Jordan pulled up outside Carter’s. The place was easy to find mostly because of its big neon sign and was clearly popular. Cars filled the parking lot, and he parked on the end of one of the lines.
As he made his way through rows of vehicles, he looked up at the sign and took in as much information as he could before he went inside. He couldn’t fail to see the rainbow in the window and wondered if that was just some kind of random window dressing or Ryan’s influence. If Ryan’s family owned the place and he was out, then they’d want to acknowledge that, he supposed.
When he stepped inside, he knew immediately what he was walking into.
He saw a couple of men at the bar, one with his arm around the other. Next to them two women sat holding hands and talking. Groups of people were dining, some of them families. Looked like this place was somewhere that accepted everyone.
He made his way to the bar. The man standing behind it had to be related to Ryan; he was older and had silver at his temples and more years carved into his face, but his smile was Ryan’s and he had the same dark eyes. Maybe this was Ryan’s father.
“Hi.” Jordan leaned over the bar.
“What can I get you?” the older man asked.
“I think I’m here to see your son,” Jordan said. “Ryan.”
“I don’t have any children.”
“Oh. But Ryan lives here?”
“He does.”
Getting a straight answer out of this guy is like getting blood from of a stone, Jordan thought. “Can you, um….”
“You said you only think you’re here to see him?”
“I did?”
This was getting confusing. Then the man broke into a wide grin and extended a hand, which Jordan took.
“Just fucking with you. I’m Saul, Ryan’s oldest brother. He’s upstairs. Go through the back door, turn right, take the stairs, and his door is the first one.” He released Jordan’s hand. “Take these with you.” He handed over two beers and a bottle of wine.
“What do I owe you?” Jordan moved to pull out his wallet.
“Nothing.” Saul waved him away. “Get yourself upstairs. And comment how tidy it looks, okay?”
“Okay.” Jordan gave an answering smile and pointed at the door. “That door?”
“Yep. Nice to meet you.”
“And you.”
Jordan wasn’t lying; it was nice to see someone connected to Ryan. It wasn’t as though Jordan could google Ryan and get all the details of his family or his background, not like Ryan could do with him.
He went through the door, which opened onto a large internal hallway and the stairs, which he took two at a time, excitement in every step, until finally he was outside the door. He shifted the three bottles to one arm and knocked. The door opened really quickly.
“Hey,” Ryan said and widened the door.
He looked good. Just as good out of uniform as in it. Tonight he was in jeans that stretched over muscled thighs, a slim black tee that hugged every muscle, and he’d done something to his hair—maybe gel or something, whatever. He looked edible.
Something was definitely going to be happening tonight.
“Hey, your brother gave me these,” Jordan said and held out the wine and the two beers. “I called him your dad. He didn’t seem to mind, though, so I don’t think I fucked up too bad.”
Ryan took the bottles and walked over to a small kitchen, no more than a breakfast bar, really, with a microwave and a kettle. Maybe he didn’t do a lot of cooking.
“Beer or wine?” Ryan asked. “Dinner’s in twenty. I made something instead of getting take out.”
“You cooked?”
“Simple stuff, in the downstairs kitchen. Lasagna, so beer or wine?”
“Wine is good,” Jordan said.
He crossed to a shelving unit against the wall and looked at some of the photos there. He spotted five men in a row in one picture, and he could make out Saul at one end and Ryan at the other. Three men, all with a similar look to them, stood in the middle. The five weren’t ranged by height; Ryan was easily the tallest and had the nicest smile.
Or am I just biased?
“My brothers. Left to right, in order of age. Saul, you met him downstairs, then Eddie. Aaron—he’s the paramedic—Jason, the fireman you met on set, and then me.”
“So, where did you get the tall genes from?” Jordan asked. Not that the other brothers were short, probably all hitting six foot, but Ryan was definitely taller.
“My dad’s family, or so Saul tells me. Dad’s cousins were tall. They live in Canada now, we don’t really see them; some kind of family falling out.”
Jordan considered pressing for more, but he sensed the story might be too much for what he was pretending was an evening to talk about his script.
Ryan went on anyway. “And this is my niece and nephew, Milly and Jake. They’re Eddie’s children and spoiled because so far, Eddie’s the only one of us to have kids.”
“Really?”
“Yeah, Saul always said he’d had enough bringing us up, and Aaron and Jason just haven’t found the right person.”
“What about you?”
“Me?” Ryan frowned. “No, I don’t have kids.”
