by H. E. Trent
“Just answer her,” Oreva—sprawled lazily in the co-pilot’s chair—said.
“You wouldn’t say that if you knew what she wanted.”
Oreva snorted. “The usual shit, right? I think you’ve forgotten how many Hauge family conferences I’ve witnessed.”
“I haven’t forgotten.” Alex turned on the camera in the back section to see what Luke was doing. He’d been avoiding looking, assuming that Autumn would capitalize on his absence by sinking her claws into his man the moment he put the screen up, but she seemed to be behaving herself. Although they were sitting quite close, with her looking onto Luke’s tablet screen, there wasn’t anything remotely romantic happening.
Rolling his eyes, he turned the monitor off. Never in his life had he felt such jealousy. He’d never had to be jealous. He was Alex Hauge, and Hauges were born with silver spoons shoved into their mouths. Everything he’d ever wanted, for the most part, he’d had.
Perhaps what jarred him about his circumstances with Luke was that the man was the first thing Alex had to work for. Luke was the first important thing he’d wanted simply because of his own wishes and desires, and not because the idea had been planted into his head by influencers.
“You best tell me what the problem is now,” Oreva said, “especially if I need to tell lies for you.”
“I appreciate your support, but I don’t need you to lie for me. I’ve already told the truth on the matter. That’s why she’s calling so frequently.”
The panel chimed again, perfectly on the hour.
“She must be setting a fucking timer,” Alex muttered. He adjusted the ship’s course. They were making pretty good time back to Little Gitano, and he was sure they were all eager to get the ship tethered someplace stable and to sleep in beds that weren’t rocking with the wind.
“Tell me,” Oreva said. “How bad can it be? After all, I’ve shared with you all the sordid details of my falling out with Anna.”
“You hide your shame well.”
“I was brought up that way. Emotions were weak things, and I was taught to pretend I didn’t have any. For the most part, I grew out of that training, but some elements linger. I assure you, I’m more out of sorts about the situation than I let on and the fact that I can’t do a thing about it…” He blew a frustrated huff through his teeth and pounded the armrests. “It makes me want to abandon this work and go back to Earth.”
“And what good would that do? Nothing would change if you confront her in person.”
“But I’d feel better.”
“No, you wouldn’t.”
Oreva grimaced and murmured, “You’re probably right.” He sighed dramatically. “Still, I have to do something to make this…pit in my stomach go away. It’s not going to go away just from me wishing it would.”
“What you’re feeling is helplessness. It’ll go away when you distract yourself with more important things.”
“How do you know?”
“Because I’ve felt the same plenty of times recently myself.”
In fact, Alex was feeling that way a bit right then. His grips on the steering controls were white-knuckle-tight not because the mechanisms were so hard to manipulate, but because if he let go, he was going to turn that camera back on. And if he turned the camera back on, he was going to find something to fault in Luke and Autumn’s proximity. Alex would have to go back there and separate them as though they were schoolchildren who wouldn’t stop talking during a lesson.
He’d have to go back there and separate his lover—who he’d outed himself for—and his lover’s fucking wife.
When he thought of it that way, the desire made no sense, but he craved doing it, anyway, the same way Oreva wanted to go back to Earth on a pointless errand.
Another chime erupted from the COM panel.
“You should at least check it to see if it’s her,” Oreva said.
“It’s her. She’s the only one assigned to that chime tone.”
“Oh, so you’re efficient about ignoring people, then.”
“Only her. Everyone else at least gets a fair shot of hearing my voice.”
Oreva’s laugh was warm and sultry as he slid lower in his seat. “I don’t know why that makes me feel better.”
Another chime. Not from Alex’s mother, but close enough—his manservant.
He groaned. “Now she’s using Stefan’s frequency.”
“Maybe not. Stefan’s unimpeachable. He wouldn’t let her piggyback on that line. He’s too damned professional.”
“Think so?”
“I know so. Answer him.”
