Dean’s not into relationships and Pieter’s already in one. Phoenix doesn’t know what he wants, but he’s pretty sure it’s Dean. How’s this going to work, exactly?
Ever since dropping out of high school, Dean Garner has lived down to his estranged family’s expectations. Enjoying a quiet, if decadent, life as a barman in one of his parents’ holiday parks, he romances whoever takes his fancy. The affairs are brief, frequent and empty. That suits Dean, who has had his heart broken once and doesn’t intend to let it happen again.
When Pieter Croft enters his life, Dean’s happy that he’s met someone equally casual when it comes to sex. But as they grow closer, Dean can’t deny he’d like to get to know the mysterious Pieter a little better.
Tracking down where Pieter lives is easy, but what Dean finds when he gets there is…complicated.
Pieter has a secret. A secret called Phoenix. While Phoenix is everything to Pieter, Dean can’t decide if he’s a blessing or a curse. The one thing he does know is that the two of them are inseparable. If he wants Pieter, he’s going to have to take on Phoenix, too.
General Release Date: 1st January 2019
“Hi, Dean.” A girlish giggle accompanied the greeting, sweet enough to strip the enamel from my teeth.
I cracked open an eye. The blonde I’d spend most of the week hooked up with was standing before my sun lounger, dressed for the pool in a tiny bikini top and even tinier denim shorts. Her ash-blonde hair shimmered under a mid-morning sun.
“Good morning, ladies.” Brian produced his best gap-toothed grin as he sidled over to the girls. He took care to lock his hands—and his wedding ring—behind his back. “Looks as though it’s going to be another beaut. Not as lovely as the both of you, naturally.”
Stacey gave him a wide berth and approached my sun lounger. Her slight but dense shadow chilled my bare chest, which had only partially cultivated a tan. “You do remember I’m leaving today?”
I’d done better than that. I’d assumed she’d already gone. As far as I was concerned, we’d said our goodbyes the night before, with a few hundred holiday-makers and a good length of bar-top between us.
“Yeah.” I stifled a yawn. “Like I said last night, might see you next year.”
Stacey pouted. “You still have my number, don’t you? Only you said we could meet up after you finished work last night, and you didn’t call.”
She’d given me her number at the beginning of the week, but I’d deleted it last night after we’d said our goodbyes. Not that I didn’t appreciate Stacey, or any of the others I’d hooked up with over the course of the summer. It was just that I was incapable of feeling anything for her—or them—despite almost always being able to convince them otherwise.
I grabbed my cigarettes from the grass. “I had a family emergency.”
“Oh? Anything serious?” She sank to her knees and pressed a neat hand to my thigh. Pink nail varnish and a cheap ring glinting fake stones. I recalled that same hand working the base of my cock at the back of the clubhouse a few nights before. The memory of her roving tongue quivered through me, as did the thought of spending any more time in her company, but for entirely different reasons. “I might’ve been able to help.”
“Nothing you could have done.” Mainly because I hadn’t seen my so-called family in two years, and if I didn’t see them for another two, I’d call that a result. “It’s all sorted now, anyway.”
“I’m glad to hear it.” She shifted her hand from my thigh to adjust her bikini top over her B cups. “Do you want to come to the pool with us?”
“Can’t. Sorry.” I lit my cigarette and inhaled a hefty drag. “I’m off out in a bit.”
“Anywhere nice? I’m on a late checkout, so I can ditch the pool and come with.”
I looked to Brian for rescue. Some hope. The park’s maintenance manager was too busy schmoozing the girl I hadn’t had, who was backing away from the ghoulish gawk pinned to her chest. Any rescuing was down to me. “Hey, Bri?”
Brian hitched up his low-slung overalls over his fat arse with one hand and made a batting gesture at me with the other.
I reached for my mobile. “Brian, mate. Your wife wants a word.”
“What?” Brian spun around, almost tipping head first into the side of my caravan.
I placed my hand over Stacey’s. “You’d better get your friend to safety. I’ll see if I can pop by your van later.”
She brightened with a smile far prettier than her pout. “Promise?”
“Remind me of the number again?”
“One hundred and eighteen, by the trees over there.” She pointed down the path, though I knew the exact location of all the vans. I should do, I’d spent enough years in exile here.
“How do you have my wife’s number?” Brian loomed above me, but at least he was done doing the same over Stacey’s less-than-enthusiastic friend.
“I don’t.” I showed him the blank screen of my phone. “Now shut up and have a fag, before you get reported for sexual misconduct.”
Stacey giggled, then planted a warm, unexpected kiss on my cheek before taking off after her pal.
Brian snatched a smoke from the packet and waited until the girls were out of earshot before passing comment. “How come it’s all right for you to soak your wick willy-nilly, but when I want in on some action, the guests are off-limits?”
