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  Copyright

  Published by

  Dreamspinner Press

  5032 Capital Circle SW

  Ste 2, PMB# 279

  Tallahassee, FL 32305-7886 USA

  http://www.dreamspinnerpress.com/

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

  Midnight Caller Copyright © 2012 by Anna Birmingham

  Snapshots Copyright © 2012 by Rena Butler

  Basil’s Luck Copyright © 2012 by Henrietta Clarke

  Boys, Toys, and Carpet Fitters © 2012 by Taylin Clavelli

  Outbursts Copyright © 2012 by Bell Ellis

  Tyler Wang Has a Ball Copyright © 2012 by Kim Fielding

  Boy Next Door Copyright © 2012 by Ellee Hill

  Gremlins in the Works Copyright © 2012 by Kiernan Kelly

  Good Food Gone Bad Copyright © 2012 by Venona Keyes

  Attack of the Hedgehogs Copyright © 2012 by Kate Pavelle

  It’s Not What You Think Copyright © 2012 by Teegan Loy

  Slippery When Wet Copyright © 2012 K. Lynn

  Desperate Measures Copyright © 2012 by E.T. Malinowski

  Gordon’s Cat Copyright © 2012 by Aundrea Singer

  Photo Finish Copyright © 2012 by AC Valentine

  Edited by Anne Regan

  Cover Art by Paul Richmond

  http://www.paulrichmondstudio.com

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be 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 the written permission of the Publisher, except where permitted by law. To request permission and all other inquiries, contact Dreamspinner Press at: 5032 Capital Circle SW Ste 2, PMB# 279 Tallahassee, FL 32305-7886 USA

  http://www.dreamspinnerpress.com/

  ISBN: 978-1-61372-263-3

  Printed in the United States of America

  First Edition

  August 2012

  eBook edition available

  eBook ISBN: 978-1-61372-264-0

  TABLE OF CONTENTS

  Basil’s Luck by Henrietta Clarke

  Midnight Caller by Anna Birmingham

  Boy Next Door by Ellee Hill

  Gremlins in the Works by Kiernan Kelly

  Attack of the Hedgehogs by Kate Pavelle

  Gordon’s Cat by Aundrea Singer

  Slippery When Wet by K. Lynn

  Boys, Toys, and Carpet Fitters by Taylin Clavelli

  Good Food Gone Bad by Venona Keyes

  Desperate Measures by E.T. Malinowski

  It’s Not What You Think by Teegan Loy

  Tyler Wang Has a Ball by Kim Fielding

  Snapshots by Rena Butler

  Photo Finish by AC Valentine

  Outbursts by Bell Ellis

  BASIL’S LUCK

  Henrietta Clarke

  BASIL CARAWAY WATKINS was not a superstitious man. The fact that everything seemed to be going wrong on this Friday the thirteenth was of little note; things always seemed to be going wrong for Basil. Today, he’d knocked his colleague Lena’s coffee over in the morning and trapped his thumb in the stepladder in the afternoon. It was with an ironic smirk that Lena had wished him “good luck” instead of “good night” when, at the end of the day, they’d locked up the doors of the library where they worked and gone their separate ways.

  Now, as he picked up a basket in his local store on the way home and caught sight of the fresh white bandage on his thumb, Basil reflected that it was a good thing he didn’t believe bad things came in threes. He’d already had enough bad luck for one day, thank you very much! To his relief, he managed to get halfway around the store without anything going wrong. For once, no cans toppled off the shelf when he picked one up; no insects flew out of the bananas and stung him; and no eggs spontaneously leaped out of the closed carton when he put it in the basket. (He still wasn’t sure how that one had happened.) However, he’d gotten all the way around to breakfast cereal without anything going wrong, and so he began to relax.

  Really, he should have known better. It was always when he was relaxing that the worst things happened. It was why, as he told his mother, he was tense most of the time. At least when he was tense, he anticipated the bad luck.

