they know?”

“They would at least know her friends. Her social life.”

“Everything about this evening tells me they probably haven’t let the girl too far out of sight. She seems a bit sheltered, particularly for an American.”

“We mustn’t rely on our stereotypes. Find out for sure.”

“Of course, your Majesty. And if she… has taken lovers?”

“She will have to be examined.”

Mazigh’s lips became tight as he shook his head. “She won’t like that.”

“Of course she won’t.”

“We can combine the DNA testing with the examination. Make it seem as arbitrary as possible,” Mazigh suggested.

“I am now wondering whether I even want to know.”

Mazigh gave him a nearly imperceptible smirk. “Only her attendants will truly need to know. Shall I keep his Majesty in the dark?”

“Please.”

“Even if the results are pleasing?”

Mazigh knew him too well. That’s what he gets for hiring his childhood friend to be his advisor.

The beautiful Princess Asha being a virgin was a longshot, but it would essentially make her perfect. Like a daydream. His own personal treasure that’d been hidden for him these senselessly hard, long twenty-five years. Waiting. Maturing.

He wanted her. Like he had never wanted anything.

He’d born the burden of ruling a nation for most of his life, but he had never known want. He’d always had to experience it vicariously, through his friend.

Princess Asha was close enough to touch, but he couldn’t. Not yet. The King dared to let his vizier observe his unmitigated thoughts.

“Especially if they are pleasing,” he muttered, facing the rain-soaked window.

The King’s Vizier is now available for pre-order exclusively on Amazon. Also in Kindle Unlimited!

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