by Kent, Julia
“You’re the one who was a model, Dylan,” Alex said in a low voice as he bent down in the squat cage, squaring his shoulders under the bar and wrapping his wrists up to put his palms, then fingers, on the gnarled metal. “You know more about buffed nails and body paint than I do.”
Mike’s howl of laughter seemed to fuel Alex, and damn if the guy didn’t come a little too close for comfort to Dylan’s highest weight and rep set. Shit. He needed to up his game and lift more.
Staggering out of the cage after two sets and a failed rep that required Mike and Dylan to grab the pole, Alex looked purple. Little broken blood vessels around his eyes told Dylan the guy had been saving face. Ah, damn.
“You pushed too hard,” Mike said quietly, careful not to let any of the other lifters in the gym hear.
Alex nodded as he sucked down water Mike had mixed with an electrolyte solution. “I know. Stupid,” he added, shaking his head. “But look who I’m lifting with.”
Mike and Dylan nodded. They got it.
You had to at least try.
They grabbed their car keys and phones from the little cubbies in the free-weight room. The walk to the smoothie bar made Dylan feel like he was marching on down-filled pillows, the push of blood to the surface of his skin such a fucking awesome rush. He could forget about anything in those moments of extraordinary strength.
Anything except Frank.
Smoothies ordered, the trio drank more water and rested on barstools at the juice counter.
Bzzz. Alex jumped and felt his own ass like a man going off to prison and touching a woman for the last time in his life. Frantic and weirdly rushed.
“What the fuck?” a disembodied man’s voice muttered.
“Is that me?” Alex hissed. “I’m on call for a case.”
“Me,” Dylan said, grabbing his phone. A swipe and—score!
“Nick’s report!” Dylan crowed as a tray filled with large shake glasses teeming with greenish-grey sludge was delivered to them.
“What’s in there?” Alex asked Mike as Dylan read the email from the private investigator:
Dylan,
See attached.
Nick
“Talkative guy,” Mike mumbled as Dylan opened the PDF, turning his phone sideways so they could read the tiny print a little bit better.
The report was astounding. Arrest records in one, two, three—Dylan couldn’t keep up—states, all for fraud or larceny or petty theft. Most involved cons, which didn’t surprise him. Frank set up fake charities and scammed people. Frank trained a fleet of kids to steal dogs and waited for the owners to post a reward and brought them back, caught only when one of the kids stole the same dog twice and Frank showed up again for a reward.
And then—
Mike’s low whistle pierced the juice counter’s sitting area. “He defrauded an heiress?”
“Don’t forget the DUIs,” Alex added, pointing to the screen. “In one…two…three different states?”
“You would never guess,” Dylan said, handing off the phone to Mike and drinking half his smoothie in one series of gulps. The cold, slightly chalky drink made him crave coffee suddenly.
Damn Alex. He was right.
“What do you mean?” Alex asked Dylan, mesmerized by what he was reading on the phone’s screen.
“Frank. He’s so…slick. Smooth. Like a well-preserved middle-aged man. More George Clooney than Bernie Madoff, you know?”
“Bernie Madoff was pretty damn slick, too. Fooled a lot of smart people,” Mike said.
“True. Frank’s just—he seems above a DUI. Or stealing dogs.” Dylan shook his head. “Who the hell steals someone’s dog for money?”
“The same kind of guy who sniffs out his niece after she’s settled into a great life with two billionaires,” Alex pointed out.
Dylan felt like a balloon with a slow leak.
“At least we know now,” Mike added. He pointed to the phone. “We need to print that out and study it. I’ll bring it to our lawyer and get his opinion. And we need to talk to Laura about it.”
“No!” Dylan could imagine it all seven steps ahead, how Laura would freak out, the way she’d feel guilty again, then angry, how this information would give them a leg up when it came to dealing with Frank but, really, no new answers. They’d suspected Frank was a slimeball. Nick’s report confirmed it.
“Why not?” Mike and Alex asked in unison.
“Is there anything violent in there?” he asked rhetorically. Mike shook his head. “Nothing about kids?”
