Undue Influence

by Jenny Holiday

  It felt exactly the same now, though Adam understood that was an illusion. A trick of a mind that had made a mistake and bitterly regretted it. Things weren’t the same. They couldn’t go back—he’d made sure of it.

  “I wanted to say…”

  Freddy startled Adam out of his self-flagellation. His skin started to prickle, but he forced himself to keep walking as if he wasn’t on pins and needles waiting for Freddy to finish his aborted thought. This was how big things had gotten said all those years ago. It was easier to talk while you walked. I…really like you. And, later, I think I love you.

  “I didn’t know it was Kellynch that Sophie was buying.” Freddy blew out a breath. “I didn’t put her up to it.”

  “I didn’t think you had.” He truly hadn’t. Yes, he’d been knocked on his ass when he’d learned that Sophie was the purchaser, but it hadn’t occurred to him to think Freddy had been pulling the strings behind the scenes. It wasn’t that Adam wouldn’t have deserved just that, more that he assumed Freddy was too busy with his successful life to lower himself to something as petty as revenge. Adam might not have moved on, but he had no doubt that Freddy had.

  Freddy exhaled again, but this one sounded more like a sigh of relief.

  “What I said before was true,” Adam rushed to reassure him. “I’m glad to have someone like her at Kellynch.” Adam didn’t know Sophie Croft—née Wentworth—well. Freddy was two years older than Adam, and as Freddy’s older sister by five years, Sophie was half a generation ahead of Adam. “I feel like she’ll appreciate it, maybe more than a lot of other people would.” Certainly more than his mother had.

  “She will. She does.”

  That made Adam happy. Well, happy-sad.

  “Her husband had to leave the navy because of an injury, but he still loves the water. He has a mind to start a pleasure boating business. Dinner cruises for tourists, that sort of thing.”

  “I imagine that will be a success. That’s kind of a gap in the economy around here. The only thing close is the paddle boats and canoes you can rent downtown.” It was a great idea, actually. “They could pave a little trail down to the water. Build a bigger dock.”

  The waterfront at Kellynch had always been utilitarian—the family had never used it for boating—but it could easily be made prettier and more accessible. Back in the day, Adam and his siblings had sometimes picked their way through the rocky shore to go swimming. Well, mostly Adam.

  And Freddy. Adam and Freddy had gone swimming there quite a lot that last summer. They’d done other things in and by the water, too, scrambling up onto the dock and losing themselves in each other under cover of darkness.

  He forced the memory back and made himself keep talking. “If we could get the vines back under control, we could have tastings, too. People could come early and…” No. He’d misspoken. There was no we. Kellynch didn’t belong to the Elliots anymore.

  “You,” he said. “I meant you.”

  “Sophie,” Freddy corrected, though gently. “I’m only here temporarily.”

  “Right.”

  “But it’s a good idea.” He paused as they approached Rook Street. “This is where you turn? You’re staying at your brother’s, right?”

  Adam wanted to ask how Freddy knew that, but that was dumb. He was flattering himself to think Freddy had sought any special knowledge of him. This was a small, gossipy town, and probably everyone had dissected the foreclosure of Kellynch and its aftermath in minute detail. “Uh, yep, this is where I peel off.”

  “I’ll walk you the rest of the way.” Freddy gestured for Adam to make the turn ahead of him.

  Adam’s heart thumped. He ordered himself not to read anything into this. Freddy had always had a protective, chivalrous streak. He’d always walked Adam home back in the day, even before there was anything actually going on between them and despite the fact that it had been a ridiculously long walk to Kellynch and back to town where Freddy lived.

  “I was sorry to hear about your dad,” Freddy said when they’d made the turn and reestablished a rhythm.

  “Thanks. It was…a shock. One day he was out there testing barrels, and the next his heart had given out.”

  “So you didn’t get to take over like you wanted?”

  Adam shook his head, embarrassed that he had ever told Freddy about that foolish dream. That he’d ever thought he was smart enough to be the winemaker at Kellynch.

