“Do anything else?” Edward asked.He sucked down half his tea in one quick, mouth-scalding gulp. He glanced at his watch. “Since I doubt the young lady is going to pose a threat, I’ll actually go and check in with Harry. He’s not enjoying being out of the loop. Anything you want me to tell him?”
Joe smirked briefly as he entertained the idea of whether or not he could make Edward tell Harry that his son was gay. The notion hadits appeal, but it supposed it was the sort of thing he had to do himself.
“I hope he’s getting some rest,” Joe said.
Edward nodded, placed a tip on the table, and left. Alone for a while, Joe collected his coffee and moved to a table in front of the window. He watched the tourists file over the road and queue for the British Museum. The selfie shuffle on the forecourt, as everyone tried toget a shot of the Museum with no one else in it, amused him until Bea arrived.
She jingled through the door with her arm around the shy red-haired woman from the other day. A quick kiss and the woman laughed—a surprisingly big, sweet sound—and headed for the counter while Bea came over to him.
“Perfectly professional,” she told him with a sly smile as she slid into the seat, long legs in flower-patternedtights tucked under her. “Rosie actually works for someone on the board of the charity. That’s how I scored your tickets.”
Joe raised his eyebrows. “That’s a coincidence.”
“Not really. Our firm has worked with this charity before. The board member who Rosie works for is a client, and a few of the trusts that we administer include donations made to various hospices and respite programs that thecharity runs.” Bea set her laptop bag in her lap and pulled out a neatly bound set of documents. She pulled a rueful face at Joe over them. “Apparently that’s how we met the first time, but I guess she wasn’t as cute and flustered then. Anyhow, I had a look, like you asked, at all the legal filings and contracts that my firm has done for your… company. Which you currently represent and, therefore,have every right to access. The only thing that really stood out was this—for fifteen years, your father, through a blind trust, bought and maintained a small house in Readingandpaid a monthly stipend to the owner.”
“Could it be my mother?” Joe asked. Maybe his mother had some sort of mental illness. Harry wasn’t a monster, but like Joe’s claustrophobia, he expected people would get betterfrom their anxiety or depression if they tried.
Before he could speculate too far, Bea shook her head. “The owner was a widower with a young daughter,” she said. A quick flight through her files pulled out a photocopy of a newspaper article with a photo of a stocky, bearded man as he carried a little red-haired girl with bandaged hands out of a graveyard. Bea tapped the blurred faces with a well-manicuredfinger. “Keith Mantle and his daughter, Daisy. The stipend is still paid, actually. After Keith died, we were instructed to pay it directly into a new account that Daisy was given access to.”
“What was the connection between this man and Harry?” Joe asked.
Bea pursed her lips. “Well, nothing obvious,” she said. “But… his wife died in a car accident. The little girl was in the car with her atthe time. It was apparently pretty horrific, although reports stated that there had been only one car involved in the accident. The papers interviewed a witness—a woman from London out for the night—and she said the woman was alive when the car started to burn. Awful. The payments started around six months after that. It sounds to me like a guilty conscience.”
“Dad doesn’t drive,” Joe said. “He’sgot epilepsy. He never learned.”
“Maybe your mum, then?” Bea said. When he frowned at her, she spread her hands in apology. “Sorry, but it feels like a payoff to me, and one this generous? That’s a personal connection. Anyhow, here’s everything we have about it.”
She handed the file over, zipped up her bag, and gave him an inquisitive look. “If there’s nothing else?” she said. “I’ll see youtonight.”
Joe riffled through the pages she’d given him. There were pictures of the house, a report from an insurance company, and nothing that proved anything.
“Nothing else,” he said. “Thank you.”
“Keep me in mind in future,” Bea said as she unfolded herself from the chair and glanced at her watch. “Now if you’ll excuse me, I have half an hour to enjoy my lunch date….”
She looked aroundand bit her lip in distracted appreciation. Joe followed her gaze and Rosie had balanced cake plates precariously on top of two different-sized coffee cups as she wove through the tables. Her hair was in a scruffy ponytail, and she was in jeans and a shirt decorated with little birds. Each, Joe supposed, to their own.
There were probably people who didn’t think Cal was attractive.
NO.JOEwatched Cal ruin the line of his trousers by putting his hands in his pockets. He’d been wrong. This had to be universal.
Cal smirked at him. “Hot as you hoped?”
Hotter. The dark blue was a soft contrast to Cal’s pale skin and tawny hair, and the tailoring showcased the heft of his shoulders and then tucked in to expose his narrow waist and lean hips. He still looked like bad news, but Joewould have been disappointed if they’d styled that out of him.
“You look,” Joe said as he pushed himself off the doorframe, “like we don’t have to leave for a while.”
He walked over and cupped his hand around the nape of his Cal’s neck to pull him into a kiss. His cropped hair was stubble-rough under his fingers, and the compliant tilt of Cal’s heavy muscled body toward him made Joe’s stomachtwist with sharp pangs of lust. Stubble still grazed along his jaw, a golden scruff that scraped Joe’s lips and tasted like cologne.
Joe worked his hands under Cal’s jacket, his skin hot under the thin silk of the shirt, and he started to shove it off his shoulders. Before he got it down as far as the elbow, Cal bit his lower lip and shoved Joe backward.
“You made me get all dressed up,” Calsaid as he shrugged the jacket back up over his shoulders. “Now you get to take me out. Unless you’ve changed your mind.”
There was something expectant in the way he said that, like he figured Joe had. If it weren’t for that, Joe probably would have dragged him back over to the bed. Joe licked his lower lip where it still stung from Cal’s teeth.
“Next time,” he said as he gave Cal a last, appreciativeonce-over. “You can wear jeans to the party and keep that for when we get back.”
Cal snorted and rubbed his hand over his head. The tips of his ears had gone red. Joe would have never thought that Cal was insecure about how attractive he was, but apparently a compliment could still fluster him a bit.
