She flashes both hands at him and waves them back and forth. “They too wittle, siwwy!”
“When your hands are big and strong enough to palm a rugby ball, you have to hold the teacup by the handle. Deal?”
“I dwink my tea now, pwease.”
“Good enough.” He passes her back the cup.
She puts both hands around it and sticks her whole face in, coming up with a whipped-cream-and-hot-chocolate mustache.
“Nowthat’show you wear a mustache,” I murmur.
He slides a look at me and rolls his eyes, but his lips are tipped up at the corners.
“You’re good with kids.”
“I am a kid.”
“Very few kids are so business-minded about their professional sports careers.” And attentive to what’s not being said in a room. Intuitive about what various situations need. Able to talk a hostess into seating him and his dog as the third and fourth wheels at a table set for two in a place that doesn’t generally allow dogs.
We’re near the rear door, close to the kitchen in the princess palace room.In case you do need to make a hasty exit, the hostess said as she sat us, telling us without telling us that she knew who we were. Very few other guests will wander by us here, and there are no windows.
Fletcher slipped her a fifty and asked her to make sure we had privacy.We’re with a kid. Leave her out of it, he said.
He holds my gaze for a long, serious moment. The man doesn’t like being called out on being a grown-up, and an intelligent one at that. But he’s saved by a low beeping on his watch. “Tea’s ready.”
I reach for the dainty milk carafe, but he stops me.
“Tea first.”
“I thought it was milk first.”
“Are we doing this the proper British way or not?”
“They don’t put the milk in first?”
He rolls his eyes. “The palace doesn’t. Their teacups don’t crack when you pour in the hot tea, so they don’t need the milk to go in first.”
“Fletcher Huxley, are you secretly an anglophile?” I whisper.
His ears go pink again. “In my younger years, I liked to fit in where I was at. Here’s the sugar if you want it.Afterthe tea goes in your cup.”
“And now?”
“I don’t take sugar in my tea.”
That isnotwhat I was asking, and he knows it. “Why don’t you try to fit in?”
“We’re in mixed company and can’t discuss that.” He pours my tea for me, then his for himself. When I pick up my spoon after adding a splash of milk and a lump of sugar, he covers my hand with his. “Don’t clink it. Stir gently. Not in a circle—do it back and forth. This way.”
A current ofhe’s touching mebuzzes up my arm. “You’re very picky about tea.”
“If you’re gonna do something, do it right.”
After he helps me with my tea, he makes his own. I watch him while he sips his tea. No slurping for Fletcher. But he’s still a giant, over-muscled, tattooed man wearing a tiara to humor a birthday girl and sipping tea delicately from an elegant teacup that he could probably crush with his bare hand.
And I wonder what he’s doingrightin being here with us tonight. What role this event is serving for him.
Is this some power play against Silas, and will I hear about it for the rest of my natural life?
