“If you have some time,” he said, the internal wrenching as part of him tried to keep Graeme at the forefront of his thoughts tugging. But why? Graeme was out of reach and Art wasn’t.
“I have plenty of time,” Art said, glancing quickly at Casper. “I’m not teaching any courses this summer and the dig up in theHighlands that I was supposed to assist with during my holidays was canceled. In fact, if you’re free, I could go take a look at these ruins of yours right now.”
“Really?” Ryan asked, pulling back a bit in surprise. “I don’t want to keep you from whatever you’re doing.”
“I’m not doing anything,” Art said, standing like he was eager to get on with things immediately. “And I do prefer to be doing something, or someone, at all times.”
Ryan stood, his knees feeling weaker than they should have. Arthur Johnson was a firecracker, and he was beginning to worry that he might go off in his face.
No, that analogy didn’t work at all.
Or maybe it did.
Ryan cleared his throat. “My car is parked in the garage. I can take you home right now.”
“I love it when a handsome man offers to take me home,” Art commented to Casper.
Casper laughed and shook his head. “Sorry,” he told Ryan. “I should have warned you about him.” To Art he said, “Behave.”
“Always,” Art said with a flash in his eyes that said “never”.
Ryan used the time it took them to walk down to the garage to fetch his car to steady his nerves. Art was a chatterbox who didn’t really say much of anything, which was actually something of a relief. While he tried to figure out how he felt and what he should feel, Art entertained himself with talking about club business and the latest gossip from The Brotherhood.
By the time they were out of London and driving along the M20, Ryan felt gathered enough to join the conversation.
“So what made you want to become an archeologist?” he asked as they approached the turn-off that would take them to Hawthorne House.
“A mad crush on Harrison Ford when I was growing up,” Art said, freely and easily. “And on Brendan Fraser whenTheMummycame out. Well, everyone in that film, really. WhenThe Mummycame out, I came out.”
Ryan hummed and nodded. “What a film,” he said, sending Art a sideways look that said he understood completely. Graeme had probably developed a thing for Rachel Weisz.
The discomfort he felt over that thought vanished when Art went on with, “I also did a work-study in college. I grew up near York, where there are plenty of Viking-era sites to excavate. I fell in love with digging in the dirt and bringing ancient treasures to light that summer.”
Ryan was immediately certain that Art and Graeme would get along famously. They both liked digging in the dirt.
“And I fell in love with Lars,” Art continued with a broad grin. “He was a big, strapping Swede who had also come over as part of a university program to work on the site. What a summer that was! I could have let him explore my caves forever.”
Ryan whipped his head to peek at Art. That was the same joke he’d been tempted to make back at the club. The coincidence felt significant somehow.
They drove on and were at Hawthorne House in no time. Art bounded out of the car as soon as Ryan parked, giddy as a schoolboy as he looked up at the edifice of the family side of the house.
“It’s magnificent,” he sighed, scanning every detail of the side of the building. “It’s not Nicholas Hawksmoor, is it?”
Ryan’s jaw nearly dropped. “It is, actually.” He’d never run into anyone who knew the name of the prominent architect before.
“Magnificent,” Art said with genuine appreciation.
Art’s enthusiasm was contagious. Even though Ryan had spent nearly every day at Hawthorne House for the last several months and had grown up there, he saw his family home with new eyes as they walked around to the back, where the gardenswere located. For the first time in a long time, he felt deeply proud of his family and heritage.
“Absolutely magnificent,” Art repeated for the dozenth time, only with an entirely different inflection, as they stepped into the kitchen garden, where Graeme was hard at work, his shirt off, planting some of the shipment of vegetable seedlings and herbs he’d showed up with that morning.
The shattered glass feeling Ryan kept experiencing turned particularly sharp as Graeme stood from his work and glanced their way. Especially since his eyes landed on Art before him. Graeme jerked all the way straight, brushed off his hands, and looked around frantically. He stopped searching when he spotted his t-shirt, but before he could make a move toward it, Ryan and Art had reached him.
“Hello, you,” Art said, flirting as hard with Graeme as he had with Ryan back at the club. He raised a hand and dove straight for Graeme like he wanted to do more than just shake.
Ryan’s insides tied in knots with…jealousy? No, that wasn’t right. He had nothing to be jealous of. Graeme was straight, and even if he wasn’t, the friendship that he’d begun to form with Graeme was brand new and miles away from exclusive.
Maybe the sensation he felt was arousal. Because if he was honest with himself, seeing Graeme take Art’s hand and shake it while smiling kindly at him, matched with Art’s clear intention to seduce the living daylights out of Graeme, kind of turned him on.
