Loving Bailey

By Lee Brazil

Ashton Duval is a professor at the college Bailey attends, and even though there's no rule against dating students, he knows something about the strain that power imbalance puts on a relationship. He's been down that road before, and he doesn't want to put the man he loves in the position of feeling like less than an equal partner.

Bailey Harris has been in love before, with disastrous consequences. His heart tells him this time is different though. And after nearly two years of hands-off dating, he's ready to move forward with his boyfriend.

Secrets Bailey's held as treasures in his heart, emotions he hadn't realized were undermining his confidence, and a man from his lover's past all threaten to destroy the life they've been building.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lee Brazil
• Release date: Oct 26, 2013
• ISBN: 9781310391224

Lee Brazil

Somewhere in a small town in up-state New York are a librarian and a second grade teacher to whom I owe my life. That might be a touch dramatic, but it's nevertheless one hundred percent true. Because they taught me the joy of reading, of escaping into worlds crafted of words. Have you ever been nine years old and sure of nothing so much as that you don't belong? Looked at the world from behind glasses, and wondered why you don't fit? Then turn the page and see… there you are, running from Injun Joe in a dark graveyard; there you are fencing with Athos; there you are…beneath the deep blue sea- marveling at exotic creatures with Captain Nemo. I found myself between the pages of books, and that is why I write now, it's why I taught English and literature for so many years, and it's why my house contains more pounds of books than furniture. If I'd had my way, I'd have been a fencer…or a starship captain, or a lawyer, or a detective solving crimes. But instead, I am a writer, and that's the best thing in the world to be if you ask me, because as a writer, I can be all those things and more. If I hadn't learned to value the stories between the pages, who knows what would have happened? Certainly not college…teaching…or writing.

Book preview

BLURB

If only letting go of past mistakes were as easy as moving out of your father's house and into your boyfriend's!

Ashton Duval is a professor at the college Bailey attends, and even though there's no rule against dating students, he knows something about the strain that power imbalance puts on a relationship. He's been down that road before, and he doesn't want to put the man he loves in the position of feeling like less than an equal partner.

Bailey Harris has been in love before, with disastrous consequences. His heart tells him this time is different though. And after nearly two years of hands-off dating, he's ready to move forward with his boyfriend.

Secrets Bailey's held as treasures in his heart, emotions he hadn't realized were undermining his confidence, and a man from his lover's past all threaten to destroy the life they've been building.

Loving Bailey

Sequel to Loving Eden

Contemporary M/M Romance

By

Lee Brazil

SMASHWORDS EDITION

Acknowledgements

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, locations and incidents are products of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. As such, any resemblance to any persons, living or deceased, businesses, events, or locales is coincidental.

Cover Art

Photography by © Artem Furman - Fotolia.com

Design by Laura Harner

Editing by Jae Ashley

Copyright July 2013 © Lee Brazil

All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof

may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever

without the express written permission of the publisher

except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

Trademark Acknowledgements:

The author acknowledges the trademarked status and trademark owners of the following trademarks mentioned in this work of fiction:

501's: Levi Strauss & Co. Corporation

Band-Aid: Johnson & Johnson Corporation

Chapstick: Wyeth LLC

Ford Fusion: Ford Motor Company

iPod: Apple, Inc.

Netflix: Netflix, Inc.

Scantron: Scantron Corporation

Yale: Yale University Not-for-Profit Corporation

Chapter One

Open windows let in the salt-soaked breezes of the California evening, and with them the laughter, shrieks, and good-natured hum of humanity that abounded in the early summer evening. One of his neighbors was barbecuing, and a delicious spicy sweet scent drifted in occasionally. He'd turned the television on for white noise when he arrived home an hour ago, and it continued to drone on in the background. These weren't the things that kept Dr. Ashton Duval from accomplishing what needed to be done tonight. The three unexpected and unanswered text messages from his ex, Dennis Romgarten, chair of his department at the college, weren't the cause of his distraction either. Nothing he had to say interested Ashton outside of working hours.

In the comfort of familiar surroundings with their incumbent noises, a pile of blue books which contained handwritten final essays from over one hundred fifty freshmen surrounded Ashton. His colleagues chided him for the old-fashioned method of test taking. They preferred their students to email essays in typed format. Ashton figured having the students in his composition classes actually write their final essays in class guaranteed the work he scored was original and not copy-pasted from elsewhere on the net. Handwritten exams also meant he had to squint and strain his eyes to read practically illegible handwriting from students no longer accustomed to working in pen and ink. The results were frequently disastrous, but often very telling.

He'd carefully sorted the exam books into piles, those that would be unbearably difficult to score, those that were sure to be brilliant, and those that would be tedious but not painful to read. Over the six years that he had been teaching Comp 101, he'd developed a reward system of sorts to make the task easier. One painful essay scored, plus three tedious essays, and then he'd be permitted to read one from the sure to be brilliant stack.

Usually that system worked just fine and allowed him to plow through the reading and have this portion of the grading for his class done before the final exam. The method ensured that he could grade the data assessment portion of the test, one hundred fill-in-the-blank, multiple choice, and matching questions about correct word choice, punctuation usage, and grammar, quickly and easily. Usually.

This year, there were too many distractions and he wasn't at all able to focus on scoring the essays, not the good ones, the bad ones, nor the merely tolerable ones.

Instead, he sat in the early evening, regretting his insistence that Bailey not come over. He'd known that if his boyfriend were in the room, he wouldn't get a damn bit of work done. He'd hoped that the prospect of seeing Bailey when he finished his grading would give him incentive to finish quickly, but his masterful plan had backfired.

The television blithered on in the background about record amounts of summer traffic and potential danger from sharks or maybe ultraviolet rays at the beaches. He couldn't focus on any of that. The only thing his mind wanted to dwell on was that graduation was ten days away.

Ten days, each comprised of twenty-four hours. Two hundred forty more hours during which he would do his best to be a gentleman and keep his hands to himself and his lust in check. Pomp and Circumstance had soared to number one on his personal list of favorite songs ever.

Because after graduation, he and Bailey could move forward.

So while he should be thinking about whether the essays that he had to score met state standards, all he could focus on was that, in ten