Author: Lillian Francis
Length: 53,600 words
Blurb:
How long can you wait on a promise?
After his first
night with Mal, Rick broke the habit of a lifetime and invited the sexy
radiographer to spend the weekend in the sleepy English village he called home.
Rick isn’t in denial but he’s afraid to reveal his sexuality in the close-knit
community that has known him since he was a babe in arms.
The sex is
amazing but equally Mal loves lazy days spent in the garden at Slopy Bottom,
and every precious moment he spends with Rick. For Mal the village quickly
becomes an oasis of peace, far from the noise and grime of life in London, a
slice of tranquillity with Rick at the heart. But Mal has defied his family and
his religion to be true to himself, and there is no way can he join Rick in his
self-built closet, no matter how comfortable it is...
Rick is afraid
revealing the true nature of his relationship with Mal will change the way his
neighbours see him. He adores these people, this village, and he can’t face the
thought of losing everything over who he chooses to sleep with. When the alternative
is giving up a man who has slotted perfectly into his life—a man who he might
just love—it’s no choice at all. But, knowing what has to be done isn’t always
as easy as putting it into practice.
About the Series
Resistance is
book 1 in my new series, Village Love. Village Love is set in the fictional
Sussex village of Slopy Bottom. I'll let Rick tell you how Slopy Bottom got its
name.
“It’s one p,
Slopy Bottom. The village has been there centuries. Local historians think it
started life as Slope Bottom since the oldest houses are on the low slope at
the bottom of a hill. The rest of the village spread out into the valley as the
years went by but the name stuck. At one point the village was all but owned by
a French lord, which could account for the mispronunciation, and it appears to
have been Slopy Bottom ever since.”
Rick and Mal? Haven't you written about those characters
before?
The simple
answer is yes. Rick and Mal appeared in a one-off short story, Resonance.
Resonance spawned this story which in turn spawned a whole host of storylines.
As Resonance doesn't take place in the village it has been assigned as Village
Love 0.5.
Do I need to
read Resonance to read Resistance?
No. Several of
my beta readers didn't read Resonance before working on Resistance and found it
had no impact. However, Resonance is the story of how Rick and Mal meet and
will obviously shed further light on their relationship.
Where can I buy
Resonance?
At Are it has
been free on a semi regular basis since release. It is currently free until
31st July.
At Amazon it is
99p or the equivalent. Here's a universal link to take you to your local Amazon
store. myBook.to/ResonanceL_F
Will there be
more books in the series?
Definitely. I'm
already working on Book 2, and Book 3 has been urging me to write it's opening
scene in the last couple of days (I resisted, but I did make
some scrappy
notes). I have very brief story lines, if they work out, for at least a Book 4,
and maybe a Book 5. If you read a particular character that you like
drop me a line
and let me know, I've undoubtedly got a plan to pair him with someone!
Excerpt
‘A smile can always be heard in your voice’.
He could almost hear his mum uttering those
words of wisdom—just nine of many in her repertoire—and for a moment Rick
wished that his parents still lived in the village. That he didn’t need to
travel halfway around the world for a hug from the woman who’d always been
there for him.
Not that she’d entertain his chiping for
more than a moment before he got a bannicking. She’d always listened to his
complaints, would offer advice where necessary, but stupidity would be followed
by a whack upside his head or being chased off with the yard brush. He smiled
at the memories the thought conjured up. No, his mum would provide no help in
this situation. He’d be thirty in eighteen months, old enough to deal with his
relationship woes, especially since they were problems of his own making.
Rick forced the widest smile he could manage
and gripped his phone while he waited for the call to connect. Leaning on the
old wooden farm gate that cut his property off from the lane beyond, Rick
scratched at the short hair at the back of his head. The lane was empty; his
cottage the last before the cobbles narrowed to a dusty footpath and
disappeared into the lush green of the woodland.
“Mal,” Rick said the moment the call was
picked up at the other end, not even giving his lover a chance to utter his
standard greeting.
