When Christmas Lights Are Blue

By Harper Fox

Rob and Karan are a great couple, but they’re tearing apart under the pressures of modern life. They both work as paramedics for the NHS, and just before Christmas, their plans for the future are in jeopardy.
Rob knows he’s on thin ice with the man he loves more than anyone else in the world, and he’s at a loss to fix it. The job is getting tougher, and Karan, who’s of Sikh descent, is facing violence on the streets in the wake of Britain’s decision to leave the EU. Financial problems, hostile families on both sides... Their troubles seem insoluble.
An emergency callout stops them on the brink of a final and heartbreaking row. In a forest on the bleak northern hills, Rob loses control of the van in the snow. The only gleam of light comes from a strange, lonely house among the trees. Lost, cut off from the world they know, can they find their way back to one another? It’s the longest night of the year, and spirits are abroad among the pines...

• Language: English
• Publisher: Harper Fox
• Release date: Dec 21, 2016
• ISBN: 9781910224649

Harper Fox

Harper Fox is the author of many critically acclaimed M/M Romance novels, including Stonewall Book Award-nominated Scrap Metal and Brothers Of The Wild North Sea, Publishers Weekly Best Book 2013. Her novels and novellas are powerfully sensual, with a dynamic of strongly developed characters finding love and a forever future – after an appropriate degree of turmoil. She loves to show the romance implicit in everyday life, and she writes a sharp action scene too.

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When Christmas Lights Are Blue

Harper Fox

Copyright Harper Fox 2016

Published by FoxTales at Smashwords

When Christmas Lights Are Blue

Copyright © December 2016 by Harper Fox

Cover art by Harper Fox

Cover photo licensed through Shutterstock

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 written permission from FoxTales.

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This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to persons living or dead is entirely coincidental.

When Christmas Lights Are Blue

Harper Fox

Table of Contents

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter One

An hour after dark on the longest night, Karanji turned to me and said, I can’t do this anymore, Rob. I don’t even know how.

And this was why Control seldom let couples out together on a shift. Tonight was a short-staffed emergency. I pressed my hands against the dashboard. Karan, no. Don’t do this to me now.

We’ve been doing it to each other. We’ve got to stop.

The minute hand of my watch jerked past the twelve. Karan and I were now technically free to have the miserable fight we’d been putting aside all day. Not a moment before: ambulance paramedics might horse around, make awful jokes and yell at backed-up traffic, but we never dropped the ball. Never let our personal crap get in the way of a callout. Everyone who needed us—from road-crash victims to old ladies mistaking indigestion for a heart attack—deserved better of us than that.

We were off-duty now. One minute past six. My watch had been a Christmas present from Karan the year before. I loved it because he’d ignored all the cheap alternatives I’d suggested and gone right to the jeweller’s for the one I liked best, and it was elegant without being fussy, and so far resistant to hard knocks, vomit and blood. He was wearing the handsome engagement ring I’d bought him, and I was wearing his. He was my Karan, good as gold. I’d found out during the first Diwali celebration I’d shared with his family that his brother called him Karanji, because he was as sweet as the cardamom and poppy pastries piled high on the table, and no-one could get enough of him. For once we’d managed to swing Christmas leave together, a whole blessed week. Oh, God. Can’t we just go home?

You can. I’ve told Mackie I’ll work.

I finished shutting the satnav down. The ambulance was parked by the dangerous roundabout where the main street of Hollyford met the bypass, a good strategic point for callouts to pub brawls after office parties. Drunken pile-ups, too, and we’d already dealt with two of those today. Karan had been keeping the windscreen clear with an occasional sweep of the blades. The street was deserted now, only the snowflakes disturbing the stillness, wind-blown wraiths. All right, I said bleakly—hopelessly, because he never said anything he didn’t mean. I unhooked the radio mic. I’ll report us off-shift. I’ll get a cab home from the station.

No, I’ll drop you. It’s only a short detour. Mackie won’t mind.

The mic beeped in my hand. I thumbed the button. Eight-two.

Eight-two, three-four. My board shows you two lads still in Hollyford. Is that right?

The staff shortage must have reached critical for Mackie to be handling dispatch himself. Yep, I said, squeezing a passably normal voice through the hot pain in my throat. Just signing off. Gonna bring Karan back in.

Hold your horses. Got a 999 from up in Kielder.

"Kielder Forest? That’s half an hour away from us, Mac."

I know, and it’s a wilderness, and it’s snowing. But all the local vans are working crashes on the A68, and you’re my last hope. It’s a bit of a weird one, too.

Oh, good.

Elderly lady, very distressed. Says something’s fallen on her house, and people are hurt.

Something’s fallen on... What, a meteorite or something? Doesn’t she need the fire brigade?

All out on the 68 with tin-openers, I’m afraid. It’s a house on its own, three miles northwest of Greystead. Come on, Robbie—I know you lovebirds need the money. Weddings don’t come cheap.

Yes, Mackie. We know. I reached to flip an overhead switch, and the ambulance, newly kitted out with an on-board computer whose pronouncements and instructions I would never get