Chapter 30 No Running #2
“You’d be bouncing, too, if you’d finally got rid of your annoying cousins.”
“He didn’t have to wait.”
“Yes, he did. Julian does things by the book, and he had nothing against his cousins apart from annoyance.”
“He’s made a standing offer to buy their shares,” Janet reminded him, “but none of them have ever taken him up on it. The company is just too profitable.”
Frazer straightened. “Cecily Nancarrow has turned in all her electronics, I forgot to say. Package turned up this morning. Analyse or destroy?”
“Oh, analyse,” Janet said immediately. “Let’s see if she had any nasty little secrets.”
“You both didn’t like her?” Except for attending two board meetings, Jack had had little interaction with the members of Julian’s extended family.
“Cecily Nancarrow sat on that board since before Julian’s grandfather handed him the company. She was like… furniture.” Frazer thought a moment. “A very squeaky chair. Things will be so much quieter now she’s gone.”
“And that’s a good thing?”
“Gods, yes. She loved to nitpick everything Julian was doing.”
“Did Julian say whether he wants us to keep digging now he’s booted his cousins?” Janet switched from sandwiches to scones and reached for the jam.
“I can’t see him walking away from this without knowing who the real competition is, but I’ll check with Gareth. Do you want to keep digging?”
“Sure. Julian’s cousins were just the sideshow. Far more important, in my opinion, is finding out who got hold of that laptop. And if we found evidence that Donovan is in it, too… it would get even quieter.”
“Seems I’ve missed an awful lot around here. Again.” Jack knew he pulled his weight when it came to their work. It didn’t stop him feeling guilty about skipping out whenever someone needed him.
“That happens when you run three jobs,” Frazer declared. “What I don’t understand… why is it there’s always shit blowing up around you?”
Jack shrugged. “They gave me the fuck-up fairy for a godmother?”
“Must have done. I don’t know how you cope with it all on nothing but coffee, but I can’t argue you do. Now.” He turned to Janet. “Spill.”
“Spill what?” Jack looked from one to the other.
“What she wouldn’t tell Gareth. Not even when he asked.”
Janet was so unhappy Frazer put her on the spot that Jack signalled for another flute of champagne and started to worry when Janet twirled it between her fingers instead of drinking it. “If it bothers you this much—”
“It’s not that.” She finally took a sip of fizz. “But this stays between us until there’s proof, okay?”
Frazer scoffed. “There’s no reason you have to do this alone. It’s as if you’ve forgotten that Mr Bond over there loves to poke his nose into the craziest corners on the internet. For fun, too. Or that I’m almost as nosy.”
“I haven’t forgotten. It’s just…” She finished the fizz with a gulp. “I have an idea about who’s behind this. It’s a notion based on links and names I’m seeing and stuff I’ve heard over the years, but most of it is hearsay and rumour, which is why I’ve kept it to myself.”
“And? Who’s trying to stick their dirty fingers into our pie?”
She leaned over the table and whispered, “Fostrite Industries.”
Jack blinked once, twice. Then he had it and whistled. “Damn, woman! You don’t do things by halves, do you?”
“It’s a hunch, Jack. I can’t prove a single link.”
“Yet. Keep tracking those payments. I’ll help Don with the names.
” He flexed his fingers, ready for another fight, and didn’t care what his wide, delighted smile said about his attitude to risk.
At thirty-two, he had a home, a lover, a family, and a few too many jobs, but he wouldn’t have it any other way.
Gareth hated waking up in an empty bed at any time. He hated it more when pale grey light seeped around the curtains, telling him he could have slept another two hours before he needed to get up. He hated most of all that it was becoming a daily occurrence.
To say that Jack was moping was overstating matters, but if he didn’t have something on his mind, he’d be tucked into bed beside Gareth, not wandering the house like a lost wraith.
Asking outright would do no good, so Gareth had switched to observation and stealthy intelligence gathering. And what his mind had suggested at the end of a week of watching was… preposterous. So preposterous, in fact, that the only way to make it make sense was to test his theory.
Since Jack’s absence had woken him, he decided to let deed follow thought and tackle Jack’s unease while he was most likely undercaffeinated and easier to ambush.
Gareth rolled out of bed, threw on a T-shirt and jogging bottoms and went in search of his wayward lover.
How had it become the end of September so quickly?
Jack stood by the backdoor, coffee in hand, and contemplated their garden: the hot tub and Japanese-themed rock garden, the rows of leeks, spring onions, and strawberry plants.
The apple and pear trees spread their branches against the brick of the far wall, ready to greet the morning sun, with their fruit almost all picked.
