2016 Top Ten Gay Romance

by Snyder, J. M. ; Black, Becky; Creech, T. A.

  “Very much,” he says.

  “Okay. So let me ask you this: Why are you hanging on to this curse nonsense? We met on Christmas. Had our first date on Christmas. I’m trying to put a ring on your finger on Christmas. Explain the terrible part to me?”

  I can see his wheels turning. For a minute he just knows there’s a way for this not to be of his own doing, and I can see him digging through his brain like a kid through his toy box—it’s gotta be in here somewhere. Finally, he gives up. “I mean, the part since I left your mom’s hasn’t been so hot.”

  I roll my eyes with a laugh. “So to recap, if I understand you correctly: Together, fine; apart, ‘not so hot.’”

  He nods. “It looks that way, yes.”

  I dig the rings out of my jacket pocket. “What if I wait until tomorrow?” I ask, clicking them together. “If I ask you to marry me on a day that isn’t Christmas, what will you say?”

  Suddenly Seth vaults the counter, startling both of us almost out of our chairs. He stalks up to our table. “If you don’t say Yes, Freckles, I’m gonna. Somebody marry this dude!”

  Shannon laughs, then looks at me. “Oh, I’m marrying him.”

  After the kissing and making up, which involves more Seth than we might have been expecting, I slip one of the rings onto my own finger and hold it up to be admired. We ooh and we aah, and Shannon holds his hand out to be adorned.

  “You’ll get yours tomorrow,” I tell him. “I don’t trust you with this curse shit. I’m going home and going to bed.”

  “Okay,” he says. “Call me tomorrow?”

  I grab his hand. “Oh, you’re coming with me.”

  Epilogue

  December 25, 2015

  We’ve been married four and a half years, I guess. That must be right, ‘cause for our fifth anniversary we’re going to take a cruise on the same ship we got married on, and that’s coming up in May. There’s been some saving involved. That year it was just a little four-night Caribbean junket, this time we’re doing the Panama Canal, something like sixteen days. Plus that year it was just Shannon and me—the ship was registered in Norway and the captain who married us was Norwegian, so at least it’s legal somewhere—and this time of course there’ll be three of us.

  Not because we went looking to adopt. I was thirty-eight the first time we even met James, Shannon was already forty. Even James was six—we were all three way past the point where it made sense to be thinking about a family. No, my friend Antony, his social worker, had lamented: James was pretty much guaranteed a future in foster care. And not an especially rosy one at that, given how much more challenging his developmental delays made him to place. Heavy sigh.

  We’d never stood a chance, and somehow Antony knew it—the main reason we brought James home at all was because I couldn’t get Shannon to let go of his hand. He adopted James as fast as they’d let him, and Antony says he’s sure my second-parent status will come through after the holidays.

  Ordinarily if James isn’t already teeth brushed and tucked in by eight o’clock, a meltdown is imminent—if not from him, then from his Papa—but on Christmas Eve, man, he can hang like a champ. Which is nice ‘cause I usually need help waking Shannon after mass. The kid’s around his cousins, there’s presents, and he’s nuts for my sister’s palmiers—it takes the three of us a couple days to recover, but it’s totally worth it. I know, I know, I can hear you thinking it: a kid who loves Christmas? What’ll they think of next?

  What’s not normal about it—what was certainly unexpected, anyway—is the way he’s rubbed off on Shannon. Good Lord, for a month out of every year suddenly I’m married to Mrs. Claus. It’s Christmas cookies and Christmas music and Christmas kids shows on Netflix, on DVD—on VHS, don’t ask me where he got a VCR—before we eat our first turkey-and-cranberry-sauce leftover sandwich. And because this is the way shit like this goes, my husband and my son cannot go five December minutes without croo-oo-ooning along with someone, anyone’s version of “Blue Christmas”.

  Which Seth somehow got a hold of, and it’s blaring over the Bean City speakers when we stop for coffee on the way home from my mom’s.

  “Just for you, Little Walnut,” Seth—who bought the joint from Jackie three years ago—announces when the song starts up.