“Other than acting like Fagin from Oliver Twist and gathering a bunch of street urchins to go out and steal people’s dogs, no,” Alex said, scrolling through the report.
“Good. Then he’s just a garden-variety con man. He doesn’t want custody of Jillie. He wants money. He can threaten and cajole, tease and manipulate, and mindfuck Laura, but he can’t really do anything.”
Mike looked at him, jaw tight. “Good points.”
“Frank is the kind of guy who gets other people to do his bidding for him. He comes in for the kill when it suits him, and he’s looking for easy pickings. He’s not going to sweat. He’s not going to push and persevere. Once things get difficult, he’s outta there. Look,” Dylan said, taking the phone from Alex, “at what he’s actually done. He finds a way to prey on other people’s emotions and then gets what he can when they’re weak.”
“We’re not weak,” Mike protested.
“But Laura is,” Dylan explained. “She’s a lot stronger than she was years ago, but Frank has this ability to find some sweet part of her that wants to be good, and liked, and loved. And he plucks it like a banjo, damn it.”
“You’re right,” Mike said, clearly hating that it was true.
“Then you need to figure out his weakness, and his price. Pair them together,” Alex declared.
Mike gave Alex a look of calculated admiration. “That’s smart. But how?”
“First, I’d call your lawyer and have him review that.” Alex pointed to the phone. “Then, find out how you can buy Frank off while making a subtle threat.”
Dylan’s eyebrow arched. “Threat?”
“A subtle one. Nothing too specific. Does he have any outstanding warrants anywhere?”
“You seem to know an awful lot about the criminal mind,” Dylan said with a mock-suspicious tone.
Alex laughed. “You get interviewed by cops in the ER often enough, you pick up a few things.”
“Threaten Frank with being ratted out wherever he might have warrants, give him some money, and—”
Dylan was cut off my Mike’s joyful whoop. “Yes! An outstanding warrant for failure to appear in court for a DUI. In Connecticut,” Mike hissed.
Alex’s eyes shone with glee. “You got him. Nail the bastard. Give him a small check and a big hint that you know about Connecticut and that asshole will be gone, quick. He doesn’t care about Laura or Jillian.” His eyes clouded with some emotion Dylan didn’t quite understand, but he suddenly had the sense that they weren’t only talking about Frank.
Mike grabbed his own phone and autodialed his lawyer. “On it already.”
Dylan raised his empty glass to Alex. “To finding someone’s weakness and exploiting it.”
Alex thought for a second, then said, “No. To stopping the assholes who use that technique against good people.”
Dylan could drink to that.
Mike
Jeddy’s it was. At the rate they ate here, Mike was seriously considering making Madge an offer on the place. Owning a restaurant wasn’t high on his list of life goals, but maybe they could build an apartment over it and never have to cook again.
“What are you smirking about?” Dylan asked as he shoved hip-first into the booth, knocking against Mike’s elbow.
“Shit!” Mike hissed as hot coffee slid over the webbing of his thumb. He set the coffee cup down quickly and sucked on the heated flesh.
“Sorry.” Dylan fished a few ice chips out of his water
glass and handed them to Mike, wrapped in a flimsy napkin. The cold rush of the ice made Mike’s anger die down fast.
Laura watched from across the table, clearly amused. “You two are a well-oiled machine.”
Both of them looked up at her as she spooned a thick chunk of peanut-butter-sauce-covered vanilla ice cream into her mouth, rotating the spoon and licking it suggestively, pretending to deep-throat. Who knew a long sundae spoon could go that far in?
Mike’s pants tightened. Dylan shifted uncomfortably next to them. About that imaginary apartment upstairs…
“You auditioning for a porn movie?” a rather unwelcome voice screeched from Mike’s right. Josie appeared, dragging a bemused Alex.
“I thought we were going to Kendall Square for a movie,” Alex said, brow furrowed, shooting daggers at Josie.
“Food first.”
“But we’re miles from Kendall Square…” The look that passed between them made Mike sit up. Good thing he was capable now.
