Gambling on Love

by Jane Davitt

  Gary nodded jerkily and tried not to whimper when his action sent snow sliding down the back of his neck. He’d been outside for a few minutes, and he’d rediscovered the meaning of “chilled to the bone.” It’d been a long time since winter had meant being cold. Abe was right. He’d gotten soft in the city.

  Abe sighed. “You got anything else to wear before you freeze in that position? A thicker coat?”

  “Yeah, but it’s p-packed and I don’t remember where,” Gary stuttered through chattering teeth, resisting the urge to add “Mom” to his reply. Fuck manly stoicism. He’d been in a car crash. He thrust his hands into his pockets and stamped his feet, trying to get some feeling back in his toes. “God, it’s freezing out here!”

  “Wind chill’s pretty fierce today,” Abe allowed as he got down from his truck, swinging his legs around before jumping out. He landed with a muffled thud, his boots sinking into the loosely packed snow, and straightened.

  He was still taller than Gary by four inches, at least. The difference in height was enough to make Gary tilt his head back a little to meet Abe’s eyes, a minor source of annoyance. At five feet ten, Gary wasn’t short, but he’d never liked being loomed over by anyone but Peter. It didn’t count with Peter. Gary had chosen to kneel for him.

  “You’ll want to see my insurance card—”

  “Nope.” Abe slammed the truck door. He stepped around Gary and surveyed the situation in silence. The snow settled on him, falling heavily now, but he ignored it, bending to examine twisted metal already layered in white. “Uh-huh.”

  It took thirty seconds for Abe to study the way their vehicles had gotten jammed together. The verdict wasn’t what Gary had hoped to hear.

  “I can probably back off and get free, but you’re not driving anywhere. The front end’s twisted to hell and back, and you’ve busted both your lights.”

  “What?” Gary joined Abe in peering at the damage. His car had gotten the worst of the collision, since Abe’s truck was built on much sturdier lines and higher off the ground. “Shit. You don’t think it can be fixed?”

  “How the fuck should I know? I never did finish rebuilding my car, remember?” Gary groaned, and Abe must’ve felt a shred of pity because he added, “Probably, but it’ll need towing into town, and no one will come out here tonight even if you did get a signal by some miracle. You haven’t been gone that long, Fox. You know how it works.”

  Gary looked around him, trying to ignore his reaction at hearing his old nickname on Abe’s lips. A slip of the tongue, that was all. It didn’t mean anything. Outside the pool of light from the headlights, there was nothing but darkness. No streetlights, no houses, no other cars. Only snow, bare trees, and darkness. He wanted to throw back his head and howl, but a heavy weight of despair dampened even that flicker of emotion. He’d been running on fumes, he realized, letting the exhilaration of this trip carry him forward and distract him from the recent upheaval in his life. Now that his journey had been derailed, he was lost in every sense of the word.

  “Well, that fucking sucks.” He launched a kick at the snow around him, sending it flying up in a thick cloud. He’d lashed out without thinking, taking out his frustration on one of the elements to blame for the crash, but some of the snow flew into Abe’s face. Coupled with the bitterness behind Gary’s words, it wasn’t surprising Abe seemed to read it as deliberate on Gary’s part.

  Abe shook his head, clearing the snow from his face with an impatient rub of a gloved hand and glaring at Gary. “What the hell?”

  “I didn’t mean to do that. I’m sorry, okay?” He tried to smile again, but it’d been a while since that particular expression had felt right on his face, and his cheeks were stiff with cold. “If it’ll make you feel any better, you can throw some snow at me.”

  The blistering look that earned him was hot enough to melt the snow around them. “I’m not twelve or I might give that idea some thought. If you’re done fooling around, I’ll back up if I can. Safest place for you is beside me.” Gary drew in a breath, preparing to argue, and Abe jerked his thumb at his truck. “Move your ass before the snow buries us. And put this on,” he said irritably, drawing a slightly damp black knit cap from his pocket. “You’re turning blue.”

  Abe rammed the cap over Gary’s head, plastering his snow-encrusted hair to his scalp, but bringing blessed warmth a few moments later.

