Frog by Mary Calmes

Synopsis From Publisher:

Weber Yates's dreams of stardom are about to be reduced to a ranch hand's job in Texas, and his one relationship is with a guy so far out of his league he might as well be on the moon.  Or at least in San Francisco, where Weber stops to see him one last time before settling down to the humble, lonely life he figures a frog like him has coming. 

Cyrus Benning is a successful neurosurgeon, so details are never lost on him.  He spotted the prince in a broken-down bull rider's clothing from day one.  But watching Weber walk out on him keeps getting harder, and he's not sure how much more his heart can take.  Now Cyrus has one last chance to prove to Weber that it's not Weber's job that makes him Cyrus's perfect man, it's Weber himself.   With the help of his sisters' newly broken family, eh's ready to show Weber that the home the man' been searching for has always been right there, with him.  Cyrus might have laid down an ultimatum once, but now it's turned into a vow - he's never going to let Weber out of his life again. 

Every once in a while, you come across a book that makes you feel as if you are wrapped in a warm cozy sweater on a harsh winter day, lounging on a couch as you drink hot cocoa, safe and secure from the storm raging outside.  They are books filled with characters that make you feel right at home, surrounded by your nearest and dearest, enveloped by the love that only they can give you.  They are the books you escape into when you need to pretend the outside world no longer exists, that the fantasy playing out on the page is more real than what's outside your front door.  From the first time I read Frog by Mary Calmes, I knew that it would become one of those books for me.  After a half dozen or so readings, it just keeps getting better.

A large part of my love for this book revolves around the way the author writes.  It's in the way she structures her scenes, builds the world her characters inhabit, and in the loving way she brings her characters to life.  This is an author, and I've read quite a few of her books by now, that loves her characters as much as the reader does.  It shows in their personalities and in the way they interact with each other.  It shows in the way they think for themselves, and in the growth they develop.  They are fully formed, four dimensional characters.  They are characters that have a past, present, and future.  They are people that you not only want to be around, but they are men that you want to be.

Weber and Cyrus are perfect examples of what I'm talking about.  Weber is about as perfect of a man as I've come across in all the fiction that I have read.  He is kind, considerate, fearless, loving, gentle, caring, affectionate, comfortable in his own skin, and kids & animals adore him.  He should come across as a stock character, barely discernible from every other romantic lead out there, but he doesn't.  He shines instead.  He is his own unique self, struggling to accept the idea that the man everyone else sees, is not the man he thinks he is.  Weber is that perfect man, who has no clue of his worth to those around him.  He is a man who lost both parents at en early age, then lost the brother who raised him to a war nobody should have been fighting.  He is a man who sees himself in one light, and has come to peace with his version of reality, but doesn't seem to fathom that he is so much more than that.  Through the course of this book, and I leave the details on the how out, he comes to accept that not only is he worthy of loving someone, of building a life with someone, but that he is worthy of that love and that life.

Cyrus is pretty damn perfect too, except that man that Weber knows, is not the man that anyone else seems to know.  Cyrus is that guy who has been responsible his whole life, serious at work and at home.  It's only with Weber that Cyrus really seems to embrace all that life has to offer, and not just the success granted by working hard playing smart.  Where with everyone else, including his family, he's loving but distant, with Weber he has no walls, he is the man he is supposed to be, not the man he is expected to be.  What both men need to accept, and they do by the end, is that regardless of who they think they are, they are so much more than that.  They both learn to see themselves the way others do, and by embracing that reality, they are able to move forward together.