Chapter Two
For the next two weeks, Gray would be on the job 24/7. Technically. But as he looked around, he didn’t see it as a hardship. He was staying in an honest-to-God castle. Sure, they called it a manor, but the stone walls, stained glass windows, coats of armor and freaking round turret sure added up to a castle in his book. A roaring fire pit sat just outside the French doors. And once the sun came back up, Gray knew that beyond it, across the wide lawn, he’d see the sparkling expanse of Seneca Lake. If the guys in accounting ever saw pictures of Mayhew Manor, they’d probably fry his ass for staying at such a swanky place.
Said ass was comfortably resting on a leather couch. He had a giant platter of nachos in front of him, an interesting local beer frosting his hand, and the Knicks-Celtics game on the sixty-inch plasma screen hanging over the fireplace. A good crowd of Knicks fans filled the tables of the pub around him. Gray didn’t hesitate to call it the best working conditions ever.
Not that anyone could tell he was working. Or should be able to tell, for that matter. Since he was officially on an undercover mission, Gray strove to blend in with all the other tourists here at Mayhew Manor. Jeans. Green-and-blue rugby shirt. Legs crossed, with his feet kicked up on the coffee table, iPad on his lap. Nothing about him gave even a whiff of his real identity as a corporate hit man.
Okay, maybe hit man was going a bit far. But the term resonated with Gray way more than his actual title. Corporate realignment specialist made him sound like a chiropractor for businesses, when in fact, he came in, assessed a property to see if it should be swallowed whole by Ruffano casual, comfortable, but not terribly busy. Rustic décor that didn’t fit with the rest of castle motif throughout. On the other hand, it could be seen as a good escape bunker for guys sick of the antique furniture and oriental rugs.
No assessment yet—and not just because the game wasn’t over. Gray planned to come back several times. Just like he’d suit up and spend an evening in the fancy restaurant, too. No televisions to distract him in there. Hard not to attract attention flying solo when every table held rose buds. Maybe he’d take a date. Strictly as cover, of course.
Gray took a long slug of his beer. No point lying to himself. He was looking for any excuse to head back to the spa tomorrow, to ask out the gorgeous woman who’d put her hands all over him today. That had been an experience he wouldn’t mind reliving. Over and over again. He’d gone in there to do a spot check. See what sort of customer service a sweaty guy in running shorts got. The spa’s usual clientele probably ran to cougar types who wanted to get worked over while their husbands golfed.
The spa and its staff passed his test with flying colors, but Gray had walked out of there with a very big problem. About five feet and six inches of a brown-haired, green-eyed problem: Ella of the no last name. She’d grabbed the attention of his dick from the moment he saw her on the floor. Then once she started talking, her passionate sell of massage tickled his brain too. Sweet, pretty, and with fingers that he could tell in just five minutes knew how to wring pleasure out of every inch of a man’s body.
Oh, he wanted Ella. Enough that it had slipped the truth right out of his lips. He wanted to learn about her, wanted to get to know her. And yes, he wanted to see if her lips tasted as raspberry-delicious as they looked. Dating on the job, though, could be tricky. Could be all kinds of tricky. Mostly because he hated lying to a woman. Yeah, he did it pretty much every day of every assignment. But Gray never lied to a woman once they were involved.
Back home in Manhattan, he had a few friends-with-benefits he bed-hopped between. None of them were looking for anything serious. That arrangement suited him just fine. Gray only hung out in the city long enough to switch out his ties and grab a new assignment. Not like he was a monk out on the road. There were three flight attendants who knew his real story. Depending on their schedules, he’d meet up with one of them for a…layover. They bopped around the country so much that Gray provided them with a feeling of home, or at least continuity.
Which was why his Herculean reaction to Ella surprised him. He met cute, interesting women all the time while undercover. Gray almost never followed up on that attraction. Thanks to his Slingbox setup, he’d go back to his hotel room and catch up on all the stuff piled up on his DVR. He loved all the crazy, thousand-year-old hijinks the History Channel brought to light. His true secret obsession was worse. Nobody in the world aside from his cable repair guy knew that Gray had an addiction to court television.
Something about Ella, though, tugged at him on a whole different level, above and way beyond sex. Gray didn’t know what and he didn’t know why. He crammed a huge glob of nachos into his mouth. There was no getting around the fact that dating her would complicate his job. The idea was eight kinds of stupid. Nevertheless, Gray knew that he’d be at the door of the spa the minute it opened tomorrow.