Alex leaned in and tapped the voice and video activation buttons on the communications panel. He wanted to see who he was talking to before he said one word.
Stefan appeared on the screen, freshly shaven as always, sandy blond hair fixed precisely, and necktie perfectly knotted.
Alex raised a brow in query.
Stefan looked briefly off to the side and cleared his throat.
“Are you alone, Stefan?”
“For the moment, sir. I haven’t much time. She’s on a rampage.”
“My mother, I take it.”
Looking back to the screen, Stefan gave a curt nod.
“And I take it you know the cause of her outrage?”
“Yes, sir.”
“And?”
Stefan’s gaze flitted rightward, ostensibly toward the banging sound that came a moment later. The video and sound weren’t quite in sync, but close enough given the extraordinary distance the transmission was being sent from. He looked back to Alex and moved closer to the camera. “I would consider it a very generous act on your part if you’d…make arrangements for me to join you there.”
Stefan was inscrutable on the best of the days, but that wasn’t anything like what Alex had expected to hear from him. He’d assumed Stefan would put some proper spin on “You can fuck whoever you want, sir, that’s none of my business,” but being asked for relocation consideration was an entirely different ballpark.
“Why?” Oreva asked, panning the camera toward him. “You’ve got a wonderfully warm family there on Earth. Why leave them?”
“Because if I’m gone, they won’t bother them.”
“By they you mean…”
“He’s referring to my family,” Alex said. “Are they making threats, Stefan?” He hadn’t wanted to think his mother was capable of it when she’d been engaging in her long-distance terrorizing of Ais, but he’d caught her red-handed. She had nastiness in her heart, and Alex had no reason to doubt she wouldn’t turn on her staff’s innocent families.
Stefan fidgeted the knot of his tie and straightened his lapels. “I have worked for you for a long time.”
“Yes.”
“I know what she’s capable of, even if you don’t. I’ve heard the things she’s said about your sister. I’ve seen the messages she’s sent her. Madam McGarry’s existence infuriates her.”
“In spite of the fact that my father didn’t have much to do with her creation beyond the theft of his sperm.”
Stefan turned his hands over in that elegant, “You said it, not me” sort of way. Once again, he moved closer to the camera. He said in a near-whisper, “Your father had been making some queries about adding Madam McGarry to official documentation—his will and such. Legitimizing her.”
“Huh.” Alex shrugged at Oreva’s squint of curiosity. He was just as taken aback by the idea as his friend. “That’s surprising. He hasn’t had an original thought for the better part of twenty years.”
“I think he always wanted a daughter.”
What Stefan didn’t say didn’t need to be said. Alex’s father had wanted more than one child, but his wife was a brick wall on the matter. He had his supposedly perfect heir. Anything more would have been a waste of effort, in her opinion.
“Suffice it to say,” Stefan said, “if there is going to be upheaval here, I’d like to be far away from it.”
“You could just put in your
notice. I’ll be sorry if you’ll have to, but I’ll understand.”
“No, I don’t think you will. She said that—”
Another crash in the background made Stefan cut off his words. He closed his eyes tight and took what seemed to be a bracing breath. Then he whispered quietly to himself for a few seconds before reopening his eyes and putting his professional blank face back on. “She said that I influenced you this way. That you’re behaving the way you are because of me.”
“Wait,” Oreva said, leaning forward. “What do you mean by that?”
Fuck.
Alex panned the camera back toward him. “You have nothing to do with this, Stefan.”
“Of course not, sir.”
“What’s he talking about, Alex?”
Alex dragged his hand down his face and turned on the ship’s autopilot.
He’d known that at some point, he was going to have to come out to Oreva. He couldn’t hide Luke—especially not on a planet where people tended not to make assumptions about who men slept with. If he couldn’t confide in the man he’d made his best friend, then he hadn’t done a good job of picking a friend.
