Sapphire Sunset Read online

  Sapphire Cove

  Christopher Rice

  Writing As

  C. Travis Rice

  Sapphire Sunset

  By Christopher Rice writing as C. Travis Rice

  Copyright 2022 Christopher Rice

  ISBN: 978-1-952457-86-9

  Published by Blue Box Press, an imprint of Evil Eye Concepts, Incorporated

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author’s rights.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, places, characters and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination and are fictitious. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or establishments is solely coincidental.

  Book Description

  Sapphire Sunset

  Sapphire Cove, Book 1

  By Christopher Rice writing as C. Travis Rice

  For the first time New York Times bestselling author Christopher Rice writes as C. Travis Rice. Under his new pen name, Rice offers tales of passion, intrigue, and steamy romance between men. The first novel, SAPPHIRE SUNSET, transports you to a beautiful luxury resort on the sparkling Southern California coast where strong-willed heroes release the shame that blocks their hearts’ desires.

  Logan Murdoch is a fighter, a survivor, and a provider. When he leaves a distinguished career in the Marine Corps to work security at a luxury beachfront resort, he’s got one objective: pay his father’s mounting medical bills. That means Connor Harcourt, the irresistibly handsome scion of the wealthy family that owns Sapphire Cove, is strictly off limits, despite his sassy swagger and beautiful blue eyes. Logan’s life is all about sacrifices; Connor is privilege personified. But temptation is a beast that demands to be fed, and a furtive kiss ignites instant passion, forcing Logan to slam the brakes. Hard.

  Haunted by their frustrated attraction, the two men find themselves hurled back together when a headline-making scandal threatens to ruin the resort they both love. This time, there’s no easy escape from the magnetic pull of their white-hot desire. Will saving Sapphire Cove help forge the union they crave, or will it drive them apart once more?

  About Christopher Rice writing as C. Travis Rice

  C. Travis Rice is the pen name New York Times bestselling novelist Christopher Rice devotes to steamy tales of passion, intrigue, and romance between men. He has published multiple bestselling books in multiple genres and been the recipient of a Lambda Literary Award. With his mother, Anne Rice, he is an executive producer on the AMC Studios adaptations of her novels The Vampire Chronicles and The Lives of the Mayfair Witches. Together with his best friend and producing partner, New York Times bestselling novelist, Eric Shaw Quinn, he runs the production company Dinner Partners. Among other projects, they produce the podcast and video network, TDPS, which you can find at www.TheDinnerPartyShow.com. Learn more about C. Travis Rice and Christopher Rice at www.christopherricebooks.com.

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  BLIND FALL

  THE MOONLIT EARTH

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  THE HEAVENS RISE

  THE VINES

  BONE MUSIC: A Burning Grill Thriller

  BLOOD ECHO: A Burning Girl Thriller

  BLOOD VICTORY: A Burning Girl Thriller

  Paranormal Romance

  THE FLAME: A Desire Exchange Novella

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  Contemporary Romance

  DANCE OF DESIRE

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  With Anne Rice

  RAMSES THE DAMNED: THE PASSION OF CLEOPATRA

  RAMSES THE DAMNED: THE REIGN OF OSIRIS

  Acknowledgments from the Author

  Sapphire Cove would never have opened for guests without invaluable reads from some wonderful writers I’m proud to call my friends—J.R. Ward, Jill Shalvis, Tere Michaels, Lauren Billings, and the incomparable Eric Shaw Quinn, my producing partner at Dinner Partners and my podcast co-host on “TDPS Presents CHRISTOPHER & ERIC.”

  For invaluable insight into the operations of a large hotel, I’m indebted to Troy Pade. For insight into Marine Corps operations, major thanks to Lt. Col. M. Matthew Phelps, US Marine Corps. The last time Matt helped me on a book about a Marine, Don't Ask Don't Tell was still in force, and I couldn't use his actual name on the acknowledgments page. Any errors or embellishments in these areas are the work of the author, and not these experts in their fields.

  It’s a dream to be back working with the amazing ladies at Blue Box Press. There are not enough thanks in the world to Liz Berry, MJ Rose, and Jillian Stein for seeing the type of romance I wanted this to be and committing to it wholeheartedly. They’re not only great publishers, they’re amazing friends. Major gratitude as well goes to Kim Guidroz, for her sharp editorial eye, and to Kasi Alexander for additional proofreading.

  As always, I’m grateful to Christine Cuddy for her sterling legal guidance and Cathy Dipierro and the team at The Unreal Agency for their fantastic web management.

  Table of Contents

  Book Description

  About Christopher Rice writing as C. Travis Rice

  Also from Christopher Rice

  Acknowledgments from the Author

  Prologue

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  An excerpt from Sapphire Spring

  Discover More Christopher Rice

  Discover 1001 Dark Nights Collection Nine

  Discover the World of Blue Box Press & 1001 Dark Nights

  Special Thanks

  Prologue

  When Logan Murdoch was sixteen, his dad caught him watching porn, and their lives changed forever.

