Over the last year, Will Parkinson (the man, not the character from Blindside) has pestered hounded harassed encouraged me to write a little more of the Blind Faith series. And while it might not be a full novel, I have done a very short (as in only 8500 words) FREE Christmas story instead to shut him up make him happy. 🙂  (Disclaimer: No Will Parkinson’s were harmed in the writing of this story)

Will has demanded requested demanded Mark and Will (the characters, not the men) become parents. But we all know Mark doesn’t have a clue paternal side, and truthfully I just didn’t see Mark filling that role. He is, after all, a child himself.

So what we have, is this…

Blurb:

Will Parkinson has been with Mark Gattison for five years and, in his words, there has never been a dull moment. Will has always been the serious one, the responsible one. Mark is the irresponsible man-child who loves nothing more than to make people smile.

But Will has an ache for something Mark won’t give him.

Until he does.

Join Will, Mark, Carter, Isaac and Brady, Hannah and her family (and some other special guests for Christmas) and have yourself a Merry Twelfth of Never.

Excerpt:

The coffee shop was busy, even for a snowy Boston Christmas Eve. The world outside the windows was a whitish-gray, muted and bitterly cold. Inside, the fire was blazing, people were chatting and laughing and the air smelled of Christmas tree pine needles and coffee.

We were always busy, and had been for the five years we’d owned the shop. I was proud of our business, how we knew most of our customers by not just their name, but the names of their friends and pets, where they worked, and of course, how they liked their coffee. With its warm wooden panelling and comfy seats, our coffee shop was a cross between the one in Friends and the bar in Cheers.

Buying the business was the best decision Mark had ever made. Well, correction, second best. The very best decision he’d ever made was finally pulling his head out of his ass and admitting he was in love with me. Or maybe it was when he said yes to marrying me two years ago. Or maybe it was the day last year when he said “I do”….

Mark Gattison, the love of my life. The very crazy, no-filter, funny-as-hell, charming love of my life.

Needless to say, not a day since we finally got together had been boring.

I couldn’t deny the success of the café was Mark’s doing. He was in his element. Everything he thought was lacking in over-franchised, over-impersonalised coffee magnates was typified in our business, and the way most of our customers had become our friends was testament to that. Sometimes, if they were in a hurry or just passing by, they’d call in anyway just to tell us they got the job, or to tell us he or she said yes, or their Grandpa was out of hospital.

It seems a lifetime ago when I think back to Mark in a suit, sitting at his work cubicle, dying a little inside every time he took a phone call about structural cabling.

And then I look at him now, so relaxed, dressed in jeans and a long sleeve tee with his little black apron tied around his waist, serving a customer and laughing. It’s hard to believe he’s the same guy.

He still has perfectly-imperfect dark brown hair, styled just so. His eyes still sparkled with life and an unlimited amount of energy and, in the five years we’d been together, he’d accrued these little laugh lines at the corner of his eyes that made him, somehow, impossibly, even better looking.

And he wore a simple silver band on his left hand that said he was mine.

“You plan on emptying those trays, or you just gonna ogle me all day?” he asked with a grin.

“Oh,” I said, remembering the tray of mugs I was holding. I put them on the counter and shrugged. “Work, ogle, work, ogle,” I said, putting the mugs on top of the coffee machine to stay warm. “It’s a hard job.”

Mark rolled his eyes and smiled. “I wonder if there’s ever been a case of sexual harassment in the work place against a husband before.”

“Oh please,” I scoffed. I gave a pointed nod to the security cameras. “We have tapes of exhibits A through Z of how much you hate it.” It was just last week when he’d dragged me into the storeroom and locked the door. He claimed he had started an exercise program and needed a quick protein fix as he shoved me against the shelves, unzipped my jeans, and went to his knees.

Like I said, never a dull moment.

~

Where can you get it? 

This little Christmas story is free, and available at ARE !