A loud cheer went up from the crowd, both on the television and in the bar. Gray belatedly joined in, raising his beer. Already thoughts of Ella were screwing with his job. Refocused, he scanned around the room for anything noteworthy. Off in the corner were three guys in Knicks caps who’d clearly pre-partied before the game started. Lots of fist banging on the table, raised voices, too-loud laughter, and they’d started gifting every player and ref with the honorific title of “fucking idiot.”
This wasn’t a rowdy crowd in general. After all, the pub was inside an actual castle. People who’d laid out the significant cash to stay here were on good behavior. But these three looked like they’d gotten down to the serious business of drinking in a cheap local watering hole, and just come in here to watch the game on the big screen. Some of the other customers had shot them dirty looks at the noise, but it hadn’t dialed them back one bit.
A tall guy with something between scruff and the beginnings of a dark beard crossed past their table carrying a full beer mug.
“Can’t stay on your feet off the football field, and damn sure couldn’t get a job on the field,” mocked one of the yokels with a spotty mustache. Then he stuck his foot out—really? Didn’t think anyone outside a junior high cafeteria crowd made that move—and tall guy went flying, flannel shirt flapping out to the sides. Along with most of his beer. Karma helpfully splashed it right onto the jackass who’d tripped him. Gray swallowed a snicker.
But apparently the three idiots had it in for tall-flannel guy. As he started to get up, they booted his ass so he fell back to the floor on his knees. Hard. This time he didn’t get up as quickly, like he was figuring out his next move. Holy shit. In a hotel where the rooms started at four hundred bucks a night, Gray was really about to watch a bar fight. This would be a story to share at the next corporate retreat.
“You don’t look much like the town’s golden boy anymore, Ward,” one of them taunted. “Wait, I can fix that.” He emptied his beer over Ward’s head. Then his friend winked at him and opened the door to the patio. “Maybe you should go clean up. In the lake.” Another kick to the ass that sprawled him halfway out the door. The third guy grabbed his waistband and tossed him the rest of the way onto the flagstones.
Gray looked around. Of course, there was no bouncer to be found. Not at a nice place like this. The bartender, although a whirling dervish at pulling taps, looked to be just shy of five feet. No help there. His luggage probably weighed more than she did. All the other customers looked uncomfortable, but nobody looked willing to leap into the fray.
Well, he couldn’t just let the guy get beat on, could he? Three-to-one weren’t great odds. He could at least try to break it up. Vaulting over the end of the couch, he yelled to the bartender, “Call the police.”
By the time Gray made it outside, battle lines were drawn. The three dickwads stood on the far side of the fire pit. Blood trickling from a split lip, Ward stood on the other. A stack of crackling logs throwing flames three feet into the air made the whole scene feel melodramatic. Gray took a split second to think that a soundtrack of spooky drum rolls and acoustic guitars would be nice. Crickets—cicadas—something rasped rhythmically up in the trees. And then the lead guy turned on him.
“Get outta here.”
“Let’s go back inside. I’ll buy you all coffee. And dinner.” Something to soak up the alcohol fumes rippling off him.
He gave a sneering look down at Gray’s sneakers, up to the collar of his rugby shirt. “Then what? You think this’d turn into a date, fancy-pants?”
Shit. He really had to get his cleaners to quit starching his blue jeans. “Look, I saw the whole thing. He only spilled his beer because you tripped him. Let’s call it even and go back inside.”
“Don’t want even. Want him to admit he’s too chickenshit to fight me and Bruce and Mike.”
Gray hadn’t been in a fight in decades. He wasn’t really looking to break his streak tonight. Getting hauled off in the back of a cop car wouldn’t help him fly under the radar. He tried again to appeal to reason, even though reason rarely worked on the flat-out wasted. “Come on, nobody’s fighting. The police are on their way.”
“Not here yet though, are they?” And with that, he plunged his fist into Gray’s stomach.
Ward raced around the fire pit. “You’re an idiot, Chuck.” He let loose a flying kick that knocked Chuck all the way back against the doors. Bruce and Mike rushed him, swearing.
