John S. Mclaughlin

Gideon Holiday is the perfect neighbor. Need a cup of sugar? Spare folding chair? Extra batteries? He's always ready to help. And he's waited years for his hot, grumpy, silver-fox neighbor, Paul, to need him. For anything. But right now, Gideon would be happy if he could just get the Scrooge-like Paul on board with the neighborhood holiday lights fundraiser.

As a founding member of The Vers, a queer podcast I host with my three best friends, I’m "The Loner"—quieter than the others, and except for them, I don’t let myself get too close to people. Most of them just let you down anyway, or maybe it’s just that something about me chases people away.

As the hottest bodyguard on Security Force Omega, Oscar Oliveira has no trouble finding a warm body at any odd hour. But he's ready for more. And for the first time in this ex-pro boxer's life, he just got rejected. For a kiss. Oscar's friends warned him not to fall for the straight guy, but flirty, sexy-as-hell Jack Highland made that difficult. Now Jack has Oscar's sweatshirt. His belt. His bandana. And Oscar seriously wants them back. As for Jack - well, Jack wants a lot of things.

Harper Reid has no money and nowhere to go, but he can't spend one more day under the same roof as his abusive boyfriend. Desperate to start fresh, he takes on a special case through the caregiver agency that contracts him. The client has fired everyone else, but this job includes lodging, so Harper will find a way to make it work until he's back on his feet.

When Miller Hobbs finds himself on a winter vacation in Colorado with the giant, exceedingly loud, Marian and Wilde families, he doesn’t quite know what to do with himself. He’s not really a Marian or a Wilde despite having DNA ties to both. So every morning before the rest of the family wakes up and fills Rockley Lodge with holiday merriment (and noise), he escapes to the quaint downtown of Aster Valley where he spies a man through the bakery window kneading dough and dancing to music only he can hear.

Lieutenant Apollo Floros can ace tactical training missions, but being a single dad to his twin daughters is more than he can handle. He needs live-in help, and he's lucky a friend's younger brother needs a place to stay. He's surprised to see Dylan all grown up with a college degree...and a college athlete's body. Apollo's widowed heart may still be broken, but Dylan has his blood heating up.

I left my family and tiny Texas hometown 15 years ago to escape small-town gossips and to give my mom and sister the chance at a better life. But when a phone call from an attorney back home informs me that my sister passed away, leaving me custody of her newborn baby, I'm shocked out of the steady life I've built for myself running a tattoo shop in San Francisco. The thing is: I don't do babies. And I don't do small towns. Or commitment. And I especially don't do family.

You think you know me. That's the way I want it. Making you feel like we know each other - like we could go grab a beer sometime - is part of my job. Maybe the most vital part. It doesn't hurt that I'm easy on the eyes, single at 35, and born richer than sin. My aesthetic matters much more than it should, but all the better for my worthy cause. And it's a worthy cause. I've made an art out of making you feel good, and my influence makes you want to be good. Good like me. You think you know me, but you don't. Everyone has secrets. Mine could cost me everything.

Charlie Matheson has spent his life taking care of things. When his parents died two days before his eighteenth birthday, he took care of his younger brother, even though that meant putting his own dreams on hold. He took care of his father's hardware store, building it into something known several towns over. When a stranger with epic tattoos and a glare to match starts coming into Matheson's Hardware, buying things seemingly at random and lugging them off in a beat-up car, Charlie's instinct is to help. When the man comes in for the fifth time in a week, he can't resist intervening.

Hockey right winger Tyler Jensen isn’t thrilled to get the news he’s been traded to the Bethesda Barracudas. The team may be red-hot in the rankings, but there’s someone there he’d rather not have to see every day. Defenseman Kevin Moore is living the dream playing for the Barracudas - until he hears that his old high school crush Tyler is joining the team. Ty was once everything Kev wanted, but their age difference got in the way. In Bethesda, Tyler doesn’t take long to notice that Kevin has grown up into precisely the kind of man he can’t resist.