Lance needs a vacation from DC and his job. He’s lost his passion to work there now that shifters and humans have equal rights, and he’s thinking about retiring, even though he’s only forty-seven. Of course, that means he has to deal with the people who want him to run for president—something he has no intention of doing.
Matt was only supposed to stay in Hope for a few weeks, but he ends up accepting the sheriff job, even though the station isn’t even finished yet. He was looking for a change from his job as a detective anyway, and he likes Hope, the friends he has there—and the two men he just met.
Monty has a lot to deal with as the only healer in Hope, but that doesn’t stop him from deciding he wants to see where things go when he meets Matt and Lance. He knows being in a relationship with two men isn’t usual and that it’s not going to be easy, but he wants it to work.
Matt, Monty, and Lance have hurdles to get over, though. Lance’s job means he can’t come out, especially not as being in a threesome when one of his men is a shifter. Humans still aren’t accepting of them, no matter what the law says. And even though he’s been thinking about retiring, Lance has to make a hard choice between the possibility of making other peoples’ lives better or making his better. He has a hard time accepting the possibility of being in a throuple, but once he lets go of his fears, the stakes rise.
Will Lance choose happiness over duty? Will Matt and Monty be willing to give him time to work things out? And what will happen when he is outed against his will?
Lance closed his eyes and leaned his head against the car seat. He was officially on vacation, and that meant he needed to leave DC and politics behind, at least for the next week or so.
He already knew that wasn’t going to happen.
He couldn’t remember the last time he’d allowed himself to have time off work, not in the past few years. He’d been too busy working on getting shifters equal rights, or at least something that resembled equal rights. It had been his priority, and now that he’d obtained that, he felt a bit lost.
Hence his vacation.
It was a working vacation, but he was trying to be sneaky about it. He wanted to check in on the shifters—and the humans—who lived in Hope, the first human-shifter town in the country. Other towns were quickly popping up, but Hope was already a town, even though the people there were still working on building houses and other buildings.
Hope was Lance’s baby. He’d come up with the idea for the town when he was still a teenager. It had been just dreams then, and he could hardly believe he’d made that dream come true. He wished the world was safer for shifters, but it was still early days, even though the Supreme Court had made their decision almost a year earlier.
That dream was the reason Lance had gotten into politics, and now that he’d gotten what he’d been fighting for for so long, he wasn’t quite sure what to do with himself. He didn’t know if he could do anything else, or even if he wanted to. A few people had asked him if he was planning to run for president, but the thought terrified him.
And he didn’t have to think about it right now. Besides, he wasn’t planning to run, so he should stop thinking about it and stressing himself out. He hated politics, how fake and turncoat the politicians, and he couldn’t wait to retire. The only thing that had stopped him until now was the fact that he could do good for people in his position. He realized that would never change, though, and that even now that shifters had equal rights, it didn’t mean everything was right and good in the world. There would always be someone who needed him, so if he didn’t force himself to take a step back, he’d never retire.
Of course, he didn’t have much to retire for. His father had died several years ago, and though his mother was still alive and kicking, she didn’t need him. She had a busy life, hobbies, and friends, so much that they barely talked. Lance, on the other hand, didn’t have many people in his life. Politics didn’t make for friends. He’d never understood how some people he worked with seemed to become friendly. He’d never be able to trust anyone he met through his job. He’d seen too many people being backstabbed by people they’d trusted.
Lance’s phone rang. He opened his eyes and stared at it, willing it to stop. He knew it wouldn’t, though, and even if it did, it would ring again in seconds. He might as well answer now.
“Lance Rexford.”
“Mr. Rexford, hello.”
Lance sighed at the sound of his PA’s voice. “What is it, Samuel?”
“I got a call from Mrs. Lopez.”
Lance closed his eyes again. “Did you tell her I was unavailable?”
“Of course, sir, but she insisted on talking to you.”
“That’s not going to be possible.”
“That’s what I told her, but—”
“But she didn’t care.”
“She didn’t say it in those words, but she implied it was irresponsible of you to leave town right now.”
Because Lance was supposed to decide on whether or not he’d be running for president. It wouldn’t be announced for months, of course, but the people who mattered wanted to know. Lance could have told them he wouldn’t and got rid of them, but he already knew at least some of them would try to change his mind, and he was afraid they might succeed. Some of his allies knew exactly what buttons to push to obtain that, and they wouldn’t hesitate to use them.
He sighed. “Tell her I’ll call her next week, once I’m back in town.”
“I will.”
Lance could hear the reproach in his PA’s voice. “You think I should call her right now.”
Samuel chuckled. “You know me too well. And yes, I do think that, but only because she won’t take no for an answer and she’ll no doubt continue to call me. And if that doesn’t work…”
“She’ll call me on my cell phone.”
“Probably.”
“I should turn it off.”
“At least during the night, yes. I doubt anything that needs your immediate attention will happen over the next week, but you know how it is.”
Lance knew all too well. “I’ll call her back once I feel ready to, then. And you have my permission to ignore the phone if she calls you again.”
“I’d never do that, but thank you.”
“Anything else?”
“Nothing I can’t deal with on my own.”
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