Midnight Musicals and Coffee Ice Cream by Layla Dorine
An escort and his client…could it ever be more than a business transaction.
Midnight Musicals and Coffee Ice Cream Blurb
Takashi never imagined that a simple call to an escort service would result in meeting Zander. What started out as a date to the winter gala at his office, morphed into a series of paid dates that offer him several unique opportunities to get to know the handsome, enigmatic escort.
Zander hates feeling like an ornament. After four years he’s ready for a new occupation. Unfortunately, he isn’t skilled enough for any job that would pay him the money he needs to make to support himself and his family. So, he stays with Mateo’s agency and keeps on taking clients, refusing to call them dates because that’s too personal.
Until Takashi.
Now their both trying to make the best of the brief moments they have together, blurring the lines more and more with every passing night. Takashi wants more, Zander wants to give it to him, but only after he gets the rest of his life worked out. Only problem is, he has no idea how.
Buy Links
US Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Midnight-Musicals-Coffee-Ice-Cream-ebook/dp/B07CZ4BQ1D
UK Amazon: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Midnight-Musicals-Coffee-Ice-Cream-ebook/dp/B07CZ4BQ1D
JP Amazon: https://www.amazon.co.jp/Midnight-Musicals-Coffee-Ice-Cream-ebook/dp/B07CZ4BQ1D
CA Amazon: https://www.amazon.ca/Midnight-Musicals-Coffee-Ice-Cream-ebook/dp/B07CZ4BQ1D
AU Amazon: https://www.amazon.com.au/Midnight-Musicals-Coffee-Ice-Cream-ebook/dp/B07CZ4BQ1D
About the Author
LAYLA DORINE lives among the sprawling prairies of Midwestern America, in a house with more cats than people. She loves hiking, fishing, swimming, martial arts, camping out, photography, cooking, and dabbling with several artistic mediums. In addition, she loves to travel and visit museums, historic, and haunted places.
Layla got hooked on writing as a child, starting with poetry and then branching out, and she hasn’t stopped writing since. Hard times, troubled times, the lives of her characters are never easy, but then what life is? The story is in the struggle, the journey, the triumphs and the falls. She writes about artists, musicians, loners, drifters, dreamers, hippies, bikers, truckers, hunters and all the other folks that she’s met and fallen in love with over the years. Sometimes she writes urban romance and sometimes its aliens crash landing near a roadside bar. When she isn’t writing, or wandering somewhere outdoors, she can often be found curled up with a good book and a kitty on her lap.
Layla Dorine can be found at:
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Author Website: layladorine13.wix.com/layladorineauthor
Author on Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/9814124.Layla_Dorine
Midnight Musicals Excerpt #3
Rolling on his back, Corban brushed his shaggy blond hair from his eyes and stretched, eyes catching on the remnants of his ‘Zander’ persona draped carefully over the back of his chair. He’d take it to the drycleaner later, when he was running the rest of his errands. This time of year, there’d be several other formal events to attend and he only had four carefully cobbled together outfits to mix and match between. The clock on the end table said eight forty-three, shit, he’d have happily slept for another hour or two. A quick glance at Ainsley and he knew she’d been up for hours. Her hands were already dye stained and there was a little purple smudge on her cheek. It matched the streaks in her mahogany brown hair, but Corban knew those were deliberate. Her golden eyes were framed by red reading glasses that took up half of her face, the wide, circular lens, giving her a slightly owl-like appearance. It was classic Ainsley, ‘funky nerd’ perfect for her workshop or anywhere else she might care to wander. Right now, though, the look she was giving him was part concern and part frustration and he could practically feel another lecture coming on.
“Come on, Ains, not this morning, okay? I’m careful, you know that. It’s been four years already and nothing has ever happened.”
“It doesn’t mean nothing ever will.”
Corban glanced over at the window to see that the sky was a bright blue, speckled with clouds and the sun was shining unobstructed today. Didn’t mean it wouldn’t rain later but at least for now, it was absolutely beautiful. Not that he was ready to rise and greet it. Groaning, he grabbed his pillow from Ainsley’s lap and yanked it back over his head, only to have Ainsley snatch it away and smack him with it.
“Really?” he grumbled.
She flopped over backwards and rested her head on his chest, her fingers splayed over his heart. “You’re my best friend. I don’t know what I’d do if someone hurt you.”
Sighing, he stroked the soft, silky strands of her hair. “Beat them with sparkly fabric until they were choking on glitter, then stab them with those red hooker heels you have tucked away in the back of your closet.”
Giggling, she smacked a hand across his abs and hugged him tighter, holding her body along his side. “You better believe it.”
He slung an arm over her and continued playing with her hair, reminded of the cat he’d had for a brief time as a child. He’d loved falling asleep to Jinxx purring on his pillow. Now he lay there, eyes drifting closed as he tried to sink back into sleep again, wishing Ainsley could purr too.
