Hey, Joe

By KC Kendricks

A vignette of contemporary gay romance

New York City detective Joe Hamilton lives a double life as an undercover operative. When a case takes an unexpected turn, Joe finds himself separated from his partner. He scribbles a cryptic message in a birthday card and drops it in the mailbox.

Riley O'Shea kissed his partner goodbye at the beginning of a normal day only to have Joe disappear without a word. Riley's worried but after a greeting card arrives with a date and flight number inside, Riley claims the ticket and boards a plane to Chicago. It's the only way to get the answers he needs – and lots of reunion sex. 

(short story, 6k)

• Language: English
• Publisher: White Deer Enterprises/White Deer Books
• Release date: Jan 10, 2016
• ISBN: 9781524267858

KC Kendricks

KC Kendricks calls herself an accidental writer. After completing her first novel writing as Rayne Forrest, she was urged to submit it to a publisher, and everything snowballed from there. Today, the author has had over seventy books published. In July of 2021, she tried to retire but her employer offered her a deal to work at home. She accepted. Now she balances work, writing, and hearth and home in a controlled chaos. A native of scenic western Maryland, the author enjoys most activities that don’t include snow. In warm weather she might be found walking the dog, biking on the C&O Canal towpath, planting delicacies in her garden for the deer to munch on at night, playing in the creek, or lazing on the patio with her Kindle reader or laptop. She recently began to research her family history and can't drive past a cemetery without stopping to search for family sites. Her mission is to photograph old tombstones before the elements erode the stones and the names are lost to time. For more about KC Kendricks and Rayne Forrest’s writing life, please visit the Between the Keys blog at http:kckendricks.blogspot.com . If you’d like to know more about the author’s country lifestyle and her daily activities full of simple country pleasures (and a lot of work), please visit the Holly Tree Manor blog at http://hollytreemanor.blogspot.com . KC can be reached through her blog, Between the Keys. All comments are strictly moderated by the author and personal messages are treated as such. Follow the author on Twitter for up-to-date announcements at Twitter.com/KCKendricks.

Book preview

Praise for the writing of KC Kendricks

KC Kendricks never disappoints!"—Fallen Angel Reviews

..beautifully moving in all the right places...KC Kendricks gives us a well-crafted tale- The Romance Studio

Good to the last word....- Sensual Reads

...Seriously entertaining and totally engaging...- Joyfully Reviewed

...solidly written contemporary romance...-Jessewave

Hey, Joe

The days blurred, blending into a blue-tinted kaleidoscope of loneliness with a spreading stroke of black fear. I hated being alone when I had no idea of how much longer my solitude would last. And while it was true I could have people around me if I wanted, I didn’t socialize that much when I was on my own. Not even the warm camaraderie of my friends could ease the chill of Joe’s absence.

Joe. My lover. My partner in life. My cohort in harmless mischief. He was the person I turned to in good times and in bad.

Joe was God knew where, doing God knew what, for only God knew whom and I was forced to keep the home fires burning while keeping my fears and questions to myself.

Vivid in my memory would always be the night I met him. We were at Rumours, a local watering hole for the less hip gay crowd. He sauntered up to me with the unmistakable swagger of a gay man on the prowl and proceeded to greet me with a simple, Hey, Riley.

I wondered how he knew my name – and what a six foot two, dark-haired, blue-eyed stud was doing cruising little ol' me. I had mousy brown hair, brown eyes and not enough ass to fill out a slim cut pair of jeans. Handsome men rarely notice me.

I responded with a quip meant to amuse him, but instead, it turned his face an eerie white. At the time I thought it was just the blinking lights from the dance floor.

You must be a very competent spy to learn my name so quickly, I had said.

Imagine my surprise six months later when I discovered he really was a spy.

Sort of.

Joe was first and foremost a New York City detective, but he also had a skill set from his days in the military that made him useful for undercover work. He had the knack of blending in and quickly gaining the trust of those in the inner circle of a group. People opened up to Joe, telling him secrets no one ever divined. 

He said the clandestine work wasn’t dangerous, and to be fair to him, it usually wasn’t. But it’s a fact that people become unpredictable whenever large sums of money are involved.

Joe didn’t infiltrate gangs or drug organizations. He responded to claims of fraud by nonprofit entities. He got hired so he could check out the accusations from the inside.

What had sent him to the job he was on now?

Four weeks ago Joe kissed me goodbye at seven forty-one a.m., stepped out of our apartment to begin a new assignment – and vanished. In the twelve years we’d been together, that had never before happened. I’d always