Page 24 of Dragged Home for Christmas

“Depends if we’re talking about you playing the violin or something else,” Jim said with a leer.

“Wait a minute. Ashley might be onto something.” Sam’s eyes gleamed. “What about aThanksgivingbrunch? That would give us time to advertise it, sell tickets… We’ve got the tables and chairs. They’re stored in the shed. And it’s a commercial kitchen, for God’s sake. We could cope withfeeding a lot of people.” He grinned. “We could pack the theater space.”

“I think itwasa restaurant in the past,” Mike told him.

“See? We’re on the right track. It would be a sellout. How many guys in this town do you think wouldlovethe chance to have someoneelseslave over a hot stove? All they’d have to do is show up, mingle, flirt, and eat. They even get to leave the dishes to us.”

Mike smiled. “You might have something there.”

“Ihave an idea. Not sure if it’s a good one, but…” Elliott flushed.

“Let’s hear it, then.” Sam nudged Elliott’s arm.

“Well, it’s also about the theater space. What if we offered classes?”

“In what?” Mike asked.

“Well, art, for one thing. I mean, comeon. Look under a rock in this town and you’ll find an artist. So… we find some willing artists, we charge for a two-hour class, and we take half the proceeds. Win-win.” He widened his eyes. “Life drawing classes. That could be real popular.”

Jim struck a pose. “I’m ready.”

Anthony snorted. “Are you kidding? Your dick would take up the whole canvas.”

Jim leaned closer. “Jealous much?”

Mike grinned. “Okay, I like this. Elliott, you really think you can persuade some artists to come on board?”

There was that flush again. “Oh, I can think of one or two who’d be keen. One in particular.”

“And we all know whothatis,” Anthony said before giving a loud cough.

“What about workshops?” Jim interjected.

“What kind of workshops?”

Jim bit his lip. “Okay, Nick had this friend, Kris. He’s what you’d call a leather daddy. Into BDSM, kink, stuff like that. Suppose we ask if he’d like to run workshops? We could start a poll, find out what guys would be interested in, then leave it up to Kris to work out a schedule.”

“Would there be enough guys interested?” Mike asked.

Four men stared at him, their lips twitching. As one, they all said, “Yes.”

Ashley laughed. “Well, that was unequivocal.” She glanced at Jim. “Could you contact this guy?”

Jim coughed. “Yeah, I could do that.”

“I might have an idea,” Anthony murmured. “I know we couldn’t find a replacement for Frank—our pianist—but what if we took a different tack?”

“What did you have in mind?” Mike hadn’t expected such an enthusiastic outpouring of ideas, but listening to them set his mind racing.

This might work.

“Well, I was thinking… What about music recitals? Concerts? P-town has musicians too. Same idea as the art classes—we split the profits with the performers. Hell, even a night of show tunes would bring people in.” He smiled. “We could set up a projector and have a sing-along withThe Sound of Music,The Wizard of Oz,Frozen, whatever.”

Sam bit back a smile. “Frozen?”

Anthony gave him the finger. “We could move the baby grand piano into the theater. Or leave it in the lobby for more intimate evenings.” He peered at Mike. “What do you think?”

Mike grinned. “I think all your ideas are amazing. But thereisone question I have to ask. If you can come up with all these awesome suggestions now, why haven’t youimplemented any of them already?”

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