Worth Fighting For

Book 3: Heart of the South

by Wendy Qualls

Genres: LGBT Gay; Contemporary Romance

Synopsis

For two gay men in the Deep South, fighting for love and family can lead to one beautiful, sexy, and unexpected knock out . . . In college, an “are you sure you’re gay?” experiment with his (female) best friend left Sterling Harper married with a baby on the way. Eleven years later, his life is flipped upside-down—his wife has died, his “little boy” is transitioning to her new life as a girl, Alexa, and his embittered in-laws have proven too transphobic to babysit for the summer like they’d planned. They’re fighting for custody of Alexa, though, so Sterling can’t afford to give them more ammunition. If only there were a nice, conservative, trans-preteen-friendly nanny available on short notice . . . Jericho Johnston doesn’t do “conservative,” but Alexa takes to him immediately. He’s got a teaching job lined up for the fall, a killer smile, and loads of charisma . . . but he is not going back in the proverbial closet. It doesn’t take long for the two men to go from comrades-in-arms against their rarified community to two men in love. This kicks off the looming custody battle with Sterling’s bigoted in-laws, though, and the idea of two gay men raising a trans daughter isn’t going over well with anyone. Now, with so much to lose, Sterling and Jericho must fight harder than ever—for themselves, for Alexa, and for their future. Praise for Worth Waiting For “Qualls provides a sweet romance with some spice while tackling issues such as coming out as an adult, family relationships, and religious acceptance or denial of LGBTQ lifestyles.” —Library Journal “A sexy new voice, full of promise. These heroes stole my heart!” —Annabeth Albert “Sexy, fun and well written . . . the perfect book for a cozy night at home reading. I can’t wait to see what Ms. Qualls has in store for us next. —J.L. Langley, bestselling author of The Tin Star “A charming, sexy, and beautifully crafted tale that tugs at the heartstrings. Can't wait to read more from this talented author!” —Sara Brookes, award-winning author

Release date: August 14, 2018

Publisher: Lyrical Press

Print pages: 188

Sample

Chapter 1

“Dad! You came! I knew you would.” Alexa came barreling through her grandparents’ foyer and practically tackled Sterling with a tight hug. She was in jeans and an oversized white polo shirt, which wasn’t what she’d been wearing when he dropped her off at school that morning. “Please, please can we go home?” she asked, muffled against his chest. “Grandma Butler is mad because I won’t let her cut my hair, but she keeps yelling at me and I don’t want a boy cut, I want to let it get longer—”

“Hey.” Sterling drew back and got a good look at Alexa’s hair. She’d been growing it out for months, trying to get it long enough to pull back into some semblance of a feminine style, but now there was a conspicuous chunk missing from the left side. Even Sterling, who’d kept the same basic haircut since he was twelve and couldn’t tell a fashionable style from bedhead, could tell it wasn’t fixable.

Vivian Butler, Sterling’s mother-in-law, came around the corner from the living room while Sterling was examining the damage. She flashed him a blatantly fake smile and hurried over to offer a side-armed hug. “Sterling! Oscar didn’t tell us you’d be home early.”

“My name isn’t Oscar,” Alexa growled through clenched teeth, “and I called him to come pick me up. Dad, can we leave now?”

“You need to go grab your backpack,” Sterling said. “And I want to talk to your grandma for a minute first, okay? You can go out and wait in the car if you want to—the door’s unlocked.”

Alexa nodded and went to the kitchen to retrieve her things. Sterling took Vivian’s arm and drew her aside, out of the hall, so they were out of Alexa’s way when she headed outside.

“You’re not doing that boy any favors by encouraging him, you know,” Vivian said in a low voice. “I can’t believe you let him go to school wearing pink this morning! I had to pull out one of Lawrence’s old shirts for him to wear instead.”

