Hi guys, we have Kate McMurray popping in today with her upcoming re-release The Boy Next Door, we have a brilliant guest post and a great excerpt, so check out the post and enjoy! <3 ~Pixie~
The Boy Next Door
Kate McMurray
Life is full of surprises and, with luck, second chances.
After his father’s death, Lowell leaves the big city to help his sick mother in the conservative small town where he grew up. He’s shocked to find himself living next to none other than his childhood friend Jase. Lowell always had a crush on Jase, and the man has only gotten more attractive with age. Unfortunately Jase is straight, now divorced, and raising his six-year-old daughter. It’s nice to reconnect, but Lowell doesn’t see a chance for anything beyond friendship.
Until a night out together changes everything.
Jase can’t fight his growing feelings for Lowell, and he doesn’t want to give up the happy future they could have. But his ex-wife issues an ultimatum: he must keep his homosexuality secret or she’ll revoke his custody of their daughter, Layla. Now Jase faces an impossible choice: Lowell and the love he’s always wanted, or his daughter.
Small-Town Romance by Kate McMurray!
Small-town romance are a staple of the genre. Many take place in fiction towns that are kind of their own ecosystems, with their own businesses and a lively caste of characters. Usually these are small towns a good distance from major cities, with populations of (it seems) less than a thousand people. They are settings for cute little romances where, say, a bookseller falls in love with a volunteer firefighter.
So that’s what I was going for when I cooked up the fictional town of Greenbriar, CT, but me being me, I made it a suburb of New York City. One of our heroes, Lowell, just moved back to Greenbriar after a long stint in the city, so he’s got City Boy written all over him. It’s his move back to town that is the catalyst for the action of the story.
I set Greenbriar in the part of western Connecticut where my father lives, smack in the middle of Fairfield County. The area is more suburban than small town. I’ve never really lived in a small town, but I grew up in the suburbs, so I figured I’d stick with what I knew. I wanted Lowell to have that fish-out-of-water feeling, though; he’s kind of my surrogate in the story, mildly horrified at having to adapt to life outside of the city. He needs a car. He doesn’t have enough furniture to fill his new house because he’s so used to squeezing his stuff into smaller spaces. He doesn’t feel nostalgic for his birthplace so much as inundated with old, bad memories.
So The Boy Next Door was basically my take on a small-town romance. I like those books quite a bit, and I think you can tell different kinds of stories set in small towns or the suburbs than you can set in cities. This would have been a different book if Lowell had been returning to New York City from the suburbs rather than vice versa.
So in Greenbriar, you have the local businesses: Russ’s mechanic shop, Shuster’s bar. Small towns are rife with gossip the way cities aren’t. Even in big suburbs where my dad lives, if you’re involved with the town in any way—if you teach, lead a scout troop, are involved with local government, attend church regularly–you might be the sort of person who, like my dad, is always up to date on local gossip. Which means that characters like Jase face very real consequences if his old lies come to light.
Excerpt
Neal went on, “You remember Old Man Fisher died a couple of months ago?”
“Yeah. Liver disease, right?”
“Yep. Apparently his widow isn’t coping very well, so Lowell moved back to Greenbriar to take care of her.”
“Why not move back into his parents’ house?”
Neal squinted at him. “Weren’t you and Lowell friends as kids? Surely you can guess.”
Jase had heard the rumors. That Old Man Fisher was an alcoholic, that he routinely beat the crap out of both his wife and his son, that Lowell and his father had stopped speaking entirely when Lowell came out. Jase didn’t know how much of it was true. If Lowell was getting beaten up routinely, Jase never saw signs of it when they were kids. Which didn’t mean anything, of course. Lowell could have been good at hiding it. Jase had been an oblivious kid.
“Bad memories in the house, maybe,” Jase said.
“Yeah. Well. Either way, I think business here declined 10 percent when Fisher died.”
Jase waited for Neal to laugh, but when he looked up, Neal had a serious expression on his face instead. Jase nodded.
“You want another?” Neal gestured toward his now-empty glass.
“Nah. I might go to the city anyway. Good luck with the car.”
“Good luck finding a woman willing to take your sorry ass home for the night.”
Jase frowned at Neal. He knew Neal was kidding, but he said, “I just don’t want to spend my Friday night alone on my couch.”
“So hang out with me here. Come with me to Russ’s after. We’ll watch the game or something.”
Jase shook his head. “I don’t know when we became such old men that we worry more about making sure our cars run than going out.”
“Around the same time you had a kid.”
“Ha.” Jase dropped a five on the bar and left.
He drove home and made sure to glance at the for-sale sign in the yard next to his house. It did indeed have a SOLD! sticker on it now that partially obscured a photo of Joanie Reickert’s smiling face. He sat in his car for a long time, just looking at the sign, trying to imagine living next door to Lowell Fisher. He wasn’t sure what Lowell would look like now—if he’d still be as blond as he had been in high school, if he’d still be as skinny, if he’d still smile the same way.
Of all things, Jase did not need Lowell Fisher in his life again.
He made himself get out of the car. On the way to the house, he picked up Layla’s bike and wheeled it inside, not wanting it to rust should it rain. He left it on the tiled area just inside the front door. Then he climbed the stairs up to his room, where he gratefully shed his work clothes. He flipped through things in his closet. He’d definitely go out because, yeah, he wanted to get laid, but more, he couldn’t stand how quiet the house was when Layla wasn’t in it.
He put on a dark T-shirt and a pair of well-fitting jeans, ran a comb through his hair, and stood in front of the mirror, wondering how inconspicuous he looked. Probably it was better if Neal didn’t come with him. Not for what he was planning now.
He opted to drive instead of taking the train, so he got back in his car and got on I-84 going east. The drive into Manhattan took an hour and a half, and traffic was surprisingly light for a Friday night. He also, miraculously, found parking near the East Village bars he tended to frequent. After he parked, he walked a couple of blocks and ducked into one of his favorite pubs. He strolled up to the bar and ordered a Scotch and soda and then turned around to watch what was going on around him.
Jase took in the smorgasbord of beautiful people, mostly men, and leaned back on the bar to observe them. He was content to do that until a blond man caught his eye.
Too young to be Lowell Fisher, but this man bore a close resemblance to the boy Jase remembered. The guy in the bar was tall and thin, his hair artfully disheveled, his pants tight. He raised an eyebrow and gestured toward the back of the bar, so Jase followed.
He walked with the blond guy into a back room. Blond Guy turned around and smiled at him; then he hooked a finger into Jase’s belt loop and pulled him close. Jase smiled. Blond Guy leaned in like he was going to kiss Jase, and Jase put a hand between them. “I don’t kiss,” he said.
Blond Guy shrugged. He moved his hand until he was undoing the button on Jase’s jeans, so Jase reached for Blond Guy’s tight pants and echoed his movements, sliding down the zipper when the guy slid down Jase’s. Reaching into the guy’s pants was almost a relief; getting close enough to smell the other man had Jase hard and wanting.
“What do you do?” Blond Guy asked, his hand on Jase’s cock.
“Everything else.
About Kate
Kate McMurray is an award-winning romance author and an unabashed romance fan. When she’s not writing, she works as a nonfiction editor, dabbles in various crafts, and is maybe a tiny bit obsessed with baseball. She has served as President of Rainbow Romance Writers and is currently the president of the New York City chapter of RWA. She lives in Brooklyn, NY.
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