  He was just reaching for the last bottle of Rioja when a hand collided with his, sending a tingle up his arm. Glancing up in surprise, he found himself looking into the face of a truly gorgeous man; a truly gorgeous man who was holding the same bottle of wine and looking equally surprised to find a man attached to it.

  “Oh! Um. Sorry!” Basil stuttered, blinking.

  “No, sorry, my fault,” the stranger said with a stunning smile. “Here, you take it. You saw it first, I think.” He glanced down to where his little finger overlapped Basil’s thumb.

  “Oh no, it’s all right, I can pick another,” Basil replied, shaking his head. He’d picked the Rioja as a Friday night treat, but this man’s smile was treat enough for today.

  “No really, I insist.”

  “Honestly, it’s fine, you take it.”

  The man gave a laugh, and Basil’s stomach flipped.

  “Yeah, we could be standing here doing this for a long time….” The stranger paused. “Look, this might be wildly inappropriate, and I apologize if I’m reading you wrong, but I was wondering… would you maybe like to have dinner with me and share the wine?”

  Basil blinked. “Sorry, a-are you asking me out on a date?” It seemed too good to be true, and clarification was definitely necessary.

  “Is that okay?” The man looked worried, and it was the most endearing thing Basil had ever seen.

  “Er, yes. Yeah, I’d like that.” Basil smiled, releasing his hold on the wine.

  “Great.” The stranger winked… and also let go.

  A moment later, the sound of smashing glass echoed through the store, and Basil’s beige pants were splattered with red.

  “Oh… sugaration!” he exclaimed, glaring down at the mess on the floor.

  The stranger quirked an eyebrow. “‘Sugaration’? I was thinking ‘crap!’ myself.”

  Basil flushed a little. “Force of habit,” he explained. “I work in a library, and obviously we can’t swear in front of the kids. Spur of the moment substitute curses are a necessity.”

  “No, I like it,” the stranger responded. “‘Crap’ is so unoriginal.”

  “Well, it has been around since the dawn of time,” Basil responded automatically, then flushed a little more. “Sorry; I make jokes when I’m nervous. And they’re usually as bad as my luck.”

  “Hmm, well, I can see it hasn’t been your lucky day today.” The man nodded toward the bandage on Basil’s thumb. “You look like you’ve been through the wars.”

  “You could say that,” Basil observed wryly. “I’m Basil, by the way, Basil Watkins—and if you really want a date, I’d advise you to wear Kevlar.”

  The stranger laughed. “Tom,” he offered, extending a hand. “Thomas John. Unfortunately I don’t have any Kevlar—for some inexplicable reason it isn’t standard issue for bank tellers. Would taking you to a restaurant where I can find a human shield at short notice instead be an acceptable substitute?”

  “That works for me.” Basil smiled, taking a couple of steps backward to get out of the way of the store worker who had appeared with cleaning stuff to mop up the spilled wine. Unfortunately, the wine had oozed across the floor while he and Tom had been talking, and the surface behind him was now crimson and slippery. Being Basil, he found himself
sitting on his ass in the wine and broken glass before he had time to blink.

  “Oh Jesus, are you okay?” Tom asked, a frown creasing his handsome face as the floor shuddered slightly with the impact.

  Basil sighed heavily, wincing as he gingerly attempted to move. “I’m not sure which hurts most, my ass or my dignity.”

  Tom winced in sympathy. “I’d help you up, but if I try to move….” He shook his head, one hand giving a sweeping gesture to the perilous floor. “I figure one of us ending up on their ass is enough for one day.”

  “Yeah…. If it’s all the same to you, do you mind taking a rain check on that date until my dignity has had time to recover some?”

  Tom chuckled. “Well, if I’m being honest, I’d rather postpone it until your ass has had time to recover.”

  “That too,” Basil agreed, putting his hands down to push himself up and yelping as fragments of broken glass burrowed into his palms. “Shit!”

  “That bad, huh?” Tom’s tone was sympathetic.

  Basil chuckled weakly. “I’ve had worse.”

  He watched idly as the store worker, whose badge proclaimed her to be “Mary”, got to work mopping up the wine, figuring it would be easier to get up once the floor was dried.

