by Wendy Qualls
“Ah.” Dave belatedly realized his mouth was hanging open, so he closed it. “How’d you guys keep this a secret from me? It must have taken ages to plan.”
“That’s the other half of the surprise.” Gus planted a hand on each of Dave’s shoulders and turned him ninety degrees. “Walk in that direction until you figure it out.”
The suggestion didn’t really help much, but the entire team was watching him with anticipatory looks on their faces so Dave started walking. Now that he was taking the time to actually look, the festival layout made more sense—several tents around the perimeter, some with corporate logos on them and some without, probably giving out swag and brochures. A large roped-off area in the center of the field with a little stage on it. Demonstrations of some kind, perhaps? Two food trucks in the opposite parking lot were doing decent business, judging by how many people were walking around with ice cream and popcorn. And the last tent at the end of the line, backed up against the trees and the side of the maintenance building, was—
Damn.
Lito dropped the towels he was holding and trotted toward Dave, stopping right in front of him. He was shirtless. And wet.
“Hey,” he said quietly.
Dave couldn’t get his throat to work, so he just stood there stupidly.
“Want to come meet my friends?” Lito asked. There was a hesitation in his voice, a nervousness which snapped Dave out of his shock.
“Your…”
Lito reached for Dave’s hand but drew back at the last second. Fuck it—Dave covered the remaining distance and enveloped Lito’s hand in his own. He’s back and he’s not mad at me. Everything else was a bit slower to come into focus. Lito’s smile when Dave responded, though, was all Dave really needed. He tugged him toward the final tent in the row. “This is my Atlanta crew. Everyone, this is Dave.”
The group of similarly wet, shirtless guys waved.
“Dog-wash station,” Lito explained. Needlessly, because after Dave finally managed to tear his eyes away from Lito’s naked chest, the hoses and the kiddie pools and the huge pile of ratty towels were kind of a dead giveaway. Oh, and the smell of wet dog.
He was standing and staring again. “Hi,” Dave managed.
Lito’s posture relaxed a bit, and he started pointing down the line. “The guy on the end is Ian, who let me and Spot crash with him at Christmas. Chris is the blindingly pale one with the red hair who pretty much had to bathe in sunscreen before coming out here. Then the tall-dark-and-handsome guy is Jericho, and the idiot on the end there is Adam.”
“Hey,” Adam protested. The African-American guy next to him—who really was Dave’s height, if not taller—elbowed him with a smirk.
“It’s not the whole clan,” the first guy said, stepping forward to shake Dave’s hand, “but we’re the ones who had the weekend free. Lito asked if any of us would come do this surprise thing for you and we all jumped at the chance. I had to meet the guy Lito couldn’t stop talking about all week at Christmas.”
“Hey,” groused Lito. “That’s…okay, that is accurate. But y’all kept asking about him, so that’s not all my fault.”
“Not me,” Jericho said. His voice held a hint of an accent Dave couldn’t place.
Lito acknowledged that too. “Jericho just got back from Haiti, what? Last week Thursday?”
The guy nodded.
“Right. So this is a welcome-home party for him too. Or welcome-to-the-States, at least.” He stuck his tongue out at the dude. “Lord knows where your ugly bod is going to end up once you actually get hired somewhere.”
Jericho struck a muscle-man pose. He didn’t particularly have a lot of muscle—his was more of a tall, skinny, and wiry build—but he started making silly faces while he did it and he drew a few laughs from other people passing by.
Lito seemed to suddenly notice their spectators too, because he waved Jericho back to the soapy kiddie pool he’d been standing next to and directed a lady with a boxer over to him. “You guys okay if I take a minute with Dave?” he asked.
The red-haired one made kissing noises. The guy next to him splashed him with the hose. Jericho waved Dave and Lito away. Lito retrieved his shirt, ran a hand through his damp hair, and fell into step at Dave’s side.
“So, um.” He steered them toward the tents on the opposite side of the greenspace, which looked like they provided shade for an assortment of folding tables. “I owed you an apology and I figured this might be a way to show you I meant it.”
