Book Title: Home Work (Life Lessons 3)
Author and Publisher: Kaje Harper
Narrator: JF Harding
Release Date: September 6, 2022
Genre: Mystery/Contemporary M/M Romance
Tropes: Hurt-comfort, established couples, parenting
Themes: Found family
Heat Rating: 3 flames
Length: 10 hours and 28 minutes
It is not a standalone story. Listen/read books 1 and 2 first.
The book does not end on a cliffhanger.
Buy Links – Available in Kindle Unlimited, Paperback and Audio
Murder, trauma, and raising children – who said love was easy?
Blurb
Mac and Tony thought the hard part was over. They’re together openly as a couple, sharing a home and building a life with their two kids. It’s what they dreamed of.
But daughter Anna struggles with the changes, Ben is haunted by old secrets, Mac’s job in Homicide still demands too much of his time, and Tony is caught in the middle. It’ll take everything these men can give to create a viable balance between home and work. Especially when life refuses to give them a break.
(This is a lightly edited rerelease of the 2012 original novel.)
Detective Jared MacLean kicked his partner’s ankle, trying not to lose his footing on the icy pavement. “Jesus, Oliver. Don’t eat that now.”
The older detective ignored him and bit into a greasy breakfast sandwich. “What? I’m hungry, the food’s getting cold, and it’s nothing we haven’t seen before. Grow a pair.”
The words hung between them. Oliver shifted his weight subtly away from Mac, and Mac decided the discomfort wasn’t just his imagination. Since coming out of the closet three months earlier, Mac had worked his tail off to keep his relationship with his police partner unchanged. And yet, every time the topic of sex or anatomy came up, no matter how innocently, Oliver would flinch. As if knowing Mac was gay had made him different from the guy Oliver had worked with for the last three years. Oliver’s reactions were slowly getting better, but that sense of strangeness between them wasn’t quite gone. Mac hadn’t realized how comfortable he’d been with Oliver until suddenly they weren’t.
And the only answer he’d come up with was to give his partner time. More time.
Mac turned, leaned his elbows on the bridge rail, and looked out across the Mississippi River. His eyes blurred from the cold wind and he ducked his head lower in his parka hood. The pitch-black sky of early morning added to the chill, “with the shortest days of the year approaching. Most people were still asleep at five AM, though the lights of the city never went completely dark.
Blue-white and gold streetlight colors glinted off the ice along the edges of the river. Closer, below Mac’s feet, dark water flowed and eddied around the bridge pilings in wind-whipped surges, more heard than seen. The river would freeze eventually, but despite the bitter bite of the November night, it would take a lot more time and cold to finally subdue that wide water.
Mac glanced back at the dead body on the sidewalk. The victim was frozen in a heap, his arms folded under himself, his face hidden under a mass of tangled hair. A small pool of blood, now glazed to red ice, marked the frosted sidewalk under the corpse’s head. MPD Homicide had been called to the scene by the first responders, who suspected the bleeding was something more sinister than a slip and fall. After one look, Oliver had decided to keep the area secured and wait for the medical examiner.
Oliver came to stand beside Mac, still munching on the damned sandwich. “What do you think? Killed here or dumped?”
“It’s an odd place to dump a body.”
“Maybe they were planning to throw the guy into the river and didn’t realize the railing was so high?”
“Or they got spooked before they could get him into the water. Still it’s a damned public spot to try it.”
“Maybe it’s just a slip and fall.” But Oliver’s tone was doubtful.
Excerpt From
Home Work
Kaje Harper
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