After a last, desperate gasp for oxygen, Gray joined in. Then it all became a blur of kicked-over patio furniture, flying gravel, fists and elbows and knees. Damn, but they fought dirty. Or were hair pulling and cheek scratching now considered legit moves? He landed his fair share of solid punches. Couldn’t tell who was which, but everyone wearing a Knicks cap felt his knuckles by the end of it. And end it they did. He and Ward each had a guy by the collar and a fist cocked when the wail of police sirens startled the cicadas into silence. A couple of fast twists, and all three bloodied idiots ran away, into the darkness of the estate.
The bartender cracked the door. “The police’ll be here any minute. You got a room here?” she asked Gray.
No point lying. He’d run a tab, and she had his credit card. Gray looked over at Ward, bent in half, hands braced on thighs. Bloodied, bruised, but still standing, thanks in no small part to Gray’s help. So if he had to spend a night in a cell for being sober and disorderly, well, he’d suck it up. “Yeah. I’m in the Marshgrass Suite.”
“Good.” She thrust a first-aid kit at him. “Take Ward with you and patch yourselves up. I’ll call you to come back down when the coast is clear. Even buy you a round, on the house.”
“What?” The bartender wanted him to hide from the police? She was protecting them? It didn’t make sense.
“Just go—hurry!”
Ward actually led the way, taking Gray along the length of the castle. Looked like Ward knew the layout of the place. He must be a local. They slipped in a door adjacent to the ballroom, and up a set of back stairs he hadn’t known existed, probably because the door to them was hidden behind a freaking tapestry. God, he loved this place. The history buff in him reveled in all the authentic castle details.
As he walked, the adrenaline of the fight still juiced him. But the stings and aches started to make themselves known as well. Gray catalogued pain in his knee, right hand, shoulder, jaw—no, make that a throbbing in his whole head—and his belly, thanks to the sucker punch that started it all. Wetness slid down his cheek. Gingerly, he swiped his thumb along his eyebrow. Yup. A cut. Bleeding like crazy.
“You okay?” Ward asked.
Gray pulled out his key—an actual brass key, as long as his finger with an ornate curlicue on top—and unlocked his suite. “Hey, I came late to the party. The real question is are you okay?”
“Yeah.” Moving slowly, Ward shuffled inside straight to the bathroom. Flicking on the light, he asked, “You sure you don’t mind if I get blood all over your towels?”
Gray shrugged from the doorway. Felt a twinge in his shoulder. So much for the benefits of his five-minute massage. “It’s a hotel. I can get more.”
“Thanks.” The word was barely out of his mouth before Ward grabbed all three fluffy washcloths stacked on the marble counter. One he pressed to his cut lip with a wince. He turned on the old-fashioned spigot and ran water across his bleeding knuckles, then tied another cloth around them to staunch the blood.
“If I call for more towels, maybe they’ll bring me another one of those bedtime chocolates. Worth a shot.” He could be a glass half full kind of guy. Hell, he’d just won a fight, against guys who looked like they’d been in more than their fair share.
“No, I mean—” Ward soaked the third cloth and dabbed it at the long scrape down his arm where he’d hit the gravel path. “Thanks for butting in.”
Gray just raised his eyebrow. Then hissed when the motion pulled at the cut still dripping blood. He grabbed a towel and pressed hard, trying not to think about whether or not the blood stains would come out of his shirt. Still totally worth it. He’d stood up to bullies, fought for someone. The rightness of it reverberated bone deep. And winning sure didn’t suck.
“Sorry. I’m no good at heartfelt speeches. Ask anyone I’ve dated.” Ward sank to the edge of the tub, braced his wrist against his chin and started picking out gravel. “You risked an ass-kicking to help me. I owe you.”
“I was just in the right place at the wrong time.” Gray thrust out his left hand, since both their rights were pretty battered from the fight. “Gray Locke.”
“Ward Cantrell.” They fumbled into an awkward shake, then immediately went back to clean up.
It was kind of surreal, trading off turns at the sink to rinse blood out of the towels in a room covered with floral wallpaper. Not to mention the cut glass bowl of potpourri on the toilet. To break up the weird vibe, Gray asked the question that had been circling his brain nonstop. “What’d you ever do to those guys?”
A snort came from Ward, muffled by vigorous toweling to get the blood out of his mustache. “Led them—along with the rest of the team—to four straight seasons as divisional high school football champions.”
