Ladies and Gentlemen I Present You… #3
“Oh.” Suddenly all Josh could do was stare at the clothes on the bed, thinking that Liam could produce a lime-green-and-magenta paisley jacket and he’d put it on after a revelation like that.
“Don’t let it panic you,” he murmured directly in Josh’s ear while holding out a slim-fitting pair of black slacks.
“I got all my panic out on the yacht in January. You didn’t see because you slept through most of it.
All I could do was look at you and think, ‘If anything happens to him, my heart will stop beating. That’s terrifying.
’ So yes. I’ve come to grips with that. This is the next phase is all. ”
Josh shivered. “You think I don’t have my own panic attacks about you?” he asked, thinking about how badly he’d wanted Liam to take their information/gaming drills seriously.
“I got that feeling when you tried to get me to play video games to strengthen my thief skills,” Liam said, voice dry. He picked up the tie, which was suddenly dazzling. “Don’t worry, boy—lad….”
Josh kissed him, enjoying the banter, the closeness, and the physical permissions they’d given each other during lovemaking the night before and that morning. They’d fallen in love ages ago, but consummation was so, so sweet.
“Josh,” Liam finished fuzzily, looking pleased. “Why do you object so much to ‘boy’?”
“Because I’m the baby,” Josh said, smiling but not happy about it. It was a unique position of privilege and pressure. “I want you to think of me as grown.”
Liam gave a low, filthy chuckle. “I think we’ve covered that,” he said, and Josh bussed him on the chin and then ducked, because they could be arguing about this forever, and it was time to get dressed.
THE DINING room table had been somewhat reconfigured in the last six months.
For as long as Josh could remember, it backed up to a long bench against a wall, and six to eight people could slide in on the booth-style seating on that side while the rest gathered in chairs on the other side of the banquet table or at the ends.
Until Danny’s reintegration into their lives, Felix and Julia rarely had a full table, so they’d mostly dropped the wings, kept the extra chairs in storage, and entertained four to six people at a time.
That didn’t work so much for the family as it was, so they’d moved the table out to the middle of the room, kept it sturdy, and replaced the booth-style seating with individual chairs—also sturdy.
They weren’t entertaining guests in tuxedos sampling wine anymore—they were dining with family, with big, strong, solid men and women who disliked tiny, delicate furniture.
While Marco reported the staff found the new configuration easier to serve, the result for those sitting down was mostly the same, with the exception of being able to excuse one’s self to the restroom with much more ease if you were sitting on what had once been the wall side of the table.
Josh liked the changes, almost unilaterally.
He and Grace and sometimes Stirling and Molly had done a lot of homework at the old table, munching snacks Phyllis had provided with little more than a hair tousle and a “You’re welcome—don’t spoil dinner.
” Well, not homework, really. The four of them had finished that at school.
This was more… side-quest work. But they’d been together, and they’d been working toward a goal, and their presence had helped erase some of the silence and loneliness left by Danny’s absence.
Josh had a lot of fond memories of Felix and Julia being out on the town, doing something important for the company, and of coming to sit by Danny as he researched or plotted or simply educated himself on something he hadn’t known before.
All three parents had given him a thirst for knowledge, but Danny had given him a delight in it.
Josh loved that the table had changed to accommodate so many people who delighted in the same things he did.
It was only halfway full as he and Liam approached, but he noticed that Grace—instead of sitting to Hunter’s right, which would have left two seats open—had chosen his left, which meant Josh had to sit between him and Carl.
“Nice,” Josh told him, tugging on a straight lock of black-and-(this week)-pink hair.
“What?” Grace asked, batting his tawny eyes ingenuously.
“Ignore him,” Carl said. “He’s being a jealous prick, we’ve already told him so, and Michael has threatened him with not being able to babysit the next time his children come over.”
“A blatant lie,” Grace said primly. “Those kids love me, and he wouldn’t deprive them of the pleasure.”
“As long as you foot the bill for the repairs again,” Michael said mildly, which was only fair.
“Hey, we fixed your plumbing problem,” Grace said.
“And also fixed that whole ‘lack of a sunroof’ problem,” Carl muttered, referring to the high-powered jet of water that had blown a hole from the upstairs toilet through the ceiling.
“The skylight looks so much better,” Grace told him.
On the other side of Hunter, Josh heard Liam say, “Good God, what happened?”
Hunter made a little grunt and rubbed the spot in the middle of his forehead that was probably wound tightly enough to catapult a grape into space if he lay on his back and just let go of the tension caused by his significant other.