“No, I mean, do you want them?” He couldn’t believe he’d asked that and even began to create a sentence whereby he apologized, but Ryan beat him to it.
“One day,” Ryan offered. “I’m thirty-three. I guess I should be doing something about it soon.”
Jordan’s heart swelled; he could imagine Ryan holding a baby. He had to school his features into a mask of faint interest without thinking that his own wanting kids was a good match for Ryan. Yes, he wanted kids, three or four of them. One day.
“I’m thirty,” he said.
Ryan smiled at him. “Just a baby,” he teased.
“Old enough.” Jordan offered a wink as punctuation to that. Then, when he realized he was an idiot, he concentrated on sipping his glass of wine.
“Did you bring the script with you?”
“Do you have a laptop? I have it on a stick.”
Ryan walked through a side door that Jordan assumed led to a bedroom. Part of him, the part that wanted to climb Ryan and get off against him, felt like following him. After all, there was definitely something between them; all it needed was for one of them to say something and they’d be off.
Ryan came out, opening the laptop as he walked and clicking buttons before passing it to Jordan.
Jordan placed his wine on a coaster and then balanced the laptop, pushing in the stick, locating the file, opening it, and handing the whole thing to Ryan.
No one else had read what he’d written, not even Micah. Because hell, Micah might have signed off on the five year plan, but Jordan wasn’t ready to share the script just yet. He didn’t think Micah would be dismissive of the story he was writing, but could they take the chance on something that might not be a commercial success?
Ryan shut the laptop and placed it on the coffee table in front of the huge comfy-looking sofa and straightened. “Dinner first,” he announced. “Then I can read it properly.”
“You don’t have to read it tonight.”
“I want to. Dinner is in the main shared kitchen downstairs. We should have the place to ourselves.”
Jordan followed Ryan out of the room and down another set of stairs, which opened out into a large brightly lit kitchen. The scents of garlic and tomato hit him as they entered and his mouth watered. Whatever was cooking had an Italian smell to it, and he loved Italian food.
“Hope you like lasagna. I didn’t ask if you were vegetarian, so I did two, just in case.”
“No, I like meat,” Jordan said, then winced internally when Ryan raised an eyebrow.
So, it was going to be that kind of evening. Hell, he could do innuendo with the best of them. He sidled up to Ryan and leaned over the piping hot lasagna. “What can I do?”
“The salad is in the refrigerator if you want to get it, and I’ll take some more wine. I’m not on duty tomorrow, and I can always go into the bar and get more if we empty that one.”
“You looking to get me drunk, Sheriff?” Jordan teased.
“Obviously.”
Once the plates were filled, they sat at the table opposite each other. Jordan was too hungry to delay eating. The sauce was hot, the pasta perfect, the salad fresh, the wine soft, and Ryan was sitting there looking all kinds of gorgeous.
Ryan cleared his throat. “How is filming going?”
“Fine. We’re clearing all the exterior scenes next—me in a shirt and no jacket in the snow.” Jordan couldn’t help the shudder; Montana was freaking cold.
“Any night shoots?”
“Some. We have packs we can use to keep warm. I just hope I can deliver all my lines without my teeth chattering.”
“Did you always want to be an actor?”
Oh, now that was a leading question, and he had a standard answer: he was born to love it, acting was in his genes, and he was happy all the damn time. But somehow, he wanted to be completely honest with Ryan.
“I was born into it. I assume you googled me?” He waited for Ryan’s cautious nod. “Well, Dad was an actor on a soap opera as you no doubt read, and we—Micah and I—were the babies they switched about to play his newborn son in the show. As twins we could do that, one of us asleep, the other awake, taking turns. We worked on that set until we were six or so. Then I had a few years of small bit parts until Micah and I landed our main show, where we played twins.
“No surprise there,” Ryan said.
“Yeah. It ran ten seasons. I can’t say I always wanted to be an actor, though. Not like a normal kid wants to be an astronaut or a sports icon. I just was an actor.”
“So, you don’t enjoy it?” Ryan looked horrified, as though he couldn’t understand someone doing a job they didn’t really love.
“I love it now. I think I burned out with the Jordan-Micah show, and Micah decided he’d had enough. I kept my hand in with other things: small parts in movies, voice-over for a Disney film, that kind of thing. I never lost the focus on acting, and then, of course, the Christmas movies happened.”
“The King of Christmas.”
