Big, burly CEO Abe Behr is furious to discover someone -- probably a relative -- is embezzling from Behr Construction, a family-run business in the Sierra Nevada foothills outside Lake Tahoe. To confirm his suspicions, Abe takes the unprecedented step of hiring a non-family accountant, handsome Jeff Mason, to go over the books and help find the culprit. As they talk to Behr relatives and visit construction sites, Abe and Jeff are drawn to each other, bringing out new, softer emotions in workaholic Abe. Since he has sacrificed romance all his life to build the construction business, Abe’s surprised by his feelings for the handsome Jeff. He’s even more shocked when they come face to face with homophobia in the small foothills community where generations of Behrs have called home. Abe had always thought Stone Acres was a live-and-let-live kind of town. As he and Jeff get closer, he finds out how wrong he is when he comes out to both family and a community who think he’s making a big mistake. Will being the head of a large, powerful family and a pillar of the community be enough to win Abe his happily ever after with Jeff?

Behr Facts

I stood on the porch and really looked at it. It was raised, with a woodpile underneath. When we were growing up, there was a potbellied stove providing most of the heat during the winter. Which meant we had to chop wood to stay warm, which in turn meant getting up early in the mornings or staying up late at night to do more physical labor on top of the work we did during the day


As I stood there, I realized I’d never really looked at the house where I’d spent over twenty years of my life. I’d been too busy coming and going to enjoy the walls around me. I could draw its floorplan with my eyes shut, but I couldn’t say what color the living room was or even if there’d been pictures on those walls.


Had I looked at but not seen my brothers too? What did I really know about them—about them today and not in the past? Was I kidding myself to think we were close?


Chapter 33