Definitely a local. Gray looked at him again, frowning. The guy was pure muscle, head to toe. Burly enough to make the statement confusing. “Led them? You look more like someone who’d hold the line than a quarterback.”
“Not back then. I had the height, but not much else. Now, I spend my days hefting fifty-pound sacks of rye and barley. It bulks you up fast.”
“You’re a farmer?” Gray guessed.
Ward had leaned forward to check out the damage in the mirror, but at Gray’s question, he white-knuckled the edge of the sink. Clearly a story there. “Fuck, no. Not anymore, I mean. I own a distillery.”
So cool. Who didn’t dream about blending their own whiskey or vodka? Gray walked out to the closet to grab a clean shirt. “That’s awesome. Seriously. I’d love to come watch you work your magic one afternoon.” Gray would make the time. Work could wait. Although practically speaking, it might end up yielding some interesting research for the project.
“As long as you’re willing to pitch in, no problem. And you’ve proved that tonight already.”
Back to the fight. This night was turning out to be way more interesting than the Knicks game. He tossed his rugby shirt onto the antiquely fragile-looking desk chair and pulled on a black-faded-to-gray long-sleeved tee from a long-ago Nickelback concert. Tastes changed. Gray seriously regretted the concert. But he loved the shirt, and the memory of the girl he’d kissed that night. Aileen? Alicia? Shit. He sometimes remembered the kissing more than the name. Just like every other man on the planet.
“Don’t take this the wrong way, but I’d say you left high school in your wake almost ten years ago.”
“Yeah. But not them. For Bruce, Mike and Chuck, high school was the best part of their lives. They still go to the SLHS games every Friday night. You ask them their favorite team, and they won’t mention one in the NFL or MBA. Small-town pride burns damn deep. And they think I screwed over the town.” Ward wrung out the now-pinkish towel and draped it across the faucets. “They’ve never moved on. Which means that as long as I live on Seneca Lake, I don’t get to, either.”
Gray paused, one hand in his not-yet-unpacked suitcase. “Want to borrow a shirt?”
“Nah.” Instead, he just buttoned the flannel over the worst of the stains on the tee below.
“Want me to point you to the quickest way out of town?”
Disappearing as fast as it came, a grin slid over Ward’s face. “Nah.”
A sharp knock on the door spun them both around. Shit. It had to be the police. Ten minutes ago, he’d been prepared to march off to jail on a wave of victorious righteousness. Now, Gray just wanted to drown his aches in beer and get a fresh plate of nachos. Oh, and not have to call the company’s attorney and ask to be bailed out. Or explain to his boss how, after being in town for all of six hours, he’d blown his cover in a high-class bar, low-class brawl.
Ward jammed his hands in his pockets. “Might as well get it over with.”
“Yeah.” Now he wanted the soundtrack from Stars Wars to play—the creepy marching music of the Stormtroopers seemed about right. Resigned to his fate, Gray threw open the door, and felt his pulse skitter back into a normal rhythm.
A pimply kid in a splotched dishwasher’s apron stood on the other side. His hands were hidden beneath a folded tablecloth. Ward hurried forward. “We didn’t call for room service, Brandon. What are you doing here?”
“Dani sent me on a mission.” Self-importance practically pulsed from his clogged pores. “She entrusted me with—”
A brusque wave of Ward’s hand cut him off. “Shut it, kid. Leave off the role-playing lingo and just tell us why you’re here.”
The eagerness in his face melted into standard teenager sullenness. “You can come down in five minutes. Dani already put in an order for wings, nachos and loaded potato skins. They’ll be ready when you are.” He started to leave, then turned back. “Here. She didn’t want you to worry about it.” Gray’s iPad appeared from beneath the tablecloth.
“Thank God.” He hadn’t given it a second thought when he raced off to help Ward. But now he realized what a clusterfuck it would’ve been if it got into the wrong hands. All the confidential project information was on there. Ward shut the door as Gray sat on the couch and brought the tablet out of hibernation. He needed to be sure nobody had been on, had seen anything—the pages of stats and crunched numbers on Mayhew Manor, the bullet points on the surrounding town of Geneva. Or worse, the designer’s sketches of what might be built in its place if he pulled the kill switch on it. Sure, the password protect would’ve kicked on the minute it hibernated, but he still had to double-check. Couldn’t be too careful in his line of work.
