A Different Kind of Forever - By Dee Ernst Page 0,96

are roughly a gazillion groups out there related to the romance business, and they all love to have conferences and conventions, and prizes are awarded for everything from best plot, pluckiest heroine, or most frequent and imaginative use of the word “cock”. I have a number of these awards. Considering what these awards represent, you’d think they’d be shaped like a giant, erect penises, or maybe upright and breathtakingly full breasts. Instead, they are very abstract in nature, and tend to look like falling stars, soaring comets, or something a dog may have thrown up.

Speaking of dogs, and throwing up, that morning as the girls were heading out the back door, I heard Miranda mutter, then, moments later, Jessica growl. Lauren called over her shoulder about something gross on the floor. I wasn’t paying a lot of attention because I had my head down, trying to dig the keys out of the bottom of my purse. Then I stepped in something. It was soft and made a squishy kind of sound. I closed my eyes and sighed. Fred had left me another treasure.

My Golden Retriever is named Fred, after Fred Astaire, because I watched…wait, you already know that. Golden Retrievers are America’s favorite pet because they are beautiful, loyal and good-natured. Fred is beautiful, loyal, etc., but he also has a brain the size of a dried lima bean and is constantly eating the girls’ underwear and then throwing them up all over my beautiful hardwood floors so I could then step on them and flatten them out so they looked like the Best Regency Romance Award I won in 1995.

I returned from driving the girls to school, cleaned up the Fred mess and called Ben. I’m on a first-name, as well as know-all-his-kids-name, basis with my plumber, Ben Cutler. We first met when one of my three then-interchangeable daughters, all toddling and wreaking havoc, flushed several socks down the toilet, causing the entire sewage system of Westfield to back up into my downstairs powder room. Since then, he’s attended to several emergencies, as well as routine maintenance and upgrading activities. He’s charming, polite, and always apologetic when handing me the bill. He also has a network of other highly paid professionals listed in his little black book, so when plaster/wiring/flooring needs to be replaced as a result of his work, he just calls up a buddy and takes care of it for me. Brian had always maintained that there probably was a kick-back in there someplace, but I try not to think about it. Oh, and did I mention that Ben is probably one of the five most beautiful men on the planet? He’s a true inspiration.

In Down To Desire, he was the mysterious and charismatic Devlin Montry, Earl of Northumberland. In Wednesday’s Lover, he was Philip Waters, the conflicted agent of the mysterious and dangerous Lord Buckingham. In Passion’s Eve, he was Sir Jon Allenby, wrongly convicted of treason and on the run from the King’s vengeful agents. Whenever I’m writing, I spend a lot of time thinking about Ben, usually in various states of undress. To be truthful, I spend a lot of time thinking about Ben even when I’m not writing. Then it becomes really distracting because, doing what I do for as long as I’ve been doing it, I tend to think of him in a romantic and historic context.

Usually I get his machine, so I was pleasantly surprised when he answered his phone. Even his voice is delicious, very deep, with the hint of a southern drawl.

“Ben, it’s Mona, your favorite customer.”

He grabbed her by the shoulders and shook her roughly. ‘You little fool,’ he said, his eyes glittering dangerously. ‘Don’t you know what you mean to me? Do you really think I’ve been keeping away from you because I want to?’ He pulled her close, his lips a breath away from her own. ‘Don’t you know that I’m afraid of what I’ll do if I’m alone with you?’

“Is it the downstairs toilet again?” Ben asked.

“No. The tub in the girls’ bathroom puked up some rust earlier.”

“Ah. Puking rust.” He chuckled. “There’s a lot of that going around. I can come by after lunch, if you’ll be home.”

“Yep. I’ll be here. See you later.”

I hung up the phone and was drinking my fourth cup of coffee, seriously thinking about getting some writing done, when Brian came through the kitchen door. Brian is an accountant. He’s actually head of a department full of lots of