  It felt like an eternity, but all told, it probably only took Chip Murdoch five seconds to realize the guys in football uniforms on Logan’s laptop were working themselves into a frenzy without any assistance from a nubile female cheerleader. Maybe because the sound was off and there’d been no all-male moans to clue him in. The next thing Logan knew, his six-foot-four kickboxer of a dad was shuffling off down the hallway like he’d been kneed in the stomach by the Jolly Green Giant.

  A few breathless minutes later, dressed in the first clothes he could pull from his dresser with trembling hands, Logan found his dad sitting on the foot of the lounger in the backyard where he usually smoked, staring up at the scrubby hillside behind their house that coughed a rattlesnake or two onto their patio every spring. But he wasn’t smoking. Shaking one loose from the rumpled pack on the table next to him would have required concentration he didn’t seem to have.

  Up until then, Logan had never known fear like that in his life.

  Years later,
he’d discover a more sudden and visceral version of it after he joined the Marines. But the fear of getting blown apart was distinct from the fear of losing everything you care about because of who you are. Nothing came close to the total, bone-deep vulnerability he felt from head to toe in that moment. There’s dying, and then there’s eking out an existence without love or family. At sixteen, both prospects seemed equally dire.

  For a while, his dad just stared and stared. Like he thought a meteor was coming to wipe out the planet, and he didn’t have time to run.

  That, or he was trying to permanently unsee his son’s junk.

  Whatever the case, Logan was pretty sure his old man hadn’t been this shell shocked since Logan’s mother died suddenly when he was three.

  Chip Murdoch was a hard guy who’d had a hard life, born to a mom who’d loved heroin more than her kid and a father who’d grieved his wife’s overdose with a belt. In other words, Logan’s dad hit the streets at sixteen and never looked back. There was a year or two of running with bad crowds, even sleeping under a few bridges, before he made a life for himself in construction that ensured he’d never have to enter the snake pit of his family again—a family who’d never sent Logan so much as an email or a Christmas card, which was all he needed to know about them. For most of those difficult years, Chip Murdoch’s height and brawn, which he’d passed on to Logan, had been the key to his survival. Protecting him on the streets, aiding him in a job devoted to manual labor, making him a hit with the ladies, the most important of which had been Logan’s mom.

  Guys like that didn’t put up with a homo for a son.

  And so as Logan stood there, waiting for his dad to rouse from his shock, he was braced for a fist to the face, even though the guy had never raised a hand to him in his life.

  Instead, his old man swallowed. “Well, looks like I won’t be passing on my shitty history with women.”

  Then he ordered Logan into his truck.

  In silence, he drove them south to Fallbrook, that hilly little town just east of Camp Pendleton’s rugged stretch to the sea. The Marine base would later play a huge role in Logan’s life, but in those days it was shrouded with grown-up mystery and video-game fueled fantasies of war games. When they crested the winding gravel road that brought them to his aunt’s lonely ranch house atop a boulder-strewn hill, that’s when he learned that yes, his mom’s sister Fran was a lesbian, and her housemate Pam wasn’t just her good friend. And as his dad wandered their property in a daze, Logan sat at a butcher block table in a kitchen hung with so many knickknacks it looked like a TGI Fridays, across from the women who would become his gay moms. The three of them drank chamomile tea out of big glazed ceramic mugs painted bright primary colors as Fran asked him important questions his dad couldn’t. Was he experimenting? Using condoms? Doing things online with strangers he shouldn’t?

  He gave honest answers. His dad’s relaxed attitude toward Internet parental controls had helped Logan create a rich and vivid fantasy on his hard drive. Women played no role in it. But it was all dirty movies, like the one he’d been caught watching that day. No stranger danger involved. As for real-world experiences, just a few fumbling misfires with other boys at school, none of them repeats. That was all.

  After gathering the essential intelligence, Fran went for a walk with Logan’s dad. Later, Logan realized whatever shitty things his dad probably had to say in that moment he’d said to his sister-in-law so he’d never have to say them to his son.

  But that night, when his dad told him it was time to head home, Logan started blinking back tears the minute he heard the man’s casual tone. “I thought you were going to leave me here,” Logan blurted out. Then a big, wet humiliating sob burst from him like a breath he’d been holding in for hours, and his dad reached up and planted a hand on his shoulder.

  “You’re my boy.” Chip Murdoch’s grip became a brief hug. Kinda awkward, but a hug, nonetheless. “You got that? You’ll always be my boy.”

  They drove home under a clear, star-flecked Southern California sky, the wind pouring in through the truck’s open windows as they listened to Lynyrd Skynyrd, his dad’s favorite. Logan had never been much of a Skynyrd fan, but that night, the melancholy chords of Simple Man wound their way through his soul, turning into an anthem that meant freedom. It was a song about a mother’s advice to her son, and he was pretty sure his dad played it every time he wished the love of his life was there to help him raise their boy. Maybe she had been in spirit, and that’s why the greatest secret Logan had ever kept didn’t destroy his family after all.