  Gary stared after Abe, openmouthed with indignation at being dressed as if he were a toddler, but there was nothing to say. He could take off the hat—a hat he was sure made him look ridiculous—but doing that would make him look more stupid because he’d get hypothermia and die.

  The lure of a respite from the biting wind was too strong for Gary’s pride to stand a chance. He got into the truck using the driver’s door, as ordered, and scooted over to the passenger seat with no grace at all, scattering snow everywhere. The comparative heat inside the truck when the door was closed again made him gasp, the exposed skin on his face and hands prickling painfully back to life.

  He was aware of being studied, but he ignored the scrutiny in favor of rubbing some feeling back into his hands.

  “Hold on to something,” Abe warned.

  The engine coughed and roared back to life, and Abe backed the truck. The grind of metal on metal sounded worse than the noise the crash had made, but before Gary lost hope, the truck lurched backward, and space appeared between it and the Taurus.

  “Yeah,” Abe said, more to himself than Gary. “That’ll do it.” He turned his head. “Looks like we got lucky.”

  “Speak for yourself.”

  The headlights showed the extensive damage to the Taurus. He’d bought the car knowing it didn’t have much life left in it, but he’d expected it to take him to his destination without a problem. He could complete his journey some other way, but this was a definite setback. He didn’t count himself as a superstitious man, his trust in his lucky coin aside, but it was difficult to see this as anything but a bad omen. The trip had been fine up until the detour today, but experience had taught him anything too good to be true was exactly that. Was this Peter’s way of screwing with him from beyond the grave? The man had been kind to him in a way, but no one knew better than Gary that Peter could be capricious, even cruel, when the mood took him.

  Abe followed his gaze. “Yeah, it took a knock. You need a hand getting your gear out?”

  “Huh?”

  “Your gear,” Abe repeated patiently. “What you’ll need for tonight, anyway. I can’t guarantee we’ll be able to get back here until late tomorrow. It all depends on the storm. You said you had some winter clothes packed?”

  “You’ll drive me into town?” Gary had whiplash from veering between being annoyed at Abe and grateful. Some things never changed. “Thanks. How about I buy you a drink when we get there? Catch up before I head out tomorrow.” He had enough money for that at least. Peter had left him funds for the trip, and Peter’s idea of basic needs when it came to accommodation and food were based on his standards. Gary stayed at the cheapest places he could find to spin the money out. The accident would leave his financial cushion leaking feathers, but if he had to, he’d walk the rest of the way, his thumb out for a ride.

  Abe shook his head. “I’m headed home. You’re welcome to ride with me and stay there until the storm goes by—I leave you here and you’ll be dead by morning, so it’s not like I’ve got much choice there—but I’m not taking you into town. So are we getting your stuff, or do I start driving and you go without brushing your teeth tonight?”

  “None of the above.” He’d never been good at backing down from a challenge, even a self-imposed one. What Abe had said qualified as a pushy ultimatum, and he’d had his fill of those after the last five years. “I’ll take my chances in my car and flag someone down who’s got the balls to drive into town instead of running for cover. The way my luck’s been going, it’ll be the gym teacher who told us we were perverts when he caught us in the showers, but I can deal with that.�
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  “Coach Dyer retired to Florida six years ago, so I doubt it. Stop being such a fucking drama queen, Fox.”

  “Don’t call me that again.” It might’ve seemed petty, but he could remember Abe using that name, his voice rich with affection, and Gary didn’t need those memories resurfacing.

  “There won’t be anyone driving by,” Abe said, with maddening patience. “You’re lucky I did.”

  “Lucky?” Gary laughed at him. “By whose definition? If you’d stayed home today, I wouldn’t have been blinded by your lights—did you have them on high beam, by the way?—and I wouldn’t have wrecked my car. I’d be in town by now, enjoying a hot bath and a glass of wine.”

  “Thought you were passing through. And the road you were on before you saw me and did your moth imitation leads to nothing but trees. It dead ends in a mile or two. I know. I live there. You were lost. Twenty miles from home and you were spun dizzy lost. Admit it.”