Just like their house, the garden was a work in progress, but Jack could imagine it complete—or as complete as it would ever be between the four of them and their ideas.
The thought hurt.
More than Jack had imagined anything could hurt.
This was the third house he’d bought and renovated.
The others had been investment, entertainment, shelter—a safe base for him and his work.
The house he’d bought with Gareth, Nico, and Daniel felt different.
It was a home, and it was perfect for them.
Jack hated even thinking about selling it and starting over.
It tasted too much of running away.
Hearing Gareth’s steps on the tile was a relief, unspoken permission to stop thinking. Gareth was dressed as if he’d just rolled out of bed, and Jack winced. He’d been doing that a lot lately, dragging Gareth out of bed to have conversations by the garden door. When had that become a thing?
“Did I wake you?”
“It was your absence that woke me. Coffee?” He held up the carafe from the coffeemaker.
“Please.”
Jack’s mug topped up, Gareth set the carafe aside and joined Jack by the doors. “Can I ask you a question?”
Jack wasn’t sure he could explain his anxiety, but for Gareth, he would try. “Sure.”
“Why did you ask the boys to decide what to do about Manville?”
“Why did I—what?” Jack’s eyebrows shot up.
“Tell me, Jack.”
“Because it should be their choice, more than anyone’s. Yes, we want Manville in jail, but if Nico and Daniel are called to give evidence, the defence counsel will make them remember all the shit in their past. In detail. I’m twenty years past it and I don’t want to answer those questions.”
“Shhh. I didn’t mean to rile you.” Gareth put his arm around Jack’s waist and pulled him close. “I think Aidan would suspend his famous ‘no hard feelings’ rule and tear that counsel a new one,” he said.
“Maybe. But you understand why the least I can do is offer the boys the courtesy of choice, right?”
“Of course. You wouldn’t have reported Manville to the police if the boys had said no.”
“Of course not!”
“But you wouldn’t have let him get away doing what he did, either.”
Jack sighed in frustration. “Gareth, what is the point of you stating the obvious? No, I wouldn’t have reported Manville against the boys’ wishes. No, I don’t need the police to do damage, and yes, I’d have made his life a merry hell. Happy now?”
“Not really. Manville isn’t really the point here.”
Gareth dropped a kiss into Jack’s hair, and Jack had to fight not to melt. They were having a discussion, damn it! Even if he needed a moment to remember what Gareth had just said. “If Manville isn’t the point, then what is?”
“Your obsession with choices. A healthy obsession, I grant, but… if you’re so keen on Daniel and Nico picking what they want, then why are you out here at the crack of dawn suffering the consequences of a choice you haven’t even asked them to make yet?”
Jack had no answer for that, but Gareth didn’t need one.
“You are worrying about selling the house, right? Grieving for what we’d have to leave if we moved?” Gareth shook his head. “You and my mother. Honestly.”
“What?”
“Didn’t I tell you? My mother called me while we still had the police crawling over the hall and garden and asked me when I was going to put the house up for sale. She said our home was compromised. Tainted. That Nico and Daniel needed a place without negative associations to feel safe.”
“So that’s what drove you to Purple Line,” Jack exhaled frustrations he hadn’t known bothered him. “Your mother’s suggestion and Daniel preferring to be away from home. And then I made you take the boys to Aidan.”
“You didn’t make me do anything. You were repairing the backdoor.”
“Semantics. You had to take the boys out of our home because they no longer felt safe there, and it bugged you.”
“Granted.”
Jack leaned, let Gareth take his weight in a move that soothed them both. “We’re idiots, aren’t we?”
“Not. We’re making a family with nothing more than heart and stupid determination. Worrying is normal.”
“If you say so.” He felt Gareth’s fingers twine into his hair, felt him rub gently at his nape, soothing and grounding. It helped. “We need a plan,” he said. “For asking, I mean.”
“I know what you meant and… how about breakfast?”
Given the ridiculously early hour, they returned to their room to shower first, and Gareth did his best to help Jack relax.
The sight of his hands on Jack, of Jack leaning into him, and giving in to pleasure would never get any less arousing.
Or stop feeling like the greatest gift he’d ever received.
“If you hadn’t picked Nancarrow Mining to work for,” he mused, running a towel over Jack’s damp hair, “where would you have gone?”
“I had a shortlist of five.”
“And Nancarrow was fifth on your list?”
“First,” Jack disagreed. “I always start from the top. Fewer compromises that way.”
“Logic, thy name is Horwood.”