Was I man enough?
This is something that has been rattling around in my mind for several years ever since an old friend of mine told me how he'd been able to pull his imploding marriage back from the brink with the help of counselling and a sex surrogate. It got me wondering, what was the real story behind the use of surrogates, and not the tabloid press version, and how do friends and relatives react. I've been writing and rewriting various versions of this story for the last year, I hope that this version works for you.
The time line flits back and forth between the two main characters, not always in perfect sequence. But that's how the story grew in my mind so I'm afraid you will have to live with the confused musings of my imagination.
There is some sex but not as much as my other stories.
I can't thank Romantic1 enough for the time he spent reviewing, commenting on and editing this story, any remaining mistakes are mine.
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Prologue
I picked up my cup of coffee from the counter and walked to a table between two comfy chairs by the window. Sitting down I pulled out the book I'd bought a few minutes earlier at the bookstore downstairs and opened it to the first page. Four words leapt out at me from the page
'We need to talk'
. With a wry smile I realised I'd been sitting in the same spot five years ago when the most beautiful girl in my life had uttered the same four words to me, turning my world inside out.
How did it all start? Downstairs in the bookstore five and a half ago, that's when and where. I was sitting on a comfy armchair, tucked away between a pair of book shelves, while I watched as Ian signed his name in a book and handed it the woman on the other side of the desk. I'd been shanghaied by my agent into offering Ian moral support at his first book signing. I remember my first one, the sweaty palms, the dry throat as you sit there hoping that someone, anybody, will turn up and want you to sign a book, so I felt a degree of sympathy.
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Daniel
My name is Daniel Davidson, and I'm thirty-six. I'm also an author; I'd begun by publishing erotic short stories online for my own entertainment over ten years ago. Somehow I'd managed to hit a cord with the readers and generated a following. Eight years ago a literary agent was sent a copy of one of my stories and liked it enough to contact me. I was one of the lucky ones. She found me an editor and between us, we managed to turn a series of linked short stories I'd written into a book.
I'd used the pen name Alexander Peters, I'm not sure why we'd chosen that name, it just seemed right at the time and now I'm stuck with it. The book did well enough that the publisher offered me a further five book deal. They waved a cheque with enough noughts on it to make it easy for me to jack in my real world job.
My publishers and agent were based in the States - (did I forget to say I'm British; I probably did knowing me. The Internet makes the world a very small place on occasions). They suggested I move to the States to write the other books. There was nothing but Liz, my bitter unfaithful ex-fiancée to keep me in England. My parents had died with months of each other a year before, and I was an only child. I can't say I was on the next plane but it was pretty close.
For the first few months I'd hung around Chicago where my agent had her office. She'd found me an apartment to rent while I sold my home back in the small village I'd grown up in Kent. To my total surprise the home and the surrounding two and a half acres of land I'd lived in all my life sold for a whopping million and a half pounds.
With that financial freedom I started to look for somewhere else to live. I don't like big cities; I found it difficult to write in the enclosed space of the city.
I'd lived and worked all my life in a small village set amongst the rolling hill and orchards of the Kent countryside. The only time I'd left it was the three years it took me to get my degree in history at university.
Jenny my agent listened to my tales of frustrations of ever finding just what I wanted and suggested I look farther afield. She'd grown up in Denver and proposed we take a trip to have a look at the towns in the hills above Denver. Take a trip with a beautiful blond, I'd say so. Then she dashed my hopes by saying she was bringing her girlfriend with her on the trip.
We found just what I was looking for an hour to the southwest of Denver. A three-bedroom log cabin set in the hills just above a small lake on the outskirts of a town called Evergreen. I fell in love with it the moment it came into view as we turned the bend in the dirt road. It was a large modern A-frame design and the whole of the end wall was glass with the most amazing views across the lake and the hills beyond.
I told Jenny, "This is the one, and I love it."
She shushed me and then proceeded to demolish the real-estate agent. We signed the deal at a hundred thousand under the asking price. I honestly think if Jenny had spent a couple of more hours the harassed agent would have paid her to take the place off her hands.
Six weeks later I was all moved in and with a working Internet connection I was half way through the editing of my second novel.
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Two more years, two short relationships that failed in part because of the insecurities that Liz had left me with, and three further best sellers brings us to Ian's first book signing In a bookstore in Evergreen, the town near where I lived. Jenny had begged, bullied and blackmailed me into going. I don't like attending my own signings let alone anyone else's. And I never did a signing this close to home, I kind of like my anonymity.
Jenny had disappeared leaving me on my own. I was sitting and watching as Ian grew steadily more confident as he saw the line growing. I stood to leave, texting Jenny to let her know I was going.
I wasn't looking where I was going and I ploughed into someone walking over to join the line with a book in their hands. The book fell to the floor and I bent down and picked it and straightened to look into a pair of the most mesmerising brown eyes I'd ever seen. Long glossy black hair was swept back from her oval face that had the hint of the orient in her features. I couldn't tell what the rest of her looked like other than she was probably in her late twenties or early thirties and she was about five-eight. The rest was hidden under the bulky long coat she was wearing. Had I mentioned it was three weeks before Christmas and it was well below freezing and snowing outside, again probably not!
"I'm so sorry," I said.
I think she was about to ignore me but my British accent held her attention long enough for her to calm down a bit. Then she saw how long the line was and cursed.
"Shit this going to take forever and I have to get back to the office," she moaned.
Her eyes had struck deep into my soul and I saw the perfect opportunity to speak to her. "Give me the book please, I can fix it for you," I said, and then thought to ask whom it's for?
"Ohh, It's for me."
"And you are?"
"I'm Mia."
I hurried off to the desk and caught Ian's eye. "Quick sign this one for me, and make it out to Mia." I thrust the book at him.
He grinned up at me and wrote on the title page.
