The Fireman's Pole

by Sue Brown

  All good things had to come to an end. At a knock on the door, Ben stepped back hastily. He thought he heard Dale sigh, but he said nothing as he let Ben go.

  “Yes?” Ben called, aware there was a distinct snap in his voice.

  “The estate manager is here for your meeting, your lordship.”

  Ben frowned. “Damn, I forgot about that. I’ll be out in a minute.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “I thought your butler calls you Mr. Ben,” Dale said.

  “He does, but not usually in front of strangers. Colson only calls me your lordship when there are people around.” Ben rubbed his temples. “I’m so sorry. I’ve got to talk to Barry. Our meeting this morning got postponed.”

  “Not a problem. I’m the one who interrupted your afternoon. I’ll go for a walk.”

  “The spring flowers are lovely this time of year,” Ben said, opening the door of the study.

  Dale tilted his head. “Do you like gardening?”

  “Hate it,” Ben confessed as they walked across the hall. “They’re all weeds to me. The gardeners are under orders not to let me anywhere near the flowers. I only have to look at a plant and it dies.”

  “You can’t be that bad,” Dale said.

  Ben ushered Dale into the large study. “I am, aren’t I, Barry?”

  The middle-aged estate manager looked confused. “You are what, your lordship?”

  “Don’t start that,” Ben said. “This is Dale.”

  Barry raised an eyebrow. “The bloke that rescued Mrs. Wilson?”

  “That’s him. Dale, this is Barry Chalmers, Calminster Hall’s estate manager.”

  To his surprise, Barry sprang to his feet and shook Dale’s hand vigorously. “Thank you.”

  “You’re welcome. What for?”

  To Ben’s amusement, Dale stuck his hand behind his back and flexed it a couple of times. Barry had a firm handshake.

  “For finding Aunty Mavis,” Barry said.

  “Aunty… oh, Mrs. Wilson. She’s your aunt?”

  “She’s not strictly my aunty, but as good as. She and my mum went to school together.”

  “I’m just glad I found her,” Dale said. “She was almost hidden from view behind a wall.”

  Barry pumped Dale’s hand again. “Don’t be surprised if my mum turns up with biscuits and cakes at the fire station soon.”

  “I’m not going to complain,” Dale assured him. Every fire station Dale had ever worked at loved supplies of homemade cakes and biscuits.

  “As long as some of them come my way,” Ben said plaintively.

  “He’s the hero,” Barry said, pointing at Dale.

  Dale puffed out his chest. “Yeah, I’m the hero. You wait your turn.”

  “But Barry’s mum makes the best double chocolate chip cookies ever.” Ben had seen grown men fight over the last cookie because they were that good.

  The expression on Barry’s face was as smug as if he were the one making the cookies. “She’s the best in the village. She wins the prizes in the village fete every single year.”

  “I thought this was a parade.” Dale was sure it was a parade and not a fete.

  Barry turned to his boss. “You mean you haven’t told him all about the village life?”

  Ben hadn’t had time to explain the ebb and flow of Calminster. But Dale was looking at him a little confused, and Barry obviously expected Ben to explain. “We have three big events in the village during the year. In May we have the May Day parade, in September we have the cricket match combined with the village fete, and in November we have the Christmas Carnival.”

  Dale nodded. “So lots of competitions; gardens, cakes, and that sort of thing?”

  “Don’t ever make the mistake of thinking these aren’t taken seriously,” Barry said. “The villagers have been known to send people to Coventry for making that foolish error.”

  “I promise to keep my mouth shut,” Dale said.

  “Just praise everyone,” Ben suggested. “Don’t show any favoritism, unless it’s Mrs. Wilson. And for heaven’s sake, don’t even think of entering any of the competitions. You have to be living in the village for at least fifty years to get a foot in the door.”

  Dale laughed, the laughter trailing off as both men stared back at him, deadly serious. “I hear you, and there’s no fear of that. I have no baking skills.”

  Ben patted him on the arm, wishing he could grope the muscles longer. “You’re golden in the eyes of the village. You rescued one of their matriarchs. Just smile, flex those muscles, and look pretty. That’s all you need to do.”