“Half-naked but for a good cause?”
Lito shot him a wary look, but his posture relaxed when he saw Dave was teasing. “I’ll admit that wasn’t totally accidental, but no. I meant back here, with the team and with you and with everyone else in Black Lake wandering around. I said some things I shouldn’t have, and I’m sorry.”
“They weren’t entirely…” Dave sighed. “You’re not the first to call me a redneck, you know. And I do avoid bringing up my orientation sometimes. I hadn’t really thought about it, but you were right.”
“I never said ‘redneck,’ but I was still being a dick.” Lito grabbed his hand and pulled them both to a stop. “You are who you are and you can’t change that, just like I can’t. It’s not your fault that you’re all built and masculine and handsome and everyone assumes that means you’re straight.”
“I did overreact to Chad, though,” Dave said. “You said I was acting all protective white knight and I was. That stuff he said caught me by surprise—I really don’t hear all that many things I can’t just brush off, and those bothered me more than usual because they were about you. I can…I can try to tone it back in the future.” Please let there be a future.
“Funny you should mention that.” Lito rubbed his thumb over Dave’s knuckles. “As it so happens, I talked Dayspring’s owners into letting me move back here if I want to. Anytime in the next six months. They haven’t been able to find anyone capable of taking over the stuff I dealt with while I was here, and now that things are up and running they don’t really need me for day-to-day decisions down in Miami, so…yeah. Right now the plan is for my previous supervisor here to take over what I was doing down there. She’s scarily efficient and she’d be fantastic at it. Then I could do a mix of telecommuting and local stuff.”
Dave nearly forgot to breathe.
“I’m saying I want to give this another try, twit.” Lito brought their joined hands up to press a kiss on the backs of Dave’s fingers. “If you’re willing to give me another chance.” He wrinkled his nose. “Well, me and Spot. We’re a package deal.”
“Yes.” God, yes. “As soon as you want, however you want. If you—I’ll understand if you want to take this slow, but Lumpy and Woozy really do sleep better when Spot is there, and my house is big enough—”
Lito’s eyes lit up. “Really?”
“Really. On one condition.”
The wary look immediately came back to Lito’s expression. “What?”
“Cover for me with your friends? There’s no way I’m going to remember everyone’s names, and I don’t want to put my foot in my mouth.”
Lito yanked him down into a kiss. “I could put something else in your mouth instead,” he murmured in Dave’s ear, “but that will probably have to wait. There are kids around, and I need you here to judge the dog talent contest at two o’clock.”
Hell yes. “Tonight?”
“Tonight is a welcome-home shindig at the hotel for Jericho, but I think they’d be okay with me bringing a plus one. And they’ll understand when we leave early.”
“We.”
Lito grinned at him. “I’m diving back into your world—this is your chance to get a taste of mine.”
It sounded wonderful.
Chapter 21
“So you were in Haiti for three years?” Dave asked, for the second time that evening. He hadn’t been lying about bei
ng shit with names—Lito remembered that very well from their first meeting—but he seemed to be soaking up everyone’s stories and anecdotes just fine. Especially the ones about Lito when he first fell in with their group back in Atlanta.
Jericho nodded and slung back the rest of his rum and Coke. “I was planning to just do one, but I liked it there. It was excellent hands-on experience and I was actually helping.”
Dave shook his head. He was pleasantly warm, nestled against Lito’s side on the hotel suite sofa, and acting more than a little tipsy. Hell, Lito was feeling a little floaty too and he hadn’t drunk more than half a beer. “I’m still stuck on how you could live in one of the most backward, homophobic countries in the world for three whole years and not go batshit insane,” Dave said. Also for the second time.
Ian shrugged.
“I want to get back to talking about how wonderful Lito is.”
Adam laughed. “So that’s how it is, is it. I’d say get a room, but—”
“But I already got you all rooms,” Lito finished for him. “And you’re lucky I did, because y’all are too drunk to drive anywhere. Definitely not all the way back to Atlanta.”
