Coming Out on the Mountain Read online

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Copyright © 2020 by P.D. Singer

  Publisher Managing Agent: Eden Winters / Rocky Ridge Publishing

  Editor: Eden Winters

  COVER ART & Formatting by Tarian P.S. / TPS Publishing

  Photo Credits:

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  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system without the written permission of the Publisher, except where permitted by law.

  Rocky Ridge Books

  Box 6922

  Broomfield, CO 80021

  PRAISE FOR P.D. SINGER

  Fire on the Mountain —Rainbow Awards Jury’s Choice Honorable Mention

  “This was a well written, engrossing story and I can’t wait to see where this series goes from here.” —Pants Off Reviews

  “…a sexy and fun and sweet story.” —Under the Covers

  Snow on the Mountain

  “I highly recommend Snow on the Mountain to anyone who likes a romance mixed with misunderstanding, scandal, adventure, a little possessiveness, and a secret cabin in the mountains. It is as fun as it is sweet.” —Joyfully Jay

  “…another treat from Ms. Singer and I really enjoyed it.” —Mrs. Condit Reads

  Blood on the Mountain — Rainbow Awards Finalist, Honorable Mention

  “Read it for a cracking plot, and a wonderful couple that deserve their Happy Ever After.” —Mrs. Condit Reads

  TABLE OF CONTENT

  DEDICATION

  CHAPTER 1

  CHAPTER 2

  CHAPTER 3

  CHAPTER 4

  CHAPTER 5

  CHAPTER 6

  CHAPTER 7

  CHAPTER 8

  CHAPTER 9

  CHAPTER 10

  CHAPTER 11

  CHAPTER 12

  CHAPTER 13

  CHAPTER 14

  CHAPTER 15

  CHAPTER 16

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  MORE BOOKS BY PD SINGER

  WHAT IS COMING NEXT

  MORE BOOKS BY ROCKY RIDGE

  DEDICATION

  In Loving Memory of Author P.D. Singer;

  Now it is Heaven’s turn to cozy up with the love stories Pam was best known for writing.

  CHAPTER 1

  I hadn’t been home for Thanksgiving in two years. Last year had been the first time ever that I hadn’t been with the family: Mom, Dad, my sister Shari, Gramps, aunts, uncles, cousins. Stray neighbors. Thanksgiving in the Landon family means a mob scene.

  Last Thanksgiving had been a mob scene, too, but it was all people in their twenties, because ski resort staffers don’t get a winter holiday off; we’re too busy making sure the paying customers have a good time. Still, we had turkey and fixings, friendship, a football game.

  Last Thanksgiving, I wasn’t sure what I was most thankful for. Being alive. Kurt being alive. Being with Kurt. It all wrapped together and it had come out of my mouth sounding like “I love you.”

  That was a year ago and it was all still true. The avalanche had spared us, the forest fire hadn’t toasted us, and this year, I could be extra happy that my right arm worked again. Add “Thankful that Kurt is stubborn and determined” to my list, or Buck, Tubbs, and Co. would have left me under a dead bear. My last session of physical therapy was the month before; I could be thankful that I had more time for the things I really wanted to do.

  My parents were thankful for all of those same things, well, the ones they were aware of, at any rate. I’d survived two fire seasons and one winter, thanks to Kurt, and they’d had more opportunities than they realized to get me back in a box. I was coming back to Detroit on my own two feet, because of the man beside me.

  “Can I come home and bring a guest?” I’d asked. Of course, Jake, your friends are always welcome. They’ve always said that. I hoped they’d continue.

  One more person at the Landon Thanksgiving melee is barely noticeable, but I was certain they’d notice Kurt. Handsome, blond, blue-eyed, charming as all get out, he’d attract Shari’s attention all right; I could foresee an interesting conversation with my sister. There’d be an even more interesting conversation with my father and grandfather in there somewhere, too.

  You can’t exactly say I’ve come flying out of the closet. Coaxed out is probably more like it; Kurt and I don’t usually make a big deal of being a couple in public, though anyone who cares to look can probably figure it out. People do care to look, because Kurt is well worth looking at, and I guess they don’t mind looking at me, either, though it only matters that he finds six feet of brown haired, brown eyed, sort of muscular pharmacy student appealing. Eyes followed us through the airport; eyes would be on us at home.

  Home. Odd word. If home is where the heart is, then home is where Kurt is, whether it’s in our little apartment in Denver where we lived now, the tiny place we’d shared up in Wapiti Creek, the ranger cabin where we’d had almost two fire seasons, or my parents’ house, where I was bringing him for the first time. Of all the places we’d been together, this last was the one I worried about most.

  “It will be okay, Jake,” Kurt had reassured me on the plane. “They’ll love you no matter what, and so do I, you know that.”

  “I know, but it isn’t going to work well if they can’t accept you in my life,” I fretted as I’d fretted for weeks. For all that I could have told them at any time that the man I was bringing home was my lover, I’d wanted to wait until they could see what a magnificent man Kurt is.

  Okay, I can hear Bullshit on that. As much delay as possible before I uttered the dread words and changed my family was fine with me.