  “I’m not sure whether to be insulted or not,” Dale said. “Besides, I damaged part of the history of the village. People don’t know whether to hug me or slap me. I’m the big bad hero, not pretty.”

  Ben would have loved to make a comment, but he refrained from embarrassing Barry. He could see the challenging expression on Dale’s face, daring him to say something, but he just opened his eyes wide and kept his mouth shut. He took satisfaction in the disappointed glance Dale shot him. The one thing he really did need to do was have this meeting with Barry, and much as chatting with Dale was a good thing, it wasn’t going to get the work done.

  “I was just telling Dale about my black thumb,” Ben said.

  Barry chuckled. “Never let Mr. Ben near a plant. It’ll be dead before he walks out of the room. He even managed to kill a cactus.”

  Dale seemed impressed. “How the heck did you manage to do that?”

  “I overwatered it,” Ben admitted.

  “He’s hopeless,” Barry said, a large smile on his weathered face.

  Dale pointed a finger at Ben. “Stay away from my orchids!”

  Ben knew it was pathetic the way he reacted to the deep growl in Dale’s voice. “Yes, sir.” It didn’t escape his notice that Barry’s eyes widened. Dammit, Dale only had to be in the vicinity and Ben threw caution to the wind. Time to get things under control.

  “I’ll leave you to your meeting,” Dale said. “Do you think the dogs would like to come for a walk?”

  Ben nodded, fully aware from the way Dale had swayed toward him that he’d noticed the yes, sir as much as Barry had. “Barry, would you call security and the gardeners? Let them know we have a visitor.”

  Barry grabbed his walkie-talkie as Ben led Dale out onto the long veranda. Ben drew Dale out of Barry’s sight and grabbed his hand. Dale stared at their joined hands and then at Ben, a question clearly in his expression.

  “Be back here by five,” Ben ordered.

  “Yes, your lordship.”

  Ben threw caution to the wind and dragged Dale in for a kiss. It was the briefest brush of their mouths, but it was enough to make Ben want more.

  He stepped back as he licked his lips, tasting sugar from the cakes. “Go now before I do something that will embarrass Barry.”

  Dale’s lips twitched. He gave a mock salute, and whistling for the dogs, he vanished into the gardens, swiftly hidden by one of the hedges. With not even a backward glance at Ben, the traitors rushed to join him.

  “You’re supposed to be my dogs,” Ben muttered before walking back into the study. To his relief, Barry said nothing beyond “Dale seems like a nice lad,” although his eyes were conducting a whole other conversation.

  “He is,” Ben agreed, although Ben wasn’t interested in the “nice” side of Dale. Not at all.

  BY ten past five, Ben was ready to throw his laptop across the room. There was a mistake in one of the columns on his spreadsheet, but he couldn’t work out where, and Dale was nowhere to be seen. Ben had told him to be back by five o’clock. Where the hell was he?

  Ben heard voices outside the window, one of them definitely Dale’s and both of them laughing. Ben stiffened, irrationally angry at Dale’s happiness. Dale hadn’t laughed like that, so free and easy, in Ben’s company. He strode to the window to find Dale talking to one of the gardeners. Anger coiled in Ben’s stomach as Dale made a deep belly laugh at something
the gardener said. Tim was young, maybe twenty at the most, and one of the apprentices at the Hall. He was also blond, blue-eyed, and drop-dead gorgeous. It didn’t take a rocket scientist to see Dale was attracted to him.

  Then Dale noticed him and waved. Ben thought about ignoring him and walking back into the study, but he knew that would be petty and childish. Girding his loins, Ben pasted on a fake smile and joined the two men. He bent down to pet the dogs.

  “Hello. You look like you’ve had more fun than me.”

  Dale grinned at him, his eyes twinkling in the sunshine. “I met up with Tim, and he showed me around. Tim’s big brother went to my uni. I used to get drunk with him at the student union. I was just telling him some of Adam’s secrets.”

  “I’m sure he’ll appreciate that,” Ben said dryly.

