Christian Rivers has been single for a year and a half. Emotionally disconnected, he focuses on writing his next best seller. Unfortunately, his neighbor’s teenage son, Bret Hicks, causes trouble next door with his bad friends hanging out, smoking marijuana, drinking, and abusing Christian's dog, Darth Vader. Incensed, Christian phones Milestone County’s Sheriff Philip Erickson to lay an animal cruelty charge. When Sheriff Erickson arrives, the two men have coffee, and a spark of attraction that has been developing between them since they met, flickers to life. But Philip is on duty and has to leave. Later that night Christian wakes up from the sounds of breaking glass as someone forces entry into his house. He calls Philip but before the sheriff arrives, Bret appears in the door of Christian’s bedroom, drunk and wearing a Halloween mask. In the aftermath of the drama the suppressed attraction between the two men comes to a boil, leading to new hope and mutual satisfaction for Christian and the sheriff.

A Light in the Dark

“She’s just a mutt. Cute as hell, though. I was tired of coming home to an empty house.”


I swallow hard and look around the uncomfortable silence of my once cozy home. Suddenly a clap of thunder rumbles somewhere far off. Pellets of sleet blast the windows as if Milestone County is under attack.


Then over the deafening clatter, I hear my name being called as if it is an echo in a dream. “Christian?”


“I’ll be at the Hicks’s place in less than ten minutes.”


The knock on my front door comes twenty minutes later, after I hear the police cruiser crunching over my gravel driveway.


Chapter 3