by Anne Tenino
“That’s not— Please believe me, I—I desire you. It’s just that my brand of desire may not take the form you’re used to.” Way to sell him on the product, Albano. “What I mean is this isn’t a one-way connection, you know? If you want something—something more than I’m giving you—please, just tell me. Being with you, touching you, is no hardship. Far from it.”
Seth bit his lip and dug his fingertips into Nate’s back. “It’s no hardship if you don’t—” His cell phone went off. “Sorry. That’s probably Lucas. I should get it to make sure he actually shows up.” Seth answered the call and walked into the bathroom, shutting the door as he greeted his friend.
Damn it. That discussion hadn’t gone the way Nate planned at all. Story of my life. How did you frame the conversation when the other person’s frames were completely different? How could he make Seth understand how huge a deal this was for him? One way or another, he needed to figure that out before Seth decided Nate was too high maintenance to be worth the effort.
By the time he dressed, fed Tarkus, brewed the coffee, and had an omelet ready to slide out of the pan, he still hadn’t figured out the answer to that little conundrum.
Seth strolled out of the bedroom, running his fingers through his damp hair. “I really need to start keeping my hair product in my car. How am I supposed to keep my ’do in place?”
Well, that was something. Seth apparently hadn’t rejected the notion of showering here again—which presupposed spending the night. “I’ll pick some up. What brand?”
“Don’t, I’m kidding.” Seth flicked his fingers in dismissal, and Nate’s heart sank. “I’ll bring some over next time.” Next time—heart bounces back.
“That’s . . . great.” He divided the omelet between two plates and set one in front of Seth. “A little piperade to start your day.”
“Mmm. Another Italian specialty?”
“Actually, it’s Basque, but I learned it from my dad.”
Seth sat down on a barstool and inhaled the steam rising from the eggs. “Mmm. Smells most excellent.”
“Thanks.” Nate nodded at the coffee by Seth’s plate. “Coffee’s up too. A little milk, right?”
Seth tilted his head, his hand poised halfway to the cup. “You remember how I take my coffee?”
“Sure. I saw how you doctored it when we stopped for coffee at the studio canteen after the tour.”
“That’s so sweet.” He took a sip and closed his eyes. “Perfect. My mother still doesn’t remember, and she’s had about a thousand times more chances.” He dug into the omelet. “Oh my God. This is incredible. If you keep feeding me like this, you’ll never get rid of me.”
That’s a fantastic plan. If I keep taking care of him—food, coffee, moral support—maybe the relationship will take care of itself.
“What did Lucas want?”
Seth shrugged. “He’s bringing Gabe with him.”
“Gabe?”
“Savage. His boyfriend. He won’t be as easy to fool as Lucas.”
“A skeptical sort, is he?”
“It’s not that.” Seth took another bite of eggs. “Jesus, this is good.” He chased it with a gulp of coffee. “But Gabe knows me better. I have tells.”
“You play poker with him or something?”
“No.” Seth stopped cutting up his omelet and met Nate’s eyes. “We, um, we used to fuck.”
Nate froze with his own fork poised over his plate. “You—you were in a relationship with him?”
Seth rolled his eyes. “God, no. We were friends with benefits, and he ended the benefits as soon as Lucas was back in town. It’s okay, I saw it coming, plus—in his case—just friendship is fine with me.”
“Ah.” Nate stabbed his omelet with extra force, wishing it were Gabe’s hand—or maybe his dick.
“Hey. Look at me.”
Nate responded to Seth’s cajoling tone—how could he not?—and looked up. “Hmmm?”
“It was nothing serious, okay? Gabe was always waiting for Lucas, and I knew it. We just hooked up when it was convenient. And once the convenience stopped, so did the sex. It’s a different thing altogether.”
“You deserve to be more than a convenience.”
“Sometimes convenience is all you need.” Seth shook his head. “It worked for me too.”
“Oh.” Did this suit Seth too? Would he walk away when it didn’t suit anymore, the way Jorge had done?
“It’s not what I want now, though.” He grinned. “For one thing, I never got piperade out of that deal.”
