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Excerpt From "Dream Guy"
A Warner Forever Release
February 2005
ISBN: 0-446-61455-6
© 2005 Candy Halliday All Rights reserved
Annie Long could trace her problems with men back to her first high school dance. Billy Ray Smith begged her to put her sweet lips where her sweet lips didn’t want to go. Annie gagged at the thought, and vomited bright red punch all over the white leather interior of his rich daddy’s brand new Cadillac.
Even for a naïve sixteen-year-old with a weak stomach, that should have been Annie’s first clue that more often than not relationships basically do suck. But instead of heeding that warning, Annie bravely continued lily pad hopping her way through life, fully convinced she would eventually find a prince among the usual suspects milling around in society’s frog-filled pond.
Hop. Hop. Hop.
Zip past successful entrepreneur Ben, who claimed he was a leg man instead of a boob man -- Annie’s mile-long legs really were her best feature. Dirty liar Ben dumped her at twenty-two for a waitress from Hooters with fake boobs the size of Annie’s beloved state of Georgia.
Zoom past independent moviemaker Dan, whom Annie met at the popular Atlanta Film Festival when she was twenty-four. Slightly perverted Dan dumped Annie when she refused to star in his upcoming documentary Women Making Love to Women.
And skip past handsome pharmaceutical salesman Ron altogether. Amazingly, idiot Ron somehow got it into his hypochondria-impaired mind that some evasive mineral in Annie’s twenty-six-year-old saliva was responsible for his excruciating migraine headaches.
It wasn’t until promising young advertising executive Dave came along when she was twenty-nine that Annie thought she’d finally found her Mr. Potential. Dave claimed he loved Annie’s small perky breasts just as much as he loved her long silky legs. He had no apparent lesbian sex fantasies as far as she could tell. And he didn’t even mind swapping saliva on a regular basis.
Dave, in fact, was the reason Annie was humming happily to herself during Thank-God-It’s-Friday early-morning rush hour. Black lace teddy. Candles galore. Dom Perinon and Russian caviar. She ticked the items off in her mind, ignoring the downtown Atlanta traffic that was a total bitch as usual.
Music? The red light caught her, giving her a minute to ponder. Dave was a huge jazz fan, Annie knew that. But jazz really didn’t fit the mood she had in mind. She’d have to give it more thought when she reached her office. Go with something more Motown maybe. Something slow and sexy.
A pushy SUV the size of a tank cut her off, which usually catapulted Annie close to the road-rage edge. She didn’t even honk her horn. Clean sheets. Fresh towels. The Hilfiger terry cloth robe as a surprise gift for Dave. She smiled. He would complain she was spoiling him, of course. Tell her she shouldn’t spend her hard-earned money on him. But he’d love it. She knew he would.