  Tim laughed, although he seemed a little self-conscious now Ben was there. “He’s been spilling my secrets my entire life. It will be good to get my own back.”

  “Don’t forget to mention the one about wearing the pink bra and tied to the lamppost,” Dale said, and he and Tim laughed, momentarily excluding Ben from the joke.

  Ben was about to excuse himself and retreat to his study to lick his wounds when Dale turned to him.

  “Are you free now?”

  “More or less. Are you sure you don’t want to continue with the tour?” Ben was proud of the way he kept the jealousy out of his voice.

  Maybe he wasn’t quite as successful as he hoped, because Dale narrowed his eyes and Tim shuffled his feet.

  “I’d—er—better get on,” Tim said, “or Joe’ll have words.”

  Joe was the head gardener at Calminster Hall, with an extensive and salty vocabulary that he never failed to exercise.

  “Thanks for your time,” Dale said, clapping Tim on the back. Then Tim excused himself, and it was just the two of them.

  Ben was about to speak when Dale got there first. “What’s wrong?”

  “Nothing’s wrong,” Ben lied.

  “Then why do you look as if I killed your puppies?”

  “I don’t.” Now Ben felt like an idiot.

  “Yes, you do,” Dale insisted. “You were fine when I left.”

  “You and Tim—”

  “What about him?” Then Dale’s eyes widened. “You were jealous of Tim?”

  “No.”

  “You’ve got no reason to be jealous of him. He’s totally straight. Got a girlfriend in the village.” Now Ben felt embarrassed, even more so when Dale laughed. He should have known about Tim’s girlfriend. He tried to avert his gaze but Dale cupped his jaw and made Ben focus on him. “She lives next door to me. Jenny’s a nice girl. I told her I’d say hello if I saw Tim.”

  “You told your neighbor you were coming here?”

  Dale nodded. “I said you invited me to look around the Hall. I know you’re not out to the village. But I don’t play games, Ben. I wouldn’t come here and flirt with someone else.”

  “One of my exes used to,” Ben said thinly.

  “Then he’s better off as an ex. My ex spent our entire relationship shagging women, and I never knew until I caught him in my bed with one of the women officers. She didn’t know about me.”

  “You weren’t out to the crew?”

  Dale shook his head. “Baz was firmly in the closet. I didn’t realize he kept it a secret so he could screw around.”

  “How long were you together?” Ben asked.

  “Three years, nine months, and five days.”

  “You counted?”

  Dale snorted. “You mean you don’t know?”

  “I do,” Ben admitted with a wry smile. “Although none of them were long enough to deserve it.”

  “I know, and it fucking hurts that he cheated. I don’t play games. Maybe I’m old-fashioned, but I’m faithful to my boyfriends.” Dale knew it would take a long time for him to get over Baz’s betrayal.

  “How many have you had?”

  Dale counted on his fingers. “Alf, Will, Paul, and Roland. Baz was the longest. What about you?”

  “Hookups only, guys not wanting a public relationship,” Ben said. “They were happy to keep it discreet.”

  “My crew know I’m gay. I’m not being shoved back in the closet again.”

  The silence hung between them crystalline sharp, and there was a warning in Dale’s eyes. Still, he wasn’t able to hoist the rainbow flag above Calminster Hall just yet.

  “I need time.”

  “I can give you that,” Dale said. “Much as I’d like to walk down Calminster High Street holding your hand, I don’t think anyone is ready for that. I’m not sure I’m really ready yet.” He emphasized the end word.

  Ben shuddered at the thought. Calminster village definitely wasn’t ready to see the lord of the manor parade down the street with another man—yet.

  “On the other, if you should invite me to dinner….” Dale waggled his eyebrows.

  “I’ve done that already,” Ben pointed out.

  “So you have. When’s dinner?”

  “I don’t usually eat ’til seven.”

  Dale glanced at his watch. “That means we’ve got—an hour and a half until we eat.”

  “So?”

  “I think it’s time you showed me the house.”

  Ben stared at him. “You’ve just toured the garden and now you want a tour of the Hall?”

  “I do.”

  “Are you a glutton for punishment?”

