“Call who what?” Joe inquired as he got into the back of the car, with a lockbox under his arm. His lean, elegantly suited frame impinged over the drama on the pavement. He pulled the seat belt across his body and clicked it into the anchor.
“Nothing, Mr. Bailey,” Cal said. Company practice was to call the employer “sir” or “ma’am” unless instructed otherwise, butCal had never been able to wrap his tongue around that. In his mouth, “sir” always sounded sullen. He started the engine and glanced in the mirror, his attention split between Joe’s lean, handsome face and the tail end of the confrontation as the woman threw the eggy napkin at the traffic warden. “Where to next?”
So far it had been a round of banks, law offices, and the Bailey Property Trust’sLondon office building. Most of the time Cal waited in reception and cadged a cup of tea from whoever seemed amenable. The clerk at the last lawyers had thrown in a plate of cookies and his number. It was in Cal’s wallet. He was, after all, supposed to be on the lookout for a nice boy with a good job and a domestic streak.
In the back seat, Joe laid the lockbox over his lap and tapped his fingerson it. His dark, straight eyebrows were pulled down in an expression a twist of the mouth away from a frown. Cal waited for directions while the engine idled quietly under his foot.
“Mr. Bailey?” he repeated. When Joe didn’t react he tried again. “Joe?”
Dark eyes—still close as dammit to black in the sunlight—flicked up to meet Cal’s gaze in the mirror.
“Do you know where there’s a good florist?”he asked. “I need a wreath on short notice.”
Cal raised his eyebrows at Joe in the mirror. “Flowers aren’t really my thing,” he pointed out dryly. “But there’s a place we use when a client wants to surprise someone with a car full of flowers. They’re usually pretty good.”
Joe gave him a quelling look in the mirror. “I don’t need a résumé,” he said witheringly. “Just some flowers.”
“Flowers,she can do.” Cal twisted around, his arm hooked over the back of the seat. “It’ll be about a half hour?”
Joe shrugged and leaned over to set the box on the floor. He sat back and lifted his tablet from the seat. “I pay you whether you’re driving or drinking tea.”
It might not have been a joke, but it made Cal laugh anyhow. Joe looked amused for a second, with a half-smile and a shrug that brieflyreminded Cal of the other night. Then he shook his head and went back to work.
Cal straightened up in the driver’s seat, checked the road, and pulled out. Old habits made him clock the nondescript Volvo parked opposite, its muted navy paintwork and tires so new and shiny the edges weren’t even scuffed. He dismissed it a second later. Even if it was an unmarked car, it was no skin off his nose.He wasn’t doing anything wrong and didn’t even have any plans to in the foreseeable future.
A SWEATYman in misjudged yellow workout gear power walked between the gravestones. The sound of Taylor Swift on repeat was loud enough to hear through his headphones. Disapproving looks followed him as the people who were there to actually mourn registered his presence.
Cal leaned against the frontbumper of the Bentley and thought about whether he should stick his foot out to trip the guy. Probably not, but it was tempting.
He dragged his attention away from the exaggerated jiggle of the guy’s ass—not a bad ass, as it went, but nothing looked that good as it pistoned up and down in acid yellow—and back to the phone tucked against his ear.
“… have you talked to Jane?” El asked. Casually.As though that weren’t the whole reason he’d interrupted Cal’s day.
“Nope.”
El cleared his throat. “When you do, could you tell her—?”
“Nope.”
“Cal, you owe me.”
“I know,” Cal said. “Doesn’t mean I am going to pick sides in your divorce.”
“You’remybrother.”
“And Jane has never tried to bury me in the backyard,” Cal said. “So you aren’t coming out ahead there.”
El snorted but didn’t arguethe point. They loved each other—they had to; they were all the family they had left that was worth shit—but that didn’t mean they always got on… or had ever gotten on in the traditional sense. Their childhood had been spent alternately at odds or allied against any outsider who thought they could put their oar in. As kids, El had never quite gotten over Cal being born, and Cal had never quitegotten over not being El.
“Fine,” El gave in. “How’s the job going? Any problems?”
Cal rubbed the back of his neck—strong fingers dug into his shoulders, the heady weight of a cock in his ass, Edward’s grim, harsh face as he killed the afterglow with threats—and glanced up the hill to where Joe paced between the long, sunlit graves.
“Uneventful,” he said. “Nothing an Uber couldn’t have managed.”
A sigh trickled down the line. “Tell me you didn’t say that in earshot of the client,” El grumbled. “If the man wants to pay over the odds to be driven around the block in a fancy car, don’t put him off because you’re bored.”
Cal watched as Joe paused at the end of the row, the wreath of purple and blue flowers tucked in the crook of his arm. Joe looked around—it was too far to see his expression,but Cal imagined it was the same irritated pinch of his mouth from last night—and then turned to the left. It didn’t take long for him to disappear out of sight behind a bank of spindly trees and shadows.