  “You’re a walnut.” James can barely contain his giggles. He’s always Seth’s little something, a bond of which he’s both proud and protective. Goofy pet names are Seth’s domain, and this rule is diligently enforced. Papa and Daddy Ben are to call him James. Under extenuating circumstances he’ll tolerate “mon fils,” but he lets me know he’s doing me a favor, and I use it sparingly.

  We floated “Papa” for me originally, but James applied it to Shannon almost at once, and it’s so freakin’ adorable to hear my non-French kid call my non-French husband Pa-pa, I surrendered it gladly. I was perfectly satisfied with “Daddy,” but he hears his Papa call me Ben, and if Shannon does it, it is to be emulated at all costs, so “Daddy Ben” it is.

  “Seth, I will give you a hundred dollars to turn that song off this second,” I wheedle as James and Shannon carol along.

  He fiddles with his phone, plugged into the sound system. “Let me just put this on ‘repeat’ right quick…” He looks up at me, surprised-like. “Sorry, Benny, what were you saying?”

  “I was saying James is right, you are a walnut.” James cackles with glee as the song trails off, then starts again.

  Dads get coffee, kids get hot chocolate. “And a banana,” Shannon allows.

  “I want a cookie.”

  “You’ve had a million cookies, which is your limit.”

  “Please, Papa. I’ve had a million minus one, I promise.”

  “I ate the millionth one,” Shannon says. “So you may have one banana.”

  “That’s not fair!”

  “So no banana?”

  James looks at Seth. He can barely mumble out, “One banana please.”

  Seth gives the kid a cookie, obviously, and we adjourn to a corner table, which most of the cookie ends up underneath.

  Shannon is guiding James through the list of his Christmas presents for Seth’s benefit. “And what did your cousins Louis and Greg get you?”

  “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles!”

  “That’s right. And stickers?”

  “And stickers.”

  “Whoa, cool.” Seth is duly impressed. His girlfriend of less than seven months is six months pregnant, and he’s a little freaked out, but he’s gonna do great.

  “And what did your Mimi get you?” Mémère is more than Shannon can get his mouth around, never mind James, so my mother, too, got a new name out of these proceedings.

  “Nothing,” James says, dejected.

  “Nothing?” Shannon coaches. “Or did she get you Legos?”

  “Legos!” James squeals, bouncing up and down on Shannon’s lap. It’s a lot for the little guy to keep track of.

  “It sounds like you had an awesome Christmas, Little Walnut,” Seth enthuses.

  “Did you have an awesome Christmas?” Shannon asks.

  James nods, eyes wide; a definite Yes. Then he looks at me, concerned, and places his little hand on my knee. “Daddy Ben, did you have an awesome Christmas?”

  “I sure did,” I say.

  He turns in Shannon’s lap to regard his Papa. “What about you?” he asks. “Did you have an awesome Christmas?”

  “Of course I did,” Shannon says. “We always do.”

  “That’s right. Christmas is always awesome,” James tells Seth. “It’s the best holiday there is, huh, Papa?”

  Shannon kisses the little walnut on top of his head, winks at me.

  “Yes, it is.”

  THE END

  In His Line of Work by Tinnean

  As always, this is for Bob.

  Also, many thanks to Gail Morse for her help.

  Chapter 1

  Deuce Pettigrew entered Lacey’s Café on 14th St. SW. When he’d first come to DC, back in �
��93, it had been known as Java Joe’s.

  The place was mobbed, filled with men and women who were taking a break from work or from class. It looked like he’d need to find another coffee shop to frequent.

  He shook his head and got on line.

  “So what’s the skinny, Dix?” the young man ahead of him asked his companion.

  “I’m at loose ends right now. Charles has gone down to Disney World to see a friend of his.”

  “A male friend?”

  “No. Jeanette Van Orden and her kid are down there.”

  Deuce made every muscle in his body relax. He knew that name. He’d looked for the woman and her son for most of the past year.

  “I haven’t been to Disney World in ages,” the young man observed.

  “It’s not a vacation. She’s working there.”

  “So was I, last time I was there.” He bumped his shoulder against Dix’s. “Is she one of the characters?”