Nate forced himself to laugh. “Well, there’s that, I suppose.” He finished the last of his eggs. “So. You remember your cues?”
“Yup. When we’re on the landing, I have to say ‘rodents.’ Then upstairs, I have to trigger the sensor for the door.”
“And make sure they don’t come back downstairs again until I have time to reset the mirror.”
“Mmm, I like a man who establishes control.”
“I can, when the occasion warrants.”
“Sounds like fun.” Seth shot him a flirty look from under his lashes. “You’ll have to give me a list of warranted occasions.”
Oookaay. Nate’s skin suddenly felt a couple of sizes too small in several key locations. “I’ll—I’ll definitely think about it. But, for now, we’d better get going.”
Because whether or not their plan succeeded in getting the other Larsons to back off and let Pearl sell her house, Nate would take savage satisfaction from scaring the bejesus out of Gabe Savage.
Seth was pretty sure Grandma would notice he hadn’t come home last night. She’d known he was with Nate, and she’d definitely have checked for his car before going to bed and when she got up. He wasn’t normally an early riser, so if it wasn’t there in the morning . . .
And yes, she’d have paid attention because she wanted to know what was going on between him and Nate. The looks she’d given him yesterday before going off to have lunch with Eleanor had made that clear.
This morning at Nate’s had been a little awkward, and Seth imagined it wouldn’t get any better once they showed up at Sentinel House and Grandma started asking barely veiled questions.
Nosy old woman.
Correction, nosy woman seasoned to perfection.
“You good over there?” he asked Nate, sitting in the passenger’s seat of his car. Once the words were out, Seth nearly squeezed his eyes shut in embarrassment. He couldn’t do that, though, because he was driving.
“Fine.” One of Nate’s eyebrows twitched quizzically, but he went expressionless. “Why wouldn’t I be?”
“Just checking.” Shut up. You’re making this worse. “Do you want the heater on?”
Excellent. He clearly wasn’t done with the oversolicitous questions.
“Really, I’m fine.” Warmth enveloped Seth’s hand on the gearshift. Nate, touching him. Reassuring him.
That made things both a little better and a little worse. This right here? This situation would have benefited from his having had a boyfriend in the past. Then he’d have a clue how to behave the morning after. He knew all there was to know about how to act around a casual hookup over breakfast but next to nothing— Scratch that. He knew nothing about how to make sure the guy knew he was interested in waking up next to him for the foreseeable future. Should he just say it outright? I want to be your boyfriend.
Partner. That was the PC word. “I want to be your partner,” he whispered, then ripped his hand off the steering wheel and slapped it over his mouth. The car veered toward the shoulder, which meant he had to grab the wheel, so he lost physical contact with Nate. Tarkus yipped his displeasure at being thrown around in the backseat too.
Damn it.
When they parked in Seth’s driveway, Nate didn’t get out right away. “Are you okay?” he asked instead, capturing Seth’s hand again, but this time pulling it over onto his thigh. “You seem a little on edge.” A wave of something that wasn’t all warmth began to radiate up Seth’s arm,
comforting him enough that he could laugh. Well, chuckle, in an embarrassed way, but still.
Time to lay it on the line. “I’m just freaked out about . . . Tell me again you really want to be with me. Like this, and—” He jerked his head back the way they’d come, trying to indicate the bed they’d slept in together. “And like that. I don’t do this, Nate, or I haven’t done it. Had romantic relationships. I’m afraid I’m going to fuck it up somehow.” When he realized he’d dug his fingernails into Nate’s jeans, he loosened his grip.
Nate looked at him forever, eyes especially deep and serious. “You don’t need to stress about it. I’m not exactly a flighty guy, so you don’t need to worry that I’ll suddenly take off in a fit of pique. We’ll figure out the relationship as we go along, okay? So just . . . be yourself, I guess. That’s worked pretty spectacularly so far.” As Nate spoke, the knot of anxiety began to unravel in Seth’s chest.
“I can do that,” he said on a relieved breath. Then, well aware the chances Grandma was watching were fifty-fifty, he leaned over the console and tilted his head, pressing his lips against Nate’s perfect ones for a few seconds. Long enough to spark up a little heat inside him, in his heart and his gut. “I like this,” he whispered. Again with the being stupid, but he had all these feelings inside him that wanted out, and he couldn’t seem to bottle them up. The guy I am doesn’t want to hold back.