To Stefan, he said, “As soon as I land in Little Gitano, I’ll speak to my agent in Buinet and find out how we may possibly legally relocate you here. You need to give me some time. Can you lay low until then?”
“He can go to the hotel in Lagos,” Oreva said. “No one will bother him there.”
“Can you get to Lagos?” Alex asked Stefan.
“Yes, sir. I believe I can leave tonight. I just need to arrange the absence with my family.”
“I think they’ll understand. Your family has served mine for three generations. If anyone would understand the vagaries of Hauges, it’d be them.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Contact me as soon as you get to the hotel.”
“Yes, sir. I will. And thank you.”
At another thunderous crash that actually made him flinch, Stefan reached to the COM controls on his end and disconnected.
Alex wanted to turn off the autopilot and return to manual steering so he’d have something to occupy himself, but there was no good reason to. It was one thing to ignore his mother from several light years away, but he couldn’t ignore the best friend sitting right next to him.
“As far as I know,” Oreva said, “and I may be wrong given how unintelligible your mother’s shrieking is at times, but…the only flaw she finds in Stefan is whom he sleeps with.”
Alex grunted and rubbed his eyes.
“Is there something you’d like to tell me?”
“Not particularly.”
“Well, obviously you told her. Shouldn’t that be much harder?”
“She’s not sitting right here.”
“Exactly right. She’s not sitting right here. I am, because I’m your business partner and friend of fifteen years years. Do you think I’d abandon you during a crisis?”
“No.”
“Do you think I’d decide that you’re no longer of any value to me because certain circumstances in your personal life have changed?”
Alex did have to give that a bit of thought. Friendships around him had fallen apart over less.
He shouldn’t have had to give the question any thought. Oreva was a through-it-all kind of friend, and Alex had done his part over the years to ensure he was the same in return.
“I would hope not,” Alex demurred. “I’d hate to lose someone who’s been like a brother to me over who I love.”
“Let’s be more precise here. I wouldn’t ditch you over your sexual orientation. I’d ditch you if the object of your affection was…” Oreva shuddered on cue. He’d always been the dramatic sort. “Appalling.”
Alex chuckled and turned off the autopilot. He could save a bit of fuel by relieving the burden on the computer for a while. “He’s not appalling. In fact, you know him.”
At that exact moment, there came a heavy-handed rap from the other side of the partition that could have been performed by no one other than Luke. Autumn didn’t have enough physical substance for it.
“He’s right there,” Alex murmured. He hit the partition power switch.
When it was down a foot, Luke said, “If we’re about a thousand kilometers outside of Little Gitano, there’s a little community we can stop in to stretch our legs, unless you want to power straight through.”
Oreva propped his chin onto his fist and blinked at Alex.
Alex cleared his throat and put his focus back on the controls. “I’m willing to go straight through if everyone else is. Someone else may need to drive for a while, though.”
“Oh, I’ll drive,” Oreva said. “Just like driving a car, hmm?”
Alex grimaced. “A bit more finesse might be required. After all, there’s altitude to consider.”
“Altitude is only a problem for people whose heads aren’t always a million miles away.” Oreva wriggled his eyebrows. “Mine usually is.”
“I’ll show you how, then.”
“Good. I love acquiring new skills.” He switched seats with Alex. “Plus, you never know when you might need to have an extra getaway driver on hand for something.”
“We’re not planning any heists anytime soon, are we?” Luke asked.
“Not that I know of,” Alex murmured. He activated the ship’s guided navigation feature. It would walk Oreva through the basics of keeping the ship in the air—and would compensate for any illogical moves on his part—but if they hit any major weather or hard-to-navigate geological formations Alex had forgotten about, he or Luke would have to take over. The best Alex could tell, Luke could fly anything. He had that in common with Edgar Salehi and Allan Rowe. Apparently, some people had the right kind of brains for piloting. Alex simply did the best he could.
Oreva fiddled with the altitude knob and, grinning lecherously, looked from Alex to Luke, then back to Alex again.