Sterling closed his eyes and counted to ten. They’d gone round and round and round on this, but his in-laws still refused to call Alexa by her new name or to use feminine pronouns. “Alexa is welcome to wear whatever color she likes,” he said for what was probably the hundredth time. “And if you keep calling her by her deadname, I swear I’m going to keep her home this summer and you won’t get to see her unsupervised ever again.”

Vivian crossed her arms and glared at him. “Dana would have been ashamed of you both. Oscar was a perfectly healthy little boy before—”

“Before my wife died. Thank you so much for bringing that back up,” Sterling snapped. “You don’t think I miss her the same as you do? Or Alexa does? It still doesn’t give you the right make those decisions on behalf of my daughter.”

“If you refuse to parent our grandson—”

Goddammit. “Know what? I can’t do this anymore.” Sterling was seriously resisting the urge to hit his mother-in-law; heaven only knew how long he could keep his hands to himself. Not that he’d actually hit her, but it would be so satisfying…

“It’s embarrassing!” Vivian exclaimed. “What am I supposed to say when my friends at Bible study ask how Oscar is doing? It’s bad enough you never take him to church anymore. I can’t tell them my grandson is being dressed up like a girl and is demanding everyone call him ‘Alexa’!” Her tone softened a bit. “I know Dana loved you very much,” she added. “And I know you worked hard at making her happy, regardless of…circumstances. But can you honestly tell me you think Dana would have approved of this? You know as well as I do she would have been mortified to have everyone gossiping about Oscar behind your backs. Lawrence and I are just trying to help him get back to the real world and stop all this sexual confusion nonsense. He’s ten. Nowhere near old enough to be thinking about sex yet.”

That argument was frustratingly familiar too. Sterling took a deep breath, formulating a reply—and then decided it wasn’t worth the effort. She wouldn’t understand. She hadn’t understood Alexa in forever and hadn’t understood Dana and Sterling’s relationship for a lot longer than that. Vivian and Lawrence’s refusal to honor Alexa’s social transition was clearly hurting Alexa more than Sterling had realized, and his in-laws were both being more stubborn about it than even the worst-case scenario he’d envisioned when Alexa first came out as female. It always boiled down to them insisting her transition was a phase, or some red flag for sexual deviance, or a cry for help because Sterling’s parenting skills were somehow inadequate. They refused to see the perfectly healthy girl finally getting to express herself the way she wanted. Her gender had nothing to do with wanting sex.

There was a zero percent chance his late wife’s parents would bother to learn the difference between the two, or even care about getting it wrong.

“Goodbye,” Sterling said, in lieu of something much ruder. Many somethings, if he let himself give her the tongue-lashing she deserved. He left Vivian standing there in her living room and took a tiny bit of satisfaction in letting the screen door slam on his way out of the house.

Alexa was already buckled into her seat in the back when he got to the car. She’d shed her grandfather’s oversized shirt and was back in the pink butterfly-print tank top she’d been wearing that morning. “Thanks for coming, Dad,” she said softly. “Grandpa keeps telling me I’m being disobedient, but I’m not. Now that I’m finally…but they keep telling me I’m wrong.”

“I know. And I’m really, truly sorry for not putting a stop to this earlier. I didn’t realize they were still doing this to you when I’m not there.” It was one more failure he could tally up, courtesy of being a single dad. God only knew how they’d have handled Alexa’s transition if Dana were still alive, but she wasn’t and he’d had to come to terms with that ages ago. “I kept hoping they’d eventually come around,” he added, “but your grandparents are…” Big damn narcissists? Self-absorbed jackasses? “…slow to change.”

Alexa grimaced. “Did you see what she did to my hair?” She turned her head to the right, and Sterling tried not to react too badly. He’d only gotten a quick glance at it inside, before his mother-in-law distracted them, but now in the passive afternoon light he could identify the damage more clearly—a big hunk was missing over her left ear. Everywhere else was still a gender-ambiguous length, but that one spot looked ridiculous. She’d been trying for months to grow her hair longer to look more feminine, but Dana’s parents were more concerned about what people would think of their “grandson” than about what Alexa wanted. Goddammit.