“So, what was it like?”
Her question startled him a little, drawing him away from the soft void that had been gently pulling him under. “Hmmm?”
“The gala, come on, dish on all the details. I know there were a lot of fancy dresses. What did they look like? You have to describe them for me. How was the Champagne? Was it the good stuff, or that cheap crap that gives a too fast buzz and a hell of a hangover? Were there people making out in the shadows? And secret trysts in dark corners? How about the food, was it any good?”
“All of the above and a ton of amazing hors d’oeuvres. The champagne was top shelf, but I only had one, as always. The dresses were ordinary, I hate to say. There were very few outfits that stood out. Takashi’s did though, utterly unique and looked like it was made for him. There was a huge fountain, completely frozen in the lobby, it was fuckin’ surreal. There was a koi pond too, the fish were huge, and beautiful. I could have sat there for hours and watched them.”
“It never ceases to amaze me how rich people spend their money,” she muttered, skimming her fingertips along his side until he shivered and began to laugh.
“It was nice though. I mean, no one was loud, and Takashi was a very good dancer. I only saw one couple making out in the shadows, and they left together so I’m pretty sure it wasn’t a secret tryst or anything.”
“Think he’ll be one of your regulars?”
“I hope so, but I wouldn’t count on it. He wasn’t like most of my other clients.”
“Really?”
She was playing with his hair now, and he sighed, relaxing even more. If it wasn’t for Ainsley he wouldn’t know what it felt like to be cuddled and hugged. While some might infer something completely different from how tactile they were with one another, they both knew there would never be anything between them but a deep, and long-standing friendship.
“Yeah, it, I expected him to be older, in his fifties, you know how rare it is for my clients to be younger than that, but Takashi was, well he really looked young, like no way was he in his forties yet.”
“Uggg, that’s still old enough. I could never let someone our parents ages paw at me, let alone touch me with their wrinkly old cock.”
“Come on, Ains, it ain’t like that and you know it. The way my dating record has been, I’ll die a virgin.”
“That’s because you stubbornly insist on waiting for feelings. Blech.”
He chuckled, and stroked her arm, encountering a smudge of green glitter paint. “Is it wrong to want to be loved?”
“No, but it is wrong to waste your youth waiting for something as temporary as love.”
“I wouldn’t know.”
“Awe, honey, I love you, and that will never be temporary. The rest of the world out there, can fuck right the hell off. Fuck those people.”
“Believe me, I’d like to,” he grumbled.
“Then do it,” she said, far too excited for how early it was. “I’ll help you.”
“Um, Ains, I’m pretty sure you’re lacking one basic piece of equipment for that.”
“I mean by being your wingman and helping you find a hot stud of a bear to take care of that little issue for you. Unless you want me to go get a strap-on and see if I can’t rock your world.”
He shuddered, grimacing at the images that conjured up. “God, Ains, don’t even joke like that. How awkward would that be?”
“Probably about as awkward as the time I kissed you.”
“Please don’t remind me about that.”
Guest Post #2
Greetings and thank you so much for hosting me and my new release Midnight Musicals and Coffee Ice Cream. One of the things that I really wanted to explore in telling Takashi’s story was the concept of time. Its easy to get so involved in something you loose track of a day. As a book lover this happens to me all the time, be it while I’m reading or while writing. I get lost in photography as well, and wandering museums, fossil hunting and almost everything else I love. But what happens when someone comes to love their work above just about everything else in their life?
With Takashi I had the opportunity to explore that. He’s a workaholic, one of the first people in and last people out of the building each night, takes his work home with him, has an almost non-existent social life made worse by the fact that in the months leading up to the story’s beginning he’s slowly been forgetting to make time for family and friends.
It’s not that he’s uncaring or disinterested in them, its simply that he’s good at what he does and rather enjoys it too, and because his last relationship ended so badly, he decided that hurling himself headlong into work would be better than actually dealing with it and trying again.
One of the saving graces of the character is his love of plays, musicals and all things theater, which sometimes is the only break he gets from his work, be it to attend in person or to sit back and indulge in a homemade pizza and video.
Pairing him with Zander helped pull back some of his layers. I enjoyed learning about some of the other things he enjoyed and watching him interact outside an office setting and I hope as readers, you will enjoy these things too and come to view him as a character with depth and substance despite his outward reservations.
Through the side characters he comes in contact with, I also looked to show different concepts of time. From his best friend, who is slowly dialing back his own work hours to make time for family, to his highly driven and creative fashion designer sister who has also come to realize that there are things to be enjoyed outside of the workroom. Add in Zander’s personal timeline for making changes in his life, and Ainsley’s ability to project plan and create in a home working environment while still taking time out to enjoy herself, and it became an interesting journey into what people do with the time they have and how they view time in the first place.