“Next time,” Josh said, exerting whatever control he’d ever had over his best friend, “you ask Chuck and Hunter how to fix the plumbing. Or the electricity. Or the internet.”
“I fixed the internet,” Stirling said. “Carl could hack the Pentagon from his house, but he keeps refusing to race me for it.”
Carl gave Stirling the soft look you’d give a favorite nephew.
“But don’t think I don’t appreciate the gesture anyway,” he said.
He and Michael had bought the house (or rather, Leon had bought the house for them) in late November, after they’d helped solve the mystery of what happened to Leon’s brother, Josh’s father.
The structure had been perfectly sound and had needed zero improvements when they’d moved in, but between Michael’s three precocious children and their choice of Molly and Grace as their favorite babysitters, the same could probably not be said now.
It was a good thing Michael was so good-natured and Carl so unflappable, Josh figured, but he still wouldn’t put Grace in charge of so much as microwaving pizza bites without explicit instructions and a list of ABSOLUTELY DO NOT DOs.
“Wait,” Liam said at Grace’s elbow. “Weren’t you two going to get a dog—”
“Oh Jesus,” Carl muttered.
“No,” Molly said, shaking her head.
“Oh for fuck’s sake,” Hunter swore.
“For the love of God,” Chuck said, sauntering in with his boyfriend, Lucius, on his arm, “don’t even get us started on the fucking dogs.”
Josh turned to Chuck, impressed by the natty blue-striped brown suit he was wearing, including a tie of such lustrous brown it looked almost like velvet.
Lucius—a smaller dapper man with a slight widow’s peak of brown hair and classically handsome features—wore his own understated suit, this one charcoal gray, but judging by the look of adoration on the quiet businessman’s face, his absolute devotion to Josh’s munitions-and-transpo guy hadn’t lessened one iota in what amounted to a year of a long-distance relationship.
“Nice suit,” Liam said. “Did you say dogs?”
“Nice accent, son,” Chuck needled. “Good of you to show up at the last moment.”
“And where were you?” Liam and Chuck got along quite well, actually, but Josh rather suspected Liam’s dynamic with most of his team was the same dynamic he had with his large, rowdy family back in England.
“Me?” Chuck baited. “Me and Lucius here were at the party across the way from Miss Celeste’s party. We caught all the overflow guests who fled after the po-lice came so they could gossip with other rich people. Picked up all sorts of tidbits.”
“And Charles was on call for a distraction in case Josh needed one,” Lucius said proudly. “Which he didn’t.”
“What did you pick up?” Carl asked curiously.
“That the insurance investigator was dreamy,” Chuck replied, holding his battered hands to his impressively broad chest.
“Fuck off,” Carl retorted. “I was just asking.”
“No, really,” Lucius said, taking his and Chuck’s spot farther down the table. “Carl, you cut quite a swath among Celeste’s guests.”
“Oh hell,” Danny muttered, entering the room.
Danny was dressed in a close-fitting black suit with a black dress shirt, no tie—the formal version of thieves’ clothes, Josh thought fondly—and unless he was being Benjamin Morgan, happy art docent of the Chicago Art Institute, who wore tweed and corduroy, it was the outfit that made him most comfortable.
“Why’s that bad?” Michael asked, hand protectively on Carl’s arm.
“Because I’m stuck being an insurance investigator for this gig,” Carl said. “If too many people in Kadjic’s circle remember me, it means our cast of bit parts has been stretched a little thin.”
It was one of the reasons they’d put Chuck and Lucius in the party three floors down from Celeste’s when Lucius had found the invitation in his mailbox.
Chuck was a brilliant chemical engineer and a very talented getaway driver—but he was six feet three inches tall, with red hair, freckles, and a Texas drawl that could shake timber.
Carl was just as tall, but his blond, green-eyed looks were a little less noticeable.
“Alas,” Hunter said, “Molly and I have a run on the catering gig.”
Molly grunted, shaking out her curls. “Speak for yourself. I heard two people last night try to link me to that thing we did in the winter before we nailed that sweatshop owner to the fucking wall. Apparently my hair is attracting notice, dammit.”
“Wigs?” Stirling asked, a sort of neediness in his voice that Josh understood.
She grimaced. “I’ve done wigs, little brother. They’re like wearing a furnace on your head, particularly if you’ve got a lot of hair underneath. I may straighten it and dye it blond.”