  “I’m sorry about that, too,” said Freddy, with more gentleness than Adam deserved. “So what happened? The vineyard couldn’t survive without him?”

  “Pretty much. There was no succession plan in place. We had someone in to take over, but…” Wilhelmina and Betsy spent all our operating money. “You, ah, remember my mother?”

  “Of course I do.” Freddy laughed, which Adam was both surprised by and grateful for. “Do you know she cornered me that night?”

  Adam didn’t have to ask what night. He and Freddy had whiled away many a day—well, many a night—outside at Kellynch, or in the barrel rooms, but they’d done it alone. The one family dinner Freddy had come to had been fraught. And that hadn’t even been a “I’m bringing my boyfriend to dinner” thing. Though he’d been out for a year at that point, Adam had been nervous about actually introducing Freddy as a significant other. His misgivings had been justified: when he’d announced he was bringing his friend Freddy Wentworth to dinner, his mother had started in on an interrogation about where Freddy lived and who his parents were. The phrase town riffraff was used more than once. Betsy had chimed in with the news that he was a high school dropout. Then Mark followed by launching a conversational grenade as he recounted Freddy’s town-square sex scandal. Adam had thought maybe he could get away with the ruse that Freddy was merely a friend, but as he watched his mother’s eyes narrow and her lips purse, he knew he had been naive. And though she hadn’t outright forbidden him from bringing Freddy over, he’d known the dinner wouldn’t go well.

  But he hadn’t known his mother actually said anything to Freddy that night. “She spoke to you? What did she say?” He didn’t know why he was asking. He wouldn’t like the answer.

  “She followed me when I went to the bathroom and told me outright I wasn’t good enough for you.” He chuckled. “I told her we were just friends.”

  Something in Adam rebelled, even after all these years, at the idea that Freddy had instinctively known he had to cover up the true nature of their relationship from his snobbish family.

  But of course Adam had done the same thing, and done it first.

  “But she wasn’t having it,” Freddy went on. “She said her assessment stood independent of the precise nature of our relationship.”

  “She what? Why didn’t you tell me any of this?”

  Freddy glanced over. “I was afraid she was onto us. I knew your relationship with your family was important to you, and that it was tenuous. But mostly I didn’t tell you because I knew it would upset you, and I saw no reason to do that.” He paused, then added, “At the time, I thought her opinion had no bearing on anything.”

  Adam wanted to explain that it hadn’t. His mother never could have made him give Freddy up. Hiding who Freddy was to him, maybe. But not giving him up.

  No, that distinction belonged to Rusty.

  “It turns out,” Freddy went on, “that her opinion was more widely held.”

  “Freddy, I…”

  What? He what? What could he possibly say that wouldn’t make him sound like Lulu McGuire, fawning all over Freddy because he’d become rich and famous? How could he explain his overreliance on Rusty’s opinion back in the day? He was there for me when no one else was? My relationship with my family was fragile, and I imagined a future in which Rusty was all I had? It all sounded so feeble now.

  Yap, yap, yap, yap, yap!

  Saved by Mr. Collins.

  Freddy whirled. “What the hell is that?”

  Mr. Collins did have quite a unique “bark.” It was like a cricket, but louder.
More like a high-pitched chain saw.

  The pitiful creature came loping up the street, barking his little head off. He made a beeline for Adam and started jumping up and down at his feet. When he was excited—which was a lot—Mr. Collins could jump a good two feet off the ground, which was pretty impressive considering his legs were probably only six inches long.

  Freddy’s laugh was a cross between delight and incredulity. “I repeat: what the hell is that?”

  Adam spoke to the dog first. “Shh!” Then to Freddy: “This is Mr. Collins.”

  “My God. He’s…”

  “Ugly as sin? An assault on the eardrums? Some breeder’s idea of a joke?” Adam had, despite himself, grown fond of Mr. Collins, but he held no illusions about the dog’s qualities. Or lack thereof.