  “Fine. I’ll get my damn toothbrush.” Gary got out of the truck and immediately discovered why Abe had told him to climb into the truck from the driver’s side. Outside the passenger door, the snow was deep enough to come high up his calves, soaking through his thin pants and leaving them clinging to his legs. Gritting his teeth, he made his way back to his car, covering the few yards in what he intended to be a dignified stride but which became a graceless flounder. Once inside his car, in a cooling pocket of air, he folded his arms across his chest and glared out of the window at Abe’s truck. He couldn’t see Abe, but he was damn sure the reverse didn’t hold true.

  Still shivering, but filled with purpose, he searched through the various boxes piled up on the backseat. Somewhere in one of them—please God let it not be one of the bags in the trunk—was his winter jacket and a pair of never-worn ski pants, bought for a trip to Whistler that had been canceled at the last minute. He hadn’t minded. As the only novice in the group, he’d have been left out of all the fun anyway.

  He located the box containing his ski clothes and struggled into his jacket and pants, plus some thick gloves and a far superior hat to the one Abe had forced on him. The gloves made it harder to paw through his stuff and find the other important gear to salvage, but he finally managed to pull the right few boxes free and set them by the car. They were covered with snow instantly, but he was almost done. The suitcases were all at the rear of the car, so they would be easier to retrieve.

  He was opening the cargo door when a heavy hand on his shoulder made him jump.

  Gary. Gary fucking Stratton, in the flesh, as mouthy and sharp as ever, still possessed of the ability to get Abe as ready to fizz up and over as a shaken bottle of pop. Eleven years and he hadn’t recognized the guy at first, too pissed over the accident, too busy trying to keep his temper under control. Then he’d seen those eyes, amber-brown, the color of dark beer, the sharp cheekbones and that sleek fall of red hair, and his body had clenched like a fist. Everything had stopped. Breathing, thought, even his heart had stuttered. Gary, close enough to touch—and on the heels of Abe’s shock and joy had come anger. It’d given him the strength to stay calm even if it’d crumbled in the face of Gary’s woebegone expression and the way the man shook with cold.

  It built back up as he surveyed the boxes next to the Taurus, and the row of expensive luggage Gary revealed when he opened the liftgate. At least Gary had found something sensible to wear. That raised Abe’s opinion of his intelligence a few points. He deducted a couple when he realized Gary still wore leather dress shoes.

  He had to yell over the wind, which was starting to howl again. “Are you nuts? I said grab the essentials and find a winter coat. This is only gonna get worse. We need to get going now.”

  “Not without my stuff,” Gary called back. “Everything I own is in there.”

  “You were already cold and wet when you put that winter gear on, and the temperature’s dropping. You’re probably in the early stages of hypothermia already. There’s no time to salvage anything. We need to get home. We can come back when the storm’s over.”

  “It’s everything I own. Help me get the cases out of the trunk. My suits are in there too, so be careful with them—”

  If stupidity were catching, Abe could come down with a terminal case from breathing the same air as Gary.

  “You may be literally freezing to death and you’re worried about your suits? Tell me you’re kidding.”

  “They’re bespoke,” Gary said impatiently, as if that should mean something to him.

  “And in some parallel universe, a version of me cares,” he snapped back.

  “Less talk, more moving boxes.” Gary gestured at his pickup. “Can’t you bring that closer? It’ll make loading go faster.”

  The man was unbelievable. Abandoning reason in favor of action, Abe grabbed Gary by the arm again and hauled him away. Gary dug in his heels, jerking back and making Abe stumble.

  “Get your hands off me, Carter!”

  Abe took a deep, slow breath. “Last chance, Stratton.”

  “Didn’t we do this already?” Gary demanded. “Only then I was going, and you were the one who wanted to stay. Listen up, muscle for brains, because I won’t say it again—”

  “You wouldn’t hear me out back then, and I don’t want to hear it now.” Abe drew back his fist and punched Gary hard enough on the jaw to rock the man back on his heels. Oh, it hurt. It fucking hurt. His knuckles throbbed viciously, pain radiating up to his wrist.

  Still felt good. Eleven years he’d waited to land that one, and a raw piece of him was soothed. Gary had left him. Thrown an ultimatum at him and gone. Abe could still remember the numb disbelief, the ache of loss.