  “I’m so sorry about this,” he murmured, unsure whether he was addressing himself to Tom or Mary and not really caring.

  “No, no, it was all my fault,” Tom insisted, stepping backward in a trail of deep red footprints after Mary had mopped the floor behind him. “Do you need a hand?” he asked the store worker, who shook her head.

  “I’m okay, sir; happens all the time,” she said cheerfully. “And honestly, it’s more interesting than working the checkout.”

  “Well, I live to entertain,” Basil quipped, examining the blood oozing from his palms and sighing. He wasn’t quite dexterous enough to clean out his own right hand with a pair of tweezers, which meant a trip to the emergency room. The sixth this year, if his tally was correct.

  “How ’bout you?” Tom asked, skirting Mary carefully and extending his hands to Basil. “Ready to try getting up?”

  “I guess…” Basil said doubtfully. “Not sure I can grab you, though.” He glanced down at his ruined palms again. It was kind of hard to tell what was blood and what was wine, and the last thing he wanted to do was leave burgundy handprints on Tom’s white jacket, which had miraculously escaped the bottle-dropping without a splash. Some people, Basil thought with the slightest hint of bitterness, were just lucky.

  “Okay, sugar, I’ll grab you,” Tom responded cheerfully, reaching down to grasp Basil’s elbows and haul him to his feet.

  The movement sent prickles of pain rippling through Basil’s ass, and he yelped again, breathing harshly through his nose to combat the pain. Yep—definitely a day for the emergency room.

  Tom frowned in response to the yelp, eyes full of concern. “Sugar, you need a doctor,” he observed. “You okay to walk out to my car? I’ll drive you to the emergency room. And don’t worry about leaving bloodstains; they’ll clean, and you need to get that glass seen to as soon as possible.”

  Considering that Basil had walked to work and shopped on the way home, he was grateful for the offer.

  “I think so,” he replied cautiously, gritting his teeth and appreciating Tom’s hold on his wrist as he gingerly took a few steps in the direction of the checkout and exit.

  “I’ll have to pay for that wine on the way out,” Tom mused, holding up a hand to halt Basil’s protests. “No, it’s only fair. Please let me; I feel terrible about this.”

  Deciding that you had to pick your battles, Basil smiled. “Wait ’til you’ve known me a little while,” he cautioned. “Give it a couple months and forget terrible, you’ll just be exasperated. I’m afraid I’m a bit of a walking disaster.” He blushed.

  Tom grinned. “A very cute walking disaster,” he countered.

  Basil blinked. “Cute?” he repeated with a frown. Standing short at five foot nine, with round cheeks and a weak chin and mousy hair topping a body which the kindest soul could only describe as “cuddly”, Basil had never thought to apply a word like “cute” to himself before. Nor had there been many men in his life to boost his confidence with such compliments. He was just the pasty, pudgy, accident-prone one, and until his first glimpse of Tom’s devastating cheekbones, Basil had been okay with that. Now, he wondered if Fate was trying to make up for thirty-one years of embarrassing calamities.

  Tom paused, turning to look Basil up and down, appreciation clear in his eyes.

  “Yeah,” he said, winking. “Cute. And sweet. And, I imagine, interesting and funny. So before you ask… yes, I do still want that date.”

  TOM still wanted the date when a red-faced Basil limped out of the emergency room a couple of hours later, palms and ass free of glass. He still wanted it a week later when he called Basil up to see if his dignity had recovered any, and he still wanted it two days after that when Basil called to ask for another rain check because he’d sprained his ankle slipping off a stepladder at work.

  In the end, it was two and a half weeks after the bottle-dropping incident before they finally managed to make it to a restaurant. Tom had chosen it specifically because it had no stairs and plenty of space between the tables; from what he’d seen of Basil so far, the man would manage to have an accident somehow, so why tempt fate?

