Red, Red Rose (Burns! Mystery 3)

By Erin O'Quinn

Two men, opposites in every way, have somehow found each other. The attraction between blond detective Thomas Fitzgerald and the sable-haired “Professor Burns” is instant and all-consuming.

Even cops and scholars take a holiday. When they bridge the physical distance between themselves and finally spend time together on Burns’ own turf, Thomas finds that his mysterious “poet” is a shadow behind another shadow.

There’s something about Burns’ past that hangs on him like a shroud. Always a cop, Thomas cannot help looking past his lover’s charms, delving into the heart of him. What he finds is chilling.

A tight-lipped Irish cop and an enigmatic Scot come together in a place of sorrow and hidden passion. Can a “red, red rose” from a poet named Burns solve the unknowable mystery of love itself?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Erin O'Quinn
• Release date: Oct 30, 2015
• ISBN: 9781310935046

Erin O'Quinn

Erin O’Quinn sprang from the high desert hills of Nevada, from a tiny town which no longer exists. A truant officer dragged her kicking and screaming to grade school, too late to attend kindergarten; and since that time her best education has come from the ground she’s walked and the people she's met.Erin has her own publishing venue, New Dawn Press. Her works cover the genres of M/M and M/F romance and also historical fantasy for all ages.

Book preview

Red, Red Rose

Burns! Mystery 3

By Erin O’Quinn

Copyright © 201 5 Erin O ’ Quinn

ISBN:  9781310935046

First electronic edition published by New Dawn Press

Published in the United States of America with international distribution.

Cover Design by Erin O’Quinn

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without written permission from the copyright owner except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author ’ s imagination or are used fictitiously; and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

WARNING: This writing contains explicit sexual descriptions and is intended for a mature audience over the age of 18

Blurb

Two men, opposites in every way, have somehow found each other. The attraction between blond detective Thomas Fitzgerald and the sable-haired Professor Burns is instant and all-consuming.

Even cops and scholars take a holiday. When they bridge the physical distance between themselves and finally spend time together on Burns’ own turf, Thomas finds that his mysterious poet is a shadow behind another shadow.

There’s something about Burns’ past that hangs on him like a shroud. Always a cop, Thomas cannot help looking past his lover’s charms, delving into the heart of him. What he finds is chilling.

A tight-lipped Irish cop and an enigmatic Scot come together in a place of sorrow and hidden passion. Can a red, red rose from a poet named Burns solve the unknowable mystery of love itself?

Dedication

As I did for its prequel The Dundee Law , I dedicate this present work to Scotland’s renowned poet Robert Burns, whose famous poem is also the title. In this day of overblown rhetoric, who’d have thought that the adjective red, twice repeated, would help create so powerful an image of love?

I have found one version of the song My Love is Like a Red, Red Rose I especially like, sung by the late Scottish tenor Kenneth McKellar, and I append a link to the end of this novella for your enjoyment.

I hope lovers of poetry will forgive my changing one word— lass —to lad in the poem. After all, my man Burns has chosen his lover, and who am I to argue?

Foreword

I created a very sensual gay man partly from a notoriously not-gay historical figure, the poet Robert Burns, who is said to have more than 600 living relatives from his umpteen children and children of children of children. By so doing, I have allowed that venerable figure at least one progeny who can carry the gauntlet of alternate lifestyle into the twenty-first century.

The character Burns is purely a figment of my imagination, as are all the others in the story. The inner workings of Police Scotland, the gabled residence in Edinburgh, the flat in Dundee…all these and more have jumped entirely from my brain.

Scotland’s national motto is Nemo Me Impune Lacessit…No One Harms Me With Impunity. Those familiar with that bonnie country will see that my story is meant to be read on more a mythic level than a real-life one. And so I ask your understanding in advance for any and all lapses in judgment and in fact. I wouldnae hurt ye willingly, bonnie lass Scotland.

Chapter One

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Shadows

Thomas Fitzgerald woke up embracing a sodden pillow and realized he’d either drooled or ejaculated into it. Maybe both.

He was gut-ache, heart-deep lonely, for the first time in his life. Tossing the pillow on the floor, kicking off the tangled sheet, he stretched out and contemplated what his nightlight allowed him to see of the low ceiling.

He saw shadow on a shadow.

He stared up at his life in general, and in specific.

Thomas sometimes thought of himself as a Scot. He’d lived in that bonnie auld country for a dozen years, since turning tail from his home in Ireland, shunning his uncle’s sick interest in him, and then running from the horror of the man’s untimely death. Small for his age, he’d hidden aboard a passenger ferry from Belfast, begged a ride from Cairnryan, and had easily slipped into anonymity on the streets of Glasgow.

It had been easy…maybe too easy…for a fourteen-year-old lad to disappear. From Glasgow to Edinburgh, from there to Perth and finally Dundee. From helter-skelter odd jobs to the British Army to Police Scotland.

In fact, he felt he was still more a silhouette than a real man, in his career as undercover detective and in his home life as well.

He’d become a gray man in a gray job, living on a street of gray buildings.

It had never bothered him to know that he lived on the nebulous edge of reality, until very recently.

Tracing his own indistinct outline on the ceiling, he thought he hadn’t felt this kind of hollow aloneness even after David left him last year. His ex had run from the bogey man of his flat-mate’s tortured past. Thomas had felt betrayed by his flight, then sorry for himself, and finally numb to the whole scenario.

It was different this time.

Back in February, returning from a brief assignment in Montrose, he’d met Burns.

They’d spent damn few hours together—less than half a day the first time, and a weekend of ass-hammering sex a month later. Now, in mid-June, he found himself not just missing the man. He craved the sight and sound and feel of him. The taste and smell of waking up with him.

It would be easy to hit speed-dial and say good morning. And then what? A too-hearty lie about how great he felt…stifled sighs, refusal to admit the emptiness of days…the stammered confession of restless nights.

No. It was better to shut his mind and try to make it through another day without the man he was pretty sure he wanted next to him forever. His being a cop, and Burns’ being a university man, were facts of life that kept them more distant than the scant 100 kilometers separating Dundee from Edinburgh.

Face it. I’m too embarrassed…or too scared…to simply say, I need you. And hearing his voice will only make me feel bloody worse afterwards.

He still wouldn’t allow himself to admit any feeling beyond raw loneliness. He could not and would not stutter and stumble over his astonishing emotions, even to himself, except for times like right now, talking to the ceiling.

I need to…to see you, Burns.

That was easier to say than he’d expected. He cleared his throat and tried for more.

I crave your…uh, your poetry.

But his cock was fully aware of the real problem. And so was his goddamn pounding heart. He groped for his rising prick and began to fist it, very slow at first, in rhythm with his hoarse mumbling.

Burns, Burns, Burns, I love…I want to be in you. I want you to be in me.

It took only a few