“Watch it,” Alex said in an undertone.
Oreva shrugged. “I was just thinking that if you were going to drive your mother to an early grave, doing it with someone who reminds her of Paolo would be a stroke of genius.”
“Who’s Paolo?” Luke asked.
“Remember when I told you that it isn’t all that uncommon for people associated with the monarchy to have extramarital lovers?” Alex asked.
“Yeah?”
Reasonably convinced Oreva wouldn’t send the vessel crashing to the ground, Alex stood and stretched his back. “My mother once had a tennis coach named Paolo. Tall, dark, model sort of fellow with bright white teeth and an indecipherable accent.”
“And you think I resemble that?” One of Luke’s eyebrows slanted.
“Only peripherally. Bring up Italians at all, and you can send her into an incomprehensible fit.”
“Like the one she’s in now,” Oreva murmured.
Luke crossed his arms over his chest and leaned against the wall behind the pilot seat. “You talked to your mother?”
Letting out a ragged exhalation, Alex raked his fingers through his hair. “No. I spoke with my manservant Stefan. He relayed the news. My mother is inconsolable right now and on the rampage.”
The communications console gave another cheerful chirp.
“There she goes again!” Oreva sang.
“What’s she on the rampage about?” Luke asked.
Oreva chuckled. “A certain Italian, but I think, in general, she’s the sort who looks for reasons to be angry.”
Luke gave Alex an eloquent look—it was a “Speak” look, and Alex was too tired to remember what he had or hadn’t told him. So he spoke. “She found some woman willing to marry me. I told her I already had a lover and that you didn’t particularly wish to meet the young woman.”
“Hi. He’s married,” came Autumn’s sullen voice from the back.
“Yes, you are,” Oreva said with a chuckle. “You calculating bastard.”
Obviously undeterred by Oreva’s chiding, Luke furrowed his brow and shifted his
weight, keeping his gaze locked on Alex. “So, she’s raising hell because of me.”
“Yes.”
“And you…”
“I’m not running away from this, Luke.” He didn’t care how much he had to battle Autumn or how nutty the rest of the Cipriani clan made him, he wasn’t giving up.
“So, you’re not concerned about your reputation anymore?”
“If I planned on spending much time on Earth, perhaps I would. If there was any shot at hell of me actually being the king someday, maybe I would.” But probably not. Even if he were king, he wasn’t entirely certain he’d toe the line. There was no rule that said he had to have a wife. Obviously, securing an heir would be an issue, but there were ways around that.
Luke smirked. “What about your business?”
“What about it?” Autumn called up. “He’s on Jekh. No one here’s going to care.”
“But on Earth…” Luke said.
“I don’t have any new projects in the works,” Alex said.
“Even if you did,” Oreva said, squinting at the flashing COM console, “everyone knows you’re totally aboveboard. I’m the one they need to be cautious of. Heh. Heh heh.”
Alex pinched the bridge of his nose. That dry laugh tended to be a harbinger of events that would almost certainly cause him a headache, but he chose to worry about them when they actually happened.
The console chirped again.
“Fuck, just answer it,” Luke said. “I’ll talk to her if I have to, just to get the beeping to stop.”
“Ooh, this is going to be juicy,” Oreva said.
Alex swatted Oreva’s hand away from the console. “So, you all want to provoke her? Is that what you’re doing? In case you’ve forgotten, Oreva, I still need to clear the way for Stefan to get off the planet.”
“Knowing how efficient Stefan is, I bet he had a bag already packed and a cab waiting outside the mansion. At the very least, he’s outside of the splash zone right now, I’d bet you.”
Another chime from the console.
Grunting, Luke squeezed between the seats and slapped the connection buttons. “Greetings from outer space,” he said drolly before Mother could open her mouth to speak.
She stood dumbstruck in front of the camera with her jaw flapping and nose crinkled with distaste.