“Grandma Butler did that?”

“Yeah.” Alexa’s shoulders slumped. “She made an appointment to take me to the barber today. To get a boy style. I flat-out told her no, so she got the scissors from the kitchen and chopped off a big hunk of my hair out so I’d have to go.” She fingered the ragged cut. “I can’t leave it like this,” she whispered in the direction of her lap, “but now it’s gone and I can’t grow it back.”

“You’ll have longer hair eventually, but I promise you don’t have to leave it uneven in the meantime.” Sterling started the engine and backed out of his in-laws’ driveway. He headed east, toward downtown instead of home. “I’m sure we can find a stylist who doesn’t require an appointment—let’s see what they can do.”

“You think it’s fixable?”

Sterling locked eyes with Alexa in the mirror and willed her to believe the sense of calm competence he was trying to project. He didn’t have the first clue how to fix the whole mess, but at the very least he could get Alexa a nice, shorter-but-still-feminine haircut. “It is,” he declared firmly. “And I’ll see what I can do about your grandparents.”

Chapter 2

Jericho got to the little coffee shop about ten minutes early. Other than when he signed up with TeachUniversal three years earlier, he hadn’t had an interview in…well, ever, really. He’d only had the one job at Uncle René and Tante Brielle’s summer camp, and even though he’d stuck with it for several years running, there’d never actually been a formal interview. The whole offer had been more like “Your mom said you’re good with kids! Want to come to Florida for the summer and entertain them? We’ll pay you!” The application process for TeachUniversal had been more in-depth, but still culminated in something less like a job interview and more like a personality test. Apparently there were a lot of people who wanted to work with special needs children in exotic locales whose enthusiasm didn’t correspond with the right ability or temperament.

On the subject of temperament, though…coffee. Coffee would be heavenly. It was almost eight a.m.—presumably prime time for pre-work caffeination—and the shop had a busy drive-through but only three other customers inside. That was good, both because there was no line and because the dining area was seriously tiny. Any more people and he’d be having his interview two feet away from a random stranger. Jericho covertly scanned the room while pretending to look at the menu. The spot near the front window would be the best place to sit for a one-on-one, but it was already occupied by a clean-cut white dude in a suit. Blondish-brown hair, square-rimmed glasses, kind of a hot lawyer look. The guy wore it well, but his knee was bouncing madly under the table. He looked almost as jittery as Jericho felt. Maybe the table near—

“Good morning,” the suited man said, standing and approaching him. “Your name isn’t Jericho Johnston, is it? I’m supposed to meet him here at eight and you’re the only one I’ve seen come through who fit my friend’s description.”

Oh, he’s got a nice voice too. Jericho plastered a confident smile on his face and offered a handshake. “You must be Doctor Harper.”

The man nodded and smiled back. “Call me Sterling, please. Being on a last-name basis all summer would get to be a bit much, don’t you think?”

Starting off on a first-name basis felt equally weird, but Sterling couldn’t have been that much older than Jericho was. Four or five years, maybe. If this hadn’t essentially been a job interview, the informality of the whole first-name thing would have felt like an opening for some subtle flirtation. As it was, though, Jericho was more than willing to keep his trap shut for the next two and a half months if it meant having somewhere to live and hopefully some money left over at the end.

“What did Irene tell you, then?” he asked his potential employer. “Tall, bald, and cheerful?” There was a good chance “really dark” was part of her list too, but since Jericho was six foot three—which tended to be his second most noticeable feature, after his skin tone—it was possible she’d stuck with “tall.”

“Something like that,” Sterling hedged. So yes. “It let me pick you out of this total lack of crowd, at any rate. You want to…?” He gestured back toward the table.

“Okay if I grab myself a coffee?”

Sterling waved him toward the counter. “Oh, sorry, of course. Take your time. The caramel mocha’s amazing.”