  It was more a precaution to spare Basil pain and blushes than to reduce Tom’s chances of embarrassment and annoyance; to his surprise, he was actually finding the whole “walking disaster” thing as adorable as the man himself. There was something like suspense inherent in it, and overall it served to make Basil intriguing. The fact that the man could laugh at himself was another major point in his favor, and Tom was really looking forward to the date.

  To his mingled relief and disappointment, they managed to get all the way through being seated, ordering, and the wine being served without disaster striking; though Tom was definitely amused by how cautiously Basil handled his glass.

  “Wine hates me this month,” he explained with a sigh. “As if dropping the bottle when I met you wasn’t bad enough, I managed to overturn a full glass into my clean laundry last weekend. Fortunately it was white wine and dark clothes, so it didn’t stain, but all the same, I’m not taking any chances.”

  It was evident that Basil was one of those people who struggled to speak without gesturing (this had been less apparent when he’d been sitting on his ass in a pool of wine with his hands full of glass), and he finished up his speech with a wild sweep that knocked into the plate of salad the waitress was attempting to place in front of him. There was a clatter of smashing china as the dish hit the floor, and Basil blinked in astonishment, looking around. Tom bit his lip to keep from smiling at the look of bemusement on his date’s face.

  “Oh Lord, I am so sorry!” Basil apologized, blushing.

  Tom chalked up a few more points in Basil’s favor as the other man listened to the waitress’s apology and waved it aside gracefully, insisting that the incident was entirely his fault and that he would pay for the appetizer to be replaced.

  “But don’t let me hold you up,” he told Tom with a flush. “Please, get started.”

  Tom smiled, reaching over to take Basil’s hands, uncaring that the waitress was still crouched a couple of feet away, cleaning up the unfortunate plateful of food.

  “Okay, how about you share mine now, and then we share yours when it comes? And let’s talk about something so boring that you don’t feel moved to gesture. Like, I dunno, pasteurized milk. Or baseball. I’ve never gotten what the deal is with baseball. Give me football any day.”

  “I’ve never really been one for sports,” Basil returned, and Tom noted with warmth that the other man had made no attempt to extract his hand from Tom’s.

  “Too busy reading?” Tom guessed, remembering Basil was a librarian.

  “Something like that,” Basil agreed. “Although I guess it really stems from h
igh school. I was always the kid who was last to be picked: too chubby to run fast; couldn’t catch for spit; and don’t get me started on throwing. I picked up a ball, and everyone ducked and covered. It was more excruciating than having glass pulled out of my ass by a doctor who I swear was trying not to laugh the whole time.”

  Tom quirked an eyebrow, biting back a smile of his own. “So is that really the most embarrassing thing ever to happen to you? Being picked last in sports?”

  Basil laughed. “I know, I know—the Walking Disaster must have had more embarrassing moments than that, right? Truth is, I’m so used to having to apologize everywhere I go that I just don’t feel it as much as if it were a one-time thing. And you know how deeply you feel things like that as a teenager. But no, that’s not the most embarrassing thing.” He sighed.

  “You gonna make me work for it?” That could actually be fun, but Tom was determined to know eventually. Curiosity had always been one of his greatest failings.

  Basil glanced down at their hands, still linked, then back up at Tom’s face with a cheeky smile.

  “No, I’ll tell you. If you pay for dinner.”

  “As long as you get the tip,” Tom bargained. It seemed only fair that Basil coughed up a little compensation for the poor waitress who’d had to scrape his appetizer off the floor. Fortunately, it had been second time lucky when Basil’s replacement plate of salad had been delivered, but that didn’t mean they’d manage to get to the end of the meal without further incident.

  “Of course,” Basil nodded, thanking the waitress as she removed the plates without accident. It probably helped that one of his hands was still enclosed in Tom’s. He waited until the waitress was out of earshot, then returned his attention to the conversation.

  “Okay, my most embarrassing thing: my name.”

  “Seriously? I think Basil’s a lovely name.” Okay, that sounded a little trite, but it was true. It was a nice name, and one that Basil probably hadn’t shared with eight other kids in his class. Much as Tom loved his mother, he wouldn’t credit her with imagination.