Two years ago, Chris and his boyfriend left the city to settle in a small town at the US-Canada border. Eager to start a new life, Chris bought the Frontier Café, but a year later, his boyfriend dumped him, leaving Chris the only openly gay man in town. Nowadays he's resigned to a life of romantic solitude.<br><br>Hank spent the last years traveling through the country for his job as a water plant engineer. Deeply closeted, he's careful about the men he meets. Like the rivers he studies, he runs fast through the land.<br><br>In town only for a few weeks, Hank is intent on getting the job done and returning home out west to take care of his father. But Chris’s warm manner and decadent desserts are no match for Hank’s defense mechanisms. For the first time in his life, he finds himself wanting to go with the flow.

No River Wide Enough

“How much?” He reached into his pocket. “Say, five?”


The door opened behind John and, looking even better and sexier than the last time I’d seen him, Hank stepped into the dining room. “Just—just make me a T-shirt or something,” I sputtered, praying I wouldn’t blush too hard. “I’ll box it up for you,” I said, turning away, giving myself time for the blood in my face to cool.


“No, no, I insist,” John said behind me. “Hey, by the way, where’s Drika this afternoon?”


“Uh, she’s at home. Had a little bit of a stomachache.” Shakily, I slid the cake into the white box and folded the flaps.


Hank was sitting at the front table, going over some notes. I could tell by the tension in his jaw and the way he kept circling the pen over the same figure again and again, that he wasn’t working at all, but waiting. Waiting for us to be alone.


“There you go,” I said, offering the box to John over the counter. “Say hi to Jill for me.”


Chapter 14