Love Bytes gives a warm welcome to author Ashavan Doyon joining us today to talk about his new release : Fortune’s Price part two of the Stouten Duet.
Welcome Ashavan 🙂
Hi everyone! My name is Ashavan Doyon, and I’m so pleased to finally have Fortune’s Price, book two of the Stouten Duet series, out into the world! Thank you so much to Dani and the Love Bytes team for this opportunity to talk about my new book!
While the Stouten Duet can be read on its own, it really serves as a post-read frame for the Sam’s Café Romances series: one book acting as a prequel, and another that wraps things up. The romances are with new characters of course. Fortune’s Pawn brought the story of Brian’s younger brother, Brandon, in a story that shows us the enigmatic chessmaster before his accident. Fortune’s Price deals with Brice, the older brother, and takes place about a year after The Rodeo Knight, the final book of the Sam’s Café Romances, ends.
I’d built up Brian and his very old-fashioned, rich family as this nebulous thing in the background, but when I introduced Brandon in The Rodeo Knight, I realized I opened a can of worms that needed exploring. Three gay brothers who all dealt with that oppressive secrecy in totally different ways? It begged for explanation.
The chessmaster, Brian, had walked away. What did Brandon do? (we find out in Fortune’s Pawn, the first book of the duet!) What did the older brother, always an enforcer figure, do? Could his story be more interesting?
So, in Fortune’s Price we explore that story, and learn that Brice dealt with the situation with an immense gamble and is really very much far more than he appears. I love that Brice dealt with his situation in a way that surprised me, and I hope that going with that as a writer paid off. For me it did. I love the bits with his son, and the struggles in guiding his son in a relationship when Brice knows he’s not a good role model for relationships. I love the exploration of Tony, and I think that is a pretty unexpected turn too, especially when we get to Carter, who is for sure the breakout character in the story for me.
Fortune’s Price closes out the focus on Sam’s Café and on Brian’s family, and I don’t know that I’ll write any more. Maybe. There’s still stories to be told about Corbin (the son) and perhaps about Cherry Street, but if I do, they won’t come right away.
In the meantime, I hope readers find this conclusion a satisfying one.
Fortune’s Price
Stouten Duet Book II By Ashavan Doyon
Blurb:
Groomed for high society from the time he was an infant, Brice Stouten has always known exactly what he wanted and done whatever he needed to get it. Trusted with the keys to the family fortune, Brice runs a tight ship, all business, all the time. It’s no surprise that his wife is the same way. Everything was perfect. Until his wife serves him with the divorce papers he’s known for two decades were coming—the agreed end of their quiet financial arrangement.
Anthony Burns fell in love at twenty. Driving for the Stouten family had been a great gig, and the young master Stouten as passionate as he was business savvy. But family always came first. Losing that love left a hole Anthony could never fill. But when Brice shows up at his doorstep, is Anthony ready to forgive two decades of heartbreak and take the chance they can rekindle that lost love?
This story takes place in the same universe as the Sam’s Cafe Romances, with Fortune’s Price taking place about a year following The Rodeo Knight.
Anthony’s office was small—a desk, a phone, and a computer. A few chairs so he could speak with clients. Pictures on the walls, mostly of drivers with happy celebrity clients who’d been willing to lend that little bit of voice, with the promise that it’d never go further than the wall of his office.
He groaned as he sat down, powering up the computer automatically. Better to see any cancellations now than to find them in the morning when his drivers were halfway to the destination. He scribbled notes on the pad that covered his desk.
It was nearly three in the morning, so when his personal line rang, he almost jumped out of the chair.
That was for emergencies. Deaths of drivers. His sister. No one had the number. Even knowing that, he still looked at the screen before he answered.
Byron Aimee Stouten.
He knew it was irrational, but his immediate desire was to throw the phone out the window. But every phone at every Stouten residence listed that name. It might be Brandon. Last time it had been Brandon. His heart seized a little in his chest. Something could have happened to Brice.
He slid his finger across the screen.
“Yeah.”
“Tony?”
Empires would rise and fall before he forgot that voice. Anthony stood, chair teetering behind him. “How did you get this number?”
“Oh, God. It’s really you. Tony. I….”
That’s when he caught it. There was a slur. Brice Stouten had suffered through elocution lessons. He’d never slurred a word in his life except when he was drunk off his ass. Well, maybe when his mouth was otherwise occupied. Slowly, Anthony sat back down. “It’s been a long time.”
