Rossingley#3
by
This isn’t a romance about chiseled, lantern-jawed college kids boasting V-cut abs. There are no marathon steamy sex sessions, not without having at least one nebulizer on standby anyway.
Marcel Giresse, the thirty-six-year-old Director of Finance at the French Ministry of Justice, is happy to leave all that nonsense to his oldest friend Lucien, the sixteenth Earl of Rossingley. In fact, Marcel is too short of breath and too set in his nerdy ways to ever think about sex at all. Which is a shame because the prisoner serving a sentence for murderer that he’s just interviewed is smart, intriguing, and hot as hell.
Guillaume Guilbaud is approaching forty and has wasted his best years rotting in a prison cell. The only interesting thing that has happened to him since his best friend Reuben was released is taking part in a series of interviews with a disarming and charismatic civil servant named Marcel. As if that friendship could ever materialize into anything, especially as he feels so ill-prepared for his imminent life on the outside.
But after a chance meeting at Rossingley, Guillaume finds himself renting Marcel’s annex and desperately falling for his sweet, chronically ill landlord. Which is crazy, because Marcel is celibate, posh, clever, and fundamentally out of Guillaume’s league. Furthermore, Marcel also has far too many interfering friends and concerned relatives determined to ensure he doesn’t become any more attached to the mysterious ex-con he’s shyly let into his life.
To Take A Quiet Breath is a slow-burn romance because Marcel is too breathless for a romance at any other speed. It’s about two men finding that love can quietly creep up on you no matter how many obstacles are thrown in its path and discovering that as long as an inhaler is readily at hand, anyone can swing from the chandeliers.
Publisher: Ninestar Press
Editors:
Cover Artists:
Genres:
Pairings: M-M
Heat Level: 4
Romantic Content: 5
Ending: Click here to reveal
Character Identities: Gay
Protagonist 1 Age: 36-45
Protagonist 2 Age: 36-45
Tropes: Class Differences, Criminals & Outlaws, Friends to Lovers, Geek and Jock, Hurt / Comfort, Opposites Attract
Word Count: 75000
Setting: France and UK
Languages Available: English
Series Type: Same Universe / Various Characters
The man from the ministry was not at all what I expected. Although I knew him to be in his midthirties, his pale skin was unlined, and he had the gaucheness of a younger man. He had also dressed that morning without the benefit of a mirror. The brown tweed jacket, with a red fleck, while old and comfortably worn, neither complemented the blue flowery shirt nor the dark grey chinos.
Notwithstanding, the whole package worked.
He was oddly out of breath, too, full pink lips slightly parted as if he’d climbed a flight of stairs, even though the visitors’ room was located on the ground floor. After unwrapping a multicoloured striped scarf from around his neck, he perched his slender frame on the edge of the uncomfortable orange plastic chair across from mine, then leaned forwards and breathily introduced himself.
“Monsieur, so good of you to agree to meet me. I’m Marcel Giresse.”
READ MOREI couldn’t recall the last time anyone had called me monsieur—prisoners weren’t afforded that luxury. As we shook hands across the table, his hand smaller than mine, soft and cool, his blue eyes studied me owlishly from behind wire-framed spectacles. In spite of myself, and not entirely sure why, I was mildly intrigued by him. Possibly, it was his slightly flustered air or the way he curled the edge of the scarf around his fingers. Or perhaps because his pale face with its delicate features, framed by haphazardly cut glossy black hair, was extremely pretty. Even so, I had no intention of making this easy for him. I acknowledged his polite greeting with a curt nod.
“Guillaume Guilbaud, how do you do. I’ve been incarcerated for fourteen years, eight months, and three days. Before answering any of your questions, I have some of my own. Why has the Ministry of Justice sent its director of finance to visit me?”
My tone pitched somewhere between accusatory and defiant. I wasn’t the most intimidating inmate in here—far from it—but outsiders were generally wary, and my criminal record spoke for itself. Yet this guy only fidgeted some more on the unforgiving plastic seat and surprised me with a delighted, genuine smile.
“Oh, we’re starting with the easy questions!”
COLLAPSE
