“I already did.”
“Good girl.”
Tessa smiled. Her eyes glistened. “I don’t know how to thank you. If there’s anything I can do for you, anything at all . . . ”
Teddy considered. “Well, in the next movie we do together, could you stop upstaging me so damn much?”
Tessa laughed, and batted at him playfully.
AUTHOR’S NOTE
I am happy to hear from readers, but you should know that if you write to me in care of my publisher, three to six months will pass before I receive your letter, and when it finally arrives it will be one among many, and I will not be able to reply.
However, if you have access to the Internet, you may visit my website at www.stuartwoods.com, where there is a button for sending me e-mail. So far, I have been able to reply to all my e-mail, and I will continue to try to do so.
If you send me an e-mail and do not receive a reply, it is probably because you are among an alarming number of people who have entered their e-mail address incorrectly in their mail software. I have many of my replies returned as undeliverable.
Remember: e-mail, reply; snail mail, no reply.
When you e-mail, please do not send attachments, as I never open them. They can take twenty minutes to download, and they often contain viruses.
Please do not place me on your mailing lists for funny stories, prayers, political causes, charitable fund-raising, petitions, or sentimental claptrap. I get enough of that from people I already know. Generally speaking, when I get e-mail addressed to a large number of people, I immediately delete it without reading it.
Please do not send me your ideas for a book, as I have a policy of writing only what I myself invent. If you send me story ideas, I will immediately delete them without reading them. If you have a good idea for a book, write it yourself, but I will not be able to advise you on how to get it published. Buy a copy of Writer’s Market at any bookstore; that will tell you how.
Anyone with a request concerning events or appearances may e-mail it to me or send it to: Publicity Department, Penguin Random House LLC, 375 Hudson Street, New York, NY 10014.
Those ambitious folk who wish to buy film, dramatic, or television rights to my books should contact Matthew Snyder, Creative Artists Agency, 9830 Wilshire Boulevard, Beverly Hills, CA 98212-1825.
Those who wish to make offers for rights of a literary nature should contact Anne Sibbald, Janklow & Nesbit, 445 Park Avenue, New York, NY 10022. (Note: This is not an invitation for you to send her your manuscript or to solicit her to be your agent.)
If you want to know if I will be signing books in your city, please visit my website, www.stuartwoods.com, where the tour schedule will be published a month or so in advance. If you wish me to do a book signing in your locality, ask your favorite bookseller to contact his Penguin representative or the Penguin publicity department with the request.
If you find typographical or editorial errors in my book and feel an irresistible urge to tell someone, please write to Sara Minnich at Penguin’s address above. Do not e-mail your discoveries to me, as I will already have learned about them from others.
A list of my published works appears in the front of this book and on my website. All the novels are still in print in paperback and can be found at or ordered from any bookstore. If you wish to obtain hardcover copies of earlier novels or of the two nonfiction books, a good used-book store or one of the online bookstores can help you find them. Otherwise, you will have to go to a great many garage sales.
Keep reading for an exciting excerpt of the latest Stone Barrington novel,
DESPERATE MEASURES
1
The early morning conversation had taken place in bed in London, after drinking brandy with guests until the wee hours. So if Stone had once remembered what was said, he had now forgotten it.
He struggled to put it together in his mind during their flight from his house, Windward Hall, in England, back to Teterboro, but he had failed. There wasn’t much conversation on the airplane, but he put that down to Kelly’s hangover, which must have been as monumental as his, since she had matched him drink for drink. Once they were back at his house in New York, they had dinner and went to bed early.
He woke at seven the following morning, a preordered breakfast on a tray resting on his belly. There were empty dishes on her bed and sounds of packing from her dressing room. His eggs were cold, but he ate them anyway, to settle his stomach.
Kelly came out of the dressing room naked, with predictable results. When they were spent, she stood up.
“I told you yesterday that I’d gotten a chopper ride back to Langley today, didn’t I?”
Of course she had, he could remember that much. “Surely, not at this hour,” he said.
“I’m to be there at nine-forty-five sharp, for a ten o’clock departure, and I can’t miss it. Fred can drive me to the heliport.”
“No,” he said, getting up. “I’ll drive you myself.”
“Thank you,” she said, then went back into the dressing room.
* * *
—
He surveyed his face in the bathroom mirror and was surprised to find that he didn’t look like a man with a hangover. What was more, he didn’t feel like a man with a hangover. He felt perfectly normal, except that he still couldn’t remember their conversation in London. He shaved, showered, dressed, and called down to Fred, his factotum. “I won’t need you this morning,” he said; “I’ll drive myself.”
“As you wish, Mr. Barrington,” Fred replied.
* * *
—
In the car Kelly said, “Fred is going to collect my other luggage at the hotel and send it to me.” She had a suite in a residential hotel not far from his house.
“Plenty of room at my house,” Stone replied.
“Stone,” she said, “do you remember our conversation in London?”
“Of course,” Stone lied.
“Because you’re not behaving like a man who’s being abandoned.”
That rocked him. “‘Abandoned’?”
“Do you remember my telling you that I’m returning to the Agency—and that they want me to live down there in a place they’ve found for me?”
“Yes,” he lied again, “and I’m very sad about it.” That last part wasn’t a lie; he suddenly felt overwhelmingly sad.
“It’s sweet of you to say so, but I think you’ll have forgotten me before long.”