Edward looked thoughtful, but he nodded without further argument.
OLD PHOTOS.Old postcards. Harry had once had a sense of humor. Letters addressed to Mrs. Bailey, filed in yellowed envelopes with brittle cellophane windows.
Joe didn’t know whathe expected to find in Harry’s old safety deposit box, although the part of him that had bingedBlackliston the flight over had its fingers crossed for a collection of fake passports. Instead it was just a box of memories Joe had missed out on.
Most of them anyhow. He lifted a newspaper clipping from the box, the paper yellow and rough under his fingers, and studied the low-res photograph. Threemen and two women stood shoulder-to-shoulder outside a hospital, fund-raising buckets clutched in their arms. The caption identified the tall, awkwardly smiling woman on the far left, captured as she scratched her eyebrow, as Abigail Bailey. It wasn’t the first picture Joe had seen of her, but most of them were contextless portraits where she smiled blandly into the camera. This was the firstwhere you could see something of… her… in it.
It was also the only picture Joe had ever seen where he was in it with his mother. Even if she might have only known about him for a few weeks at that point.
He supposed he should feel something about that, but it was a smudged black-and-white photo of a stranger in a local paper. Maybe he wouldn’t have liked her if he ever got to know her. Or maybeshe wouldn’t have liked him. It didn’t feel set in stone that they’d have loved each other.
Right then it didn’t feel as though he’d found his mother, all he had was another clue in a treasure hunt. If he wanted to find the next, he had to solve the first.
The beep of Joe’s phone interrupted him, and he glanced at it. A reminder about his afternoon appointment at the lawyers sat on the screenaccusingly, as though it knew full well that he’d forgotten and didn’t really care. Joe closed his eyes for a second as he tried to find the person who, a year ago, would have eagerly embraced the responsibility of divesting the firm of their UK holdings. It should have been hard, with everything else on his plate, but if Joe were honest, it didn’t take long.
He might not like his father much,but he was still Harry Bailey’s son, and he still wanted to prove he deserved everything he inherited. Besides, he’d always been good at his job.
The meeting was a few hours away, but if Joe left now, he could get lunch first. Joe pulled his jacket on and, after a moment’s hesitation, tucked the clipped story into his pocket. He wasn’t sure why. Maybe it seemed like what someone would do in thatsituation, the same way he looked sad when he talked about his mother’s death—habit and a desire to look like everyone else.
He brushed his hand down his front to listen to the muted crinkle of age-softened paper and then went to find Cal.
He should have knocked, not that Joe could quite bring himself to wish he had. He paused in the doorway and watched Cal finish a set of sit-ups. Tight bandsof muscle clenched across Cal’s stomach, pronounced under inked, sweaty skin, and his old gray sweats had slid dangerously low across his stomach. His steady pace faltered midrep when he caught sight of Joe in the door, and he grabbed his knees to steady himself when he stopped.
“Sorry,” Joe said through dry lips.
Cal thought about that and then leaned back onto his elbows. His knees were stillbent, feet flat on the floor, and they framed the long, lazy sprawl of his body.
“You sure about that?” Cal asked as he licked sweat off his upper lip.
A few scenarios flickered through Joe’s mind. All of them ended up with both of them on the ground, Cal’s legs over Joe’s shoulders, and his cock in Joe’s mouth. The fantasy was potent enough that when Joe imagined the tug of Cal’s fingers inhis hair, it sent a prickle of pleasure through his scalp and down the back of his neck.
“Well,” Joe admitted in a voice that sounded a lot smoother than he felt, “I was enjoying the show, but I have some business today. The lawyers we were at the other day, Atkins, Kinsella, and Beattie.”
Cal snorted and scrambled to his feet. He grabbed a discarded T-shirt from the bed and casually wiped thesweat off his torso with it. Joe felt a twist of mixed lust and regret as he wished he’d crawled onto Cal when he had the chance.
“Give me five minutes,” Cal said as he chucked the T-shirt to Joe. It smelled of Cal and sharp, salt-fresh sweat. “I’ll be ready to go. Stick that in the laundry bag, would ya?”
Joe hung the shirt over the handle of the door. “You give all your employers orders, Mr.Tate?”
“Naw,” Cal said as he hooked his thumbs into the waistband of his sweats. They slid precariously lower, the sharp angles of his hip bones and the trail of fine, tawny hair that arrowed down from his belly button somehow more sexual than full frontal would have been. “Only the ones that wanna watch me undress.”
Joe cleared his throat and chuckled dryly. He looked down at his feet. “Nowthat makes me sound like a pervert.”
“I didn’t say I minded,” Cal pointed out.
In the corner of Joe’s eye, he saw the gray sweats hit the ground and Cal step out of them. He left them crumpled on the floor, and Joe wondered how long it would take until that got on his nerves instead of making him hard. He shook the thought away before it could settle, because you got annoyed at clothes on thefloor in a relationship, not… whatever you called a one-night stand that dragged on.
He let his eyes track up Cal’s legs to his cock, half-hard at being admired, and then up over his chest to his face.
“You sure about it?” he asked. Joe was aware he was a lot of things that weren’t particularly nice—a cheat, a liar, cold—but he didn’t want to add predatory to that. “I do pay your wages rightnow. If you want me to back off—”
“Fuck off. I told you, I don’t need you to say please in private.” Cal licked his lips and reached down to give his cock a lazy tug. “Thank you will do.”
He smirked and turned his back as he swaggered into the bathroom. Joe watched the tight curve of his ass, the bunch and play of muscle as he walked, until Cal swung the door shut behind him. It felt like somethinggavein his chest. He wasn’t even sure what it was, but it was done.
Call it any expectation he had of leaving there in time to get to his meeting.
The water turned on in the bathroom, and Cal hummed off-key to himself. Joe took his jacket off and tossed it onto the bed. The lawyers were paid well enough. They could use some of the billable hours they overcharged for and wait for him. He followedCal into the bathroom.