  Also, nobody had told him he had to delete all that porn, and that was a relief too.

  Years later, when his dad’s life hit the skids, when he wrecked his back and a career in construction as a result, all because he’d refused the doctor’s orders to stay out of the kickboxing ring while recovering from a minor sprain, when it became clear to everyone who knew him that Chip Murdoch’s idea of saving for a rainy day had been to hold two palms over his head, Logan’s friends asked him how he could justify putting his whole life on hold just to manage the fallout of his stubborn old man’s lousy life choices. Was he really ditching his dream of becoming a Navy SEAL just so he could grab the first job that allowed him to support his dad?

  The answer was simple.

  Yes.

  Because men like Chip Murdoch, hard guys from hard backgrounds, usually kicked their gay sons to the curb. But his dad had done the opposite.

  Had he been perfect? No. Would he have been so accepting of Logan’s sexuality if Logan had turned out to be the kind of gay guy who loved things his dad found girly or soft? Maybe not. But what it came down to with his dad was simple. Chip Murdoch gave better than he got, especially when it came to his son, and he deserved to be loved through one of his lowest moments.

  And that’s how Logan Murdoch, a former staff sergeant in the Marine Corps who’d once been blasted out of a Humvee only to dust himself off and help the guys who were more injured, ended up landing a job at one of the poshest resorts in Southern California.

  1

  The jacket was a perfect fit. A sign of good things to come, Logan thought.

  After he’d aced his final interview and background check, management at Sapphire Cove provided him with three matching blazers and three pairs of khaki pants to go with them, all tailored to measurements they’d taken in their back offices.

  Now, standing before the only mirror in the trailer he’d shared with his dad for months, Logan smoothed the lapel bearing the hotel’s bright gold logo with both hands. Then he smoothed it again. The gentle motions quieted nerves that had been vibrating for days.

  It wasn’t just a blazer. It was a promise the hotel had kept, as evidenced by the way it flattered his broad chest and bulky shoulders. And kept promises were exactly what he needed.

  Truth be told, he’d gone back and forth between dreading his fancy new gig and nursing excited daydreams about it. Fantasies of escorting some Harry Styles type to his private villa, only to have the gorgeous little Hollywood twink slide his phone number into his palm. And as an added bonus, maybe his new movie star husband would be the type who didn’t drag every Marine he met for wars said Marine didn’t start or vote for. That would be a refreshing change of pace.

  Before he could savor this swell of contentment over his new uniform, there was a deafening crash from the kitchen.

  He found his dad ass flat in front of the refrigerator, one hand holding to the handle above his head. Logan figured the old man had gone over sideways when he tried to open the door. When he saw his dad’s new silver crutches leaning unused next to the sofa in the main room, his jaw ached, which told him he was grinding his teeth in frustration. Again.

  “Old man, I swear to God with you.”

  “I just wanted a sandwich,” Chip groaned.

  “Then ask me to make it for you.”

  “You were getting ready.”

  Logan hoisted his dad to his feet, no small f
eat given they were about the same size.

  “And you were doing that thing you do when you’re nervous.”

  “What thing?” Logan let Chip’s arm slide from around his upper back, lowering his dad carefully onto the worn sofa.

  “That thing where you clear your throat over and over again and pace like an elephant. You know, like when you’ve got a date.”

  “It’s not a date. It’s a job. And elephants don’t pace. Those are tigers, which is what I’m going to turn into if you don’t start taking your recovery seriously.”

  “What if I get hungry while you’re at work?” Teeth gritted against the pain, Chip rolled onto one side like a beached whale.

  “Sally will be over in two minutes.”

  “Christ on his throne,” Chip grumbled.

  “Let’s try for Chip Murdoch on his sofa, like the doctor ordered.”

  Chip’s eyes rolled back into his head, and he groaned like he’d been stuck in the gut. And that was the idea. Sally was the only other resident in their trailer park, besides Logan, capable of frightening Chip Murdoch into silence. Her secret was that when Chip shouted at her, she shouted back louder and faster until Chip shut up and got tired. It was genius. But it was also a painful reminder. They were leaning on their neighbor because Logan’s beloved gay moms were both gone now—Fran felled by a heart attack shortly after Logan joined the Marines, and Pam finally claimed by her years-long battle with cancer last winter. Just a whiff of chamomile tea would bring a lump to Logan’s throat, transport him back to their kitchen in Fallbrook where they’d spent so many special hours. He and his dad could sure use some of their wisdom now.

  Logan’s dad waved his hands through the air as if he could make the prospect of Sally’s imminent arrival disperse like cigarette smoke. Before Sally finished her harsh series of knocks, Logan opened the door, and in walked their neighbor, a proud tank of a woman who dressed solely for comfort and looked at everything in her path like she thought it might try to bite her and that was a good enough excuse to kick the living crap out of it before it tried. “Am I allowed to hit the sauce during this gig?”