“Not me,” Gus chimed in. He was sprawled on the area rug in front of the pull-out couch, feet tangled with Ian’s. “I just came down here to tell Dave that he’s being a dumbfuck who needed to get his head out of his ass and grovel until you came back already. The fact that y’all had a whole thing planned made it a lot easier.”
“Lito’s been an idiot too,” Chris chimed in. “Speaking of which, get yourselves a room already! I’m sick of all the sexual tension in here.”
Dave wriggled his ass backward against Lito’s hip and looked thoroughly smug.
“I’m not,” Gus said, eyes never leaving Ian. Who also seemed to be more than happy to be playing public footsie. “I’m in favor of Dave getting laid, though. Y’all won’t believe how grumpy he’s been lately.”
Jericho snorted. “Lito doesn’t get grumpy,” he said. “Just melancholy.”
“Melancholy?” Adam threw a pillow at him. “What the fuck, dude? You wouldn’t even know, you and your saving-the-world shit.”
Dave was apparently done with mere snuggling, which Lito found out when Dave twisted himself around in his seat and started kissing every part of Lito he could reach instead. Lito’s mind went blank.
“Just go get it over with,” Gus said, grinning. “Dave, I’ll get the rest of my stuff from your house tomorrow. I’m sure I can find somewhere else to crash tonight.”
Ian licked his lips.
“Every single one of you is ridiculous,” Lito said, and stood up. It took some tugging to get Dave to follow suit. “We are going to go back to Dave’s house. We’ll have fantastic make-up sex and plan out the rest of our lives together in a soppy and thoroughly nauseating manner. Then we’ll have more sex in the morning and talk about how soon Spot and I can move in. Y’all can all crash in here or split up to your own rooms, either way. This was a slow weekend and the hotel’s only half full, so it’s not like they’re going to waste otherwise. Gus, I’ll warn you—Ian snores. I’ll text y’all when I’m good and ready tomorrow and not one minute before. Goodnight!”
Dave buried his face in Lito’s hair for several seconds before being willing to move. “Love you,” he murmured.
Lito twirled around to give him a quick but thorough kiss. “I love you too,” he whispered in Dave’s ear. “And the sooner I get us back to your house, the sooner we can both prove it.”
Dave grabbed his hand and practically towed him out the door.
Worth Waiting For
If you enjoyed Worth Searching For,
be sure not to miss the first book in Wendy Qualls’s Heart of the South series,
A small town in the Deep South isn’t where most gay men would choose to go looking for love. But open hearts will find a way . . .
Growing up in the Bible Belt, Paul Dunham learned from a young age to hide his sexuality. Now he’s teaching psychology at a conservative college in Georgia—and still hiding who he really is. If Paul hopes to get tenure, he needs to keep his desires on the down-low. But when an old college crush shows up on campus—looking more gorgeous than ever—Paul’s long-suppressed urges are just too big for one little closet to hold . . .
Brandon Mercer has come a long way since his freshman year fumblings with Paul. Now he’s confident, accomplished, proudly out—and the sexiest IT consultant Paul’s ever seen. When Brandon asks Paul to grab some coffee and catch up, it leads to a steamy reunion that puts their first night of passion to shame. But when Paul’s longtime crush turns into a full-time romance, he receives an anonymous email threatening to expose their secret to the world. If Paul stays with Brandon, his teaching career is over. Yet if he caves under pressure, he risks losing the one true love he’s been waiting for . . .
A Lyrical Shine e-book on sale now.
Chapter 1
The chair of the psychology department was a mean, small man with a bad toupee and a permanent air of smugness pervading his office. His summons always evoked a feeling of impending trouble, but Paul stepped inside and closed the door anyway.
Doctor Kirsner looked up briefly, then went back to his typing. Paul waited in awkward silence for a full minute before his department head finally sat back in his chair and nodded for Paul to take the seat opposite.
