“Maybe,” Joe admitted. “But you looked like someone hadtold you that you could have seconds of a shit sandwich, so don’t pretend you’re that annoyed I interrupted. What was wrong with him?”
“Nothing,” Cal said sourly. So he hadn’t enjoyed the doc’s company that much, but Joe had still been a dick to interrupt them. Cal could ruin his own dates without any help. “You’re paying for his dinner, by the way.”
Joe didn’t look bothered, or sorry. “I see,”he said, as though Cal had given something away. “So he just wasn’t me?”
The calm confidence in Joe’s voice made Cal squirm as lust prickled under his skin and between his legs. It didn’t really make sense. The doc’s boasts about his medical degree had bored him, but Joe’s arrogance turned Cal on. Maybe because, with Joe, it wasn’t a boast, it was… conviction.
“Join me,” Joe said as he pointedover the table. “I already paid for the meal. You might as well eat it.”
The thing was that Cal wanted to say yes. He wanted to have dinner with Joe, go upstairs, and get fucked until he forgot all the stuff he wanted and couldn’t have. But he had a feeling that, for once, that wasn’t going to work.
“I don’t think so,” he said.
“Cal—”
Cal didn’t let Joe finish. “The doc was pompous and a bitof a prig. But at least he wasn’t so ashamed to be seen with me that he needed to pretend that dinner was a business meeting, not a date.”
For the first time Joe looked as though he’d been caught off guard. “I just…. Look, what did you want me to do, come over and punch him?”
Cal pushed himself off the booth and tucked his hands into his pockets. There was a tight knot of words caught in histhroat—the sarcastic admission that “it would have been hot” tangled with the raw “you could have asked me first”—but in the end, he didn’t say any of them. What was the point?
“Why would you?” he asked. “Like you told Kristen, your love life is nothing to do with me. So return the favor.”
The flustered expression on Joe’s face had faded. It gave way to a cool, irritated expression. The musclesin the sides of his jaw clenched as he glanced around at the nearby tables.
“This is hardly the place to discuss this,” he said.
“Yeah,” Cal said. “Exactly. Look, I’m not complaining. We both got exactly what we wanted, Joe, and it was fun. If you want to fuck? Sure, you know where my room is. But don’t try and pretend we’re dating, as long as no one else knows about it. I don’t deserve thatsort of shit.”
Joe looked frustrated. He still kept his voice down to a tight, discreet mutter. “So, to be clear, sex is okay but not dinner?”
“More or less,” Cal said. He stepped back from the table and gave Joe an empty smile. “Forward me the itinerary you wanted to go over, Mr. Bailey, and I’ll go over it tonight. Enjoy your salad.”
He turned to leave and caught the eye of an elegant, gray-hairedwoman who’d obviously shamelessly eavesdropped on them over her soup. Caught in the act, she smiled at Cal with white, even teeth and winked.
“Smart boy,” she hissed her approval at him on his way past her table. “Never take sex off the table. Or jewelry.”
He laughed despite the fact he felt like shit, and didn’t look back on his way out of the restaurant. The flash of humor got him all theway back up to the suite and then drained away as he closed the door to his room. He dropped his head back against the door with a thump and wondered what the hell had possessed him.
It had seemed like the right thing to do in the moment, but where had he gotten him? Now his cock thought he was an idiot, his heart ached, and his stomach didn’t know why it had to suffer in all this. Cal rubbedhis forehead and wondered why the hell he hadn’t shut his mouth. He could have had dinner, had sex, and if his heart hurt later… well, it didnow.So he didn’t see what he’d bloody accomplished.
CAL WOKEup to the sound of the first train of the day leaving, muffled through the thick walls and triple-glazed windows. He growled under his breath and buried his face in the pillow, his armhooked over his head.
His head felt muzzy with a mixture of embarrassment and exhaustion. Last night he’d stayed up, checked his phone every ten minutes, and realized two things—first, that he made himself look like a soft idiot when he spewed his feelings all over the restaurant last night, and second, that Joe might know where Cal’s bed was, but he wasn’t about to knock on the door. Or text.
Oh, and third, that he probably owed Doc some sort of apology.
“Shit,” Cal muttered into the pillow. He waited a while longer, until he could taste the damp from his breath against the cotton, and then rolled over onto his back. Maybe he should have been more sympathetic to El about the divorce. He’d known Joe for two weeks, and he felt like crap. If it had been years, he’d probably drink himselfinto a grave next to his grandparents.
The thought made Cal grimace sourly at this own dramatics. He scrambled out of bed, showered, dressed, and was ready to go by seven o’clock. Since no one had come to get him, or fire him, he assumed he wasn’t needed yet.
That gave him time to make a couple of calls. The first two were easy—a blunt apology to Doc and a blunt reminder for Van that he wasn’ta patient man. It was the last call that made him hesitate, his hands sweaty and his stomach sour from more than hunger. He didn’t even know what the point of it was now. He was pretty sure he’d burned his bridges with Joe last night. This wasn’t going to fix that.
He dialed away. It went to voicemail. Of course it did.
“It’s Cal. Caleb,” he said. Although he supposed she would know who he wasanyhow. “Can you call me? It won’t take long. I wanted to ask about someone you used to know. El said you knew him anyhow. It’s important.”
Ten years ago he’d have offered her money. That had always been a surefire way to get his mum to answer a call. She’d always needed money. These days her husband could give her whatever she wanted. He was a dentist or chiropodist, or something.
