Follow The Sun – excerpt and buy links

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Excerpt:

How long he sat there he didn’t know. The sounds of partying sometimes reached him—laughter and the odd splash—but down here on the beach he had time to think. His watch was in his room and he didn’t have the energy to wrestle his cell from his back pocket. Completely cut off from the passage of time, he could really lose himself in the peace of the ocean.

“Do you mind company?”

Lucas looked up and blinked at the bar-guy-slash-captain, Dylan, who was standing way tall and looking down at him with a smile.

“It’s a free beach,” Lucas said. He pushed down the instinctive thrill of pleasure that tall, dark, and sexy-rough wanted to sit next to him. Then just as quickly, he wondered why Dylan was here at all. “Aren’t you working?”

“Everyone’s in bed, it’s nearly midnight.”

“It is?” Lucas shook his head. Hours had passed as he watched the waves reach shore and then recede into the darkness.

“I bought you down another Apple Mojito,” Dylan said. Passing the drink down and carefully balancing his own bottled beer, Dylan made himself comfortable at Lucas’s side. “You look like a man who needs a drink.”

“And how is that?”

“All starry-eyed into the distance.” Dylan shook his free hand in a loose approximation of pointing out there into the dark. “Clearly, you have big thoughts.”

“It’s a big day tomorrow. I’m giving away my only family.”

“To be fair, Liam seems like a nice guy.”

Lucas cast a look sideways at Dylan. He was a staff member. Should he really be down here making personal comments to guests?

“He is. A very nice man,” Lucas finally answered.

“Can I ask you a question?”

“Uh huh?”

“You’re gay, right? I overheard it on the boat.”

Lucas turned to look at Dylan, but his companion’s gaze was fixed firmly out to sea as he asked the question.

“I don’t think that’s an appropriate—” he started, but then stopped abruptly. Who was he kidding? When Dylan turned to face him with that open expression and a faint smile on his lips, Lucas could only really say one thing. After all, Dylan had heard what Kate had said, and had probably noticed him staring at his ass when he was organizing bottles in the fridge. “Yes.”

“Don’t you want to know why I asked you?” Dylan’s voice was soft and invited confidence.

“Tell me,” Lucas said.

“I kind of wanted to ruffle your feathers a bit. Are you out?”

“To family—what there is of it—and to friends.”

“Oh.” Dylan’s voice held a note of puzzlement. “You were so distracted, first on the boat with that redhead, and then at the bar. Thought maybe you were still in the closet and it was a battle with not wanting people to know.”

Lucas huffed a laugh at Dylan’s comment. If only his problems were something that well defined. He didn’t care who knew he was gay. He was happy in his own skin, and so far prejudice and hate hadn’t really touched him. Even Oscar, his boss, knew, and although he had commented on the fact, it didn’t seem to make Lucas a lesser manager in his eyes.

“I just have a lot on my mind.”

“Your sister?”

“Tasha? No, she’s golden. She’s with a man who loves her and who will treat her right. Liam is one of the good guys.”

Dylan frowned and took a swallow of his beer. “So, you’re happy in your own skin and your close family has a good life. Why do you look so sad?”

“Is this a bartender thing? Where you ask random shit like that and I sit and tell you all my problems?” Lucas laughed. “Sad? I don’t feel sad,” he lied through his teeth. His nerves were too raw to talk about Alan or about the decisions he faced about his future. Neither subject was what he wanted to talk about to the first available person who trapped him in a dark space and beguiled him with soft emotional questions. Not that he was exactly trapped. 

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