“There have been some complaints about you,” Dr. Kirsner announced.
“Sorry?”
He slid a stapled sheaf of papers across his desk toward Paul. “Employee code of conduct—you may remember signing it when you were first hired. I gather it’s been giving you trouble recently.”
Paul took the papers and flipped through, his mind whirring. Saint Benedict’s wasn’t officially a Christian college any longer, but it did hold its staff to a fairly archaic standard of behavior. Still, he’d done everything expected—more than anyone could reasonably expect—to ensure he never put a toe out of line. Tenure was so close he could taste it, and a major violation of the code of conduct would have been the easiest way for this new department head to knock him out of the running.
“I don’t know what I could have done wrong,” he said aloud.
Dr. Kirsner seemed to expect the denial, and leaned in for the kill. “Kissing,” he hissed. “In front of students, no less.”
“I’m sure that’s not against the rules, and I wouldn’t be dumb enough to do it in front of students if it were.” Plus I haven’t kissed anyone in ages.
“Ah. So your girlfriend didn’t kiss you goodbye this morning in the parking lot, right outside my window?” Dr. Kirsner gestured to the quad outside. “You arrived at campus together well before classes started. She had an overnight bag. It doesn’t take a lot of imagination to figure out what the two of you had been doing without the benefit of marriage.” He tapped the code of conduct. “Which I’m sure is against the rules.”
Oh. Paul heaved an internal sigh of relief that it was something he could explain. “She’s not my girlfriend, and it wasn’t really a kiss.”
“Girlfriend, one-night stand, lady of the evening, it doesn’t matter. The ‘no immoral sexual conduct’ clause covers having a partner stay at your place of residence overnight.”
For all you know, we could have been having a tea party and playing videogames. Paul took a deep breath and counted to three before releasing it. “What you—and any student up that early—saw was my sister giving me two friendly kisses on the cheek as I said goodbye. She’s been in France for the last two years and the kiss on both cheeks is a French thing she’s picked up—there’s nothing sexual about it. And surely whoever’s complaining also noticed that she and I have the same color hair, same eyes, nearly the same facial structure, and a similar build. Not a girlfriend.”
Dr. Kirsner’s self-satisfied smirk froze on his face for a long moment, th
en slowly dissolved into a poor attempt at neutrality. “Sister?”
“Twin sister.” Paul shrugged and tried not to grin too blatantly at seeing his overbearing department head at a loss for words. “We’re not identical, obviously, but when we’re together most people pick up on the family resemblance. I don’t get to see her much anymore, so she stopped by after her flight got in—it’s a long drive to my parents’ house from Atlanta and I’m on the way. We took my car last night so I gave her a ride back to campus this morning to pick up her rental from the visitors’ lot.”
Paul was treated to the delightful sight of Dr. Kirsner trying very hard to fake a relieved smile and failing miserably. It was no secret the man wasn’t fond of him. Paul refused to allow his private life to become cannon fodder in the departmental pissing match for dominance the way everyone else did and Dr. Kirsner could never quite wrap his head around why. The truth—Paul was clinging to the lingering security of being firmly in the closet—would have been the coup de gras for what would have been a short but promising academic career at St. Ben’s. Much better to keep his mouth shut and let everyone think he was shy.
“Was that all, Dr. Kirsner?” Paul returned the department chair’s fake smile with a much more genuine one of his own. “Because if so, I should really go prepare for class.”
* * * *
The air still had a bit of a bite to it, but the sunshine felt wonderful and it was a beautiful Georgia spring day. Paul was more than ready to escape Dr. Kirsner’s office and get outside for a while. The “prepare for class” line had been a bit of an exaggeration—his first lecture on Thursdays wasn’t until eleven, which meant he technically didn’t have to be on campus yet—but Danielle had been in a hurry to get home so Paul had planned to spend the morning in his office. Not that he’d accumulated all that much paperwork to do, with spring break so recently out of the way and no major assignments currently looming on the horizon, but sometimes it was nice to at least feel professional.