Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    Mele Kalikimaka
    Mele Kalikimaka
    Mele Kalikimaka
    Ebook138 pages2 hours

    Mele Kalikimaka

    By B.G. Thomas and Noah Willoughby

    4.5/5

    ()

    Read preview

    About this ebook

    Being rich has its advantages, but it is also rife with suffocating pressures and family telling Chandler Buckingham how to live his life. When his assistant offers to help him escape the mounting obligations of the holiday season by running away to Hawaii, Chandler jumps at the chance. Only to find nothing is quite as he’d expected.

    Micah Keolu has lived in Hawaii all his life. He has to work two jobs and has little time for a social life, but his loving family and the island beauty around him have given him a heart as big as the ocean. And then one day he rescues a man trapped in an elevator in the building where Micah lives and works maintenance.

    The unexpected happens as they find themselves drawn together, only to learn there is more to each other than meets the eye. Can two men from very different worlds find a way to enrich each other’s lives? Maybe the magic of the holidays just might bring them lasting joy!

    A story from the Dreamspinner Press 2016 Advent Calendar "Bah Humbug."

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherDreamspinner Press
    Release dateDec 1, 2016
    ISBN9781635331851
    Mele Kalikimaka
    Author

    B.G. Thomas

    B.G. Thomas lives in Kansas City with his two husbands—which yes, is different, but amazingly rewarding and wonderfully romantic. They have two sweet rescue dogs named Oliver (who the breed name Dorkie applies perfectly) and Frodo (who is just learning to be a dog). He is missing his soul dog Sarah Jane very much, but she will live on forever in several of his books and in his heart. He is also blessed to have a lovely daughter and they love to hang out. B.G. loves to read romance, comedy, fantasy, thrillers, mystery, science fiction, and even horror—as far as he is concerned, as long as the stories are character driven and entertaining, it doesn’t matter the genre. He has gone to literature conventions his entire adult life, where he’s been lucky enough to meet many of his favorite writers. He has made up stories since he was a child; it’s where he finds his joy. In the nineties, he wrote for gay adult magazines but stopped because the editors wanted all sex without plot, and edited his setups right out. “The sex is never as important as the characters,” he says. “Who cares what they are doing if we don’t care about them?” Excited about the growing male/male romance market—where setup and cute meets is where it’s at—he began writing again. He submitted a novella and was thrilled when it was accepted in four days. Since then the romantic tales have poured out of him. “It’s like I’m somehow making up for a lifetime’s worth of story-telling!” “Leap, and the net will appear” is his personal philosophy and his message. “It is never too late,” he testifies. “Pursue your dreams. They will come true!” You can read about whatever he’s working on right now or whatever he’s rambling on about at his website/blog at: bthomaswriter.wordpress.com Facebook: www.facebook.com/bgthomaswriter Twitter: twitter.com/BGThomasBooks He is always happy to hear from his readers!

    Read more from B.G. Thomas

    Related to Mele Kalikimaka

    Related ebooks

    Contemporary Romance For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • Article

      Dustin Lance Black.

      Jun 4, 2019

      Dustin Lance Black.
      8 min read

    • Article

      The People’s Chris

      Jun 30, 2022

      The People’s Chris
      14 min read

    • Article

      Happy Endings

      Sep 1, 2023

      Happy Endings
      5 min read

    • Article

      This Family Saga Finds Grace And Beauty In Ordinary Lives, Fully Lived

      Jun 10, 2021

      Simon Van Booy's new novel Night Came With Many Stars follows several generations of a Kentucky family, their crossroads and choices, their curses and hard memories, their luck and their chances.

      3 min read

    • Article

      What Just Happened?

      Apr 9, 2021

      What Just Happened?
      4 min read

    • Article

      Life After Death

      May 27, 2022

      Life After Death
      14 min read

    • Article

      Retiring Gossip Girl

      Jul 28, 2021

      In the first few minutes of GB News, Mr Andrew Neil broadcast something as if it was intimately tailored to his intended audience, all of whose inside-leg measurements he knew already. His channel would not be peddling ‘gossip from inside the Westmin