  Dale stepped closer to Ben, into his personal space. “I thought we might find some dark corners.”

  Heat poured from the man. They weren’t touching, but from the way Ben’s body was reacting they might as well have been, “I think the Hall might have one or two.”

  “And you know where they are?”

  Oh yes, Ben knew exactly where they were.

  “Let’s go, then.”

  Dale went to move away, but Ben grabbed his bicep. “There’s something you’ve got to know. I don’t play games either.”

  “Good to know.” Dale took Ben’s hand. “We need to find one of those dark corners.”

  “Why?” Ben asked stupidly.

  “Because I’m going to kiss you.”

  “You could kiss me here,” Ben pointed out.

  Dale’s smile was wicked. “I don’t plan to make it a PG kind of kiss.”

  Despite Dale’s heated words, he didn’t seem anxious to get on with the kissing. He seemed content to go through the house as Ben gave him the visitor’s tour. Ben was proud of his childhood home. He’d grown up with a history that stretched back centuries, and he’d always known that Calminster Hall would be his to hand down to his children. Even though he’d realized he was gay at an early age, Ben had accepted that he would have to get married at some point to have children, and despite the change in the marriage laws, he knew the only way to continue the line of Calminster would be by marrying “traditionally.” Until his relationship with Sabrina, he’d accepted his marriage to a woman as part of his duty to the estate. However, his relationship with Sabrina had shown him that making love to a woman was impossible. Meeting Dale had been a wake-up call to Ben. Dale was a dose of oxygen in a world that had been filled with smog.

  Dale asked intelligent questions as they went through the rooms, his childhood outings to stately homes obviously lending a degree of knowledge in styles and furnishings of the past.

  As they discussed a rare Chippendale, Ben said, “Don’t take this the wrong way, but I would never have guessed you grew up on a council estate.”

  “Because council house kids don’t know anything about posh stuff, except to steal it?”

  Ben heard the snark in Dale’s tone. “You know I don’t mean that.”

  “Don’t you?”

  “No, I don’t, and I never once thought you’d be liable to steal.” Ben bit down on his lip before he continued. “One of the programmes we have running on the estate is employing people from all backgrounds, who struggled to find work, including peopl
e newly released from prison. They come here to learn a trade, whether it’s in the house or the gardens.”

  “And you trust them with your precious things?”

  “Yes.”

  “But you have security guards?” Dale pointed out.

  “I trust the people who come to work here. In the five years we’ve been running Calminster Moving On, I’ve only been let down twice.”

  Dale nodded contemplatively, as if Ben had given him food for thought. “I know a few kids who could have done with something like this. They ended up back in prison again because they couldn’t find long-term work.”

  Ben pulled a face. “Unfortunately that’s the one thing I can’t offer them. This programme only lasts for a year after prison, but most of the people I help go on to find work, even if it’s not exactly what they want. They get a good reference from me, and that really helps.”

  “You’re a good man, Ben.”

  Ben flushed at Dale’s obvious praise. “I’ve had a lot of privilege growing up. It would be wrong of me not to offer something back.”

  “Are we near one of those dark corners you mentioned?” Dale asked.

  Ben was taken aback by the sudden change in subject. “Not too far away. Why?”

  “I think I’d like to show you just how pleased I am that you are a decent man.” Dale’s voice was certainly hoarse and needy.

  Shivering in anticipation, Ben drew Dale into one of the small bedrooms and then through into an even smaller room, which he informed Dale had been the valet’s bedroom. “No one will find us here,” he said.

  Before Ben had drawn the next breath, Dale’s mouth was on his, and thoughts and words became irrelevant.

  Chapter Seven

  DALE had been really offended with Ben’s remark about his council house upbringing. He wasn’t ashamed of his background, and he loved his mum to pieces, but in the face of so much wealth and privilege, he was feeling a little inadequate. And then in the next breath he’d felt ashamed at being annoyed with Ben, as Ben tried to explain about his plans to assist ex-cons back to employment. The only way Dale could think of getting over the awkward moment was to find a quiet corner and get on with the kissing.