Book Title: A Box of Wishes
Author and Publisher: Jackie Keswick
Cover Artist: Covers by Jo
Release Date: October 20, 2022/November 10, 2022 on Amazon
Genre: Contemporary M/M Romance with a touch of magic, small town romance, holiday romance, coffeeshop romance
Tropes: slow burn, characters with cats, characters with special gifts, home-made family, a touch of hurt / comfort, coffee fixes everything, love and baked goods, you’re never lonely with a cat
Themes: saving each other, we’re all special, finding the courage to start over
Heat Rating: 3 flames
Length: 64 000 words/244 pages
It is a standalone story and does not end on a cliffhanger.
Buy Links – Available in Kindle Unlimited
You build a house from walls and beams. You make a home with love and dreams.
Blurb
Does Fate Grant Wishes?
Ryan O’Shaughnessy, owner of the Top o’ the Morning Coffeehouse, is convinced of it. Besides brewing the best coffee in Rothcote and baking delicious pastries and cakes, he helps Fate with her errands, never minding that it’s always someone else’s turn to catch a bit of happiness. Not until he meets a man who takes his breath away.
Detective Sergeant Ben Hobart has made a career of helping others. He never asks help for himself. Not even when a bad breakup leaves him lonely and with only his cat for company. Until he sets foot into Ryan’s coffeehouse to investigate a break-in and finds what’s missing from his life.
Fate may grant wishes, but she doesn’t hand them out for free. Can Ben let go of the past? And will Ryan find the courage to make a wish of his own?
A sexy, slow-burn, mm coffeeshop romance with a touch of magic and a cat.
Ryan released Ben’s hand and perched on the edge of the wooden chair, staring sightlessly at his computer screen. The trip to Ireland had been an escape. From himself, from his gift, from people who thought him a freak or worse, a meddling busybody. Finding the box had been… an unexpected boon. And in his need to be helpful, he’d almost made a hash of it. Again. Until he’d opened the coffeehouse and had established rules around its use.
“It gets busy,” he said. “Busier than you might think. Though these days, the box is only out between the autumn equinox and Christmas day.”
“And you know when someone needs the kind of help that—”
“I can see it. I… the colour is all wrong.”
“‘Colour’?”
“I see people… differently. Every person has a colour. You’re a blue. When you’re happy, your blue is bright, deep, and clear. When you came in wearing Morris’s blood, you looked grey and washed out.”
“So… the colour tells you when someone needs help?”
“The colour tells me how someone feels, when they need the kind of help the box gives. Then I reach under the bar and pick a paper square from the stack.”
“You’re the custodian of the box, then. You control access to it.”
“I suppose I do. What are you thinking?”
“That someone whom you didn’t give a chance to make a wish could feel resentful.”
Ryan saw the objection from a long way away. “Wouldn’t they have taken the box rather than toss my office?”
“Hm. That would seem more likely.”
“Yes. And another thing. When someone needs the kind of help the box gives, I can’t ignore it.”
“Why not? Does it hurt?”
“Yes. No. Not… precisely. It’s… uncomfortable and debilitating. My entire focus is on the person who needs help. I can’t do a thing until they’ve made their wish. I can’t deny anyone access to the box. Not even if I wanted to.”
Ben nodded. “Understood. But it never hurts to consider all angles.”
“Then spend Christmas with me,” Ryan said for the third time.
“Are you really that desperate for me to meet your favourite cousin?”
“Lame, Detective. I’m sure you can come up with a better deflection than that!”
“What if I was serious?”
“Ben, I want to see more of you. Which means, unfortunately, you’ll have to see more of my family. Christmas Day, while we’re on familiar ground, is a good day to meet them. My ma and da, my uncles, my crazy cousins, my globe-trotting sister, and—yes—my equally globe-trotting cousin Alastair. And—”
He raised both hands to ward off objections that Ben wasn’t making. In fact, Ben looked stunned.
“I didn’t realise…” A faint smile stole onto Ben’s face, and Ryan took it as encouragement.
“Come on, Ben. It’s going to be fun.” He wasn’t above a little pleading. “You’ve only seen the box work once before. Well, twice, but you know what I mean. You didn’t know what you were seeing. Christmas Day is the last day the box is out. And my regulars often bring people to the party who really need help. I can’t guarantee that will happen this year, but—”
“Okay, okay! I give in.” Ben’s barely-there smile grew into a soft chuckle. “You’re persistent, I give you that.” He crossed the room and ran his fingers around Morris’s velvety ears. “Do you think you can cope with a Christmas party, big boy?”
“He’ll be spoilt rotten,” Ryan promised, and Morris rubbed his button nose into Ben’s palm and purred his agreement.
Jackie Keswick was born behind the Iron Curtain with itchy feet, a bent for rocks and a recurring dream of stepping off a bus in the middle of nowhere to go home. She’s worked in a hospital and as the only girl with 52 men on an oil rig, spent a winter in Moscow and a summer in Iceland and finally settled in the country of her dreams with her dream team: a husband, a cat, a tandem, a hammer and a laptop.
Jackie loves unexpected reunions and second chances, and men who write their own rules. She blogs about English history and food, has a thing for green eyes, and is a great believer in making up soundtracks for everything, including her characters and the cat.
And she still hasn’t found the place where the bus stops.
For questions and comments, not restricted to green eyes, bus stops or recipes for traditional English food, you can find Jackie Keswick in all the usual places
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