Chapter 4
FOUR
Joshua woke to a phantom hangover.
Disregarding that he’d had but one glass of wine with last night’s dinner, his head throbbed in time with his heart. He’d slept fitfully, jerking upright from dreams where he’d been shot and it had sounded like tolling bells and barking hounds, like a hunting call.
He didn’t have to do this. No one was forcing him to come out.
Right now, it was a theoretical exercise.
If he called Leo this very instant and told him to drop it, he’d never have to deal with the reality of it, would never even have to consider the possible scenarios.
Sure, he’d seem a coward, and his mum and Emma would be disappointed.
Tristan and Mo, on the other hand, would respond with the same, “Whatever feels right to you, bro,” that had been their reaction to Joshua telling them he was maybe, quite probably, going to come out.
But it wasn’t about others, was it?
Well, it was. In part. But also not.
Joshua’s brain was trying to claw a way out of his skull. Time to dig out that list of pros and cons again, then. After a shower, and tea, and checking when he’d be expected at the children’s hospice to christen the new wing.
* * *
It was quiet around lunchtime, everyone having gone out, with Nate and Leo the only two left in the office.
They’d commandeered the conference room, Leo poring over notes while Nate tapped away on his laptop.
Since it was Friday, Nate had decided to go all out on the casual part and shown up in baggy jeans and a snapback, more unbuttoned than Leo had ever seen him before, and that included their standing appointment for pints at a random pub each Saturday.
Leo hadn’t bothered holding back his delight at Nate turning into a frat boy.
It was a good change, though—made Nate look younger, less like a stuffy manager and more like a twenty-something who knew how to have a good time. Maybe Leo would even compliment him on it before the day was done.
First, though, he’d have to bring some order into the mess of notes he’d taken during his earlier discussion with James.
“Your boy’s on the telly,” Nate said all of a sudden, and Leo glanced at the muted TV in the corner of the room. He found Joshua beaming back at him and everyone else in the UK who happened to be watching. Joshua’s eyes were tired.
Leo dragged his gaze away and continued reviewing the questions James had fired at him. “Not my boy,” he corrected. Never his boy. Not in this universe.
“He made you breakfast.”
“Only because I refused to take his money for a little advice,” Leo replied, a little more harshly than he’d intended. “Did you forget the part where he’s already got a supermodel for arm candy?”
Nate frowned. “I really don’t think it works like that between them.”
“Uh.” Leo let his pen still on the paper, shooting Nate a pointedly incredulous look. Because seriously? “Aren’t you the one who watched the video? ‘Cause I’m pretty sure that yes, it very much works like that between them.”
“I didn’t watch it.” The tinge of pink to Nate’s cheeks was impossible to miss. “Not the entire thing, I mean. Just enough to… make sure it was what we were looking for.”
Leo gave him a shark-like smile, drawing the word out. “Sure.”
“It’s not what I meant anyway. I just meant they’re not…” Nate lifted a hand and dropped it again. “Romantic. Or exclusive or anything.”
“Why do you even care?”
“I don’t.”
“If you say so,” Leo said flatly. His open disbelief was met with a moment of silence, then Nate sighed.
“Don’t be a dick, okay?” Reaching for the remote control, he turned the volume up just enough to make out some presenter’s voice, infused with professional warmth, something about charity work and donations and the Royal Family.
“Why,” Nate began a moment later, “did you refuse to take his money anyway?”
Flicking the telly a quick glance, Leo found Joshua surrounded by kids, kneeling to be on their level, his smile not quite as bright, but kinder, sweeter. “I wouldn’t take money from anyone else asking for advice on this kind of thing. So why take it from him?”
“Because you were spitting expletives the first time you met him?”
Not the first time.
Leo almost, almost let it slip. He caught himself at the last second, swallowed it back down and gave an indifferent shrug. “I’m open to revising a first impression.”
“Fine, whatever. Don’t feel like you need to explain a damn thing.”
“I don’t.”
For a short beat, they stared at each other.
Nate was first to look away, a sad tilt to his mouth.
Leo bit the inside of his cheek and focused back on the task at hand.
“Care to go through my notes once I put down a few ideas?” he asked, striving for a casual tone. “Tell me whether I’m making sense?”
Nate’s answer came with a small, but noticeable delay. “Yeah, okay.”