  “No, she’s at the Contemporary, in housekeeping.”

  “Well, since Chuckles isn’t here—”

  “You’d better never let Charles hear you call him that,” Dix warned.

  The barista gave them their coffees then, and they paid her and wandered off.

  Deuce didn’t hear the rest of their conversation, but that wasn’t important. He knew where the woman and the kid were, and that would give him leverage with his boss. And since she was up in New York just then, he’d have plenty of time to make his plans.

  “This one’s on me, handsome.”

  He accepted the cup of coffee the barista offered him and gave her an absent smile. She’d been trying to flirt with him since she’d started working at Lacey’s Café. She was persistent; he’d say that for her.

  “Thanks very much,” he murmured. It wasn’t that she wasn’t pretty, because she was; it wasn’t because she was too young, although she was that also.

  The thing was, Deuce was already attracted to someone. And okay, so that someone was probably the barista’s age, but as it happened, he was also male.

  Deuce retrieved the morning’s copy of the Washington Post someone had left lying around and retreated to a chair in the corner, where he wouldn’t be noticed. He made himself comfortable, took a sip of the coffee, and grimaced. It wasn’t sweet enough. Dammit, just because he was a guy and a tough one at that, it didn’t mean he had to take his coffee black and strong enough to float a horseshoe.

  He set aside the cup, snapped open the newspaper, and thumbed the pages to the obituary section. Most men read the sports section first, but he always checked out the obits. In his line of work, it paid to know if someone you were on the hunt for no longer needed to be dead, because they already were.

  “Son of a bitch!” He ignored the startled looks his exclamation caused. The first obit at the top of the page was for Eric Jameson, the man he’d done some odd jobs for the year before.

  Of course, what Jameson hadn’t known was that Deuce actually worked for Dr. Pandora Gautier and had for the past twelve years, since he’d left the military. It was under her direction that he and his team—Ace, Stan, and Trip—did those jobs for Jameson. Last year the job had entailed getting their hands on a seven-year-old boy, but damned if the kid and his mother hadn’t managed to slip through their fingers. Although now it seemed they were in Florida.

  He never asked why Dr. G. wanted something done. She paid well, and if you lived long enough, the benefits were decent.

  That was the problem. Sometimes you just didn’t live long enough.

  He studied the obit thoughtfully.

  Eric Jameson, 38, suddenly. A native of Washington, DC, he worked for the CIA from the time of his graduation from George Washington University in 1987 until he left to pursue his options in the private sector in 2002. He was predeceased by his parents, Elizabeth and Bernard Jameson, and is survived by his brothers Bernard, Jr. (Christine) and Andrew (Samantha), his sisters Beatrix (John) Merrill and Isabelle (Forest) Pollard, and numerous nieces, nephews, and cousins. Services will be held privately for the family.

  Suddenly? Jameson had been healthy as a horse. He’d been a supercilious major pain in the ass, but he should have had a lot of years ahead of him.

  It would pay for Deuce to look into what had really happened to Jameson.

  Absentmindedly, he took another sip of coffee. “Jesus.” He rose, dropped the paper cup into the trash can, and then headed out the door.

  * * * *

  Hit by a bus? By a fucking Westbound 36 bus? How the hell did a grown man who’d lived his entire life in DC do something so asinine?

  Now Deuce really needed to find out what was going on.

  Chapter 2

  Deuce always figured he was a lucky guy. Unless it came to love. Or family.

  But lucky, yeah.

  He threaded his fingers through his hair.

  Since Dr. Gautier had gone up to NY for more plastic surgery, as usual, she’d taken Finchley, her right-hand man, personal assistant, and virtual guard dog, with her. That left the DC offices of BIMOS—the Biederman Institute of Meteorological and Oceanographic Studies—untended; she always gave the staff time off when she went to have work done.

  This turned out to be one of those lucky things for Deuce—it gave him the perfect opportunity to do a little snooping.

  Her private offices were buttoned up tight, but that didn’t matter. He chuckled to himself as he took a kit from his jacket pocket, selected a lock pick, and let himself into the outer room, which was Finchley’s office.

