Chapter 4
B RANTLEY STARED OUT at the path that led up to the Finleys’ front door from his car. Over the years, he’d been to this little beach house in varying capacities. Never, though, had he walked up that path with the nerves that were currently making him want to hyperventilate.
This is stupid, he told himself for the millionth time.
Get out of the car and go inside. It’s not like Daniel is going to see me and jump me in front of his mother or our entire small community.
And, from the amount of cars and people walking down the sidewalk taunting him, he deduced that that was exactly whom Camille had invited—everyone.
As he finally unbuckled his seatbelt and pushed the door of his car open, he took a fortifying breath. Then he slammed the door shut and leaned back against it, clutching the bottle of wine he’d brought in a death grip.
I can do this. I can walk in there, greet Camille, and then look for her son, the man I ? —
“Evening, professor.”
He looked up and saw Katrina walking down the path toward him. She was wearing a red sundress, and her dark curls were piled atop her head in a messy updo.
When she stopped in front of him, she joked, “I didn’t think you owned a pair of shorts,” as she looked down at his legs, which prompted him to do the same. “You’re not going to stand out here all night, are you?”
“No, no,” he said, before spouting off a blatant lie. “I just got here.” Yeah, fifteen minutes ago.
“Ahh, okay. I’m just heading out to get more alcohol for the natives. Everyone is out back. Just head through the front door and down the hall. Well, you know where it is.”
As she walked away, he was close to asking if she needed help. But then she looked over her shoulder and smiled.
“Finn’s waiting for you.”
Before he could try to formulate any kind of reply to that, she jogged across the street to the silver car parked by the curb.
After she had driven away, he headed up the sidewalk. People were chatting and milling about on the front porch, and as several of them stopped to say hello when he passed by, he reminded himself to breathe.
When he stepped inside, he became hyperaware of his surroundings. The first thing his eyes landed on was the photo on the table in the foyer. It was of Daniel in his college graduation cap and gown, his arm around his sister. The fresh-faced young man he hadn’t seen in years.
He wasn’t sure why, but the thought of seeing Daniel again had him more nervous than he’d anticipated. He’d always thought he would be excited about their reunion, and he definitely was, but there was also some underlying apprehension he couldn’t quite pinpoint.
Knowing that he needed to get this first meeting over with, he ordered himself to start acting like the adult he was. So he steeled his nerves and walked down the hall to the back of the house. It was time to find the man who’d come home to him.
DANIEL HAD BEEN keeping close surveillance of the sliding doors ever since people had started to arrive an hour ago, and with every person who stepped outside that wasn’t Brantley, his anxiety rose a notch.
He was trying to play it cool as he stood with Derek at the bottom of the stairs by one of the tiki torches his mother had had him shove into the sand earlier. But he was positive he was failing.
“If I didn’t know better, I’d be offended that you haven’t been paying shit-all attention to me compared to every other non -important person who’s walked through your back door tonight.”
He arched an eyebrow when he turned toward his friend. “Offended, huh? If I didn’t know better, I’d think you missed my pretty face, Pearson,” he said, raising the Crown and Coke he’d switched to in an attempt to calm his nerves.
When Derek said nothing and brought his always-present cigarette to his lips for a drag, Daniel chuckled. “That’s kind of…sweet.”
“You’re a dick. You know that, right?” Derek laughed.
“I might’ve been told that a time or three.”
“Oh yeah? By who? Friends of yours up north?”
The two men who sprang to mind certainly weren’t his friends by any means. They would, however, agree with Derek’s assessment that he was a dick.
“Nah, not friends.”
“Fuck buddies, then?”
Daniel winced at the memory of trying for just that and then shook his head to dispel the thought. “Definitely not.”
Derek eyed him for a second, and then his lips split into an arrogant smile. “Ohh…I see. You were denied. Ouch. Was that a first for you, Danny boy?”
“Stop fantasizing about my sex life, would you? Plus, my mother’s just over there.”
As if on cue, his mom turned their way and waved, just as she had at an afternoon barbecue or one of his birthday parties when they had been boys.
Derek raised a hand and waved back as he said under his breath, “I’m not the one standing here having fuck fantasies about his former professor. She has no idea you’re waiting for him to arrive so you can drive the poor bastard crazy, does she?”