Jericho wasn’t in a mood to make more decisions than absolutely necessary, so he got himself the caramel mocha like Sterling suggested. The second barista had his coffee ready to go almost before he was done paying. There was something weird about knowing that Sterling probably had eyes on him the whole time, waiting and assessing, but Jericho reminded himself that appearances and confidence were merely one more part of the interview process.

Nothing to stress about. You’ve got this. He had good credentials and could pass a background check with flying colors. Paul and Brandon, the friends he was staying with while job hunting, had finally taken pity on him after his third wardrobe change of the morning and essentially pushed him out the door with a pat on the shoulder and a sincere “Good luck!” In short, Jericho knew he was a damn good find for a summer nanny, and this interview was a chance for him to show that to Sterling. If it didn’t work, no biggie—he’d find something else. Another year at Camp Ladybug would be interesting too, wouldn’t it? Almost like going back in time to his high school and college summers. That would be fun.

Maybe if he told himself that enough times, he’d start to believe it.

“Sorry,” Sterling said when Jericho got back to the table. “I tend to run early more often than late, but I didn’t mean to accost you before you got your breakfast. Don’t let me rush you.”

“It’s fine. I run early too, usually.” He would have gotten actual food and ordered something a little less sweet to drink, in other circumstances, but the caramel mocha wasn’t terrible and Jericho was too hyped up to eat more anyway. “Pleasure to meet you.”

“Thanks. Good. We’ve got the nice-to-meet-yous and beverage-acquisition part out of the way.” Now that introductions were over, Sterling seemed to be relaxing some. Jericho decided to take that as a good sign. “Long story short,” Sterling explained, “my daughter is ten years old and her last day of school is this coming Friday. It’s just me and her, and I can’t always predict when I’m going to have to stay late at the office—I’m a dentist and my partner has dropped back to part-time, so I end up taking over most of the trickier issues. Seems like nowadays I’m there late more often than not. Alexa’s old enough not to burn the house down, but I’m not comfortable leaving her alone every day for the next two and a half months.”

“Of course.” He wanted Jericho to start work in less than a week? “Is there a reason you’re not interviewing candidates further in advance, if you don’t mind me asking?”

“The original plan was for her to stay with my in-laws while I’m at work, but some changes have come up unexpectedly. I assume Irene told you a bit about what I’m looking for?”

She had, but not much. This referral had totally been a chance connection. Jericho’s college roommate, Chris, had dated a girl named Irene off and on for ages. Ultimately the two had split but remained friends. Chris became part of Jericho’s core social group in Atlanta; Irene got promoted to office manager at the little health clinic she’d been the receptionist for in downtown Atlanta and then more or less dropped out of their lives. Facebook said she’d ended up in a posh little town a bit south of the Florida-Georgia line, at what turned out to be Sterling Harper’s office. Her job tip came completely out of the blue after almost three years of no contact—she’d thought of Jericho when she learned that this single dad, a rich dentist, was looking for a live-in sitter ASAP. It was a convoluted connection, but the timing couldn’t have been better. “Only the very basics,” Jericho admitted. “No details other than your daughter’s age and that you need someone for the duration of the summer.”

Sterling pinched his lips and nodded. “That’s…well. The first thing I should mention is that Alexa is on the spectrum. She doesn’t always make the most logical decisions, so you may end up spending half the summer reminding her not to take stupid risks in the name of curiosity. She also gets fixated on the strangest things and wants to talk about the same topics over and over again. It’s not always blatant—she’s mainstreamed in school and everything—but it throws adults off sometimes. You’ve got experience working with kids who have Asperger’s, don’t you?”

Extensively. “It’s generally all called Autism Spectrum Disorder now, but yes,” Jericho assured him. “My degree is in teaching special education, but I’ve spent the last three years in Haiti working at a school for children who have a variety of special needs. ASD was one of them.”