  What he needed wouldn’t be in there. He let himself into Dr. Gautier’s inner sanctum.

  It was a little after eleven, but instead of turning on the lights, he fished a flashlight from his other pocket, turned it on, and gripped it between his teeth.

  Of course the file cabinet that interested him was locked. He manipulated that lock, pulled out the drawer, and began looking through the files. It didn’t take him long to find the one he wanted.

  He opened the folder and began to thumb through it.

  * * * *

  Well.

  He took the flashlight from between his teeth and swallowed, his mouth abruptly desert-dry.

  Well. Wasn’t this fucking special?

  He put the folder away, locked the file cabinet, then backtracked out of the building, locking doors behind him.

  He needed a drink.

  There was a small bar, the Six Nine, a few blocks away. It would still be open, and it shouldn’t be too crowded on a Thursday. He shrugged to settle his denim jacket more comfortably on his shoulders, then began striding down Mass. Avenue.

  * * * *

  The sound of a pool cue striking a ball greeted him as he entered the Six Nine, and he looked around. A few men sat at the bar, while a man and a woman were in one of the booths, holding hands across the table.

  Two men studied the lay of the balls on the pool table at the rear of the bar.

  On the TV above the bar, a muted black and white movie played—something he recognized from the 1930s—while music on the jukebox blared, and the song wasn’t something familiar.

  The bartender grinned at him and gave him a nod as he approached the bar. “What’ll it be?”

  “Let me have a Jack, straight up.”

  “You got it.” The bartender reached for the bottle of Jack Daniels and poured a shot. “Do you want to run a tab?”

  “Thanks, but no.” As much as he needed this, he didn’t want to go overboard. It was always a good idea to stay on his toes. That was one of the reasons why he was still alive. “What do I owe you?”

  “Five bucks.”

  He took a five from his wallet and handed it to the man, then placed two singles on the bar. A decent tip, not too much or too little, either of which would cause the bartender to remember him.

  “Thanks.” The bartender rang up the sale, and when the cash register slid open, he tucked away the bill. The singles he put in the tip jar beside the register.

  �
�Welcome.” Deuce put away his wallet, picked up the glass, and found a booth in a secluded corner. He needed to do a lot of thinking, and he needed to do it in peace.

  He slid into the booth, tuned out the background noise, and stared into the amber depths of the whisky before taking a sip. God, he was in deep shit.

  This was like six fucking degrees of Kevin Bacon.

  Deuce had been ordered to bring that seven-year-old boy to Dr. Gautier. The kid’s mother had been friends with Delilah Carson, who Deuce had worked over for Jameson in January of 2002, only to have her die before he’d gotten the information he’d needed. Jameson insisted neither of them had to worry about her kicking the bucket—somehow Jameson had been able to locate the woman and her son. Cocksure of his success and so fucking smug with it, Jameson had been fucking positive no one would care what happened to a whore.

  Seemed he’d been fucking wrong.

  Delilah had worked occasionally with a rent boy who went by the name of Sweetcheeks. All of this would have been immaterial, except for one more connection: as it turned out, Sweetcheeks was a good friend—and Deuce would have liked to know how the hell that had happened—of Mark Vincent, the deadliest agent the Washington Bureau of Intelligence and Security had ever produced.

  And not only was Vincent deadly, he was fiercely loyal as well. It had taken some digging on Deuce’s part—okay, a lot of digging—since this information hadn’t been privy outside certain factions of the intelligence community, but Vincent had decimated a drug cartel in Columbia after they’d tortured and slaughtered his partner.

  The odd thing was Vincent hadn’t even liked his partner much.

  Deuce could understand Vincent’s reaction, though. You looked after your men, even if you didn’t have much use for some of them.

  And that meant Vincent could very well be coming after the people who’d been responsible for this entire fubar, starting with Delilah Carson’s death.

  Okay, that left him with one option: get the fuck out of Dodge. Dr. G. wasn’t going to be happy, but he had that bit of information that might appease her. He’d prefer to have Trip get in her good graces by being the one to give it to her, but it remained to be seen.