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What he realized was, he liked touching that nerve.

  He liked how angry he’d made Noah. Liked the way his eyes flashed with fury.

  If only he could push him again. Just a little bit further. Just a little bit. What would he do then? Would they fight? Would he yell? Shove Dalton?

  He almost wanted it. Almost wanted to be shoved. Not because he liked that, but because of what would happen next, the way he would grab Noah’s arms, force him physically to stand down. He’d push Noah against the side of the bridge, holding his arms behind him so he couldn’t fight back, he’d lean him over the guardrail, press his face against that cowl collar that seemed to show and hide so much skin all at the same time. He’d…

  “You grew up extremely poor,” Dalton said. “How about that?”

  His smile grew weaker, more tentative, when he saw Noah pale.

  “What…?” Noah said.

  Something was wrong.

  Again.

  He’d done something wrong, and not realized it until a moment too late.

  “I’m sorry, I just…”

  “Really?” said Noah. He pushed Dalton out of the way and began crossing the bridge.

  “Come on, wait, come back,” said Dalton, grabbing at his sleeve.

  Noah stopped and turned, and even his lips were pale. Soft and pale, a sleeping beauty’s lips that had not been kissed in a hundred slumbering years. “That’s such bullshit. It was a game, Dalton. A fucking game.”

  “Don’t take it the wrong way, there’s nothing wrong with— I mean, let me explain—”

  “What, explain how you knew? You’re going to stand there and explain? Dude, it wasn’t some great perception on your part, I’m sure you investigated each of us, the minute you decided you wanted to buy the house! So you just trot that out, to put me down?”

  “I wasn’t putting you down!”

  “To…what was it you said, hem me in, so I’d be meek and mild? Fuck, Dalton, what kind of cynical bastard are you? It was a game.”

  He opened his mouth, trying to formulate the words that would make this okay, trying to figure out the way to phrase things that would calm Noah down, to make him see Dalton’s side—he was the great negotiator, after all, this is what he lived for, wasn’t it, bringing opposing sides together for mutual profit, mutual benefit, wasn’t that his entire job?—but while he was standing there like some fish gasping in the air, his phone started going off, buzzing madly with the particular ring-tone that signaled it was Marcia’s team calling.

  The house deal. He had to take the call.

  9

  Dalton

  All he wanted to do was get out of town.

  Well, no. All he wanted to do was apologize to Noah. But Noah had disappeared, so clearly that wasn’t going to be possible, which left him only one option, that of escape. Marcia wanted to have a meeting, she was already headed back to the office, and this would be his perfect opportunity to make a getaway.

  So when the second call came, he thought it would be her again. I’ll be there soon enough, quit bugging me, he thought. Can’t I have a damn minute alone with my thoughts?

  But the call wasn’t from Marcia, it was from a local number, although it was still a request for a meeting.

  Just not the meeting he’d been expecting.

  “Thank you so much for joining me,” said Violet Mulgrew. She was a handsome woman, imposing, with a touch of high society about her. She would not have been out of place at the summer luncheons in Savannah that Dalton had hated so much as a child. Those wealthy ladies, their words like needles under the skin, plotting marriages and mergers and murders. He’d always tried to avoid them, and stay near his father, following the trail of cigar smoke, the men near the water in their Adirondack chairs, telling their war stories about companies crushed, companies bought. The difference was, they weren’t trying to hide their glee under a layer of ladylike politeness. “You’ll have to forgive a bit of spying, finding out you were here. I worried you might leave town again, without my having the chance to meet you.”

  She gestured toward one of the high-backed chairs upholstered in green velvet, the fabric giving the false appearance of a soft place to sit. When he took a seat, he felt the hardness beneath him, the discomfort of a chair designed to keep visits short and to the point, with no chance of relaxation.

  Just like everything about this town, he thought, picturing Noah walking away. He’d fucked that up so badly.

  He had to put Noah out of his mind. Business. This was the person who stood in the way of the town council. He needed to focus. To put on his business mask.

  “So, Mrs. Mulgrew, people tell me you’re the person to know in this town.”

  “I like that. No small-talk. You’re a busy man, you get straight to the point. I’ll do you the favor of doing the same. In many ways, this is my town, Mr. Raines. I was born here, I grew up here, and I own most of the buildings you see out there. I suppose I have an old-fashioned view of things, but I believe that if you own a town, you have a responsibility for the soul of the town. Does that make sense to you?”