Ryan forked up another mouthful of salad. The dressing left a small smear on his bottom lip and he darted his tongue out to collect it, which had Jordan squirming a little in his seat. Ryan wasn’t even trying to be provocative, but he had Jordan half-hard in a freaking kitchen over dinner.
“I’ll never escape that title,” Jordan said, and concentrated on cutting through layers of pasta, meat, and sauce.
“I read that your films are the most-watched made-for-TV movies.”
“A lot of that is down to my co-stars.” Jordan never took all the credit for anything and always acknowledged the team around him.
“So, tell me more about the script.”
Jordan delayed the inevitable by asking for more lasagna and watching the muscles bunch in Ryan’s forearm as he scooped out another serving. He had very sexy forearms with a dusting of hair; his skin tone was warmer than Jordan would have expected given the cold and snow and the long Montana winters. Idly, Jordan considered how hairy Ryan might be elsewhere: was he smooth to touch or did he have chest hair that would crinkle under Jordan’s touch? Was he the kind of guy to manscape, did he have a treasure trail leading south to his—
“Earth to Jordan.”
He snapped out of his inappropriate thoughts about body hair and snapped back to Ryan. “Sorry?”
“You want more salad with that? I can make some more.”
“No, thank you.”
They continued to eat, and Jordan tried his very hardest not to stare right at Ryan, but it was hard. His eyes were so dark and he had this way of looking up at Jordan, with a soft smile just at the right moment. He seemed almost shy.
Jordan loved that.
Only when he couldn’t eat another thing and had pushed his empty plate to one side did he begin to explain about the script. At least he began to, until he remembered he had something else to say.
“Dinner was wonderful,” he began. “Do you cook a lot?”
Ryan finished his own second helping with the final mouthful, chewed, swallowed, then picked up his wine.
“Saul did all the cooking when we were growing up, by the time I was old enough to know he cooked for us he was doing all the right things. Eddie, he’s the second oldest, he said dinner started off with a lot of mac ’n’ cheese for us all. Saul was only eighteen when he was thrust into having to look after four brothers. Eddie was ten, Aaron seven, Jason six, and I was just a baby. Saul had to learn how to cook and do a lot of things an eighteen-year-old wouldn’t normally need to know. He decided we’d all learn how to cook, and we would have these times when we tried out new recipes. I’ll never forget Eddie mixing apple and beef in this casserole thing. It was gross, and I was maybe seven. I spat it straight out.”
“Can I ask…? I mean….”
Ryan rescued him. “You want to know why did Saul have custody of us all at eighteen?”
“Yeah. You don’t have to say if it’s not something…. I mean, we all have secrets.”
“It’s no secret. You could google me if you want. This bar was originally my grandad’s—my mom’s dad, that is. She inherited it, married my dad, had Saul really young, then waited a while for the others, who she had close together. I was an accident, or so Saul tells me.”
“A good one, I think,” Jordan said when Ryan paused. Anything to banish this strange tone in Ryan’s voice.
“Apparently so. Saul remembers our mom being pregnant and very happy. I was maybe six weeks old, and Dad decided Mom needed a night out, just the two of them, with Saul babysitting. He’d negotiated that against his eighteenth birthday celebration the week before. They allowed him the bar for it, albeit with soft drinks only, and he in turn covered for them to have a weekend away.”
Jordan waited for the end to this story; it couldn’t be good.
“They died that weekend,” Ryan said. “A drive-by shooting, just bystanders waiting in line for a movie.”
“Shit, I’m so sorry.”
“It was so long ago now. They found the guys who did it. Drugs were involved, and my parents were two of six people shot. The cops came to us, and Saul just stepped up. He took on everything, put his plans for college on hold, ran the bar with a family friend who held the license for him until he was of legal age to have it. He brought up a baby and his three other brothers. Saul was the glue that kept us together.”
“You’re close.”
“All of us, yes.”
Jordan felt a lot of things: compassion, sadness, and an overwhelming need to touch Ryan. He covered Ryan’s hand with his own. “Saul did a good job. I’ve only met you and Jason, but Jason is professional and respectful, and you’re just….”
“Just?”
“You. Sexy, strong, and gorgeous.”
Silence. Jordan watched for Ryan’s mood to shift, but all he did was smile that soft smile of his.
“I have dessert,” he said finally.
“You do?” Jordan patted his belly. “Not sure I can fit it in.”
“Family recipe. You have to try it.”
“What?”
“This chocolate cake with cherries and—”
“You had me at chocolate.”
“We can take it up with us while I read the script.”
