Book Title: Port in a Storm
Author: Rhys Ford
Publisher: Dreamspinner
Cover Artist: Rhys Ford
Release Date: January 23, 2024
Genre: Contemporary M/M Romance
Tropes: Married M/M Couple foster / adopt child
Themes: Dealing with childhood trauma, questioning whether the past makes a bad father, found family
Heat Rating: 3 flames
Length: 59 000 words/ 200 pages
It is book 8 in the Sinner’s Gin Series and does not end on a cliffhanger.
Buy Links
Dreamspinner Press | Amazon US | Amazon UK
Blurb
San Francisco SWAT Lieutenant Connor Morgan and Crossroads Gin drummer Forest Ackerman make an odd couple. Connor, an Irish-born cop from a tight-knit family, never imagined he’d find his happily-ever-after with a raised-on-the-streets musician, but Forest had the gentlest soul he’d ever met. After a long, hard road of heartbreak, murder, and trouble, they fell hard in love and married.
Then Fate intervenes and throws their lives into a chaos neither one of them is prepared for.
During a brutal SWAT raid, Connor stumbles on Tate, an abused, vulnerable little boy caught in a shoot-out with his father’s drug-running gang. As heavy fire riddles the walls, an injured Connor rescues Tate from the fray… only to be struck numb when a caseworker pries a sobbing Tate from his arms.
Scarred from his own childhood experiences, Forest doubts he can be a good enough father, but Connor assures him they can give Tate what he needs and more. Soon they are on an insane ride where trust and affection are hard-earned, especially when coming from a little boy raised in society’s filthiest gutters. Facing down every challenge thrown their way, they battle to give Tate what Connor treasures and Forest never had—a family to call his own.
“Connor’s okay,” Forest reminded himself. “Nothing serious or Kane would’ve told me.”
And—the true sign of Connor’s well-being—the ER wasn’t full of Morgans.
“Hey, the nurse said he’s down the hall.” Miki appeared at Forest’s elbow. “She said we can go in. He’s in the fourth bay on the right.”
“She didn’t ask for any ID?” Fumbling at his pockets, Forest wasn’t even sure he knew where his wallet was. “Suppose we were someone who wanted to hurt him? There’s a lot of crazy people out there.”
“Yeah, you.” Miki shoved at Forest’s shoulder, pushing them through the cluster of first responders standing in the middle of the walkway, talking about gunshot wounds and a raid they’d been on. “One, she recognized me and then recognized you. Two, even if any of the cops out here somehow let us pull some shit, what the fuck do you think Connor and Kane would do to somebody who came at them? Don’t be stupid, and let’s go find your husband.”
A few yards in and a rumbling voice reached Forest’s ears, its rakish velvet tones painted rich with a hint of Irish and stubborn authority. A man dressed in scrubs broke off from a small group of hospital workers, intending to cut them off, but Miki wouldn’t be deterred. He angled Forest to the right, using the promise of Ireland and cop as his lighthouse among the chaos.
“Fuck off, dude,” Miki warned off the medical tech. “He’s going to go see his husband.”
“You don’t need to come down here, Mum,” Kane said as he stepped out from behind a long beige curtain wrapped around an emergency room bed. Connor’s younger brother stopped short when he spotted Miki and Forest headed his way. “Everything is going to be fine. Forest just got here, and Con’s probably going to be released. I’ll have him call you later.”
When Forest saw Kane standing in front of them with his inspector’s badge fixed to the leather gun harness he wore over a soft gray Henley, the reality of what had happened to his husband struck deep. Kane looked so much like Connor, it hurt. For a brief, wild moment, Forest cursed the universe, fear and terror screaming angrily inside of his soul that it should have been Kane lying there with bullet wounds and broken bones instead of Connor. Anyone but Connor.
Not his Connor.
The moment passed when reason filtered back into his brain, and the guilt in his heart must have been evident on his face because Miki—feral, gorgeous, and fierce Miki—muttered under his breath so only Forest could hear him.
“It’s okay to be pissed off.” Miki grabbed at the curtain, pulled it back, and stepped to the side so Forest could go past. “When shit like this happens to K, I want everybody else to bleed for it. So I get it. Let me go find out what’s happening, and you go talk to the asshole who got shot.”
“He’s not an asshole,” Forest protested. “Connor didn’t ask for this.”
“Sure he did. He’s a Morgan,” Miki snorted. “Gotta be something in Brigid’s breast milk, because they all think they’re fucking superheroes and bullets are just supposed to bounce off them.”
“Hey, no talking about our mother and breast milk,” Kane retorted. “That just makes this all weird.”
“That’s because there’s something just not right about all of you,” Miki shot back. “And what the fuck happened? Did everything go to shit?”
Behind the curtain, Forest’s heart and life sat on a hospital bed, bandages fixed to his naked torso and a hospital blanket scrunched over Connor’s lap. The gray sweatpants he wore to cover his long legs were probably Kane’s—they carried a whiff of stale air and plastic from being buried in a gym bag—but the dark pink socks Con had on his feet were definitely hospital-issued, thin rubber stripes running over the soles to prevent slippage on the hospital’s slick floors.
Connor’s deep blue eyes were hooded and a little unfocused when his gaze swept over Forest. A rueful grin pulled at the left side of his mouth, bringing out the dimple Forest loved. The tightness in his expression was a clear sign he’d probably declined heavy pain medication, a Morgan family habit Forest could have happily beaten out of him.
That was one of the biggest problems of falling in love with a Morgan. They ran into burning buildings, tossed themselves into the raging waters, and scared the shit out of the people who loved them.
Seeing Connor’s bare chest dappled with gauze and surgical tape didn’t ease the anxiety and panic he’d stewed in his belly, its sourness burbling up as soon as he got that phone call from Kane.
That phone call.
Forest thought he’d been ready for it. He and Connor had talked about it. Even Brigid had given her take on how to handle the drowning emotions he could expect to flood him, but Forest realized nothing could have really prepared him for that solemn voice on the other end of the line telling him Con had been shot.
Rhys Ford is an award-winning author with several long-running LGBT+ mystery, thriller, paranormal, and urban fantasy series and is a two-time LAMBDA finalist with their Murder and Mayhem novels. She is published by Dreamspinner Press and Rogue Firebird Press.
They’re also quite skeptical about bios without a dash of something personal and really, who doesn’t mention their cats, dog and cars in a bio? They shares the house with Harley, a grey tuxedo with a flower on her face, Badger, a disgruntled alley cat who isn’t sure living inside is a step up the social ladder as well as Gojira who is a chaos goblin masquerading as a tabico. Rhys is also enslaved to the upkeep of a 1979 Pontiac Firebird and enjoys murdering make-believe people.
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