“Why are Josie and Alex here?” Mike asked Laura, who batted her eyelashes and fished around her sundae glass for a cherry and proceeded to—
Oh, my…
“I can tie a knot in a cherry stem with my tongue, too, you know,” Josie said defensively.
Laura winked, her mouth contorting in several muscled directions, all of which made Mike’s cock thicken.
Laura’s lips spread in a wide grin seconds later and she pulled the cherry stem out of her mouth.
Double knotted.
“Show-off,” Josie muttered.
“Marry me,” Dylan gasped.
“Took the words right out of my mouth,” Mike added.
“Speaking of marriage…” Laura said, making all four sets of eyes glue themselves to hers. Mike cocked one eyebrow, broke away from Laura, and looked pointedly at Dylan.
The hair on his arms stood at attention, the ripple traveling up over his shoulders and between the blades under his neck, down to his sacrum, a chill and fire settling there as if waiting for what was about to come.
Waiting for orders to know what to do next.
Dylan looked at Alex, who was bending down to sit, Josie having shoved Laura over against the booth’s wall. “You two have something you want to share.”
Blood drained out of Josie’s face like a vampire had just exsanguinated her.
Alex chuckled, but Mike knew it was laughter without amusement. Could tell it was a touchy subject and wished Dylan hadn’t made the joke. But he had, and now the issue hung over them like a stinky fart.
“Uh, no. Not yet.” He gave Josie’s hand an obvious squeeze, but she might as well have been a plastic blow-up sex doll. Her expression said she would have been happier with that right now.
“‘Yet’? Not ‘yet’? You just moved in!”
“Two months ago.”
“I swear it’s only been two hours.”
“Time flies when you’re having fun.”
“Actually, time flies when you’re having sex. Otherwise, time doesn’t fly. It crawls with agonizing slowness, as evidenced by this conversation,” Dylan said dryly.
“We need to talk about marriage,” Laura said softly. Mike hated being across the table from her, and reached reflexively for her hand.
Dylan beat him to it.
“Whose marriage?” He exchanged a look with Mike that made Mike’s heart explode. They’d had endless private conversations about this—okay, not endless. Maybe three or so, which felt endless in manspeak. He and Dylan didn’t really talk about their feelings the way Laura did with each of them. They just…were. A decision between them took two or three sentences. Not two or three days and thousands of blabbered words.
This decision, though…who could Laura marry?
You only get one spouse, right?
“Um, yours, actually,” Josie said. Alex gave Mike a look that didn’t make sense, until it suddenly did. Gotcha. Alex knew something they didn’t, and it was about to be revealed.
“Why am I here, again?” Alex asked.
“Decoration,” Josie replied.
“Moral support,” Laura added.
The gooseflesh on Mike’s arms spread to his entire body, and his eyes narrowed involuntarily. “Support?”
“We have a plan,” Laura and Josie said simultaneously.
Dylan, Mike, and Alex all groaned in reply just as Madge appeared.
“Did you guys order before we got here?” Alex asked, incredulous as Madge unloaded plate after plate of fried green tomatoes, pistachio crepes, and ah—lobster cakes.
“As if you need to order when I know my sweet Alex is coming,” Madge said.
“We have the bat signal for you,” Laura said with a smile.
Alex stuffed a cake in his mouth and wisely said nothing. Mike’s appetite disappeared the second the talk of marriage erupted.
He thought it was about to overflow, too. Who would Laura choose? Society and law only permitted a person to marry one other person. Forcing her to choose could irreparably damage their threesome. Then again, it could also strengthen the paternity issue.
Frank’s sudden appearance complicated everything. His subtle threat to take Jillian should something happen to Laura had plagued her and it was painful to have their loving construct fraying at the edges because of the combination of Frank and a society that didn’t have a word—much less legal protections—for their kind of love.
“Here’s what we pieced together,” Josie mumbled through a mouthful of crepe. “We know who Jillian’s biological father is—”
Alex began choking on his cake. “We do?” he gasped.