“I haven’t done this in years.”
Definitely drunk. Just getting started too. Anthony propped an elbow on the table and held his forehead in his hand. “Not my job to talk you through this anymore. You got married, remember.”
“Divorced.” That one was slurred enough to make Anthony wonder whether Brice had been drinking more than he’d thought. “Tony….”
Brice Stouten hadn’t called him in twenty years. They’d only even seen each other once, five years ago, when Brice’s younger brother had asked Anthony’s help ensuring a secret relationship stay secret. Anthony hadn’t wanted to see what happened to him happen to anyone else. He’d put himself through hell to see Brice again.
Now Brice was calling him.
“She finally figure out you’re an asshole?”
“Best friend. We’d agreed. Twenty years.” Brice laughed hysterically. “Time’s up!”
Wait. What?
Anthony looked at his notes. There was nothing he couldn’t forward to dispatch. “You have a driver you can trust not to report to the old man?” Are you really doing this?
The car could have come out of his own garage. That shouldn’t have been a surprise. He’d spent years driving cars just like it. The soul of luxury. He’d based his whole business on the concept. Sliding smoothly to a stop, a smartly dressed young woman got out and came around to the passenger side.
She glanced apologetically at Anthony. “He’s a bit drunk, but he insisted.” She opened the door, and Brice pulled himself out, shrugging away from her offered help and pulling at his jacket. He was still dressed in a suit, though Brice had always tended to live in his suits. He stumbled and caught himself on the door. Then he saw Anthony. He fell forward and Anthony caught him. Brice laughed, but it quickly changed to tears.
“I have no idea what’s come over him. He’s been weird all day.” The woman shook her head. “Do you need me to wait?”
“I need you to return to the estate and forget you came here. If anything happens, and you worry, call Brandon Stouten first and give him the address you came to.”
“Sir?”
“That’s all, miss.” His tone left no doubt that it was a dismissal.
He waited for the car to leave, holding Brice up, but being careful not to embrace him. Brice, for his part, was worse than he’d been on the phone. Either the liquor had finally hit, or he’d emptied the minibar on the drive. Perhaps both. With Brice alternating between cackling laughter and tears, Anthony half-carried him up the steps and into the modest home.
The coffee was already brewed. Anthony started him drinking it as soon as he could get Brice seated straight. It took three cups for Brice to do more than mumble incoherently.
Anthony had never known Brice to be one to hurl, but he kept the bucket in reach just in case. He brewed more coffee. He stayed enough out of reach not to be smothered in an embrace—it was a danger.
When Brice had sobered enough to talk, Anthony knew. Brice’s hands trembled as he held the coffee cup, and he held it on his own. He was still in his suit, but Anthony had stripped down to an A-shirt, in case hurling became a danger.
He poured himself the last of the coffee, put a final pot on, and sat across from Brice.
Brice was plastered with sweat. The suit was going to need a good dry cleaning. In the old days that was part of Anthony’s routine. He wondered if the young woman who had driven Brice here did it now. Slowly, deliberately, he sipped his coffee and waited.
“I’m usually good at not getting drunk,” Brice said finally.
“I remember.”
Brice held the mug by both sides, sipped from it gently, and set it on the coffee table. “Maybe it’s okay. Don’t get divorced every day, right?”
Anthony raised an eyebrow. “So, what happened?”
Ashavan Doyon spends his days working at the publications and communications office at a liberal arts college. During lunch, evenings, and when he can escape the grasp of his husband on weekends, he writes, pounding out words day after day in hopes that his ancient typewriter-trained fingers won’t destroy his computer. Ashavan is an avid science fiction and fantasy fan and prefers to write while listening to music that fits the mood of his current story. He has no children, having opted instead for the companionship of puppies. While he misses his cherished pugs, his current companion is a lovable beagle puppy, who reminds him every day that there are huge differences in caring for elder pugs and energetic beagle pups. A young pug puppy, a new addition during the pandemic, rounds out the menagerie. A Texan by birth, he currently lives in New England, and frequently complains of the weather.
Ashavan went to school at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, getting his degree in Russian and East European Studies, with a focus in language and literature. He has two incomplete manuscripts from college that he goes back compulsively to fiddle with every so often, but is still not happy with either of them. He still loves fantasy and science fiction and reads constantly in the moments between writing stories.
Author website