Part of Jordan didn’t want to move. He’d just eaten an entire meal with Ryan, and he didn’t want it to end. But moving upstairs meant the sofa and the intriguing door leading to the bedroom.
Between them they cleared away the mess dinner had caused, and then Ryan decided Jordan was in charge of taking the wine and glasses up. Ryan would carry the cake, plates, and cutlery.
“Leave the cake for a while?” Ryan asked.
“God, yes.” Jordan patted his belly again.
Ryan’s gaze slipped south, before very quickly rising back to meet Jordan’s. There was a flash of heat there, and then confusion, before he indicated the sofa and sat down.
Once there, Ryan pulled over his laptop and fired it up again. The script was still open. Jordan placed the wine bottle and his glass on the coffee table and curled up in the opposite corner, sipping the red wine and watching Ryan’s expression.
“What does the thing in brackets mean?” Ryan asked.
“Parentheticals indicate action or attitude direction for a character. So if it says, I don’t know, something like ‘over phone,’ it means the character is reacting as if they’re receiving a phone call. The way you might stand when you’re listening to someone, the things you might do, that kind of direction.”
“Okay.”
Ryan went back to reading, the only sound his steady breathing and the tap of his finger on the mousepad to scroll down. From this position, Jordan got free rein to stare. Ryan’s profile was just as sexy as seeing him face to face.
Which of course got him thinking about Ryan naked because that was exactly how his brain was working right now.
And that wasn’t a good idea.
So, he sipped more wine and considered what to do with himself while he waited. He pulled out his cell phone, but even the visual evidence of emails waiting didn’t have him opening it to check. He placed it on the table next to the wine and instead leaned back into the cushions and relaxed.
This was nice, this downtime. The first he’d had in a long time.
He closed his eyes and centered his thoughts, pushing back the embarrassment and slight anxiety about someone reading his script.
“Hang on.” Ryan’s voice sounded loud in the otherwise quiet room.
Jordan opened his eyes and saw Ryan looking right at him. “What?”
“This is a gay romance. Two men. Together. Christmas.”
“Yeah.” Jordan dipped his gaze, unaccountably shy and not knowing what to say.
“The network would show this?”
Jordan shrugged, but spoke with conviction, from the heart. This was his project, his baby. “I’m going to work on it, start sowing the seed, maybe five years down the line. I don’t know. I’d just like something for the guys out there who think there isn’t romance for us, to show them there’s magic in romance and Christmas for everyone.”
“Shit,” Ryan groaned, low in his throat.
“What? Is it bad?”
Ryan shook his head, but he closed the computer and very carefully placed it on the table. “You can’t say things like that, with all that feeling and purpose.”
“Sorry?” Jordan was alarmed. Ryan looked all tense, as if Jordan had just done something very wrong.
And then Ryan moved.
Smoothly he took the glass from Jordan, put it down, and kind of loomed over him. Then with a soft curse, he kissed Jordan with absolute purpose, tongue tracing the seam of Jordan’s lips until he opened his mouth and took as much as he could.
All too soon the kisses were deep and somehow—God knows how—they were lying awkwardly side by side on the sofa, and Ryan had his hands on Jordan’s ass, and he scooped him around until Jordan lay sprawled on top of him.
“We doing this?” Ryan asked.
“Yes,” Jordan managed.
“You’re so fucking sexy,” Ryan added.
And to add emphasis to that, he bent his knees up and rolled his hips so they aligned better, all the time kissing Jordan. Ryan moved his hands along Jordan’s back and traced them up and under his shirt; his touch was firm, pressing Jordan down and against him until Jordan couldn’t move.
He didn’t want to move.
Instead he lost himself in the kiss, stretched out like a cat in the sunshine over the wide expanse of Ryan’s chest, against the length of him, lost in thoughts of getting his hands on Ryan’s skin.
He’d not done this before, just kissing. Well, more than kissing; he was learning the taste of his lover and knowing it like his own.
Ryan pulled at Jordan’s shirt, and between them they removed it, although for a second Jordan thought it would all end horribly when the collar caught behind his ear. Ryan chuckled as he eased it around. With another push from his strong thighs, Jordan was higher up, and Ryan pushed a hand between them and brushed across Jordan’s nipples, hardwired to his cock. Jordan moaned into the kisses, and pressed his hands to the sofa, supporting his weight and shifting a little so he was looming over Ryan.
He really hoped Ryan got the message.
And thank God, he did. Ryan pinched each nipple in turn, playing with them, and then, at an extremely awkward angle, he sucked on each one as Jordan wriggled against him.
