Title: Just Like That
Author: Cole McCade
Series: Albin Academy, #1
Length: 320 pages
Genre: Contemporary Romance
Imprint: Carina Press (Carina Adores)
On-Sale: June 30, 2020
Format: Trade Paperback *ebook and audio formats also
available!
Summer Hemlock never meant to come back to
Omen, Massachusetts.
But with his mother in need
of help, Summer has no choice but to return to his hometown, take up a teaching
residency at the Albin Academy boarding school—and work directly under the man
who made his teenage years miserable.
Professor Fox Iseya.
Forbidding, aloof,
commanding: psychology instructor Iseya is a cipher who’s always fascinated and
intimidated shy, anxious Summer. But that fascination turns into something more
when the older man challenges Summer to be brave. What starts as a daily game
to reward Summer with a kiss for every obstacle overcome turns passionate, and
a professional relationship turns quickly personal.
Yet Iseya’s walls of grief
may be too high for someone like Summer to climb…until Summer’s infectious
warmth shows Fox everything he’s been missing in life.
Now both men must be brave
enough to trust each other, to take that leap.
To find the love they’ve
always needed…
Just like that.
In Just Like That, critically
acclaimed author Cole McCade introduces us to Albin Academy: a private boys’ school where some of the world’s richest families send their problem children
to learn discipline and maturity, out of the public eye.
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“Extinguisher first, then sand,”
the voice ordered. “Dr. Liu, if you insist on getting in the way, at least make
yourself useful and remove anything else flammable from the vicinity of
the blaze. Quickly, now. Keep your mouths covered.”
Summer’s entire body tingled, prickled as if his skin had
drawn too tight. That voice—that voice brought back too many memories.
Afternoons in his psychology elective class, staring down at his textbook and
doodling in his notebook and refusing to look up, to look at anyone,
while that voice washed over him for an hour. Summer knew that voice almost
better than the face attached to it, every inflection and cadence, the way it
could command silence with a quiet word more effectively than any shout.
And how sometimes it seemed more
expressive than the cold, withdrawn expression of the man he remembered,
standing tall and stern in front of a class of boys who were all just a little
bit afraid of him.
Summer had never been afraid, not
really.
But he hadn’t had the courage to
whisper to himself what he’d really felt, when he’d been a hopeless boy who’d
done everything he could to be invisible.
Heart beating harder, he followed
the sound of that voice to the open doorway of a smoke-filled room, the entire
chemistry lab a haze of gray and black and crackling orange; from what he
could tell a table was…on fire? Or at least the substance inside a blackened
beaker was on fire, belching out a seemingly never-ending, impossible billow of
smoke and flame.
Several smaller fires burned
throughout the room; it looked as though sparks had jumped to catch on
notebooks, papers, books. Several indistinct shapes alternately sprayed the
conflagration with fire extinguishers and doused it with little hand buckets of
sand from the emergency kit in the corner of the room, everyone working
clumsily one-handed while they held wet paper towels over their noses and
mouths with the other.
And standing tall over them
all—several teachers and older students, it looked like—was the one man Summer
had returned to Omen to see.
Professor Iseya.
He stood head and shoulders above
the rest, his broad-shouldered, leanly angular frame as proud as a battle standard,
elegant in a trim white button-down tucked into dark gray slacks, suspenders
striping in neat black lines down his chest. Behind slim glasses, his pale,
sharply angled gray eyes flicked swiftly over the room, set in a narrow,
graceful face that had only weathered with age into an ivory mask of quiet,
aloof beauty.
The sleek slick of his ink-black
hair was pulled back from his face as always—but as always, he could never
quite keep the soft strands inside their tie, and several wisped free to frame
his face, lay against his long, smooth neck, pour down his shoulders and back.
He held a damp paper towel over his mouth, neatly folded into a square, and
spoke through it to direct the frazzled-looking group with consummate calm,
taking complete control of the situation.
And complete control of Summer, as
Iseya’s gaze abruptly snapped to him, locking on him from across the room. “Why
have you not evacuated?” Iseya demanded coldly, his words precise, inflected
with a softly cultured accent. “Please vacate the premises until we’ve
contained the blaze.”
Summer dropped his eyes
immediately—habit, staring down at his feet. “Oh, um—I came to help,” he
mumbled through the collar of his shirt.
A pause, then, “You’re not a
student. Who are you?”
That shouldn’t sting.
But then it had been seven years,
he’d only been in two of Iseya’s classes…and he’d changed, since he’d left
Omen.
At least, he hoped he had.
That was why he’d run away, after all. To shake off the boy he’d
been; to find himself in a big city like Baltimore, and maybe, just maybe…
Learn not to be so afraid.
But he almost couldn’t bring himself to speak, while the
silence demanded an answer. “I’m not a student anymore,” he corrected,
almost under his breath. “It’s…it’s me. Summer. Summer Hemlock. Your new TA.”
He made himself look up, even if he didn’t raise his head, peeking at Iseya
through the wreathing of smoke that made the man look like some strange and
ghostly figure, this ethereal spirit swirled in mist and darkness. “Hi,
Professor Iseya. Hi.”
Copyright © 2020 by Cole McCade
Carina
Adores is home to highly romantic contemporary love stories featuring beloved
romance tropes, where LGBTQ+ characters find their happily-ever-afters.
A new Carina Adores title is available each month:
- The Girl Next Door by Chelsea M. Cameron (available now!)
- The Hideaway Inn by Philip William Stover (available now!)
- Hairpin Curves by Elia Winters (available July 28, 2020
- Better Than People by Roan Parrish (available August 25, 2020)
- Full Moon in Leo by Brooklyn Ray (available September 29, 2020)
- If You Can’t Stand the Heat by KD Fisher (available October 27, 2020)
- Just Like Us by Cole McCade (available November 24, 2020)
About the Author
Cole McCade is a New Orleans-born Southern boy without the
Southern accent, currently residing somewhere in Seattle. He spends his days as
a suit-and-tie corporate consultant and business writer, and his nights writing
contemporary romance and erotica that flirts with the edge of taboo—when he’s
not being tackled by two hyperactive cats.
He also writes genre-bending science fiction and fantasy
tinged with a touch of horror and flavored by the influences of his
multiethnic, multicultural, multilingual background as Xen. He wavers between
calling himself bisexual, calling himself queer, and trying to figure out where
“demi” fits into the whole mess—but no matter what word he uses he’s a staunch an advocate of LGBTQIA and POC representation and visibility in genre fiction. And
while he spends more time than is healthy hiding in his writing cave instead of
hanging around social media, you can generally find him in these usual haunts:
Social Links
Website & Blog | Twitter | Facebook | Tumblr | Instagram
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