Excerpt:
- Tags: Contemporary, M/M Romance, Christmas, Established couple, interracial
- Length: 38.000 words
- Release date: December 2nd, 2020
- Buy links : Publisher Buylink
Victor winked at him. He hoped it was a craft thing, but they’d done the candles, done the paint-by-numbers, so what else was there? He had to give Jian credit for creativity. He wasn’t sure he’d be able to come up with twenty-four dates without doing repeats.
Walking into the dining room—as Jian liked to call it—there was a jigsaw box on the table. “Jigsaw?”
“Yup, it’s a challenge. Can we finish it in one day?”
Victor stared at the box. “It’s a thousand pieces.” Was he insane?
“Yes, I read online that a thousand pieces puzzle takes somewhere between three and ten hours to solve.”
Victor pursed his lips. “As I recall, it took weeks when I was a kid.”
Jian frowned. “No, we’re finishing this today, because tomorrow we can’t have a puzzle on the table.”
“We can’t?”
“No. Where will we put all the food? Plus, some pieces could get lost if they’re lying around here tomorrow.” The look Jian gave him made him think there was more behind the statement than he let on.
“Okay. Roll up your sleeves, we’re having ourselves a puzzling day.”
Jian shook his head, but pulled out a chair and sat.
The motif was of a bookshelf filled with books and at least fifteen cats—more, since more and more became visible the longer Victor looked at it. “This is cute.”
“Yeah, I figured… you like cats, right?”
Victor glanced at him. “Sure.”
“No, not sure. I mean, you’re not allergic or anything?”
“To a picture of a cat? No.”
Jian grimaced. “You like dogs better.”
“It’s a puzzle, Jian. It looks like fun. And yeah, in real life, I like dogs better, but cats are adorable.”
“And dogs need walking.”
Victor laughed. “Sure.”
“A cat you can let out. You can install a cat flap, and it’ll mind its own business.”
Victor stared at him. “Are you thinking about getting a cat?” He would love a cat. Sure, he’d always deemed himself more of a dog person, but they couldn’t take care of a dog properly with how they were working. And now they had no idea how Jian would be working. Cats were adorable.
“No, I’m not.”
Victor shrugged. “Too bad. A cat would be fun. And remember last year when the mouse got in? I bet it wouldn’t happen if we had a cat.” He ripped open the plastic bag with the puzzle pieces and poured them out onto the table.
“This is a lot of pieces, Jian.” Victor frowned at the pile.
“A thousand would be my guess.”
“Idiot. Okay, let’s do the frame first.”
“What? No, I want to do the cats.”
Blurb:
When Victor Hill bought a house with his boyfriend, Jian Kouri it was a dream come true. But now, two years later, instead of living their happily ever after, they hardly see the other awake.
With Jian out the door before Victor gets up in the morning, and asleep on the couch nearly as soon as he walks in the door, the life Victor imagined couldn’t be further from reality. They don’t talk; they don’t touch, and Victor fears he and Jian have already drifted too far apart.
The holiday season is a time for hope, but when Victor comes home to find Jian with a plan to woo him for Christmas, is it too little, too late? The dates are great, and there are filled with Christmas fun to get Victor in the right spirit for the holiday, but are they enough for the two of them to fall in love again? Or is there just too much in their relationship that needs fixing?
