Choice , livre ebook

Archway Publishing - Eliza Grace Howard

Découvre YouScribe en t'inscrivant gratuitement

Je m'inscris

Obtenez un accès à la bibliothèque pour le consulter en ligne
En savoir plus

140 pages

English

Vous pourrez modifier la taille du texte de cet ouvrage

Obtenez un accès à la bibliothèque pour le consulter en ligne
En savoir plus

A propos
Informations
Extrait

Description

Donna is an elementary teacher, forced into an unsavory lifestyle by her husband, and now must find a way to escape the past and move forward with a new love.

Donna Porter is a married first grade teacher with a domineering husband, Stanley. Against her wishes, he forces her into the swinger lifestyle. Donna is miserable with this arrangement but feels powerless to say no to her husband’s desires. Following an abusive encounter, she has no choice but to flee.

Away from her husband and in the process of getting a divorce, Donna begins a relationship with Quinn Cavanaugh, the father of one her students. Quinn is virile, charismatic, and very appealing. He shows her the love and respect that’s missing from her marriage, but they can’t ride off into the sunset with a happily ever after just yet.

Stanley threatens that he will reveal details that could jeopardize Donna’s career and reputation in their small, conservative Southern town. The dread hanging over her head complicates Donna’s relationship with Quinn. Can she get through this divorce unscathed, and if so, can Quinn protect her from the past?

Sujets

Women

Fiction

Informations

Publié par	Archway Publishing
Date de parution	18 janvier 2023
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9781665735001
Langue	English

Informations légales : prix de location à la page 0,0200€. Cette information est donnée uniquement à titre indicatif conformément à la législation en vigueur.

Extrait

Choice

ELIZA GRACE HOWARD

Copyright © 2023 Eliza Grace Howard.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the author except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, names, incidents, organizations, and dialogue in this novel are either the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

Archway Publishing
1663 Liberty Drive
Bloomington, IN 47403
www.archwaypublishing.com
844-669-3957

Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Getty Images are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.
Certain stock imagery © Getty Images.

ISBN: 978-1-6657-3499-8 (sc)
ISBN: 978-1-6657-3501-8 (hc)
ISBN: 978-1-6657-3500-1 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2022922971