  “You know them pretty well, Jake. Do you really think it will be a problem?” Kurt had pushed up the armrest on the seat so he could hook his arm through mine; one of the few times we’d done that. We’d done it on a ski lift after a near death experience—it took that kind of stress to get us to touch each other in public. This qualified.

  Mom knew. She seemed to have always known. Never said a word about it, either, until after she’d retrieved me from the hospital and driven me to Denver. “Is there anything you want to tell me, Jake?” she’d asked several times, and each time, I’d turned the subject.

  Not until I’d asked her about bringing Kurt home, and she made it plain she knew we were a couple. I guess she’d had enough of my dancing around the subject and wanted to put me out of her misery.

  But now? She’d also told me I’d have to talk with Dad and Gramps myself, that she wasn’t doing my emotional labor for me. Not on something this big.

  She was firmly on Team Kurt though—maybe she’d laid some groundwork?

  “It’s put up or shut up time for them, I guess. Being open minded about other people and seeing your son and his lover across the breakfast table probably aren’t the same.” I curled my fingers into his. “I know they love me, and I know they’ll like you. They can hardly help it. It’s the ‘you and me together’ part that I worry about.”

  “You survived meeting my sister and brother-in-law, remember?” Kurt grinned an
d I had to grin back, because he’d fretted the way I fretted now, and the biggest danger I’d faced was a ferocious Cliff suggesting he’d drown me in the stock tank if I broke his baby brother-in-law’s heart. It wasn’t the reaction I’d expected from a Wyoming rancher, but he’d helped raise Kurt after his mom died. Vanessa had christened me with ‘other brother’ status and given me chores to do. I learned a lot about cows that weekend.

  “I just hope my folks will be as welcoming,” I told him, and then because Kurt is a smart guy and occasional pain in the ass, he changed the subject by whipping out the flash cards and quizzing me about the antibiotics for an upcoming test.

  We hadn’t been able to get tickets for Wednesday, so we’d joined the cattle drive at the Denver airport Thursday morning; we’d get to Detroit before noon, local time. I wasn’t sure who’d come to pick us up, but a quick call home let me know to watch for Shari. I’d tried to explain Shari to Kurt but I’m just not sure there is any explaining my older sister. She’s… “Whatever she was last week is probably not who she’ll be today,” I finally concluded. “If she’s back to having green hair, I wouldn’t be surprised, although she’s done green and it will probably be purple. Or shaved off.”

  I demonstrated my knowledge of penicillins, cephalosporins, and fluoroquinolones to Kurt’s satisfaction, and gave him the rundown on the family. He’d get a quiz of his own on that once we reached the house.

  We landed, and the march to passenger pickup was my last moment of not spilling the tea about me and us to someone.

  “Jake!” squealed the apparition that leaped from the red coupe and flung itself at me. “Mwhah!” That gaggish noise accompanied the overexuberant kisses she planted all over, making me wonder if I was going to have black lipstick marks on my cheeks. She’d been a blur, so when I finally peeled her off me and got a good look, it was a shock.

  “Where is my sister and what have you done with her?” I asked the Shari-shaped person I was holding. The laugh at least was the same.

  “This is the corporate version, punkin. Or as corporate as I’m going to get.” She ran one hand through short curls a bit lighter than my own coffee grounds brown and smiled with lips painted a color more or less found in nature. The piercings were down to earrings and one tasteful jewel in her upper lip. For the first time in a long time she didn’t set off the metal detectors from out here. The slim black jeans and the citrus green sweater were unfamiliar, too; nothing was ripped, dirty, six sizes too large or small, on backwards, or otherwise declaring rebellion. Only the black leather jacket had any remnant of her previous style, which had tended to run through all variations of ‘hobo/emo/dangerous’ depending on her mood. It definitely had stuck out in the upper middle-class suburb we’d grown up in. “Like it?”

  “Uh, yeah. I’m stunned.” I hugged her again as the overhead speakers urged traffic to keep moving and not stand around like we were doing. “What brought this on?”

  “Time for a change. I decided this is what Shari looks like at twenty-six.” She grinned up at me, not very far since the heels on her shoes pushed her almost to even with Kurt’s five feet ten. I was used to that, since the Doc Martens she used to favor had thick soles and heels, but her being the same age as Kurt jolted me: they were worlds apart in maturity. Or so I decided from the vantage point of twenty-three. Maybe not as far as I once thought.

  “Looks good. It’s just a surprise.” Seems like I should have been keeping better tabs on her.

  “We’ve got all kinds of surprises in store for you.” She turned to Kurt. “Hiya, handsome. Need a room for the night?”

  CHAPTER 2

  Warning Kurt about my sister didn’t make me wary enough.

  “Shari.” I turned her back to me and dialed down the estimate on maturity: some things hadn’t changed. The interesting discussion was going to start sooner than I thought. “Behave yourself. This is Kurt Carlson. Yes, he has a room for the night. He’s staying in mine.” That was not how I’d planned to make the announcement, but I had to cut the flirting off at the knees.

