He paused and shifted uncomfortably. The conversation usually ended at “tragic and sudden,” a one-two of bad luck that no one ever wanted to question. Even when it was Joe who said thewords, he could hear Harry’s flat, uninviting delivery in the words.
“We never talked about her,” he said. “I asked, but… Edward always said it was too painful for Dad to talk about.”
Cal reached over the table and stole the glass from under Joe’s fingers. “I’m guessing this is a two-drink conversation,” he said as he stood up.
He wasn’t wrong. Joe licked his lip and tasted the diluted saltof blood. The hangover from his panic attack in the graveyard sat like a stone in the back of his skull, his stomach and arms ached dully from the beating he’d taken, and the whiskey he’d downed hadn’t even touched the edges of it.
“Get me a beer,” he said. Then, since he’d promised, “Please.”
Cal pointed his approval with one finger as he headed back to the bar. He leaned on the counter andwaited for the bartender to drag himself away from the TV. Three stools down the two rowdy businessmen switched their attention briefly away from the redhead to Cal.
“Charge by the hour, mate?” one of them cackled as he nudged his companion in the ribs. “What’s the going rate?”
Joe tensed.
Cal turned and looked the man up and down. Whatever the expression on his face was, it made the businessmanflush and look worried.
Shit.
“Sweetheart, if you could afford me—” Cal said. His voice was pitched lighter than usual, the roughness that made Joe’s balls clench stripped from under the words. “—you’d know it without having to ask the price.”
The businessman’s friend laughed and punched him in the arm while he crowed, “That’s true. He’s got you there, Ned.”
The flush on Ned’s cheeks darkenedangrily. He tossed back the dregs of his wine and curled his lip.
“Who do you think you are, you fuckin—”
“Think it through before you finish that,” Cal interrupted him, “because I will knock your fucking teeth down your throat if I don’t like what comes out of your gob.”
Whatever Ned had been going to say crawled back off his tongue and down his throat. He blanched, muttered something underhis breath, and turned his back. His friend laughed harder and refilled both their glasses.
The confrontation, at least, inspired the bartender to leave the TV for a minute as he came down the bar. He popped the top off the beer and another soda and handed them over the bar along with a soft-voiced comment.
Whatever he said made Cal shrug at him before he took the drinks and came back to thetable.
“Does that happen often?” Joe asked as Cal sat down.
Cal glanced back over his shoulder and shrugged. He slid the beer across the table.
“It used to happen more,” he said. A wry smile curved his mouth as he waved a hand at his face. “When I was a kid, I was pretty as fuck.”
He said it like it would be news to Joe, as though he weren’t… well, the sort of man someone would call to theirroom to seduce five minutes after meeting him. The pretty had faded, that was true, but it had been replaced with heavy bones and brooding sensuality. Cal apparently had no idea.
“You aren’t exactly hard on the eyes now,” Joe said.
Cal shrugged. “I do okay,” he said dismissively. “So what? You think your Dad….”
He trailed off expectantly. Joe faltered as he was faced with filling in the blank.It had been his idea to start the conversation, but this would be the first time he’d actually said it out loud to anyone. There was a possibility that the minute he did, the whole construct of suspicion and circumstantial evidence would collapse into wishful thinking.
Joe had seen it happen often enough. Some executive would get up to present his foolproof plan to save his company, every suppliersourced and line of income double-checked, but all it took was one previously unconsidered question to scoop out the foundations. It was usually Joe’s job to pinpoint and ask that question, so it would be ironic if someone did it to him.
Better now, he supposed, than in front of Harry.
“My dad doesn’t like publicity,” he said. “No fancy parties, no sex scandals, no celebrity friends. He alwayssaid only idiots court publicity, that if people see you on the news with a gold-plated Bugatti, the first thing they’ll think is you don’t deserve it and they do.”
Cal laughed and crossed his arms, his elbows braced on the edge of the table. “It’s like he’s met me.”
“As a little kid, I thought he’d found some life hack that none of those other rich people understood,” Joe said. “It wasn’t untilI was a teenager that I worked out that part of it was that Dad had skeletons in the closet and some very dangerous associates he didn’t want anyone to know about. By then, though, I had my own secrets.”