  “What is he, exactly?”

  “I don’t know for sure. He was a stray who sort of attached himself to me. The vet’s best guess is he’s a greyhound-Chihuahua mix.”

  “Almost like one of greyhounds from the racetrack escaped and—”

  “Got in on with one of Mrs. Littleton’s Chihuahuas?” Mrs. Littleton owned an antique store downtown and was obsessed with her gaggle of purebred Chihuahuas, many of which she showed professionally. “Bingo.”

  “Wow.” Freddy squatted, probably to get a better look at Mr. Collins since the moonlight wasn’t very bright. Mr. Collins was ugly as sin. He had huge, pointy ears that were way too big for his head, bulging milky-blue eyes, and a scrawny body encased in a layer of fur so thin he looked bald from afar.

  Mr. Collins started wagging his tail and licking Freddy’s face. Mr. Collins was ugly, but he gave his affections easily, and once given, they remained fixed.

  “What do you mean he attached himself to you?”

  “He just kept coming around. Would never leave no matter what I did or said. It was like he wouldn’t take no for an answer. I’d yell at him to go away, but he’d just lick me.” Which sounded stupid when he explained it like that. Mr. Collins was a dog. What did it say about Adam that he’d let himself be outmaneuvered by a dog, and one of Mr. Collin’s small stature and low intelligence at that?

  Probably the same thing it said about him that he’d let Rusty convince him to give up the love of his life.

  They’d arrived at Mark’s. “Well, this is me. It was, uh…” What? What could he possibly say? Nice to see you? Alarming to see you?

  Gutting to see you?

  Freddy just nodded. “I’ll wait until you get inside.”

  That was so Freddy-like. “I’m actually around back. In an RV.” He lifted his chin as he spoke. He was used to people looking down on the fact that he lived in an RV. But he didn’t care—or at least he didn’t care enough to change anything. That sucker was paid for, and more important, it was home. The home he’d finally made for himself, independent of his family.

  Freddy raised his eyebrows, not in disapproval so much, Adam thought, as surprise. He gestured toward the backyard. He wasn’t going to leave until he’d seen Adam safely to his door.

  “Well,” Freddy said when they’d tromped around back. “Look at this.”

  “I moved out of the house at Kellynch shortly after my dad died,” Adam said, answering the unasked question. “I drove this here after, uh, Sophie bought the place. Gotta figure out what’s next. Probably I should just get a lot in a park, but…”

  “You can’t stand the idea of living cheek-by-jowl with other people. You’d be better off buying a chunk of forest and parking it there.”

  Freddy still knew him. It was unnerving.

  Adam had picked up Mr. Collins, and now he stooped to let him down. He pointed at the RV. “Go inside.”

  The dog obeyed, disappearing through the doggie door Adam had built him.

  Freddy laughed. “He has his own little door.”

  “Yeah. I work long days sometimes, so he needs to be able to get out. But honestly, one of these days the dumb mutt is going to meet his doom. It’s not so bad here, but there were coyotes in the woods near Kellynch.”

  Freddy nodded but didn’t say anything.

  What happened now? Should he invite Freddy in?

  “Well, I’ll be off,” Freddy said.

  Apparently not.

  “I shouldn’t have left Ben this long. He’s…” Freddy looked at the sky and sighed.

  “You want me to run you home?” Adam asked.

  That drew Freddy’s attention. He chuckled. “In this thing?”

  Adam smiled. “I have a car.”

  “You just prefer walking.”

  Yep, Freddy still knew him. “I do.”

  “I do, too.”

  And with that, Freddy gave Adam another of those inscrutable nods, turned on his heel, and disappeared into the night.

  Chapter Six

  Eight years ago

  “There’s nothing wrong with your car. The cable to the battery is just…not connected.” Adam emerged from under the hood of Freddy’s Mustang wearing a quizzical look.

