“Suit yourself,” Giorgio said, sending them a look that said he thought as little of them as the dirt on the street. “But don’t count any of your chickens before they hatch.”
Ryan had never been so glad to watch someone walk away as he was to see Giorgio’s back retreating.
“I’m glad he’s gone,” Graeme said, reflecting his thoughts.
“What a wanker,” Art agreed.
Ryan smiled, throwing an arm around both of his men’s waists and pulling them close, but the hug and the quick pair of kisses, one planted on each of their cheeks, was all he had time for.
“He’s going to try something else to sabotage this show,” he said, diving back into work as a few more models and Gloria moved in, seeing that the coast was clear. “He’s already done just about everything he can to torpedo the whole thing.”
“Is there anything we can do to help?” Graeme asked, looking around.
“No, sweetheart,” Ryan said, shifting fully into work mode. “I love you, but the best you can do right now is to go have a seat and clear the way for everyone to get dressed.”
“Got it,” Art said. He grabbed Graeme’s arm and said, “Come on, lover boy. Let’s let our man do his thing. We can tell him all about our sexual gymnastics last night later.”
Graeme turned bright pink. Ryan laughed out loud. The comment was designed to change the mood and throw everyone off-balance, and it worked.
Ryan’s heart went with his partners as they pushed their way back through the busy models, but his head stayed in the game, right where it was. Art and Graeme’s short visit felt like it made things easier and lighter for him. There were still hiccups, one ofhis racks wasn’t where it was supposed to be, a few more models had problems getting there on time, but by the time he took his place in the wings, then walked into the long gallery to introduce his collection, he felt more confident than he had in years.
“Welcome, everyone, to my spring collection, The Power of Threesome,” he said, grinning at the audience and loving their reaction to the slight tweak he’d made to his original collection name. “This collection is a small miracle, though I’m not going to go into all the reasons why. I’ll only say this. I am the luckiest man alive, and I don’t care what any of you think of it.”
He blew two kisses, one with each hand, at Graeme and Art as they sat in the front row, three quarters of the way down the runway. Art reached out to catch his cheesily. As Ryan turned around to head backstage, he spotted Giorgio sitting with Marco Valliant on the opposite side. Marco was leaning over, saying something to Giorgio, who had a stony face. Ryan didn’t dare hope that Marco was telling the man off, but he wouldn’t have complained if he was.
The pulsing, throbbing music he’d chosen to underscore his show flared up in the speakers placed around the room, and just like that, Moira stepped out onto the runway in his first look.
The show was nerve-wracking, to say the least. With each new look that walked the runway, Ryan expected something to go wrong. Little things did go wrong throughout the show. Shoes weren’t where they were supposed to be, one of his highlight pieces developed a loose hem which the model could have stepped on at any second, and the pieces Javier’s last-minute finds wore didn’t quite fit as well as they were supposed to, but there were no outright disasters.
Ryan watched the whole thing on the monitors in the staging area. He cared about what his clothes looked like walking, of course, but what he really wanted to see was people’s reactions.
No, what he wanted to see were Art’s and Graeme’s reactions. He’d designed everything in the show for them, even though he was only just realizing that now. Every piece said something about their summer, about the gardens and ruins of Hawthorne House. Everything fit together in threes and triangles, giving the audience’s eyes something fascinating to look at with every step the models took. But mostly, the show was there to tell a story of falling in love with two men.
So when the threesome, bride in the middle, walked out at the end of the show, tears filled Ryan’s eyes, taking him by surprise. Those three designs were everything he felt about him, Art, and Graeme. The three of them were a unit. They were different, but they needed each other. They would each be lesser without the other two.
He hoped and prayed that the three of them were like the threesome walking down the aisle—together forever. That was the only thing that mattered. Whatever happened, whatever tricks Giorgio played or reversals of fortune he fell into, if he really did end up designing for a bargain store just teaching classes in fashion design for the rest of his life, he would be happy. He had love, more of it than he deserved, and that fulfilled him.
TWENTY
The applausethat followed Ryan’s show was so enthusiastic that Art wanted to rise up out of his seat, not to clap along with them for Ryan, but to congratulate the high-fashion crowd for showing good taste.
“Bravo!” he called out, a too-broad grin on his face that would probably embarrass Ryan if he saw it.
In fact, Ryan did see it. He walked out with his showstopper model at the end of the show to receive his accolades from the audience, and of course he looked right at Art and Graeme. Art clapped even harder, and when Ryan spotted him, he let out an entirely inappropriate cat-call. Graeme hid his face for a moment, though he was beaming, and Ryan shook his head, cheeks flushed pink with happiness, and walked on to the backstage area.
Personally, Art thought everyone in the room should have stayed right where they were and demanded to see the show again. Or they should have lined up to speak to Ryan and to demand that he design for their shops, or however things worked in the fashion industry. He didn’t really know howdesigns went from a runway show to racks on the high street, but it didn’t really matter.
The changeover from the end of Ryan’s show to the beginning of the next one was so fast that Art’s head spun a little as he grabbed Graeme’s hand to push their way through the people streaming into the room and out of it.
“Let’s go find our man,” he called to Graeme over the noisy buzz of people talking and staff trying to get everyone organized.
“I don’t think we’ll be able to get to the staging area like we did last time,” Graeme said, nodding to the pair of guards that was placed at the entrance they’d snuck past earlier.
“I can talk my way into anything anywhere,” Art said with a cheeky grin and a wink.
He could not, in fact, talk his way into anywhere. He tried, but the guards were unrelenting. Of course, while he attempted to charm and cajole the guards into letting them past, Graeme had pulled out his mobile and texted Ryan.
“He says he will meet him downstairs in the courtyard,” he told Art once he’d given up and walked away from the frowning guards. “There’s some sort of reception down there anyhow, and we can also grab lunch.”