Sterling nodded. “You mentioned that on your resume. There’s another thing, though. It’s very recent—Alexa is only starting her public transition now—but Irene may not have called attention to it. I only told everyone at the office a few weeks ago, and they all seem determined to tiptoe around the topic.”

She hadn’t mentioned anything else, Jericho was sure, but he’d have given even odds she either didn’t want to prejudice him or guessed he wouldn’t care. “Your daughter is transgender?”

“Will that be a problem?”

Jericho shook his head. Saying “some of my best friends are trans women” would make him sound like a jackass, but there was no question he’d be better-equipped than most to deal with questions an LGBT kid might ask. Age-appropriate answers, even. It wouldn’t surprise him if Irene had intentionally passed on the job tip without mentioning that Sterling’s daughter was transgender—it would be just like her to recommend him specifically without saying why. “I haven’t worked with any trans kids that young,” he confessed, “but her gender identity won’t make a difference to me. If that’s what you’re asking. The summer camp I worked at all through college was initially designed for youth with a wide variety of disabilities, but really it was for anyone who needed a one-on-one experience. Some of the teens I worked with were nonbinary or transgender and came to Camp Ladybug because they didn’t feel comfortable going to other, gender-segregated summer programs.”

Sterling’s eyed widened enough to show Jericho had surprised him. “Damn, I hadn’t even thought about that issue for as she gets older,” he admitted. “Right now it feels like we’re still struggling with one step at a time. You may hear me slip up and call her Oscar occasionally—I’m trying to work on that.”

“The fact that you are trying is a huge deal to her, I’m sure.”

“I hope so.”

“I’ll never have known her as Oscar,” Jericho added, “so that might make it easier for you. I’m guessing you don’t talk to each other in the third person much. Practice will help.”

“True.” Sterling let out a long breath and flashed Jericho a much more honest smile than they’d exchanged at the beginning. “Figured I should get that out of the way first, just in case. I did read your resume—sounds like Camp Ladybug was a good fit for you, wasn’t it? Five summers there, bachelor’s in education from Georgia State with a focus in early childhood development and special education, and three years in Haiti with TeachUniversal? Did you have a classroom there?”

Christ, did he have Jericho’s resume memorized? Jericho wasn’t sure whether that was a good sign or just intimidating. “Not exactly,” he said, “but I did interact a lot with the kids.” He’d only been back in the States for a few weeks and he already missed them like crazy. “TeachUniversal is a nonprofit that sends teachers with special needs training to underprivileged parts of the world, mostly in countries where there’s no mandated education system and no schools in place capable of handling neurodiverse kids. I was initially only going to be there for a year, helping train the other teachers who would then run this new school, but I ended up staying two more years working for the director as a program manager. It was amazing and exhausting. When I get my own class here in the States—somewhere—it’ll probably feel luxurious even if I end up in the poorest inner-city school ever and have next to no budget. We got good at making do.”

“That’s your plan for fall, then?”

“If all goes well, then yes. Although obviously it’s not entirely up to me.” Haiti had been amazing—stunning beauty and incredible poverty juxtaposed together. Jericho was more than ready to come back to the US after three years there, though. The kids were great, but the complete and total ban on homosexuality was stifling. It got claustrophobic in that closet, fast. “I’ve got an offer to substitute teach up in Brunswick starting this fall,” he added. “It’s about an hour north of here, I think? I’ll be at an elementary school, where the regular special needs teacher is going to be out on maternity leave for a while—possibly most of the year, since rumor has it pegged as a high-risk pregnancy. My certification is in Georgia and my ties are to Atlanta, so I’ll probably end up closer to that part of the state eventually, but Brunswick is still a reasonable drive from my aunt and uncle’s summer camp, and it would be nice to have family within visiting distance. I have no other obligations until the middle of August, though, so you can see why this opportunity is such a good fit for me.”

“You’ll be a good fit for Alexa too, I suspect,” Sterling declared. “I’m not saying yes yet, because I’m still looking at other options, but what do you expect in terms of salary? And time off, and benefit. . .