Too bright. Too quickly. He knew his voice
would be giving him away but he couldn’t stop himself. “Look, Mal…” He glanced
at the overnight bag at his feet.
Mal sighed, breaking Rick out of his
contemplation. “What’s happened now?”
“Happened?” Shit! Mal didn’t sound at all
surprised that he’d called. Not angry, either. Just resigned.
“Yes. What natural disaster has befallen
your sleepy little village this weekend? Has the church spire collapsed and
killed the verger? Or has Mr P K Pig had his roof blown off and you have to fix
it post haste to protect him from predators?”
“What?” For someone who’d had the entire
conversation planned in his head before he’d pressed Mal’s speed dial button,
Rick was far too rapidly losing control.
“Tell him that it’s his own fault for
building his house out of straw and winding up hairy men.”
“Mal, are you okay? What is this obsession
with pigs? Have you succumbed to the enticing waft of bacon from the flat
upstairs?”
Every time Rick woke up at Mal’s flat, the
aroma of gently crisping bacon all but lured him up the stairs to 35B. Not that
Mal had banned Rick from eating bacon when he visited, but bringing a pack of
sliced pig into the flat of his Muslim boyfriend seemed a trifle insensitive.
The neighbour in 35B was a behemoth of a man, unlikely to be satisfied by a
couple of slices of bacon. More than likely he was up there every Sunday
morning roasting the whole pig. He was hairy too, from the full beard and tufts
of hair sprouting from the V-neck of his T-shirt that Rick had glimpsed when
they’d bumped into each other in the communal hallway last weekend. More a bear
than a wolf…
Had Mal been lured by the scent of bacon
into the hairy arms of the biker upstairs, all because Rick kept mucking him
around? Surely Mal wouldn’t— “Rick!” Mal sounded exasperated and Rick wondered
how many times he’d called his name while Rick was lost in nightmares involving
bears and bacon. “I asked you what your excuse was this time. Why can’t I come
over to you this weekend?”
“I wasn’t phoning for that.” Rick’s gaze
dropped to the bag by his feet once more, and he hoped the guilty feeling rising
in his gut hadn’t transferred to his voice.
“Really?” Mal’s tone held a trace of
hopefulness that made Rick’s stomach lurch. Had his constant changing of plans
caused Mal to worry about Rick’s commitment to their fledgling relationship?
“Because you’ve had some type of handyman emergency on both previous occasions
I was supposed to come down and stay with you.”
“I still managed to see you both times,”
Rick argued. But it was a weak response and he knew that spending time together
wasn’t the issue Mal was highlighting.
“And I appreciate that you made the drive up
here after you finished your work. But I thought we were going to try to make a
go of things, not just grab a couple of hours together on a Sunday afternoon or
fall into bed on a Saturday evening because you’re too tired to go out
anywhere.”
“I had fun both times.” Whether they were
shagging like bunnies or meeting for a late lunch and a walk in the park, Rick
enjoyed Mal’s company. Something more than passion had flared brightly
between them the first time they met, but Mal lived in London, over an hour’s
drive from Rick’s sleepy village, and not wanting to lose touch was the only
reason he’d agreed to these alternate weekends. Well, actually, it had been
Rick’s idea, and yet, so far, Mal hadn’t set foot anywhere near Rick’s home.
“So did I—” The line crackled and Mal’s
voice dropped out for a second or two. “Sorry, lost you for a moment there. I
like you Rick, probably too much for a relationship that’s only in its sixth
week, and I want more than a couple of hours here and there. I want the lazy
weekends. I want to see where you live.”
“I want that too.” Rick kicked the bag at
his feet. “I’ve just been really busy.”
“I know you work for yourself and you have
to take the work where you can. I hope you don’t hate me for pushing you. I can
help if you have to work this weekend. Or I can just sit in the spring sunshine
and read a book. The sun is shining in Sloppy Bottom, isn’t it?”
Rick couldn’t help it, he laughed. “Slopy
Bottom, you idiot. Wait, hate you?What have you done?”
“I was trying to pre-empt this call.” Mal
sounded sheepish.