  Shit. Was he busted? Freddy’s car, as much of a piece of junk as it was, was fine. He’d left it at home last Saturday night so he’d have an excuse to walk with Adam. And then the invitation to bring it by Anderson Motors had been too much to pass up. So, yes, he’d googled, how to make a car not start, disconnected his own goddamn battery, and paid for a tow to Anderson Motors.

  But, oh, it had been worth it. Adam was so adorable in his mechanic persona. Instead of the coveralls Freddy would have expected, Adam wore black cargo pants and a tight, grease-spattered, red T-shirt. He also had grease on his forearms, and a little bit on one cheek. Freddy’s hands twitched. They wanted to touch that cheek, to wipe that stain off and maybe linger long enough to—

  “You figure it out?” Rusty Anderson emerged from the office.

  “Yep,” Adam said. “Just a loose battery cable. Easy as pie.”

  If Adam had looked quizzical after he’d discovered the problem, Rusty did not. He went straight for suspicious as hell. Well, they couldn’t prove anything.

  Freddy schooled his expression to neutrality and got out his wallet. “How much do I owe you?”

  “Oh, nothing.” Adam held up his palms. “It took me two seconds.”

  “Still, you have to let me pay you.”

  “No,” Adam said. “I insist.”

  “Well, okay, thanks. But at least let me buy you a coffee or something. I was going to pop over to the bakery for coffee and a bagel anyway.”

  Please say yes.

  Adam blushed and looked at the ground. It was so, so satisfying to see him blush in the bright light of day. His pale skin, which was actually smattered with a few unlikely, faint freckles, went pink all at once. There was no slow spread of color, just an immediate saturation. It did something to Freddy’s dick, which was one thing, but it also did something to his chest, and that thing was less familiar. Unsettling. But addictive.

  Please say yes.

  “Okay, thanks. I’m, uh, due for a break anyway.”

  Adam glanced at Rusty, and Freddy’s gaze followed. Rusty was Adam’s boss, of course, and the way Adam talked about him, it seemed like Rusty had a lot of influence over Adam. But Freddy had a hard time imagining the workplace culture at Anderson Motors was such that Adam had to ask if he could take a break.

  But something was up Rusty’s butt. He pressed his lips into a thin line, and his gaze flickered between Adam and Freddy. Finally he said, with practically no inflection in his tone, “Bring me a cappuccino,” and turned back to the office.

  Present day

  “It’s just dinner.”

  “I know. I just don’t understand why you had to spring this on me with no warning.”

  Freddy pressed his fingers against his temples. He tried to remind himself that there was no template for grieving. That Ben had loved his wife with a fierceness that Freddy had never felt… Well, that he hadn’t felt for quite some time. “I just think some human company would do you good.”

  “You
’re here.”

  “For now.” He left unsaid that eventually, one or both of them would have to return to Captain’s. They were its executive chefs, which meant they weren’t necessarily needed for its day-to-day operations, but they did have their names attached to the place. Reputation mattered. And they’d never been away this long, even when they’d been filming Food Fanatics. He was relying on the fact that Sherry, their head chef, could be trusted absolutely, but soon the restaurant would have to turn over the menu for fall, and Freddy or Ben would be needed.

  “You want to go back, go back,” Ben said. “You don’t need to babysit me.”

  “I don’t want to go back.”

  Freddy was surprised by how true it was. He thought he’d come here reluctantly—and he had—but it was surprisingly nice being out of the city. Not in Bishop’s Glen particularly, but back somewhere he could breathe in that green smell. See the stars he’d forgotten were up there.

  Freddy had taken Adam’s suggestion to heart and decided that if he couldn’t coax Ben out into the world, he would bring a little of the world to Ben. He had sort of sprung it on Ben at the last minute—it was two o’clock, and the McGuires were due at seven—but that was by design. Less time for Ben to freak out.

  “I thought I’d do ravioli,” Freddy said. Ravioli was a calculated manipulation. It was Ben’s signature dish, and he always maintained that Freddy’s wasn’t up to par. “I got some squash at the farmer’s market this morning.”