Daniel drained the rest of his drink and was about to tell Derek to can it, when Brantley Hayes finally stepped through the sliding doors and out onto the balcony.
Daniel slowly lowered his arm and took a step away from his friend, who’d discreetly slipped back into the crowd of people, and as his eyes traveled up to latch on to the man who’d snared his attention, his heart skipped and his cock throbbed.
Professor Hayes, dressed for work in preppy sweaters and dress slacks, was undeniably hot. But Brantley Hayes, relaxed and casual, had always been fucking irresistible.
As people shuffled around him, Daniel willed Brantley to look at him, wanting that first eye contact. And when he finally had it, the expression there just about brought Daniel to his knees.
The joy that lit Brantley’s unusual-colored eyes was evident as he gazed at him, but it was the intense focus and determined set of his jaw that had Daniel two beats away from climbing the stairs and dragging him to his bedroom.
It appeared that Brantley Hayes had definitely received his note this morning, and he was telling him in no uncertain terms that whatever reason had brought him back home, he was more than willing to explore what was currently sparking back to life between them.
Daniel refused to look away from the one watching him, and he was just about to head up the stairs when gentle fingers landed on his arm.
“Finn?”
Brantley raised his wine glass slightly in acknowledgment and then let his eyes move just beyond his shoulder.
Fuck, not now. Not fucking now, he wanted to say. But he didn’t. Instead, he tore his gaze away, figuring he’d track that man down soon after he’d dealt with whatever his mother needed him for.
“Finn, there’s someone who wants to say hello to you. You remember Kathy, don’t you? Her son is thinking about going into law next year, and he wanted to pick your brain about Chicago.”
Fantastic, he thought as he looked back to the balcony. Brantley was now talking with another man who had his back toward him, and it wasn’t until they both turned his way that Daniel realized exactly who it was— Professor Jordan Devaney.
“They’re just over here,” his mother said as she pulled him through the bevy of people drinking and eating.
Several of them gave him a wave and said a quick “Welcome back” as he brushed by, but he didn’t give a flying fuck what anyone other than the two men watching him was saying.
It was obvious that he was the topic under discussion by the fierce observation he was currently being subjected to. Brantley was speaking quietly with his colleague, whose eyes were boldly tracking over Daniel with no subtlety whatsoever.
When he caught the man’s appreciative gaze, Daniel narrowed his eyes and then looked to Brantley. He was watching him with just as much focus, but the reaction Daniel had to him was completely different.
He wanted that undivided attention. In a room. Alone.
He slicked his tongue across his lower lip and let his eyes linger over every inch he could see of Brantley.
The long legs he’d once entwined his with.
The dark, windswept hair that was cut perfectly around his ears but still long enough to hit the collar of his shirt—and the dusting of grey through it, and at his temples, which was new. New and totally fucking sexy.
When they’d first met, Daniel had spent way too many hours thinking about and trying to decide what color Brantley’s eyes were.
In the end, he’d come to the conclusion that it all depended on the light.
At the moment, he was too far away to see, but soon, he would be close enough to notice if they were the dark green they became when his professor was aroused, or that gorgeous peridot shade they were any other time of the day.
Gorgeous eyes in an already-too-handsome face. Brantley Hayes was in a class all of his own when it came to men. And fuck, Daniel thought, he was still the pinnacle of perfection in his eyes.
From the top of his thick hair to the tips of his Italian loafers, he was brains, class, and sex, and in those khaki shorts and black linen button-down shirt, Daniel wanted to touch every part of him.
Touch him, fuck him, and then forget him .
When Daniel brought his attention back to both men, Brantley’s friend leaned in toward him and whispered something that had his professor raising his wine glass and draining it.
“So, Daniel,” an unfamiliar voice said from over his shoulder.
He sighed in resignation. The quicker he spoke with this guy and his mother, the quicker he could track down the one eyeing him from the balcony.
“YOU ARE SO fucked, Professor Hayes .”
“Would you keep your voice down?” Brantley muttered before he drained his glass and watched Daniel turn away from them.
It wasn’t that he disagreed with Jordan’s observation. He just didn’t want everyone else around them to know his predicament.