Archway Publishing rev. date: 01/17/2023
Contents
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-one
Chapter Twenty-two
Chapter Twenty-three
Chapter Twenty-four
Chapter Twenty-five
Chapter Twenty-six
Chapter Twenty-seven
Chapter Twenty-eight
Chapter Twenty-nine
Chapter Thirty
Glitter
Chapter One
C hapter One
They had just finished making love on the blanket that Donna had spread out on the floor in front of the fireplace. Now the fire had died down to mostly red-coal-encrusted logs, and it was putting out a nice amount of heat, even though there were no flames licking upward anymore. They lay in the semidarkness of their living room, the only light coming from the waning firelight.
Donna Porter smiled against her husband’s bare shoulder, feeling a rare moment of contentment. “That was nice,” she said softly.
“Umm-hum,” Stanley murmured, running a hand down her flank. “You know what would have made it even better though?”
“What’s that?” she asked lazily.
“If there had been another couple lying here beside us, doing the same thing we were.”
Donna’s head popped up. “What? What did you say?”
Stanley put his hand on the back of her head, urging it back down against him.
She resisted, her mind reeling. What had he said? She cringed—she’d tried so hard to please him, with the romantic setting, making a pallet in the firelit room. What more could she have done?
“Relax,” he said soothingly. “I was just thinking how much more exciting it would have been if there had been another couple in here with us, having sex like we were. Don’t you think so?”
Donna pulled away from under his arm and sat up. She stared at him in the firelight. “Where in the world did you come up with an idea like that?”
“Oh, I just thought something like that might add a little bit of spice to our relationship. Make things a little more exciting.”
“You mean you don’t think it’s exciting enough anymore, just making love to me?” she asked, her voice quivering with hurt.
He sat up. “Oh, c’mon, Donna,” he said in a flat voice. “You know that’s not what I meant. Don’t be such a prude. Don’t you ever fantasize about stuff like that?”
“No.” She reached up for her bathrobe, which she had discarded behind them on the sofa earlier. “I don’t think about anybody but you while we’re making love. Are you saying that you do?”
“Well, sure. Sometimes.”
Donna swallowed hard. “Do you think that I’m not enough to satisfy you? That you need to imagine that I’m somebody else?” She hated the way her voice sounded—so plaintive and needy. She pulled her robe tightly around her and knotted the belt around her waist, a spark of anger beginning to form.
“No, no,” he said. “I’m just saying that it would make it even better between us if we did something like that to make things more exciting.”
“And just who would this fantasy couple of yours be? Where do you think you’d find somebody who would want to have sex in the same room with us?” she asked coldly, leaning back against the sofa and hugging her arms around her knees.
“Oh, I don’t know.” He gave a short derisive laugh. “You’d be too hung up to do it—even if I did find someone. I know you’d never go along with anything like that.”
“You’re right about that!”
He shook his head. “Yeah, I know.” He got to his feet. “Guess I’ll just go on to bed. Make sure the fire screen’s closed before you come to bed, OK?” He took a couple of steps and then stopped. He kneeled back down beside her and put a hand on her rigid shoulder. “Look, honey, I didn’t mean to hurt your feelings. Just give what I said some thought, will you? About us making things more exciting, I mean.”
When she did not immediately respond, he got to his feet again, turned, and walked down the hallway toward their bedroom, leaving her sitting on the floor in front of the dying fire.
Donna felt the tears crawling down her face as she stared blindly at the glowing embers. She felt so alone, so lonely. This marriage had seemed so right, such a perfect answer when her parents wanted to make their move to Florida and retirement, leaving her here with a brand-new job and a signed teaching contract. She’d tried so hard to make a perfect marriage, but it seemed like the harder she tried, the more she failed to meet his expectations—and the more he criticized and told her at length how stupid and inept she was. She had read all the magazine articles about how to please your man and how to make your marriage fun, but nothing seemed to work. He was never happy. Look at tonight. Finally, she rose to her feet, gathered up and folded the blanket, and walked slowly back to their bedroom.
Stanley was stretched out under the covers in bed, already snoring softly.
Shoulders hunched, she quietly went into the adjoining bathroom and brushed her teeth. She slipped her long nightgown over her head, crossed the room, and slid under the covers on her side of the king-size bed beside her sleeping husband. She lay there, a feeling of heaviness pressing on her chest, trying not to cry, until she fell into a fitful sleep.
The alarm jolted her awake in what seemed like only minutes. She reluctantly left her warm nest under the covers, belted her robe over her nightgown, and headed down the hallway to the kitchen. Stanley always demanded that she make a big, hearty breakfast to begin their day, and this was going to be an especially long one. After her day of teaching her class of first graders, there was a parent-teacher meeting scheduled for seven o’clock, followed by one-on-one meetings in her classroom with any of the parents who wanted to talk to their little one’s teacher.
“Can you get dinner out tonight?” she asked Stanley as he worked on his plate of sausage patties, grits, and eggs over easy.
He simply looked at her, raising his eyebrows in silence.
“I have a parent-teacher meeting this evening after school.”
“So what are you doing between four o’clock when school lets out and when the meeting starts?”
“I was going to stay at school and catch up on some of my paperwork.” She heard the defensive note in her voice.
“Well, I get off work at six tonight. Why don’t you come on home after school lets out, fix something to eat, and leave it here in the oven? That way, I can eat when I get home, and you can go on back to school after you cook and be at your meeting.”
Donna sighed. “OK, I guess I can do that.” There goes my time to do my paperwork , she thought.
He extended his coffee cup toward her.
Silently, she got up, poured him a refill, and returned to her scrambled egg and toast.
Stanley finished his meal and pushed back from his seat. “Well, I guess I’ll see you when you get home tonight after your parent-teacher thing, then,” he said as he headed back toward the bedroom to shower and dress.
“I guess so,” Donna replied to the empty room. She drained her own coffee and gathered up their dirty dishes. Rinsing them and putting them into the dishwasher, she pulled a package of frozen hamburger out of the freezer side of the refrigerator and left it in the sink to thaw. She returned to the bedroom and quickly dressed. The sound of the shower told her Stanley was still in the bathroom. Gathering up her purse and car keys, she left for the elementary school to begin her long day.

Donna sneaked a surreptitious look at her watch as little Danny White and his mother left her classroom and little Gina Thompson and her mother, Linda, entered.
Linda Thompson took a moment to look around at the colorful bulletin boards, decorated with cutout balloons and Donna’s first graders’ artwork.
Donna had worked so hard on the boards to make the room appear cheerful and stimulating. She smiled as they approached her desk and the two empty chairs she had placed beside it. “Hello, Gina,” she said to the little girl. “Is this your mother?”
Gina nodded, her light brown curls bobbing.
“G