Book Title: Bedside Manners (Living Situations Book 2)
Author and Publisher: Ella Fenn
Cover Artist: Mayhem Cover Creations
Release Date: May 10, 2022
Genre: Contemporary M/M romance
Tropes: Age gap, hurt/comfort, BDSM, hot mountain man, forced proximity
Themes: Healing trauma, second chances, coming of age
Length: 88 000 words
It is the second book in the series, so characters from book 1 do show up in it, but the reader doesn’t need to know their story to read this one.
The book does not end on a cliffhanger.
Buy Links – Available in Kindle Unlimited
Universal Link | Amazon US | Amazon UK
A freak windstorm. A life-changing accident. An unlikely helping hand.
Blurb
A freak windstorm. A life-changing accident. An unlikely helping hand.
After years spent suffering under the weight of his father’s expectations, Max Castillo-Grant is celebrating his shiny new law degree by drinking, partying, and bed-hopping around Seattle. Max isn’t stupid—he knows the good times never last—but if the world’s going to bring him low, he might as well enjoy the high.
Six years ago, a broken heart and a deep loss turned Ben Greer bitter and reclusive. Formerly the life of the party, he quit his job, rejected his friends, and hid from the world. Now, he spends his days alone, working on occasional custom carpentry commissions, with only his dog, Judith, for company.
Two severe weather events conspire to leave Ben in need of a full-time caretaker for his injuries, and Max in need of a respectable job. Despite a rocky start, Ben is begrudgingly won over by Max’s good humor, and the two form a lasting connection. But emotional wounds leave deep scars, and both Ben and Max are damaged. Can they find a way to heal hurts that go far beyond the physical before it’s too late?
The second book in the Living Situations series, Bedside Manners is a gay romance featuring an age gap, BDSM, and 4-6 terrible puns about woodworking. If you like steamy situations, hurt/comfort, and grumpy mountain men, then you’ll love Ella Fenn’s latest novel.
Pick up Bedside Manners and let Ben and Max sweep you off your feet today!
Bzz-bzz. Bzz-bzz. Bzz-bzz.
Max cracked one eye open, wincing when a thin beam of sunlight pierced his defenses. Squinting, he lifted his head, only to realize he didn’t recognize the curtains. The flowered curtains. Who the hell do I know with flowered curtains? God, his head hurt—that low, dense thrum of his inevitable hangover pulsing against the inside of his skull…
Seriously, though, what is that buzzing? Did I fall asleep on their vibrator last night? Were they even using a vibrator? And come to think of it… who is “they”?
Judging by the snoring lump of blankets next to him in the bed, “they” hadn’t noticed the buzzing. The vibration stopped and started again, leading his addled brain to the conclusion that it should have drawn in the first place: a phone was ringing. His phone, most likely, which was somewhere in the tangled mass of sheets that—
Oh, ew. That wasn’t his phone. That was a condom. But at least protection had been involved, which was more than he could say for some of his hookups.
A few seconds later, his fingers closed on the phone, which had been trapped beneath his bedmate’s outstretched arm. He checked the screen, wincing when he saw the name. Mom.
“Hello?” he said, keeping his voice low as he sat up, his head pounding, and swung his legs out of bed.
“Maxie? Oh, thank God. I’ve been calling you and calling you!”
Shit. A frantic Maria Castillo at the crack of dawn on a Sunday morning. With the time difference—Virginia was three hours ahead of Seattle—she’d had plenty of time to turn the day into a crisis.
“What’s wrong, Mama?” He stood, grunting when the sticky, sweat-damp hairs on his belly twisted and tugged, protesting the movement. He needed a shower, but he wasn’t about to take one here. Not when lump-of-blankets might see it as an invitation.
“The basement’s flooding! There’s been rain all weekend, and the creek was swelling—they promised the creek wouldn’t flood when I moved in, but now there’s water in the basement, and the news says it’s going to get worse because they’re opening up the dam, and it could go as high as the first floor, and I don’t know what to do!”
Shit. Shit, shit, shit. Max cast a glance over his shoulder before stepping into the hallway of what appeared to be a house, not an apartment. He really hoped the dude didn’t have roommates, or at least not roommates who’d be up at five in the morning to witness Max’s inadvertent peep show.
“Hey, it’s okay,” he said, which was his go-to answer with his mother. “Slow down a second. It’s the creek?”
The creek. The tiny, innocent creek behind his mother’s tiny new house in Arlington, which had seemed so pretty and picturesque when Max moved her in the summer before he headed west for law school. That was the problem with nature, though. It was beautiful but deceptive bullshit that lay in wait to ruin your damn day. At least with cities, you knew what you were getting—rude people, traffic, and terrible public transit.
“They said on the news it’s a five-hundred-year flood!”
Max couldn’t even begin to parse the meaning of that as he leaned against the wall and sighed, his head swimming. “Okay. Uh, first thing… if it’s gonna flood the house, you have to get out of there. Can you call a neighbor?” His mother didn’t own a car. She’d once been a competent driver, but these days, her medication meant she wasn’t allowed anywhere near a steering wheel.
“They’re all flooding too!”
Max closed his eyes, biting his lip and wishing that his mouth didn’t taste like a sodden bar rag at the end of a long night. “Okay, what about someone from church?”
There was a pause at the other end of the line. “I could call Linda.”
Linda. Excellent. Max loved Linda. “Yes, that’s perfect. Can you stay with her?”
“She has cats!”
And Maria was allergic to cats. Of course. “What about…?” He pinched the bridge of his nose. “If I get you a hotel room in town, can Linda take you there? And can you make sure you have your meds?”
“Can I take the photo albums?”
“Yes, Mama. But you have to take your pills, okay?”
She went quiet, and he could picture her sulking, which was so unlike the mother he’d grown up with that it made his stomach churn. But that was the thing about your parents getting older—or sicker, because Maria wasn’t actually that old. Suddenly, you were the responsible one, and they were the kid. Max hated being the decision maker, especially considering he lived an entire continent away from her.
Ella Fenn is a romance author best known for telling tawdry tales tinged with a little something sweet.
Author of the Living Situations series, Ella wakes at the crack of dawn each day and spends a few hours tapping at the keyboard before beginning her 9-5 job in marketing and communications.
Using her bachelor’s in journalism and a master’s in organizational behavior, Ella enjoys diving deep into the unique traits and tricks that make her characters tick. She believes everyone has a story to tell, and loves to engage with readers, whether it’s answering questions or discussing the nitty-gritty of her process.
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