Dreamspinner Press, $3.99, ISBN 978-1-935192-44-2
Contemporary Romance, 2009
The star of our story is Lucas Kiefer, who is so pretty that Sheriff Nicholas Demetris’s eyes water just looking at him. He would love to get to know Lucas much better, but alas, Lucas was still emo from having been attacked by a deranged stalker ten years ago and subsequently getting dumped by his boyfriend. Lucas is now not ready to be anything more than a friend to Nicholas.
When the story opens, Nicholas feels that he has been left twisting in the wind for five years and really, enough is enough. He is going to show Lucas that they belong together and he will start by – let me check – oh yes, going down on Lucas. You can never go wrong with the direct approach, I suppose. At the same time, the deranged stalker manages to walk free due to a technicality (hurrah for the system, snort) and he too wants to show Lucas a thing or two.
Oh, I have to laugh after I’ve finished this one. This is a very melodramatic story, but fortunately, the melodrama is in the emotions and not in the characters speaking like dramatic crybaby emus or something. There is something very appealing in Nicholas’s pursuit of Lucas, I find. He is a mix of possessiveness and protectiveness, but Ms Davis manages to balance both aspects of Nicholas so that the man comes off more like a confident yet tender protector rather than a creepy jerk who can’t take no for an answer. Lucas is a victim here, so raw and so full of angst, but hey, his character works pretty well here as the object of Nicholas’s affections.
I suspect that the overblown melodrama will become trying in a longer story, but Loving Lucas is a short story and therefore, in this instance, the author has succeeded in creating a rescue fantasy that works. Nicholas is an appealing knight in shining armor while Lucas doesn’t grate too much as the victim. All in all, this is a pretty good read.
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