I wasn’t cancelling. The lie
teetered on Rick’s tongue but he couldn’t let it fall. He didn’t want to risk
Mal calling him on it.
“How?” Rick asked, although he had a feeling
he knew. Those strange dips in the conversation would make sense if Mal—
“I’m already on the train.”
Of course he is. Rick’s heart
picked up in a rabbity beat as the thrill of seeing Mal again warred with the
familiar nervousness that always accompanied the thought of bring a guy back to
the village. The nerves had always won out in the past, previous lovers not
even getting as far as an invite, but Mal was different. Mal was…saying his
name again.
“Rick? Are you still there? Rick, dholna—”
“Dholna?”
“Er, it’s Punjabi.”
“I kind of figured that for myself,” Rick
said with a chuckle. “What does it mean?”
“It’s an endearment.”
“Like ‘babe’.”
“Sure, let’s go with that.”
Oh, right, so, not like babe then. Dholna. Rick
repeated the word several times in his head, determined not to forget it.
“It seemed like a good idea at the time, but
I can see how this could be considered press-ganging you into something you’re
not comfortable with. Do you want me to get off at the next stop and go home?”
“No!” God no. “No. Do you want me to get the
car out? I can drive over to Hillchester and pick you up from the station?”
There was no station in Slopy Bottom. With a
population hovering at around five-hundred, give or take, since the time the
first track had been laid over a century ago, the tiny village hadn’t warranted
the encroachment of civilization. Nor had it mourned being passed by, not until
the commuter couples arrived to buy up the empty farm hands’ cottages; the wives
praising the adorable quaintness of the place, while the husbands—who would
happily spend an hour on the train—were bemoaning the twenty-minute drive to
the station in town.
“Thanks, but I’ve arranged for a cab. I had
intended to take you completely by surprise and hope you thought it was a good
one.”
“It is a good one.” Rick agreed, bending to
pick up his overnight bag and hoisting it over his shoulder.
“I promise I won’t do anything to out you
while I’m visiting.”
“No rainbow flag T-shirts? Or skipping
through the village?”
“Definitely no skipping. I can’t even run.
That’s why I cycle.”
“You can’t run?”
“Have you seen Friends?”
“Who hasn’t?” Rick faltered in his stride up
the garden path. “Oh my God, you’re Phoebe! You know I’ll do everything in my
power to get you to run now.”
“Thanks. So glad I told you. Wanker.”
“You allowed to swear?”
“Double wanker.”
“I am very ambidextrous. I’m sure I can take
care of both of us at the same time.”
“Don’t I know it. But I’ll not talk about
it. They’ll be no smutty talk or double entendres. No touching in public or
holding hands.”
Touches that they had both bestowed without
thinking, while walking through many parts of the city when he’d visited Mal.
This would be harder than he’d imagined.
“Nothing until you’re ready,” Mal continued.
“I promise. Looks like this is my station coming up. I’d better go.”
“Tell the cab driver to drop you at the top
of the lane. There’s nowhere to turn around down near me without coming into
the driveway. I’ll walk up there in a bit and wait for you. See you soon.”
“Bye.”
Rick disconnected the call and unlocked his
front door. He took the stairs two at a time and burst into his bedroom. He
dropped the bag on the ottoman under the window and then quickly made the bed.
Satisfied the room was reasonably tidy, Rick turned his attention back to the
bag and unpacked the items he’d packed an hour earlier to take with him to
Mal’s.
About the Author
Lillian Francis
is a self-confessed geek who likes nothing more than settling down with a comic
or a good book, except maybe writing. Given a notepad, pen, her Kindle, and an
infinite supply of chocolate Hob Nobs and she can lose herself for weeks.
Romance was never her reading matter of choice, so it came as a great surprise
to all concerned, including herself, to discover a romance was exactly what
she’d written, and not the rollicking spy adventure or cosy murder mystery she
always assumed she’d write.
Twitter
@LillianFrancis_
Email:
lillianfrancis@rocketmail.com