With all the grace of a deployed missile, Ward dropped into a corner of the brocade sofa. The springs rolled in a wave formation beneath Gray in protest. Wood creaked. The old furniture looked right in the castle, but it had been built back when an average man clocked in at six inches less than his own lanky six feet.
“Well?” Ward prompted. “Did Brandon Skype with China? Download porn? Or is it all fine?”
Luckily, the only thing he’d left open was his personal email. And just then it pinged. A new message popped into view from the Elmhurst Federal Correctional Facility. Great. Just what he didn’t need anyone to see. Because who wanted to admit he got monthly emails from a prison? Gray powered down. “It looks to be untouched.”
“So nobody stole your iPad, we kicked some ass, and now Dani the Tight-Fisted is buying us dinner? I’d call this a good night.” Ward leaned over, slapped him hard on the back.
“Can I ask you something?”
“As long as you don’t ask to borrow money. Although if you’re staying in all this lavishness,” he waved his arm to encompass the two-room suite, from the elaborate plaster moldings to the velvet curtains, gilt-framed artwork and antique furniture, “I’d say the chances are better that I should be asking you for a loan.”
“I’ve stayed in my share of zero-star, one-ply-toilet-paper dumps. This is better,” Gray acknowledged.
“What’s your question?”
“You said those guys have had it out for you since high school, right?”
“Yeah. There was some shit that went down once I left for college. No skin off my nose to admit I screwed up, screwed some people over—at least in their minds.” Sighing, Ward scrubbed his hands through his hair. “I left for a while, but when I came back and tried to apologize, they wouldn’t hear it. Still had a bug up their collective butts. They seem to like hating me.”
That hit home for Gray. Or rather, was the exact reason why he never went home any more. Because he’d grown up in a town even smaller than this one. A fucking armpit of a town. A place where memories might fade, but grudges never did. “Why come back? I’m guessing you knew you weren’t going to get a hero’s welcome?”
Ward’s mouth twisted down. “Oh, yeah. No surprise there. But my dad died. Left me his farm. My ‘inheritance’.” He made air quotes with his fingers. “Millstone dragging me down was more like it.”
He had it easy. A farm, you could sell. Gray’s own personal hometown millstone couldn’t be gotten rid of, no matter how hard he tried. “Then why stay? In a town where people won’t forgive and forget?”
“Now I’ve got the distillery. Or at least, I’m making a go at it. Every town has an idiot or two—or three,” he corrected himself with a rueful grin, “to go around. There’s a lot of good people here, too. People who were willing to give me a second chance. Good friends.”
“Ah. That explains it. The magic ingredient that’s missing from my hometown.” Because all his so-called friends had dropped him years before Gray managed to finally hightail it out of there. They certainly hadn’t been willing to give him a second chance. If he went back tomorrow, after almost fifteen years, Gray knew he’d still find every door barred to him. Every face and window shuttered.
Ward pushed off the couch, gingerly tested his jaw. “‘Home is the place where, when you have to go there, they have to take you in.’”
Surprise almost tripped him halfway to the door. Not what Gray expected from the small-town, flannel-wearing man with muscles that looked like he could bench press a dump truck. “Did you seriously start the night with a bar fight, and now you’re ending it by quoting Robert Frost?”
“I’m a man of many sides.” Ward stroked his neat beard, a cartoonish impression of an ancient philosopher contemplating the human condition. Then he burst out laughing. “My friend Casey thinks I don’t read enough. She gave me a quote-a-day calendar for Christmas. That’s today’s. No clue if I’ll remember it by next week. Impressed you recognized it, though.”
“In college, I used to memorize lines of poetry to impress women.”
“Did it work?”
“Often enough that I still remember most of them.”
“Look, Seneca Lake is my home. For better or worse. Most of the time I can avoid Chuck and his clown posse.” He opened the door to the suite and led Gray down the hall to the main staircase. “With back-to-back games, I thought they’d be too drunk tonight to cause any trouble.”
“You knew they’d be here, and came anyway? Knowing it could get ugly? Why?”
“The cable’s out at my place.” Ward flashed a smile that would’ve been cocky, if it hadn’t reopened the cut on his lip. Blood beaded on his mustache. “And I don’t scare easy.”