  “What the hell?” Gary shook his head to clear it, and fingered his jaw, his eyes wide with astonishment. “You’ve got issues, you know that?”

  And you’ve got a hard jaw. He hadn’t expected to knock Gary out, but he’d hoped Gary would be groggy enough to be dragged away from the car and into Abe’s truck. Or intimidated. Gary didn’t intimidate worth a damn, though.

  “This is the part in our reunion where I’m supposed to hit you back, is it? Look, can we fight later—I can’t wait to see your hammerlock again—and move my things now? Please?”

  Abe looked first at the car, then at Gary. He shoved his icy hands into his jacket pockets. “Move them your damn self.”

  He turned to stomp back to his truck. He managed six steps before something struck him on the back of his head. He raised his hand and found the remnants of a hard-packed snowball clinging to his hat.

  He spun around, glaring. “A snowball? Seriously?”

  A second snowball hit his face, the powdery flakes compacted, able to hold a shape long enough to be thrown a short distance without disintegrating. The small missile had been flung with sufficient force to leave Abe’s face stinging, but it was the indignity of being nailed by a snowball that smarted.

  “We need to go, Fox—Gary,” he said as patiently as he could. Anger would be easier to channel than soothing empathy, but something told him they were running out of time. Fox’s nonsense might really be hypothermia-induced. If they stayed outside much longer, they’d be dead. “We can come back for it tomorrow, I promise, but I’m cold and your balls have got to be ready to fall off, along with your feet in those shoes, so let’s go back to my place, warm up, share a few beers and—”

  “One of those suits is a Henry Poole,” Gary informed him. “Made for me in Savile Row. Hand-stitched. Do you know how much it cost? How many fittings it took to get the pockets right? Do you know what owning a Henry Poole suit means? What I did to pay for it?”

  Abe opened his mouth, a retort primed and ready to go, but Gary shook his head, reminding him of a bull about to charge. Then Gary did charge, slamming into him and bringing them both down in an untidy heap.

  Winded, furious, Abe glared up at the face a few inches above him. “You stupid asshole. Get the fuck off me.” With his surroundings lit faintly by the headlights of his truck, it w
asn’t easy to see far, but this close to each other, he picked up on something that wiped his anger away. “Your face.”

  Gary blinked down at him, his exhaled breath cool by the time it reached him. Abe couldn’t be indifferent to a man on top of him, close enough that kissing would be easy—especially not when that man was Gary—but arousal, like anger, would have to wait.

  “What’s wrong with my face? It’s been a while, but I haven’t changed that much.”

  The wounded vanity and surprise made Abe smile, but only for a moment. He worked his arm free and put a snow-wet fingertip on Gary’s cold-reddened cheek. “Here. Your skin’s turning patchy and white. You’re on the way to getting frostbite. Get off me and get your ass in the truck. Turn the engine over and back it down here to me if you can handle it. I’ll deal with moving your crap.”

  Gary bit his split lip, gnawing at it hard enough Abe wondered if it was numb. “Great. Be careful with the Vuitton cases—”

  Abe heaved Gary off him unceremoniously and didn’t allow himself to feel more than a pang of regret at the loss of Gary’s body plastered against his. “Offer’s only good if you stop yapping and move.”

  He thought he heard a muttered and sarcastic “Sir, yes, sir” when Gary left, but he let it go.

  Gary handled backing the truck better than he would’ve expected given the depth of the snow, and it made his job easier to have it close by. The Taurus was packed full, items crammed into every crevice, but after retrieving his gloves, Abe steamed into the chore at hand, tossing boxes and suitcases into the bed of the pickup with a sublime disregard for neatness or the contents. If there was crystal and bone china along with his bespoke suits from London, England, Gary would unpack some expensive shards in the future, but Abe didn’t care. Normally, he was a help-his-fellow-man guy, but Gary was barely allowing himself to be helped.

  Gary stuck his head out of the open window. “How’s it going back there?”

  The question was innocuous enough, but he was in no mood to be chivvied along. “If you’d packed less, I’d have been done sooner. What happened, were you scared you wouldn’t have a shirt and tie that matched your favorite pocket square, so you brought along your entire closet?”