en years ago Sheriff’s Deputy Aaron George lost his wife and moved to Colton, hoping growing up in a small town would be better for his children. He’s gotten to know his community, including Mr. Larkin, the bouncy, funny science teacher. But when Larx is dragged unwillingly into administration, he stops coaching the track team and starts running alone. Aaron—who thought life began and ended with his kids—is distracted by a glistening chest and a principal running on a dangerous road.Larx has been living for his kids too—and for his students at Colton High. He’s not ready to be charmed by Aaron, but when they start running together, he comes to appreciate the deputy’s steadiness, humor, and complete understanding of Larx’s priorities. Children first, job second, his own interests a sad last.
It only takes one kiss for two men approaching fifty to start acting like teenagers in love, even amid all the responsibilities they shoulder. Then an act of violence puts their burgeoning relationship on hold. The adult responsibilities they’ve embraced are now instrumental in keeping their town from exploding. When things come to a head, they realize their newly forged family might be what keeps the world from spinning out of control.
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Cat gives this one 5 Meows...
Holy Cow! This book was AHHHHMAZING! Amy Lane makes the most realistic characters. Bonfires seemed so realistic.I was drawn into the story from the first page.The story is heartfelt, heartwarming, sweet yet sexy and had a touch of mystery as well.
I love the fact both men were older, have children, had been married, yet fit together so well.
Aaron had been married three children and loved his wife very much. She was killed in an accident when the children were young and raised them alone.
Larx is a high school principle was married, had a bad divorce when he came out, had to fight for his children and is well-liked at his school.
A lot happens in this book. There is the mystery plot that has side plots that cause this one. The romance plot I can't say anything more about the plots without spoilers.
If you love a good second chance at life romance, friends to lovers, Mature main characters, teenagers, cats, and an allover fabulous must read book!
Excerpt...
Running in the Sun
AARON GEORGE adjusted the collar of his uniform and checked his graying blond hair in the rearview mirror—and then felt foolish. He was forty-eight years old, for sweet Christ’s sake. But Larx was running down Cambrian Way again, and he’d taken his shirt off in deference to the afternoon heat, and something had to be done.
His shoulders gleamed sleek and gold in the late-September sun, and his body—lean and long, although he was around Aaron’s age—moved with a longtime runner’s grace.
Aaron had been working hard to keep off the fifty pounds that had hit his waist when he turned thirty. He was about halfway successful, because diet and exercise weren’t as easy when you drove an SUV up and down mountain roads as they had been when he was flatfooting around the city.
But Aaron’s wife had died ten years ago, and he’d had three kids—two of them out of the house now. It had felt easier, somehow, to take a deputy position in Colton. The city—even Sacramento, which was a small city by most standards—was a young man’s game. Colton, population 10,000 or so, was a little more laid-back and suited for raising a family.
Which had apparently been Larx’s idea too, since he’d brought his daughters to Colton after his divorce.
Or that’s what Aaron had heard. Mr. Larkin—Larx to his students and staff—had moved to Colton seven years earlier. Aaron’s youngest two had taken Larx’s science class and pronounced him “way cooler than anyone else in this hick burg.” When the older administration retired, Larx had put up quite a fight to not be the principal.
Aaron hadn’t been there, of course, but his youngest, Kirby, had been an office TA his junior year. He’d heard the battles raging in Nobili’s office, and the staff room, and once, he’d told his father salaciously, in the middle of the quad.
In the end, Larx had conceded to be principal on three conditions.
One was that he got to teach AP Chemistry during zero period in the morning, before school, because he’d worked for five years to make the AP program flourish and he was damned if he’d give the class to the two-year rookie who was the only other teacher at the school qualified to teach the class. (Kirby told his father there had been much rejoicing with this caveat, because Mr. Albrecht was, by all accounts, a power-hungry little prick.)
The second condition was that his best friend, Yoshi Nakamoto, be promoted to the VP’s spot. Yoshi was in his early thirties and had taught English at John F. Colton High School for six years. As far as Aaron had heard, he was a solid teacher and a nice guy, and probably the exact person a new administrator would want to have his back.
The third condition was that Larx still got to coach the track-and-field team year round.
It was the one condition he hadn’t been granted, because (and, again, with Kirby as his source) Mr. Nakamoto had insisted Time-Turners were only real in Harry Potter books, and Larx just didn’t have the hours in the day.
Which was when Larx had started fucking with Aaron’s nice orderly life in a big way.
Because every day at 4:45 in the afternoon, Larx would appear on this stretch of road, right when Aaron was wrapping up his rounds of the county. He would run from the school down Cambrian, turn right on Olson—which was barely more than a tractor road—and cut through to the highway, which was squirrely as shit and had no shoulder. He’d run the highway for a mile, turn right on Hastings, which was also squirrely as shit and had no shoulder, and then turn right and run back to the high school on Cambrian.
The first time Aaron had seen him do this, his heart had stopped. Literally stopped. Because he’d seen the headlines scrolling behind his eyes: Local Principal Killed by Own Stupidity. Entire High School Runs into Road Like Wild Ducks in Protest and Mourning.
And then, just when his heart had started beating again, he’d seen—really seen—Larx without his shirt.
Aaron was forty-eight years old. He’d known he was bisexual in high school, but it had been easier to date girls than boys back then, so he’d gone with it. He’d loved his wife with all his heart, hadn’t looked back once from the day they’d met, and had been busy as hell over the past ten years trying to raise his children.
Aaron’s libido had mostly closed up shop since his wife died, with occasional openings during tourist season when the kids were at their grandparents’. One glimpse of that glistening, tan back, those rangy shoulders, the sweat-slicked black hair, and his libido woke up and started to pray to Cialis, goddess of horny middle-aged men.
He’d gunned his motor that day and passed Larx in a haze of confusion. He was desperate to get the hell out of there before Larx caught him staring openmouthed at a guy trying to be sweaty, glisteny roadkill in the red-dirt shade of pine trees up near Tahoe National Forest.
The next day his libido told him he’d been a fool to pass up that chance to watch Larx run, and that if he passed him again, he should slow down a tad and take in the view.
Aaron had done just that, slowing down a little, giving Larx a wide berth, smiling and waving as he passed. They knew each other from parent meetings, board meetings, community events. If given a chance, Aaron would gravitate to talk to Larx in a crowd, because he was funny and smart and a born smartass. So it was only natural that Larx waved back, friendly-like, and Aaron tried not to spend the next few hours of paperwork and gun and fishing permits grinning like a teenaged girl.
He’d had two of those. They weren’t rational creatures, and he had no intentions of turning into one.
Angst and pain, Amy Lane Amy Lane has two kids in college, two gradeschoolers in soccer, two cats, and two Chi-who-whats at large. She lives in a crumbling crapmansion with most of the children and a bemused spouse. She also has too damned much yarn, a penchant for action adventure movies, and a need to know that somewhere in all the pain is a story of Wuv, Twu Wuv, which she continues to believe in to this day! She writes fantasy, urban fantasy, and m/m romance--and if you accidentally make eye contact, she'll bore you to tears with why those three genres go together. She'll also tell you that sacrifices, large and small, are worth the urge to write.
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Thanks so much for bringing such good books to my attention. I have added to my list!
ReplyDeletedebby236 at gmail dot com
sounds great !!!!
ReplyDeletejmarinich33 at aol dot com