Book Title: Breaking Cover (Life Lessons Book 2)
Author and Publisher: Kaje Harper
Narrator: JF Harding
Release Date: June 29, 2022
Genre: Contemporary/Mystery M/M romance
Tropes: Modest age-gap, in the closet
Themes: Coming out, gay parenting
Length: 9 hours and 46 minutes
It is best read after book 1.
The book does not end on a cliffhanger. It has a solid HFN ending, not yet a HEA. Audiobooks 3 and 4 scheduled for later this summer.
Buy Links – Audible, KU and Paperback
Sometimes one moment defines a man
Blurb
For homicide detective Mac, it’s been a good year. Having Tony to go home to makes him a better cop and a better person. For Tony, it’s been hard being in love with a man he can’t touch in public. Evasions and outright lying to friends and family take a little of the shine off his relationship with Mac, but Tony is determined to make it work.
As the Minneapolis Police Department moves into a hot, humid summer, Mac is faced with a different challenge. A killer has murdered two blond women, and the police have no real clues. Mac hates to think that another murder may be the only way they’ll make progress with the case. But when that murder happens, it hits close to home for Tony. And suddenly Mac faces an ultimatum: come out into the sunlight and stand beside Tony as his lover, or walk away and live without a piece of his heart.
A tinny version of the theme from Dragnet woke Jared MacLean out of a sound sleep. With a now-practiced reflex, he reached for his cell phone on the nightstand with one hand and put his other hand over his bed partner’s mouth. His lover said a muffled “Mmph?” against his palm while Mac flipped the phone open.
“Hey, Mac, you awake?” Oliver’s voice demanded, much too alertly for whatever damned hour of morning it was.
“Am now,” Mac muttered. He glanced over at where Tony lay, eyes now open and shining in the faint light from the clock radio. Tony nodded slightly and Mac withdrew his hand.
“Well, drag yourself out of bed and tell her you have to go,” Oliver ordered him. “We’ve got a dead one.”
“Tell who what?” Mac asked. It was too early for what passed as his police partner’s sense of humor.
“The gal you’ve been banging. The one who has you coming in with a smile on your face lately? Tell her there’s no rest for homicide detectives and get your ass in gear.”
“There’s no girl in my fuckin’ bed,” Mac grumbled. “No fucking girl in my bed either.” “Not that there was no fucking in his bed, but he wasn’t about to admit that to his partner.
“If you say so. Here’s the address.” Oliver reeled off a street location. Mac recognized the area as one of the rougher Minneapolis neighborhoods. “Second floor, apartment twenty-two. Female victim, related to something we’ve worked on. That’s all I have so far. I’ll see you there.”
Mac shut his phone and stretched, wincing at the tightness in his shoulders. His muscles felt stiff from too many laps in the community pool yesterday, while Tony sunbathed in a lounge chair. There were reasons he hadn’t wanted to get out of the water. As long as he was waist-deep, no one would notice where his, um, interests lay. Wet swim trunks didn’t hide much.
The cause of his reluctance sat up in bed next to him. The clock’s glow outlined a slender, bare, twenty-five-year-old body. A body that’d looked much too good half naked beside the pool. Tony’s dark hair was cut shorter for summer, but those black curls still looked sleep-tousled above his steady blue eyes. If Mac turned on the light, he’d see the blush of too much sun on Tony’s fair skin. And that soft, full mouth… Mac glanced away.
“That was your work calling,” Tony said. It wasn’t a question. They knew each other’s personalized ring tones by now.
“Yep. Oliver says we’ve got a case. I’ve got to go.”
Tony glanced at the clock. “Three AM. No chance you’ll be back this morning, then. Will I see you tonight?”
“If not, I’ll call,” Mac promised. “I’ll probably be pretty late.” He leaned over and kissed Tony softly, opening his mouth for their tongues to meet. Tony slid his arms around Mac’s neck and leaned pliantly against him, but when Mac pulled back, Tony let go immediately. So far, he’d been pretty understanding about the demands of Mac’s job. So far.
“Stay safe,” Tony told him.
Mac kissed him again, hard and fast, and rolled out of bed before his body could remind him how wonderful it would be to lie back down. “Go back to sleep.”
I get asked about my name a lot. It’s not something exotic, though. “Kaje” is pronounced just like “cage” – it’s an old nickname, and my pronouns are she/her/hers. I’ve been writing far longer than I care to admit (*whispers – forty-five years*), although mostly for my own entertainment. I write M/M romance, often with added mystery, fantasy, historical, SciFi, paranormal… I also have Young Adult short stories (some released under the pen name Kira Harp.)
After decades of writing just for fun, my husband convinced me I really should submit something, somewhere. My first professionally published book, Life Lessons, came out in May 2011. I now have a good-sized backlist in ebooks and print, both free and professionally published, including Amazon bestseller The Rebuilding Year and Rainbow Award Best Mystery-Thriller Tracefinder: Contact. A complete list with links can be found on my website “Books” page at https://kajeharper.com/books/.
Social Media Links
Audible Profile | Blog/Website | Newsletter Sign-up
Facebook | Facebook Group: Kaje’s Conversation Corner
Goodreads Author page | BookBub
Meet the Narrator
JF Harding Facebook Page | Facebook Group