“That’ll be because I haven’t been married for the best part of twenty-odd years.” I blew out a smoke ring. “And cut the attitude, or have you forgotten you’re technically talking to your boss?”
Brian swiped my lighter from my fingers. “Boy, I got technical skid marks older than you.”
“Yeah, and if you want your Linda to carry on scrubbing them from your budgie smugglers, I suggest you save your wick for her rather than…” I nodded in the general direction the girls had disappeared into.
“Where my wife is concerned, ignorance is bliss.” Brian let out a sly chuckle as he handed back the lighter. “What’s your career choice today, anyway? Marriage guidance counselor?”
I didn’t answer. Something had distracted me. The dull scrape of plastic on tarmac. A lad came into view, strolling along the tarmac path tugging a cart behind him, loaded with a vacuum cleaner and bucket of cleaning products. He trundled along, pausing at the caravan across from mine, checking the number in the window, before moving along to the next.
“Hey.”
He stopped. Homed in on me from behind a pair of black-framed geek glasses. Damned if he didn’t have the sweetest face I’d seen in quite a while. Rounded cheeks and a pixie nose dotted with sandy freckles. I could only imagine his lower cheeks were equally plump.
I flicked my cigarette to the grass then sat up. “You looking for something?”
“Yes.” The lad stared at me, rabbit-in-the-headlights style. “Number sixty-eight.”
At the sound of his soft tone, my dick jerked in my pants.
Almost as if he could hear the testosterone raging through my balls, his gaze tracked to my fly. His lips tilted into a smirk—or a nervous smile. I couldn’t tell which. So that made him one of two things. A wanton slut in the sack or as genuine a virgin as I’d ever seen. Either suited me.
“Down the far end.” I nodded in that direction. “Just before my personal favorite number.” I matched his smirk with one of my own. “Stick around after you finish and I’ll show you why.”
The kid stared at me until the meaning behind my offer sank in. He flushed scarlet, clutched the cart’s handle and hurried off along the pathway more quickly than he’d arrived.
Virgin, then, at least for the next couple of hours or so. I tracked the line of his retreat. There was a certain unused peachiness about the arse he hid beneath faded jeans a couple of sizes too big. The rest of him was drowned in a green T-shirt with Garner Village Accommodation Cleaner emblazoned across the back. Sexy, though. Another potential notch if ever I’d clapped eyes on one.
“Seriously?”
I tore my attention from the boy’s increasingly diminutive arse to Brian’s raised eyebrows. “What?”
“Come on. You know what I’m talking about. That boy is sixteen if he’s a day. And you think me checking out some twenty-year-old’s tits is perverted.”
“He’s legal or he wouldn’t be working here.” And I didn’t appreciate Brian implying otherwise. “Plus, there’s a whole world of difference between your leering and mine. You’re forty-fucking-eight. A quarter of a century older than me.”
“I am not…” A dazed expression flitted across the folds of Brian’s middle-aged face. Since the numbers would always add up to my total, he soon shook his head. “No matter the age difference, you’re still a veteran compared to that boy. Don’t you ever get into any bother with wrong signals?”
“Nope.” Unlike Brian, I knew when I was flogging a dead horse. But with the way the kid tickled my chest with his lashes, I wasn’t going to get into any trouble with him. “I only show ’em my dick. Up to them whether they want to sit on it.” I squinted at Brian through a cloud of smoke. “Hadn’t you better be getting back to work? Real work, I mean. Not drooling over the tits bouncing around in the outdoor pool.”
“I’m on a break.” Brian tapped my bare foot with his boot. “You could be doing something more productive than drooling over the new cleaning staff. Especially the ones whose balls have yet to drop.”
“Do me a favor.”
“A boss favor or a mate favor?”
“My van needs cleaning. Get the new member of staff down to do it.”
“What’s in that for me?”
I didn’t have to think too hard. “Stacey’s mate’s number. I can get it for you.” Stacey’s mate wouldn’t be best pleased, but that wasn’t my problem.
“She’s going home today. What good would that do me now?”
He had a point. I considered my options. “How about the next piece I hook up with, I put in a good word with her mate?”
“A hypothetical mate who could be a moose?”
I noted he didn’t use the ‘I don’t cheat on my wife’ line as a reason. “Fine.” I reached into my jeans and pulled out a crumpled twenty. “This do you?”
“Nicely.” He ferreted the cash away in his pocket.
I gathered up my phone and smokes, then rose from the lounger. “If anyone asks, I’ll be out all afternoon. That way, I’ll be a pleasant surprise for when the cleaning lad turns up.”
Brian slowly shook his head. “It’s like a home delivery service to you, isn’t it?”
I paused on the steps to my van. “Mate, you sound almost, I don’t know, jealous.”
“Not of the fellas.” Brian shook his head. “Still, your chances of getting this one pregnant are slim.”
I lifted my hand and showcased my middle digit.
Brian ambled away, chuckling hard enough to set my teeth on edge.
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