  She lost her cheerful lechery in a hurry—I didn’t risk letting go of her upper arms lest she wobble. Thoughts visibly flickered across her face, settling on something that looked like “uh huh.”

  “So, paws off, ‘cause yours are already there?”

  “Something like that.” I eased off on the pressure, but the wobble turned into a lean forward and a kiss on my cheek.

  “Are congratulations in order?” Shari always could shift gears in a hurry.

  “I think so. Yeah.” Kurt and I exchanged a look of relief. One family member down, six hundred to go.

  “Let's get moving!” She peered past Kurt; a security guard veered away once we started stowing the bags in the back of the Camaro, a car that was never meant for more than two adults.

  “I’ll get in the back, Jake.” Kurt eeled into the joke of a backseat, where the legroom was measured in millimeters. I would have folded myself in there, but my arm still wasn’t strong enough to really swing from the handgrips. He arranged himself over the entire rear seat, feet behind me on the upholstery, leaning sideways against the body of the car. “I might get out again without a can opener.”

  “I wouldn’t. Shari, why didn’t you bring Mom’s Escape? That’s meant for passengers.” We pulled out into traffic and I tried to ignore how she dealt with it. The best I can say about her driving is that she hasn’t gotten me killed yet.

  “I wanted to show off the new wheels. It’s purty and red and goes really fast. The opposite of your poopmobile.” She demonstrated, pulling onto the interstate that would take us to the northern edge of the metro area. The big engine rumbled and we shot into the third lane over without anyone around us hitting the brakes. Kurt’s hands tightened on the seat back and his lips went thin and white, but not a sound came out.

  “This puts a new spin on all the stories since you graduated,” Shari chirped, oblivious to our cringing. At least she settled into one lane and stayed between the lines. “Who else in the family knows?”

  And how did you keep it from me? also hung in the air, but our confidences in each other had changed character a lot since we’d quit being ice dancing partners, also known as when Shari discovered boys. Or when I had discovered boys through Shari.

  I wasn’t going to answer the unasked questions. Kurt didn’t need the rest of the backstory about me crushing on my sister’s boyfriends, something that stopped when she discovered black lipstick and the kind of guys who wanted to kiss it off her.

  “Mom for sure. Not sure what she’s discussed with Dad or the rest of the family. She did say that was up to me to have ‘the talk’ with them.” Nothing I looked forward to. The right words to get that conversation started still hadn’t come to me, though a lot of choices swirled through my head around three in the morning.

  “Hee!” Shari snorked hard. “That’s going to be a fun one!”

  “Hey!” I snapped back. “This is only my relationships with the entire family getting redefined, okay? You don’t need to laugh.”

  Guess one relationship hadn’t changed at all for the knowing—Shari winding me up from zero to sixty in three sentences or less went back to when I first learned to walk.

  “I’m not laughing!” But she was, with an indelicate snort through her nose. Again. For fuck’s sake. “Okay, I’m laughing.”

  “You can stop it now.” I folded my arms across my chest in the same gesture I would have used on campers who pitched their tents too close to running water in the Uncompahgre National Forest. It always got them to move along, but Shari had some sisterly immunity.

  “Sure.” She toned it down to giggles.

  “So, who all am I going to meet?” Kurt rescued me from the back seat with a question he already knew most of the answers to, and a gentle pat on my shoulder.

  That, thank goodness, kept Shari talking for the rest of the thirty mile trip, and clued me in to some danger spots, because
“Aunt Patrice’s been on one of her churchy kicks again, and Aunt Becky may have killed her before we get back. Uncle Ed’s been drinking since Mom put the turkey in, so someone may have poured him out the back door already, and Uncle Geoff’s…”

  Note to self, avoid Aunt Patrice and Uncle Ed. Same note to self as most years.

  “Nicole and Xander finally got engaged…”

  Good for them. Our cousin had only been dating Xander since the last time the Lions won the Thanksgiving Day football game. “Is that the big family news?” I didn’t want to step on their announcement.

  “Nah, not after all these years. They made it official on Halloween, so she hasn’t quite gotten over the ‘shove the ring in your face’ stage, and she’s a little pissy that Alexis is pregnant enough to show…”

  That was the problem with having an aunt or uncle for every purpose: they spawned cousins enough to create a TV network’s worth of drama.

  Still didn’t know how much stir Kurt and I would create. Wasn’t like I had to stand up after grace was said to announce to the world.

  “How about Great-Aunt Elaine? Is she there?” She hadn’t liked me much since the “lawn mower meets the sprinkler heads” incident when I was twelve. Coming out wasn’t likely to make things any worse with her directly, but she did fancy herself the matriarch of the clan and thus entitled to dictate the group opinion.

  Shari turned off the Southfield Freeway onto Telegraph Road, laughing again. “Oh no. She’s in Vero Beach playing bridge with her dusty old crone cronies and lamenting the sad state of the world, where her very own brother tells her to shut the fuck up.”

  Kurt snorted from the back, well, seat, was probably giving it too much dignity.

  I snorted too, because that particular directive was years overdue from someone. “Which brother?”