LITMIR.BIZ

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about dancing cowboys. She hadn’t been prepared for Jeremy.

      The place had brought her down. One moment she was driving and singing badly with a song on the radio. The next she was on the side of the road kicking her foot in frustration at the red dirt aligning the highway.

      She’d have the magazine do an exposé on the hazards of scenic drives. They should be synonymous with stranded and not seeing another person for miles. The unsuspecting public ought to know.

      One thing was for certain…she never planned to go there again. She could only hope her brother would fare better.

      2

      Oklahoma City, Oklahoma

      “ANYONE EVER TELL you that you have too much sex stuff?” Thad asked.

      Ava Simms looked up to see her brother unpack a wooden replica of Monolob, the penis god from an ancient Slavic tribe.

      “Careful with that,” she told him. “It took me weeks to find someone who could craft that out of the native wood. I’d hate for anything to break off.”

      “By anything, I’m assuming you mean this ginormous penis.”

      Thad examined the lean figure with the gigantic proportions. Male proportions. There was only one protruding object that could break off. Disgusted, he set the figure on the shelf, then turned it so the statue’s large appendage faced the wall. “It’s hard enough to get a date without the womenfolk being exposed and comparing others to this.”

      Ava paused as she broke down another shipping box. “Since when do you have a problem getting a date? Usually there’s a cadre of broken hearts left in your wake.”

      “I’m doing this for other men. We’ve got to stick together when battling forces like these.” Thad flexed his bicep in a symbol of unity.

      Rolling her eyes, Ava tossed the now-flattened box in the pile of cardboard ready to go to the recycler. “For your information, the men of the tribe carved those as they reached puberty. Some would even string smaller replicas around their necks.”

      Thad laughed, and looked pointedly at the backside of the figurine. “You’ll need to do a bit more research on this one, little sister. I can’t imagine any man, from any century, parading penises around. Certainly not around his neck.”

      “Ah, yes, sometimes I forget about the male rules of the early twenty-first century. You know, there’s a whole anthropological study there in itself. ‘No talking in the bathroom,’ ‘eyes straight ahead at the urinal,’ ‘never acknowledge another man’s penis.’ Honestly, it’s like ignoring the elephant in the room. Hey—”

      Groaning, her brother raised a hand. “Don’t even think about asking me to take you back to the men’s room at the airport. It was a mistake. You and your scientific study.”

      “There might be valuable lessons there. Think about what a trained, yet unbiased eye could glean. Maybe true insight into the differences between the sexes.”

      “Yes, the differences are very obvious at a urinal. You could call it the Stall Theory. Sorry, Sis, but I doubt any serious academic publication would pick it up.”

      Ava sighed and returned her attention to the boxes. “Well, that would be no change from what’s going on now. No peer-reviewed journals want to publish my research on the lost sexual customs of the world, either.”

      Thad stooped to pick up another box. “So that’s why you decided to write it up as a book.”

      “That, and the fact my research funding dried up, and it’s too late now to find a teaching job. No university would take me on until fall. And now the publisher wants to help me fine-tune it, make it more attuned to today’s reader. Whatever that means. As if people won’t find the way I’ve written on socio-cultural and kinship patterns attention grabbing.”

      “Yeah, I can see how that wouldn’t be a problem,” he told her drily.

      Ava glanced over to see her brother’s lips twisting into a smile. “Okay, maybe I could do with a little lightening up.”

      “Face it, Sis, you haven’t been living in the real world for…well, at all. Mom and Dad toted you around to every dig since you could carry a shovel. Then you went straight to college and basically never left.”

      “You had those same experiences,” she pointed out.

      “Except I chose to have a life between classes.” Thad placed his hands on her shoulders and she looked into the green eyes so much like her own. “You know what, I think not finding a job is a good thing for you.”

      Ava scoffed, her bangs ruffling. “Apart from the tiny problem of paying for food and utilities.”

      Thad wrapped his arm around her shoulders, drawing her beside his tall frame. Why did he have to inherit all the height genes?

      They’d always been close. Sometimes they were the only two children on a dig site, and they’d grown to read each other’s moods. “Ava, listen. This is your opportunity to fly. Mom and Dad didn’t give you that name for you to sit and mope. Avis, our eagle, now’s your time to soar. So you’re not teaching anthropology to a bunch of freshmen who probably don’t want to sit in your class anyway. That’s a good thing.”

      “I just thought I’d always teach and lecture. Share the love of traditions and learning of other cultures to fresh, new young minds.”

      Another huge disappointment in the daughter department. She’d chosen to go for anthropology rather than follow her parent’s path and continue their research in mythology and the ancient Greek cultures. They’d have loved nothing better than to always have her by their side at the digs in Greece—the magical place where her parents fell in love.

      She had no doubt if she’d pursued archeology she would have found half a dozen jobs at any major university across the country. Her last name alone would guarantee it.

      But she didn’t want to rely on that last name even on such short notice.

      So she didn’t have a job. She didn’t have anything published impressive enough to get her a job in her chosen field.

      So what? She did have a prospect. In two days, Miriam Cole from Cole Publishing would be here to “help” her explore the concepts best suited for her book. Writing her book with a little bit of help wasn’t exactly how she’d planned to earn a paycheck…but she’d adapt. Wasn’t that one of the cornerstones of her teaching anyway? How cultures, people, throughout time changed to meet the problems that faced them?

      She could be flexible. She’d show Miriam just how interesting ancient dead cultures and their sexual habits could be. Show her that they were relevant to the twenty-first century woman.

      “That’s it,” she said, suddenly ready to clear the moving distraction out of her way. She had a stage to set for the head of Cole Publishing.

      “What’s it?” Thad asked.

      Determination filled her, and Ava squared her shoulders. “I’m going to demonstrate that this book can be exciting. That people will want to read it. I’m going to knock her socks off. When Miriam Cole gets here, I’ll greet her in the ceremonial wedding attire of the Wayterian people.”

      Thad lost his smile. “Isn’t that basically just pa—”

      Ava smiled. “Exactly.”

      IAN CIRCLED AROUND THE one-way streets of downtown Oklahoma City for a third time, looking for a place to park. Why couldn’t the doc live in a normal place, not some converted old warehouse? Like maybe some place that didn’t need to be validated.

      For that matter, why’d she have to live in flyover country anyway? At least he’d had no layovers. He estimated he’d lost two years of quality life just sitting in a plane due to a lack of direct flights. The skills paid off this time. With no connections, he had some uninterrupted

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