      3 min read

    • Article

      Australia Reads At Home

      May 18, 2020

      Australia Reads At Home
      7 min read

    • Article

      The Bad Boy Of Hollywood

      Dec 11, 2020

      The Bad Boy Of Hollywood
      9 min read

    • Article

      Great Dane

      Oct 23, 2022

      Great Dane
      7 min read

    • Article

      Getting Out Alive

      Apr 6, 2017

      Getting Out Alive
      4 min read

    • Article

      “I Indulged In Forgiveness”

      Oct 9, 2019

      “I Indulged In Forgiveness”
      7 min read

    • Article

      Book Club

      Nov 12, 2020

      Book Club
      2 min read

    • Article

      Lift The Lamp

      Aug 10, 2018

      EDITOR-IN-CHIEF CLARA JEFFERY AFTER THE CAMBODIAN genocide began in 1975, my mom started taping pictures and headlines to our dining room wall. Mrs. Paul’s fish sticks and photos of the killing fields are what I remember about those meals. “We have t

      4 min read

    • Article

      Echos

      Jan 10, 2019

      Before Corrine’s husband abandoned her in Berlin, he liked to say that her name reminded him of the word “corrupt.” But ending in a twist rather than a split. Her last name was the French word for “swimsuit” but he never mentioned that. This seemed s

      17 min read

    • Article

      Riccardo

      Jun 14, 2022

      My understanding of my family’s religion was that we didn’t have to go to church if we didn’t want to and that our belief in God was tenuous at best. I grasped the seventh principle, “the interconnected web of all existence,” and I understood the hum

      14 min read

    • Article

      My Funny, Angry Dad

      Mar 19, 2022

      My Funny, Angry Dad
      6 min read

    Related categories

    Reviews for Mele Kalikimaka

    4.5/5

    2 ratings0 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

      Book preview

      Mele Kalikimaka - B.G. Thomas

      Mele Kalikimaka

      By B.G. Thomas & Noah Willoughby

      Being rich has its advantages, but it is also rife with suffocating pressures and family telling Chandler Buckingham how to live his life. When his assistant offers to help him escape the mounting obligations of the holiday season by running away to Hawaii, Chandler jumps at the chance. Only to find nothing is quite as he’d expected.

      Micah Keolu has lived in Hawaii all his life. He has to work two jobs and has little time for a social life, but his loving family and the island beauty around him have given him a heart as big as the ocean. And then one day he rescues a man trapped in an elevator in the building where Micah lives and works maintenance.

      The unexpected happens as they find themselves drawn together, only to learn there is more to each other than meets the eye. Can two men from very different worlds find a way to enrich each other’s lives? Maybe the magic of the holidays just might bring them lasting joy!

      Table of Contents

      Blurb

      ONE

      TWO

      THREE

      FOUR

      FIVE

      SIX

      SEVEN

      EIGHT

      NINE

      TEN

      ELEVEN

      TWELVE

      THIRTEEN

      FOURTEEN

      FIFTEEN

      SIXTEEN

      SEVENTEEN

      EIGHTEEN

      NINETEEN

      TWENTY

      TWENTY-ONE

      TWENTY-TWO

      TWENTY-THREE

      About the Authors

      By B.G. Thomas

      By Noah Willoughby

      Visit Dreamspinner Press

      Copyright

      ONE

      IT WAS the last straw. The very last straw.

      It had already been a bad morning in a bad week in a bad month in a bad year. First Chandler had nearly gotten a ticket for not stopping completely at a red light (it was the Buckingham surname that had gotten him out of that—oh, the startled look on the cop’s face when he’d gotten a look at Chandler’s license). Then some moron spilled coffee on him at the shop downstairs (thankfully it had just splashed his suit jacket and not him—although it was a Z Zegna jacket; his mother would be pissed). And to top it off, the elevator, a cursed elevator, had been acting up. He’d considered walking up the thirty-nine floors but knew that even as good a shape as he was in, it would take forty minutes to an hour, and he didn’t have the time.

      So he clenched his teeth and took the left-hand elevator—the one on the right was the more demonic of the two—and had to listen to Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree Muzak on his way. And Angela from the mailing room was singing along! And people were smiling at her. Bobbing their heads. For one horrifying second, he thought they were going to join in.

      God!

      He would have to see if he could get the piped-in music taken out of the elevators. He could do it. Surely he could!

      He was a Buckingham after all, and if you had that name and you didn’t throw it around, you were a moron.

      But after all that, now he had to deal with his mother? In her full form?