“Mmm.” Nate kissed him back before they finally got out of the car. When Seth glanced up, he saw the café curtain on one of the breakfast nook windows twitch.
Well, Grandma would have figured it out anyway. And honestly, he was glad she knew. She’d be happy for him.
“All right.” Seth rubbed his hands together in anticipation. “Let’s go haunt the shit out of this place.”
“You won’t have any trouble selling this house,” Lucas announced ten seconds after he walked in the door. “It’s perfect, Mrs. Larson.”
“Aren’t you sweet.” Grandma beamed at him, then allowed Lucas to give her a gentle hug hello. That was a little weird, because they barely knew each other. Apparently Lucas was a more affectionate guy than Seth had realized. That or he had a soft spot for Grandma.
As Lucas began nattering on to her, complimenting her on the house and how historically accurate it was, Seth raised an eyebrow at Gabe.
The guy smirked. “It is pretty damned impressive. Didn’t know you were so good with detail work.”
Without missing a beat, Lucas—in the middle of telling Grandma that Gothic Revival was his preferred nineteenth-century architectural style—punched Gabe in the upper arm, hard enough that Gabe massaged it while sulking. “Not what I meant,” he muttered.
Right then, Tarkus came trotting in, plumy tail swishing close to a narrow table bristling with antique vases and figurines.
“Oh, good boy.” Grandma beamed at him, completely blind to all dangers he might present. “There’s my puppy.” Bending over—was that her spine creaking?—she clasped the dog’s head between her hands a moment, then scratched him thoroughly behind the ears. “Meet our visitors, Tarkus. This is Lucas and Gabe. They’re a couple.”
Panting happily, Tarkus paid no attention to them, instead he stared hopefully at Grandma.
“Didn’t know you had a dog.” Gabe frowned. In spite of what Grandma had said, the dog clearly wasn’t a puppy, and he and Gabe used to spend enough time together that the guy could reasonably expect to know if Seth had had a pet of any kind.
“He’s Grandma’s,” Seth said quickly.
Tarkus helped out by completely ignoring him in favor of sniffing at Grandma’s pockets, where she stowed her homemade dog treats.
“This place is really well-kept. It looks so period, you know?” Lucas was craning his neck, examining the crown molding in the entry hall. “Is that chandelier original?” Now Lucas was goggling up at the fixture.
Calling it a chandelier was kind of a stretch in Seth’s mind. It was more of a multibranched pendant lamp with a few crystals hanging off of it.
Okay, fine, it was a chandelier.
“Seth does all the restoration work.” Now his grandmother was beaming at him. Would she scratch behind his ears too? “He’s been responsible for the upkeep on Sentinel House for the past twelve years. Oh, dear, that reminds me.” Her smile melted into a grimace. “I forgot, there’s something I wanted you to look at—that doorway to the servants’ stairs on the second-floor landing is doing that thing.”
That was his first cue. “Last time didn’t fix it?” Befuddlement with a hint of apprehension, that was what he was aiming for.
Grandma shot him a quelling look—had he overacted?—before placing her hand on her chest, in a perfect embodiment of worry. “I’m afraid not.” She turned to Lucas and Gabe and then nearly blew it. “Can I offer you two some coffee?”
What was she doing?
“Or would you like to follow along? It might help if you saw the problems we need to fix as well as the good points, hmmm?”
Oh, nicely played, Grandma. She might have missed her calling. Seth would let her take the lead from now on in this charade, since she was clearly a better actor than him.
Lucas and Gabe followed along, with a few more gentle nudges from his grandmother. “Don’t worry if you hear any weird noises. It’s just the rodents in the attic,” Seth announced as they began climbing the steps, Tarkus scampering along behind them. “I’m pretty sure,” he added, as if speaking to himself.
Then came Grandma’s next bit of brilliance, at the mirror hanging on the wall of the landing halfway up the first flight. Just after she’d passed it and Lucas was about to, it cracked, loudly enough that they all halted at the noise. Tarkus did his part by staring at the wall and whining, no doubt detecting Nate’s presence.