Jordan wanted more, and Ryan apparently knew; he sucked a mark right close to one, then used his teeth, tugging, and twisting with his fingers, and Jordan felt like he could come from that alone.
“You like that?” Ryan asked, his tone serious. “You want harder?”
Jordan let out a noise he’d never heard himself make before, a cross between a yes and a groan, and Ryan went to work, pulling harder and rolling his hips, and jeez…
He was going to come in his underwear, just from freaking nipple play. “We need to… need… bed,” he managed and even tried to lever himself up, but Ryan was having none of it.
“Stay still,” he ordered, his tone firm.
And God, that voice. Jordan pressed down, and then Ryan’s hands were right there on his button, cleverly slipping it open, then the fly, and then—Fuck—his hand was closing around Jordan’s cock and the noise Jordan made at the touch was just plain embarrassing: half plea, half warning. He lost himself in the sensation, arching his back a little. He didn’t need to move; Ryan’s height meant he could suck on Jordan’s nipples and give him the best hand job of his entire freaking life.
“Close,” Jordan groaned. “Ryan….”
“Come on, then,” Ryan murmured against his chest. “Let me see it.”
Jordan arched over, looked right down into Ryan’s dark eyes, and lost himself in their depths. Then he was coming hard all over Ryan’s hand in a wash of heat, and he couldn’t help his curse at completion. For a second or more, he was unfocused, moving erratically through each pump against Ryan, and then he was spent. But he didn’t collapse onto Ryan; he wanted to make Ryan come as hard.
“What do you want?” he asked, his voice husky, his head buzzing with the high of orgasm.
“Suck me,” Ryan said, his tone brooking no argument.
Jordan was embarrassingly fast as he scrambled to get his hand on Ryan’s cock, slipping off the length of his lover’s body and falling to his knees next to him on the floor. The floor was hard, but he wasn’t about to stop. He had Ryan’s jeans open and shoved down low enough to get his first real look.
Gorgeous—the weight of him, the size, the flared head, and Jordan almost licked his lips. He was good at this, knew every trick in the book, and he would have Ryan squirming and shouting his name in a second.
“Slowly,” Ryan warned.
What? Slowly? “What if I want to go fast?”
Ryan looked at him, raising an eyebrow as if to say, “Do what I tell you.”
Fuck, that’s hot.
So, he set to work with his tongue and hands, loving every sound Ryan made. He leaned up and over Ryan, swallowing as much of the length as he could, but something was missing…. Then he realized what it was. Without looking, he located one of Ryan’s hands and tugged at it to rest it on his head, pressing it hard so that Ryan got the idea.
The cock in his mouth jumped as Ryan twisted his hand into Jordan’s hair and held him still.
“You want me to fuck your mouth?” Ryan’s voice was nothing more than a rasp now.
Jordan made a noise around the mouthful of cock, a groan of assent, and then he held still, allowing Ryan to press deeper; and then Ryan pulled out.
“Fuck,” Ryan groaned, “your mouth.”
They set up a rhythm, and the prickle of sensation as Ryan gripped his hair had Jordan reaching for his own cock, which was making a valiant attempt at getting back in the game.
“Close…,” Ryan rasped.
Then it was Ryan’s turn, and he released his hold on Jordan’s hair.
He was trying to pull away. “No,” Jordan grumbled around Ryan’s cock.
Ryan’s hand returned after a moment, twisting again and finding an anchor. “Oh fuck, Jordan…”
His pushing became more erratic, and Jordan sucked as hard as he could, using his tongue, the brush of his teeth, anything to get Ryan over the edge.
“Fuck!” Ryan shouted.
And he was coming, the heat of him down Jordan’s throat: one pulse, two, releasing the hold on Jordan’s hair and the last of his spend smearing at the corner of Jordan’s mouth.
“Jesus,” Ryan muttered. And then somehow he manhandled Jordan up and over him so they could kiss again.
The kisses were lazy, erotic slides of tongues and an exchange of air, until finally Ryan cradled Jordan’s face and looked up at him in all seriousness.
“What do you see in a small-town sheriff?” he asked with his dark gaze fixed firmly to Jordan’s.
“Easy,” Jordan murmured. “You’re sex on legs, you’re firm and determined, you smile a lot. And fuck, your cock is a thing of beauty.”
Clearly he said the right thing somewhere in all of that because Ryan chuckled and hugged him close.
“Good answer,” he said.