“We can look it up on a birth certificate. And a lawyer will have to,” she added, pointedly looking at both Dylan and Mike. Appetite went from zero to negative ten, and Mike’s mouth quirked at one side as he watched Dylan drop his fork, leaving a half-eaten fried green tomato.
“Okay, so…what does that have to do with marriage?” Dylan challenged.
“In theory,” Laura said quietly, “if I married the man who isn’t Jillie’s father, then he gets stepfather protection if something happens to me.”
A cold rush flushed through Mike. He’d suspected Jillie’s lighter complexion meant…
“But that won’t work,” Alex said mildly, recovering from his choke. “If you’re planning on more kids, I mean.”
Josie nodded. Mike’s skin began to feel like cotton, the conversation bizarre and surreal, as if they were talking about cross-pollinating garden flowers, or deciding where to add a deck to the cabin.
His family’s fate was being deconstructed over coconut shrimp and peanut butter cup sundaes.
“Pull back and explain it to me like I’m stupid,” Dylan said.
“We. Already. Are,” Josie said slowly. “That’s my default mode with you.”
Dylan shot her a nasty look and made a rolling motion with his hand, urging her to continue.
“If you have another child and that child is by the same father, then you’re fine. But what if Laura has children by both of you? Then if she di—were gone,” Josie said, catching herself, “the non-biological father of the kids wouldn’t have any legal rights whatsoever to visitation or custody. Imagine if Laura and one of you died.”
“Why are we imagining all this death?” Mike asked, his voice a chilly whisper, like a cold finger sliding down the spine.
Everyone stopped mid-bite.
“It’s Frank, isn’t it?” he asked. “Not that you think he’s going on a killing spree,” he said with a derisive snort. “It’s more…estate planning got moved up a few notches on the list of Stuff We Should Do Someday.”
Laura’s mournful eyes told him he’d hit the nail on the head. The urge to hold her, raw and needful, tingled inside him and would not go away.
He drained his now-tepid cup of coffee and started to push Dylan out of the booth, thumbing toward the bathroom.
The rush of cold blood racing through his body pumped into his thighs, his calves, through his a
bs, and up to his throat as he moved past Dylan, walking numbly to the bathroom, where he found the men’s room empty. Thank God. Mike slumped against the wall and stared at his own reflection.
What the fuck? he mouthed to himself. He looked like Mike—blonde, tall, lanky, a little hunched over from being the tallest guy in the room most of his life. His shirt looked like it had the day he bought it at the mall, his jeans were old and well worn, a relic from college. Most of what he saw in the mirror had been part of who he was for most of his life—body, clothes, emotional state—and yet he felt like he was experiencing a metamorphosis right now, second by second.
Word by word.
Marriage. Jealousy flared within. If he were Jillian’s biological father, then it made sense for Dylan to marry Laura. Made perfect sense. Couldn’t argue with it.
So why did he feel like smashing his fist through that mirror?
The door creaked and Mike straightened himself, walking to the urinal and unzipping as someone entered the bathroom.
“Come here often?” asked a familiar voice. Dylan stood in front of the urinal next to him, unzipped, and they voided their bladders in unison.
Mike started laughing, his stream jumping up in concert with his amusement.
“Dude, aim!” Dylan said, alarmed. “I don’t need your pee all over me. Get enough of that already from changing the baby.”
“Can’t help it,” Mike said, finishing up quickly. “I just…I can’t believe we’re in here peeing together while they talk about our future like we’re playing Barbie and Ken.”
“And Ken. You forgot. Two Kens.” Dylan shook off, zipped up, and began washing his hands. Mike joined him at the second sink and caught his eye in the mirror.
“I never forget there are two Kens.”
Dylan’s turn to laugh. “And now we’re describing our intimate relationships in terms of plastic dolls.” He sighed heavily. “When did we reach this new kind of low?”
“When Frank appeared and threatened everything.”
Dylan made a sour face. “I don’t… That guy hasn’t technically threatened anything. Not really. And you know—and I know—we could hand him six figures and he’d go away.”