“Oh no,” Grandma quavered. “Not that damned mirror again.”
Her distress was so real that Seth actually reached to comfort her, placing his hand under her elbow, before he remembered this was according to plan. Nate was doing a hell of a job behind that false wall. “Grandma, don’t worry. I’m sure it’ll, you know, resolve itself the same way it did last time.”
He must have played it right, because she didn’t give him any dirty looks. Instead she sighed and waved him on. As he turned to head upstairs again, he spied a glimmer of confusion in Lucas’s face.
Excellent.
When they reached the top of the flight, the door was ajar. Nate had made it automatic, since he couldn’t run out from behind the wall, around to the kitchen and then up the servants’ stairs in the three seconds it took them to climb a dozen or so steps.
Or maybe it was remote controlled? Either way, it meant he was sexy and talented.
Seth shut it, making sure the latch clicked audibly. “Seems fine, Grandma.” The second he turned, it sprung open again—and Tarkus growled right on cue, hackles raised, because Nate had embedded the distant sound of the UPS truck in the mechanism somehow.
He repeated that maneuver a few times, with Grandma getting increasingly agitated. The only moment of danger was when Gabe said, “Want me to take a look at it?”
“Absolutely not,” Grandma said before Seth could do more than blink stupidly. “You’re our guest. We’ll just leave this here, and Seth can figure it out later.”
“Yes, Grandma,” he said obediently, earning an eye roll from her as soon as the other two turned their backs.
Okay, yeah, that had been out of character.
As they traipsed back downstairs in a line, like a group of climbers after summiting the mountain, the real fun began.
“Oh my God,” Lucas gasped as he caught sight of the mirror on the landing. He stopped so suddenly he teetered, and Gabe reached out for him. “The crack is— Oh my God what is that?”
Craning his neck, Seth could just make out Fennimore’s face floating in the mirror—the miraculously unblemished mirror—like a scary clown meme. It was sternly eyeing Lucas as he stood frozen in front of it. Well, frozen except for t
he tremor in the hand he’d slapped against his chest.
In the pulsing silence after Lucas’s screech, Grandma waited a beat or two for Tarkus’s whine before pushing forward to peer into the mirror. “Oh, that’s, well, we think that’s Fennimore.”
“Fennimore Larson?” Gabe reared back, nearly losing his balance too, but he recovered fast. The image flickered out a split second before Gabe shoved in front of Lucas—to protect Lucas or to see what had freaked him out? Squinting suspiciously, Gabe poked his finger toward the mirror, not quite touching the glass. “Didn’t that have a crack in it?”
“Yeah, sometimes it does that,” Seth said helpfully. “I think it’s a heat thing, like cool air makes the crack widen and, uh . . .” He shrugged, doing his best impression of a straight guy who believed he knew everything.
The look he got from Gabe wasn’t particularly trusting. “Babe, what did you see?” he asked his boyfriend.
Lucas’s gulp was audible, and his face was as white as the proverbial ghost (although in Seth’s opinion, the “ghost” that had appeared in the mirror was downright florid). “Fennimore? Maybe? Who’s Fennimore?”
God, did the guy not read the papers? Not that Seth did much himself. “He’s my great-great-grandfather. You know, the guy that built this house. He was, um . . . he was murdered here.”
Dun-dun-duuun, wouldn’t have been out of place after that little announcement.
“You think you saw a face in the mirror?” Gabe asked reasonably.
“I don’t—I don’t know?”
Honestly, Seth almost felt sorry for Lucas for a second, there. Remember the bachelorette party. Okay, yeah, no mercy. The guy had this coming.
“Oh dear.” Grandma patted him. “I saw him too, but I’m sure it’s my imagination. If he were really haunting the house, I probably would have noticed before.”
“So, you think I saw him because of your imagination?”
“No, honey, I think that was in your imagination.” Grandma patted him some more, then flapped her hands to try to move the guys along. “Now, who wants that coffee I offered? It’ll get cold if we stand here jawing about phantoms in the mirror all day.”