“Well, I like it,” Joe said. The mattress creakedas Joe propped himself up. He tucked his chin into Cal’s shoulder and wrapped an arm around his waist, fingers spread over the ink. “It suits you.”
It felt real, for a second. Joe’s weight was sprawled lazily over Cal’s back, and his breath was warm and ticklish against his ear. But it wasn’t, and Cal didn’t feel ready to deal with that. He swallowed, his throat dry, and squirmed out from underJoe’s arm.
“Didn’t you want me to drive you somewhere?”
Joe pushed his still-damp hair back from his face, the loose curls defiant as they caught around his fingers. The white sheets tangled around his thighs in a poor attempt at modesty, and his cock was soft and stuck to his thigh. It made Cal want to crawl back into bed with him, even if his cock wasn’t up for another round yet.
“Yes,” Joesaid. “I have to approve the sale of some of our local assets. I’d reschedule, but I have plans for next week.”
Cal shrugged and tossed Joe his clothes. “No need,” he said. “That’s why you keep me around.”
THE ONLYlawyers Cal had ever had dealings with wore suits, comfortable shoes, and depression. Bea McGuire, Joe’s lawyer, wore a yellow dress with frilled, three-quarter sleeves anda flirtatious smile. The difference between a duty solicitor and business law, Cal supposed.
He glanced into the rearview mirror as she slid into the back seat, the flash of her knees deliberate as she artfully arranged her legs.
“Where to?” he asked.
She didn’t look up. “There’s a lovely bistro,” she said as Joe folded his long, elegant body into the car. Her hand fluttered out and restedon his knee. “The tapas is to die for. The Minsk in Hay’s Lane?”
Joe moved her hand. He glanced at Cal and raised his eyebrows.
“Do you know where it is?”
“I’m sure he has GPS,” Bea interrupted. She sighed and rubbed her hand along the leather in the back seat. “Although it is a shame to hook something like that into an old dame like this.”
Maybe she was all right. Cal threw the car into first.“I know where it is,” he said. “It won’t take long to get there.”
He glanced at Joe in the mirror again, just because. Then he pulled out of the car park and eased into traffic. He let Joe and Bea out at the Minsk, where the street in front was cluttered with well-dressed people who smoked with one hand and swigged wine with the other.
“We’ll be an hour or so. I’ll call when we’re done here,”Joe said as he paused next to the driver’s door and stooped to look through the window. He brushed Cal’s shoulder and paused long enough to be pointed. “You can take me home.”
That was literally his job, Cal reminded himself as he watched Joe escort Bea through the crowd to the propped-open front door of the Minsk. No underlying meaning needed, but the nerves under his skin didn’t listen.
Hefound somewhere to park and walked down to Queen’s Walk while he waited. There was a spray-painted van on the corner that sold fusion ice cream in squid-ink cones. He got himself a Starbucks inside and called El from a bench that overlooked the river. Not that he could make out much of the Thames through the eddied crowd and the vendors with their packs of tat and quick patter.
“You got a few?”he asked when El picked up. No niceties; this was family. “I got you a coffee.”
Half an hour later, El jogged up Queen’s Walk in shorts and sweat-soaked T-shirt. A woman with anUpstyle canopy of mylar balloons fumbled the transfer between her and a small pink child as she clocked him. The kid wailed as the balloons drifted away, and he had to be consoled with two.
“Two birds with one stone,”El said as he bent over and braced his hands on his knees. His grin flashed white and smug from between his elbows. “Anyone look?”
“A couple,” Cal admitted. “Probably worried you were going to stroke out right in front of them.”
El snorted and sat down on the end of the bench. He wiped his hand over his dense, short-cropped curls and huffed out a breath as he slouched back. Heat seeped out ofhis body.
“You reek,” Cal grumbled as he shifted away.
“You’re getting fat,” El countered. He stretched his legs out in front of him and fanned his shirt. The flash of tight brown abs made a passerby in a nicely fitted suit stumble over his own feet. “Coffee?”
Cal hitched his hips up and pulled a fiver out of his pocket. He handed it over. “I left it in Starbucks. It would have got cold.”
El took the fiver, folded it, and stuck it into the waistband of his shorts. He pulled his hand down his sweaty face and tilted his head back toward the sun.
“Why did I start running again?” he asked as he squinted his eyes shut.
“To make your wife think you had someone you wanted to impress,” Cal said. “Not sure the show you made of yourself would impress anyone.”
To be fair, not that Cal everwould be out loud, El didn’t need to run to impress. He had a few streaks of gray in his curls and some wrinkles around his eyes, but whoever their dads had been, they’d passed down some good genes. Unfortunately, how he looked wasn’t the problem with his marriage.