  In his world, people didn’t talk about souls. Maybe because everyone had already sold theirs.

  One of the rules of business is that you never disagreed with someone directly. It could spoil a deal. Make people feel like adversaries.

  He inclined his head. “It makes perfect sense. You don’t want to invest your time and money into something that doesn’t reflect your values.”

  Her expression softened, but behind it lurked a gaze as hard and cold as the furniture in this room. “You do understand. Would you like a cup of tea? Or perhaps something stronger?” Without a word, without a signal, she had somehow summoned a servant, a nervous girl dressed in plain brown, who stood in the doorway with her hands behind her back.

  “It has been a rough afternoon,” he said.

  “Ah, something stronger, then.” She turned to the girl. “Jill, see to it, won’t you? Scotch, straight. Do I have that right, Mr. Raines, or do you prefer a little ice?”

  “Straight is fine.”

  Oh, he did not like the smile that crossed her face when he said that.

  “Just so,” she agreed. When the girl left, Violet turned back to Dalton. “Such a pretty little thing, but hardly a brain in her head. I imagine you don’t have to worry about that, do you? You must have all the help in the world. You’re not forced to settle for what small-town girls you can find.”

  Why did he get the feeling she wasn’t talking about maids and housekeepers when she said that?

  For the same reason you feel like you’ve just wandered into a trap. You just looked down and noticed your foot is about to be caught, but you haven’t heard the snap of its jaws yet. But you know it’s coming. She’d mentioned getting to the point, yet for her, the point seemed to be to keep him in his chair, ask his opinion about innocuous-seeming things. Scanning him. Sizing him up.

  Occasionally, being a billionaire had its advantages. And one of those was that people were afraid of wasting his time. So he leaned forward and said, “Let’s talk about why I’m really here, shall we?”

  “Ah, a man who likes to get down to business. Yes, let’s not be delicate. I’d like to know your plans for Superbia Springs. The news I get about it is confusing. One minute they’re applying for a grant that I have to sign off on. The next, you’re buying the place. What’s going on here, Mr. Raines?”

  “With all due respect, Mrs. Mulgrew, these are business decisions, and I’m not at liberty to discuss them with you.”

  There was that hardness again, pinching her face. She understood as well as he did that it was his business, and he was at perfect liberty to talk about it to whomever he pleased. His silence on the matter was a choice, and she was not a woman who liked being crossed.

  This is the woman who insulted Noah. Insulted Liam and Judah, the entire group of them. What had Noah called her? A mean old biddy? It was a cute phrase, but Dalton thought it underestimated the evil a woma
n like this was capable of.

  Why did he care? Noah was clearly not interested in him. He had taken offense, he’d gone away, just when Dalton thought… Well, he didn’t know what he thought. Maybe it was just an idle fantasy, meeting a cute stranger, having an unexpectedly deep conversation. Where could it have lead? Nowhere. Maybe that was the charm of it, knowing that whatever happened, no strings would be attached.

  And now…there certainly was a string. A string of guilt, tying him to the town, feeling bad about that unexpected change in the conversation.

  But Violet was speaking. “I have a responsibility to this town, you see. I’m no preacher, I don’t pretend I can lead anyone to righteousness. But perhaps I can stop sin from showing itself so blatantly. There are no Pride parades in Superbia, Mr. Raines. No rainbow flags, none of those accessories of perversion that the rest of the world likes to display. I will not countenance letting the Coopers open some sort of homosexual hotel. Not in my town. Not so long as I have breath in my body. Do you know what we used to call that place? Cooper’s Folly. For generations, the Coopers were the laughingstock of the town, trying to hold on to that house while everyone knew its day had come and gone. And now they’re trying to bring that folly back? And make it into a center of the worst kind of deviance? No. No. So I want you to know, I fully support you buying the house. A man such as yourself would be a breath of fresh air in the town. You could sweep away the cobwebs, as it were. You could save Superbia Springs from this degeneracy the Coopers seek to slide us towards.”

  He knew what he should have told her. He should have stood up and announced that she was talking to a gay man. Not just any gay man, either, a man who had donated hundreds of thousands of dollars to gay-related charities, trying to solve the problems of gay homelessness, inadequate access to medication, jobs, education. A man who sat on the board of those charities, who helped direct the flow of more funds than she would ever see in her life.

  Yet, when the moment came, he did not tell her this.

