Sunday, December 8, 2024
🎅🎄Sunday's Short Stack🎄🎅: Ice Around the Edges by Mary Calmes
Evan Kano’s life is on an even keel until the night he’s shot at the homeless shelter where he works. The resulting turmoil is not caused by a bullet but by a blast from the past: Evan’s first lover has returned to visit him in the hospital and deliver some big news.
Ten years ago, Dixon Bain walked out of Evan’s life because he thought his family didn’t approve of him having a male lover. But Dixon has discovered that what he thought he knew could not be further from the truth, and now he’s returned to claim the only man he’s ever loved... if he can melt the ice around the edges of Evan’s still-wounded heart.
2nd edition, previously published December 2010.
Second chance romance is always a favorite of mine, generally with a little redemption and forgiveness thrown in for good measure and lets face it, there isn't a better time of year for those two elements.
Another short holiday tale that I won't go into too much detail so as not to spoil anything. I will say that Ice Around the Edges may be a bit more tame than one has come to expect from Mary Calmes and her infusion of mayhem. Here the mayhem happened before and we find the MCs connecting after said mayhem. Or more accurately Dixon trying to reconnect with Evan, the man he walked away from ten years prior because of his family's lack of accepting who he is(or did they?). Dixon is not a man to give up on his plan to reconnect easily and he definitely has an uphill climb but he's determined.
Truly another lovely, fun, and spicy holiday short that will warm the heart and put a few laugh lines on your face.
I hated hospitals, and having spent the last eight days in one, I was dying to go home. Not that there was anyone to go home to, but still. The smells, the sounds—I was ready to get the hell out of purgatory. And the wound, under the bandage, below my right shoulder, was itchy now instead of painful.
My parents, my brother, had all visited and then returned to their respective homes at my insistence. I loved that they’d all hopped on planes, but the holidays were looming and things like an excitedly anticipated cruise for my parents, and his wife being in her third trimester for my brother, meant none of them could stay. I didn’t need them to. It had been scary when I’d been shot, but I was well on the mend. This was corroborated by an endless stream of friends who had come by as well. I had so many visitors, the nurses had given me multiple warnings. They understood I was popular, but the sheer volume of people stopping by was out of hand. It was very kind, and I appreciated the company, but for an introvert, it had become a bit daunting. At the moment, I was more tired of being cheerful than I was from recovering from getting shot.
“Hey.”
Looking up, I was stunned.
“What?” he groused at me, irritated that fast.
I was speechless. The man who had just walked into my room was my ex, but what made it amazing was that he wasn’t my last one. He was not Greg Nevill, who had decided that living with a man who ran a homeless shelter was too much work, and he was not Sean Harris, who I had spent three years with before that. The man I was looking at was Dixon Bain, the very first man I had ever loved, back a million years ago when I was young and stupid and twenty-two. It had begun at eighteen, when we were both freshmen in college at the University of Chicago, and ended four years later, when he returned to New York.
“Holy shit,” I managed to get out.
He walked over to the bed, took off the black cashmere-and-wool overcoat, and draped it over the end. He was wearing a navy-blue suit underneath, the epitome of polished and professional. I was thinking he should have been on the cover of GQ.
“May I sit and talk to you?”
“Of course,” I told him, too out of it to do anything but stare. I watched him grab the chair that my boss was in an hour before and move it next to the bed. He sat down facing me. “What the hell are you doing here?”
Dark olive-green eyes focused on me.
“Jesus, Dix, what’s it been?”
“Ten years.”
I knew for certain it was at least eight, but I would take his word for it. “And you’re doing what? Just… visiting?”
He cleared his throat. “You know Gwen Dawkins of Peterson Dunbar, don’t you?”
It took me a minute, because really, it had been forever since I’d laid eyes on the man, and I was having just the most surreal moment ever.
“Ev?”
And he was shortening my name like it was normal and expected and still us.
“Um, yeah, she––she’s the community outreach coordinator at PD.”
He nodded, leaning forward. “Well, I don’t know if you know or not, but Peterson Dunbar is an affiliate of Bain Limited.”
I shook my head. “No, I had no idea.”
His eyes were hard to describe, because when you said olive green, people immediately had a vision in their heads of what that looked like. But Dixon’s eyes… his eyes were this clear green mixed with brown, the color of dark khaki but with a sort of simmering intensity in them everyone always noticed. They were unique, just like he was. When I had been spellbound by the man those many years ago, just looking up and finding myself caught in his gaze had made my cock hard. I was very glad that I was swaddled under layers of blankets so he couldn’t see the reaction I was having to him. Some things never changed.
“So.” He cleared his throat. “When Gwen sent an email to her boss saying that she felt a donation in your name to the shelter you ran would be a good idea, sort of a gift for the holidays, I had to sign off on it, as my director of charitable contributions is out on maternity leave.”
I nodded.
“I emailed her back, asking why we were making a donation in your name, and she explained that she felt it would be a nice gesture, as the shelter would be missing their director for at least a month while you recuperated from getting shot.”
I had the weirdest feeling that I was dreaming. “So you came all the way from New York just to check up on me?”
“Of course I did.”
I saw how tense he looked, but that made no sense. “Why?”
“Why what?”
I squinted at him.
“Why would I come check on you?”
“Yes, Dixon,” I said, drawing out his name. “Why would you?”
“Why wouldn’t I?”
Oh dear God. We would be caught in this circle forever. “Just answer the question, would you, please? It’s annoying as hell.”
“I came because you got shot, idiot.”
Mary Calmes lives in Lexington, Kentucky, with her husband and two children and loves all the seasons except summer. She graduated from the University of the Pacific in Stockton, California, with a bachelor's degree in English literature. Due to the fact that it is English lit and not English grammar, do not ask her to point out a clause for you, as it will so not happen. She loves writing, becoming immersed in the process, and falling into the work. She can even tell you what her characters smell like. She loves buying books and going to conventions to meet her fans.
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