Smutty Advent - Day 1 excerpt and contest

I'd really like to do Smutty Advent this year - I've done it most years in some way since LiveJournal times (so you know, ancient history). I'm already a day late, but nonetheless, here we are, the first Smutty Advent post!

I'm going to start off with Unto Us the Time Has Come from a couple of Christmases ago. This one was so hard to write, because the family is broken at the beginning of the book and there was angst to write and I hate writing the angst. Of course because of that, this one wrote up really quickly because I had to get them through it as quickly as I could! 

There is an excerpt below and if you leave a comment I will draw a winner on the weekend chosen randomly from the comments.

Unto Us the Time Has Come

Last Christmas, Kenn Greyson gave husband Chris Martenson an ultimatum—spend more time with the family or we’re leaving. He never expected Chris’s reply would be “then leave,” but that’s exactly what happened, and Boxing Day took on a whole new meaning.

Separated for nearly a year now, both men are miserable apart and coping the best they can for the kids’ sake. With Christmas just around the corner, a new conflict arises: neither man is willing to forego Christmas morning with their children. Chris finally suggests they spend the holiday together at the house and, to his shock, Kenn agrees.

Armed with the knowledge that he’s been a stubborn idiot, but that perhaps he can change and begin to repair their relationship, Chris takes steps to win his husband back. He just hopes he can get Kenn on the same page before Santa comes down the chimney on Christmas Eve.

Buy links:
Dreamspinner
Amazon
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Barnes and Noble


Excerpt:

Chapter Two

Chris took a sip of his double-double and glanced at his watch. Kenn was late, goddamn  it. He only had a half-hour window before he had to head uptown for a working dinner with the CEO of Leonard Dynamics . And if he sat here for too long without anything to do, he was going to fall asleep right where he was. God, he was tired. Without Kenn and the kids, there was no reason to go home, and he’d been practically living in the office the last year.

He grabbed his phone out of his pocket and began making speaking notes for the Drumheller  meeting tomorrow. Or possibly the day after tomorrow; he couldn’t remember. It would be in his diary. Anita kept it scrupulously up-to-date.

The door flew open, and Kenn rushed in, covered in snow. “Hey, Jules. No. Just a drip. Yeah, I’m on the schedule for every day this week.”

Even in the heavy coat and accoutrements, Kenn looked like the guy Chris had met in university  —skinny, bald, eyes huge and bright, bright green.

“Sorry. Sarah’s dance teacher was running late.” Kenn sat, coffee in hand. “Micah’s at his skating lessons.”

“It’s fine. I have to go at five sharp, though.” It would take him a half hour to get to the restaurant, if he was lucky. Between the weather and the proximity to Christmas, rush-hour traffic was going to be a bitch.

Chris   tried not to think too hard about how sexy Kenn looked, about how he still loved the stubborn asshole. Or about how much he wanted to get rid of those bags under Kenn’s eyes, the tense set of his shoulders. It wasn’t right. Kenn was supposed to be making art and looking after their babies. Chris was supposed to make sure they had the money for that to happen. Why couldn’t Kenn have understood he had to work hard to provide for everything they needed? From a roof over their heads to the best ballet shoes money could buy to a nice fat nest egg for the kids’ schooling.

“I won’t keep you. I was thinking, if you want, you can have them the week before Christmas and I can have them late Christmas Eve? Your folks like to do Christmas Eve.”

The whole week before Christmas? What the hell was that? “I want them Christmas morning. I hardly ever see them. I want to be there when they open their gifts.”

“And I am the one who’s dealt with all the details. I want to see them open the gifts from Santa,” Kenn insisted.

“And what exactly am I supposed to do with them the week before Christmas? Bring them to work with me?” He was avoiding the question of Christmas morning because he wasn’t in the mood for a screaming match in the middle of the coffee shop. He wasn’t budging on getting to see the kids open their gifts either, though.

“You have almost ten weeks of leave built up. Take it.” Kenn looked furious now, not to mention utterly knackered. “I will lose both my jobs if I miss a day that week.”

Two jobs. His fucking creative artist was working two jobs. It wasn’t like he wasn’t helping with the kids, because he was. His money had to stretch to two households now, though, and all their extracurriculars . Plus he needed to keep feeding the university fund.

He sighed. “Fine. I’ll juggle some stuff and take them the week before Christmas. I’ll bring them home Christmas Day at noon.” That seemed fair to him.

Kenn’s face fell, and he saw those amazing eyes shimmer, then Kenn shook his head. “I want them Christmas morning. That’s special to me.”

“You think it isn’t special to me?”

Did Kenn really think he didn’t give a shit for the kids? For Kenn himself? This separation was not his idea. Shit, he’d been calling Kenn’s bluff when he’d said, “Then leave.” He’d never for a moment thought Kenn actually would.

“You mean if someone doesn’t call you in to work?” Kenn shot back at him.

“That was an emergency.” If the company had lost that overseas contract, he’d have been out of a job. Then where would they have been?

“There’s always an emergency. There’s always a trip or a phone call, or anything or anyone that will keep you from having to deal with us.”

“Or keep me from losing my fucking job. Did that ever occur to you? That if I hadn’t left that night to deal with the shit hitting the fan, I would have been in the unemployment line?”

Jesus, they didn’t even live together anymore and it was the same fucking argument.

“Yeah. Yeah, I hear you. It’s tough to be that important to someone, for everyone to need you.” Kenn didn’t sound like he was being sarcastic at all.

Chris just stared for a moment, then looked at his watch. He downed his coffee. “I have to get moving. I’ll take them on Friday night, keep them for the week, and bring them back Christmas Day at eleven.” Look at him, giving in by an hour.

“Christmas Eve at ten p.m.”

He shook his head. No way. “Christmas Day, ten a.m.” The kids were going to be up at the crack of dawn anyway.

“Bring them in the car late, then. Midnight.”

“That’s not fair to them. Nine a.m., but that’s my final offer—I’m giving up Christmas breakfast with them for that.” That was one of their traditions. Stockings at the end of their beds, Santa’s gifts when Daddy and Da were up, then breakfast before they unwrapped the rest of the gifts. That’s how they’d done it every year since they’d adopted the kids—Micah just three, his baby sister newly born.

Kenn’s shoulders dropped, his face falling. “I hate this.”

“And I don’t? Tell you what. You hate it so much, you come back to the house Christmas Eve and we both get them in the morning,” Chris suggested. Like Kenn would agree to that. Not his stubborn butthead of an almost ex-husband.

“Okay. That works for me.”

Wait. What?

Chris blinked a few times, but there was no damn way he was backing down. “Good, that’s settled. I have to go.”

“Bye.”

He got up and grabbed his briefcase, heading off before he could say anything else moronic. What had he just gotten himself into?