“Okay,” Leo echoed.
In the background, Joshua was talking about rare diseases and research and the braveness he’d witnessed in the kids, about one girl in particular who had clearly left an impression.
“‘If I’m sad,’” he quoted her, “‘it’ll only make my dad sadder. And I don’t want him sad.
’ Isn’t that amazing? She’s eight, and she’s dying, and that’s how she handles it.
” His voice grew quieter. “If I even have half her courage one day, I’ll be proud. ”
Leo looked up just in time to see Joshua blink a little too rapidly, smiling through it—always smiling.
Then he reached up to ruffle his hair, and a few days ago Leo would have considered it a prattish move, something intended to charm his audience.
Now, he recognised it as a tell-tale gesture that revealed insecurity.
If you go through with this, Leo thought, you should be proud of yourself. I would be proud of you.
He pushed the thought away and went back to his notes. James had put him in charge, and Leo wasn’t about to let him down. He wasn’t about to let Joshua down either.
They had a brief chat on the phone early in the afternoon, Joshua’s voice bright and firm as he called to ask how things were going, whether Leo needed any kind of input.
He sounded more determined than the night before, almost impatient, when Leo had feared that things would look different to Joshua in the light of the morning.
It seemed as though Joshua was someone who stood by his decisions. Rare, that.
Leo suggested that he and Nate show up at Joshua’s place later in the day, meet up with Joshua and his trusted sidekicks to form the Small Council—and, by the way, Leo demanded to be named Hand of the King in spite of the inherent risk to his life.
To Leo’s disappointment, Joshua didn’t catch the Game of Thrones reference.
Really, any self-respecting royal should be intimately familiar with sinister plays for power.
How was Leo supposed to trust a leader who’d exposed such a shocking gap in education?
“Good thing I’m not first in line,” Joshua said around a laugh when Leo expressed his misgivings.
“Better get your sister a taster, then,” Leo told him. “To sample her wine. Wouldn’t want this country to end up in your incapable hands.”
Again, Joshua didn’t catch the reference. “Someone,” Leo told him, “desperately needs to bring you up to speed. This is embarrassing. How do you last through any social gathering with your astounding lack of knowledge?”
“Is that an offer?” Joshua asked.
The question pulled Leo up short. “Maybe,” he said after a delay that had likely been noticeable, and Joshua didn’t probe for more.
* * *
Joshua had ordered enough food to sustain a small army.
On the way home from the hospice, he’d also looked up what exactly the Small Council was and had then considered dressing his living room table in red brocade and picking up some antique candle holders and wine cups from his mum.
Atmosphere was important, after all. He’d been running late though, and by the time he arrived at home, he had just enough time left to hop under the shower.
He wandered out of the bathroom, towelling off, to find Tristan perched on the work surface in the kitchen.
He was surrounded by food that had arrived at some point between the start of Joshua’s shower and now.
“Put some clothes on,” Tristan said in lieu of a greeting.
“No one needs to see that. Or are you reconsidering a career in the porn industry?”
Joshua spread his arms and twirled. When he came to a stop, Tristan looked decidedly unimpressed, and Joshua snorted, not hurt in the least. He draped a towel around his waist and glanced around. “Did you come with the food?”
“Good timing, eh? What if they’d turned around ‘cause you didn’t open?”
Joshua nodded. “A tragedy in the making.”
“We’d have to eat Mo,” Tristan said. “Or Nate. Not as scrawny.”
“Too much muscle, though.”
“And Leo is tiny. Guess it’ll have to be you.”
“Thanks for calling me fat,” Joshua said.
“Eh, you’re pretty scrawny too. But among all those subpar choices, you’re my best bet for survival.”
Joshua ambled over to look into the casserole that had been left on the hob. Au gratin potatoes that smelled like heaven. Only now did he notice he’d barely eaten all day. “I’m the best cook you know,” he said over his shoulder. “Cooking the cook is a bad idea.”
“You don’t know about Leo and Nate. Maybe they’re decent cooks, could take over from you.”
“Why are we talking about cannibalism again?”
Shrugging, Tristan hopped to the floor and flicked one of Joshua’s nipples. “Put some clothes on, cunt. Mo and I might be used to it, but the other two aren’t. Don’t want to scare them away, do we? Or”—he waggled his brows—“seduce them?”