The Start of a Beautiful Friendship

By Tinnean

It’s 1996, and Mark Vincent, senior special agent of the Washington Bureau of Investigation and Security, is sent on assignment to Prague to cancel the head of a terrorist organization. He has no doubt it will be a simple operation. After all, he’s the best, isn’t he?

Only another member of the WBIS gets involved, and when everything goes south -- including the loss of valued members of his team -- Mark vows to destroy the man responsible for this debacle.

Refused permission to return to the States and ordered to take time off to decompress, Mark heads to Paris, where he meets an attractive rent boy who introduces himself as Louis. Unable to resist, Mark, portraying an ordinary businessman, gives his name as Rick, and they spend the week together. However, neither man is what he portrays himself as.

With this unlikely pair, can this be the start of a beautiful friendship?

• Language: English
• Publisher: JMS Books LLC
• Release date: Sep 18, 2021
• ISBN: 9780463224090

Tinnean

I’ve been writing since the 3rd grade. I was on the staff of my high school magazine, and then... I got married. There was a long interval when raising my kids took preference, although I would scribble sci fi, contemporary, or paranormal stories with very strong heroines. (This was before I discovered m/m. Don’t laugh, I led a very sheltered childhood.)It was with the advent of the family's second computer – the first intimidated everyone – that my writing took off. I discovered 1. Fanfiction; 2. m/m (yes, I know. Finally!); 3. the wonder that is copy and paste. Does anyone remember what typing up a manuscript on a manual typewriter was like? Okay then, nuff said.While I was involved in fandom, I was nominated for both Rerun and Light My Fire Awards. But even then, my original characters would come knocking, to the point I’ve left Jim and Blair, Rodney and John, and even Lyle and Mr. Taggart (Blazing Saddles) behind. I’ve been published by Nazca Plain, JMS Books, Dreamspinner, Wilde City Press, and Less Than Three Press, and now I’m taking the leap into the self-pubbing pool. My novel, Two Lips, Indifferent Red received honorable mention in the 2013 Rainbow Awards, and Home Before Sundown was a 2017 runner-up.Now I reside in SW Florida with my husband and three computers, but I’ll always be a Noo Yawk kinda gal.

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The Start of a Beautiful Friendship

By Tinnean

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Copyright 2019 Tinnean

WARNING: This book is not transferable. It is for your own personal use. If it is sold, shared, or given away, it is an infringement of the copyright of this work and violators will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.

No portion of this book may be transmitted or reproduced in any form, or by any means, without permission in writing from the publisher, with the exception of brief excerpts used for the purposes of review.

This book is for ADULT AUDIENCES ONLY. It may contain sexually explicit scenes and graphic language which might be considered offensive by some readers. Please store your files where they cannot be accessed by minors.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are solely the product of the author's imagination and/or are used fictitiously, though reference may be made to actual historical events or existing locations. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

Published in the United States of America.

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Dedication

This is for Bob, because...Bob. It will always be for him.

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Acknowledgements

Many thanks to Gail Morse.

Without her, this would never have started: one story, no sex. ;-)

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The Start of a Beautiful Friendship

By Tinnean

I

On January 7, 1996, it started snowing in New York, and it snowed like a son of a bitch for the next two days. Trust me on this...I was there at the time.

Since I was in a hospital room at Good Sam in West Islip, I had my cell phone in etiquette mode, and when it vibrated in my pocket, I knew it was a message from work. No one else called this number. I took it out and checked the text message.

Yep, it was from the WBIS, the Washington Bureau of Intelligence and Security.

I grinned at the man lying in the bed, determined not to let him see how concerned I was about his condition. He was hooked up to more machines than a body should have to be.

My old lady was a Grade A lush who had a tendency to hit the bars and bring home whoever caught her fancy. The guy would stay with us for a day, a week, a month, maybe, and then she'd boot him out. For some reason those men always treated me well and stayed in touch. One was a scoutmaster who taught me French, as well as how to fence. Another was a Portuguese fisherman who showed me the best way to scale a fish, how to handle myself in a knife fight, and how to crochet. According to Tio Ze, a man didn't have to be defined by labels.

The man in the bed, an expat Brit, had not only introduced me to various methods of self-defense, but he'd seen to it that I had a decent education, even after he left. He got me out of the shithole that had been home from the time I was six and sent me to a military academy on Long Island. His name was Bert Greenley, but I'd always called him Uncle Bert, or UB for short. When I'd learned he had cancer and shit insurance, I'd made sure he had the best doctors and the most up-to-date treatment, even though I knew eventually it would just be palliative.

I have to take this call, UB.

Go ahead, son, he rasped. Lately, his British accent had become more noticeable, possibly due to his illness. I wondered if his accent had anything to do with my old lady's attraction to him. Now that I thought of it, most of her men weren't from the States to begin with.

I rested my hand on his arm gently. My own father had disappeared from my life when I was about five. Four? Time had a tendency to blur.

 I'll be right back. I strode out of the room, took the stairs down to the lobby, and went out to the parking lot, which was how I discovered all the snow. Fuck.

This hadn't been in the forecast when I'd flown up to Long Island a couple of days earlier, so I hadn't brought along gloves or boots, and the bomber jacket I wore was more suitable for higher temps.

The snow was already halfway to my knees, but this wasn't a phone call I could make in a public area. I worked for an agency no one outside the intelligence community knew existed, and those inside the intelligence community wished didn't exist.

I trudged to my rental, got in, and turned on the ignition