      "You’re doing this, Chandler, she said. And that’s it. For years your father and I have put up with your… shenanigans. For years."

      Shenanigans?

      Your partying—

      Partying? Chandler almost laughed. If they only knew. He’d skipped far more than he’d ever actually gone to. Drugs had lost their appeal in high school, and the serious stuff available in college interested him even less. He’d seen how it messed up the people around him. No thanks.

      —getting into trouble—

      Getting into trouble? When had he ever gotten into trouble? Or at least into any trouble that reflected badly on them? Once in college. And there was the time he’d gotten arrested in high school. He wasn’t sure how his father had kept his name out of the papers, for God’s sake, except that he was rich. And really, that was all that was needed. To this day he wasn’t even sure his mother knew about that incident.

      —your… carnal pursuits.

      Carnal pursuits? Really? It wasn’t like his arrest had been for public sex in a bathroom! And while he was sure his mother would be horrified to find out how many men he’d slept with—he knew she was a virgin on her wedding night; the whole family knew it—it wasn’t like he was a total slut. Compared to most gay men he knew, he was practically a virgin. Sex parties had never been his thing. Not that he minded getting personal with strangers. Hell no. He preferred anonymity.

      Why couldn’t his mother be happy that he kept what he did in the bedroom private? Just because he invited men there instead of a potential future wife didn’t mean what he did was carnal.

      And did we say anything? Did we condemn you when you told us you were gay? Did we kick you out? Disown you like the Chesterfields turned their backs on their daughter? The way that Oral Roberts rejected his son—who wound up killing himself?

      Had they said anything? They’d said plenty, if more in the tones of their voices—dripping with disgust—than in words. The real reason for their so-called acceptance was that he was their only son and the one to carry on the famous Buckingham name.

      Oh yeah, his parents had always had plenty to say about anything and everything.

      But in the end, he held the trump card. He was that only son. The Buckingham heir. The one who would one day rule the family empire. So every time they told him what he would do, he’d do some adamant pushing back of his own.

      They wanted him to go to Harvard and major in business. He said he’d get the business degree but insisted on going to Stanford. That took him to California and away from their constantly watchful eyes, and it cost a lot more too. Why not stick it to them? Plus he minored in film and media studies, which drove them nearly insane.

      That same drive to get away from them earlier made him insist they allow him to be a foreign exchange student in England for a year when he was in high school. His father broke down and allowed that because Buckingham Industries did a lot of business in the United Kingdom and having a son with personal experience of the country might be useful one day. Knowing those British firsthand, he’d said.

      Of course it was their disapproval of anything that would make him stand out that had motivated him to get his ears pierced in more than one place. Sometimes he had to do things that would set them only inches from a stroke. It was his only way to get any say in his life.

      But now that his father was gone—a heart attack six months ago—his mother (who should be grieving, for God’s sake) had found the energy to rise phoenix-like from the ashes and lord it over him and his sister even more than before.

      And today she was in full swing.

      What made it worse was that she was having this discussion with him in his office. His glass-walled office. Where dozens of people could watch. Surely were watching.

      Chandler’s mother drew herself to her full five foot five—hands on her hips, shoulders squared, chin thrust out—and hit him with the intense ferocity those eyes of hers were capable of. Eyes that had near terrified both him and Chelsey growing up.

      No more!

      "You will do this. You will do your duty. You will sit at the head table, you will give a speech, and you will be accompanied by a lady. You are a Buckingham. The Buckingham."

      As if his sister didn’t count. But in his mother’s eyes, she didn’t. She couldn’t pass on the name!

      "The annual Buckingham-Hicks-Woodgate Charity Christmas Gala is one of the social events of the entire year. And it is our year to be in charge of it. With your father gone, you are the head of the family. Whether you like it or not, and as a Buckingham—the Buckingham—you will do your duty!"

      Again, forgetting his sister….

      "You will give the speech and dance the first dance."

      "I will, I will, I will? he asked (yelled at) Timothy Armbruster—his personal assistant and best friend—later. I’m twenty-nine, Tim. What makes her think she can make me do anything?"

      Tim flinched slightly and then said (quietly), Well, she does hold controlling interest of Buckingham Industries. That kind of gives her the power.

      By 2 percent! Chandler shouted, and to hell with the people outside his office. At least he had the blinds drawn now. And

      Enjoying the preview?
      Page 1 of 1