Acts of Kindness

Title: Acts of Kindness
Author: B A Tortuga
Cover artist: Unknown
Publisher and buy link: Torquere Press
Genre: Contemporary m/m romance
Length: 19 pages
Rating: 4.75 out of 5 stars

Guest review by Orion

Review summary: A nice, sexy short story with lovable characters

Blurb:

Police officer Evan feels real sympathy toward the family of the injured rodeo rider he helped care for, enough so that he visits Rowdy in the hospital while they wait to see if he’ll recover. He tries hard to fight his attraction to Rowdy’s brother, Russ, because it seems ghoulish, but he can’t help but notice how caring and hot the ex-military cowboy is. Russ thinks Evan is not only a hero, he’s a good guy, and not hard to look at, either. Is comfort the only name of the game when these two get together?

Review:

The opening of this story made me grit my teeth. A rodeo cowboy, Rowdy Parker, suffers an injury so grievous it leaves parts of his skull on the ground and puts him into a coma. Officer Evan Masters is one of the emergency responders who show up after the accident. Such is his concern that he regularly visits the injured cowboy in the hospital, to provide moral support for both the man and his family.

Part of that family is Rowdy’s brother, Russ, a hunky, handsome ex-army guy. Of course, Evan is immediately attracted to Russ, a fact that makes him feel guilty under the circumstances, as the focus is supposed to be on the trauma the family is going through. Evan tries very hard to maintain that focus. When he invites Russ to his place for a home-cooked meal, it is simply another act of kindness, one intended to offer respite to a man going through an emotionally draining experience.

It is while the two men are alone together, waiting for the food to finish cooking, that Evan discovers the attraction he feels is far from being one-sided. That leads to a very hot scene right in the kitchen, where the two guys relieve some of the sexual tension that has been building between them. Afterward, both they and the reader are left to wonder: Could there be more between them?

This is a great premise for a story. It allows the author to show the heart and soul of the main characters while moving the action along. Things never bog down here. There were no points where I was tempted to skip over any passages, something I do when it feels as if an author is dragging out a scene unnecessarily. And the story also reminds us that kindness is its own reward.

Acts of Kindness is one of the short stories in Torquere Press’s 2013 Charity Sip Blitz Complete Package which, according to the publisher’s website, is “all about all of those who proudly serve and protect all of us!” It takes the sexy motif of men in uniforms and runs with it. This is the only story I’ve read so far in the package, so I can’t really vouch for the package as a whole. But Acts of Kindness has everything you could want in a quick tale of man-on-man affection. It is well-written, the characters are concisely yet fully drawn, and the ending is suitably happy. It takes the reader from a teeth-gnashing and dramatic opening to hopefulness and the beginning of what could be a fulfilling relationship for the two main characters.

I enjoyed this one very much. If this story is any indication, B A Tortuga is a very fine writer, and I look forward to reading more of this author’s works.

Highly recommended.