  It wasn’t out of fear. There was nothing scary about this woman, with her pretensions to grandeur. She might scare the girl who brought him his drink on a tray, but she didn’t scare him.

  What was it Noah had said?

  You’re very reserved. You don’t want people to know how you really feel.

  When you admitted what was in your heart, you made yourself vulnerable. You let people know where the weak spots were, where to attack.

  If she knew he was gay, Violet Mulgrew would seek to make more trouble for him, for the house. She couldn’t stop him from doing what he wanted—there’s no point in being a billionaire if you can’t command an army of lawyers to get what you want—but she could make things difficult. Make them expensive. Draw him into legal battles that could keep him from settling his dad into the house.

  As defiant as he wanted to be, he found himself sipping his drink with a friendly look on his face, his true emotions hidden far, far below.

  “You clearly care a lot about what happens here,” he said, neutrally, noncommittally.

  She took it as agreement, just as he’d known she would. “More than anything else. You know, those Coopers raised problems for us when they first moved here, they and that fey little friend of theirs. They tried to raise suspicions about my own son, Justin. I wish you could meet him, Mr. Raines. You could use someone like Justin in your company. He has a sharp eye for value. But can you imagine? To get their way, they raised up all sorts of rumors about him, about the rest of my family. Dredged up old gossip from generations ago. Vile, disgusting things. But that’s the way it is with the gay, you know. Lacking any sense of purpose higher than their own carnal pleasure, they don’t understand those of us who would rather build, instead of destroy. I believe it’s all about child-rearing, don’t you?”

  The air in the room seemed to have dropped twenty degrees, and he had to taste his drink again to make sure it hadn’t been poisoned. What a vile woman this was. “What do you mean?”

  “They’re sterile, in their homosexuality. Without being able to reproduce, they have no view of the future, they place no value in future generations.”

  “Liam Cooper has a daughter, I believe.”

  “And what a horrible fate for such an innocent child. Can you imagine, having two fathers, with nothing maternal in life to balance that out, other than the innate girlish weakness of the gay psyche? What will the child become?”

  It was like he had walked into the distant past. A past that hated everything that didn’t fit the proper mold. That chewed and chewed away at it like termites. She thought gay men were destructive? Did she not hear the pernicious sound of her own words?

  “I’m afraid my time is running out,” he said. “I need to get back to the office.”

  He had listened; she had been placated. She rose from her chair. “I’m so pleased you came to see me today, Mr. Raines. I look forward to helping you in your pursuit of Superbia Springs.” She came close, closer than he would have liked, close enough that he could see the lines that hatred had etched into her face. Some people over the course of their lives grew laugh-lines from so much good cheer. Some people grew worry lines from a life of care.

  Never had he seen disgust-lines before, but he saw them now, the result of a lifetime of sneering at a world she truly hated.

  He should have come out.

  He should have admitted what he was.

  He cursed himself all the way back to Atlanta, for letting her rattle him, for letting this natural sense of reticence take over.

  You managed to wreck two conversations in one day. God knows what you’ll accomplish next.

  10

  Noah

  “Where were you?” asked Judah, later that night. “We looked everywhere, we called, we texted—”

  Noah lifted his phone from the bar. “Silenced,” he said. Then he shrugged, shook his head, and set the phone back down, ignoring that he had put it in the little circle of condensation from his grenadine fizz.

  “The way you left with Dalton, and then didn’t come back, you had us worried,” said Judah.

  As much as Noah didn’t want to talk about it right now, he really didn’t want to talk about it with anyone else listening, so he picked up his drink. There was a back corner at Toady’s where you could usually count on a little privacy, and he headed that way. “Order yourself something if you want to,” he told Judah.

  “How many have you had?”

  “Not nearly enough.”

  It was true. His step was absolutely steady as he lead Judah to the back booth, and when he slipped into his seat, he was utterly sober. For now. He’d held on to this drink for so long, the ice had nearly all melted, and the cool, transparent water had formed a little layer at the top, as though protecting the red liquor underneath.

  He was secretly grateful for Judah’s arrival. Grateful for the interruption. Because while he’d been sitting here, not drinking his drink, and trying not to remember the conversation with Dalton, another memory had elbowed forward. Another school chant, as clear as the one he’d heard back at the town council meeting. This one used to greet him first thing in the morning, when he had shuffled into homeroom, the teacher simultaneously trying to shush the students and hide her own smile:

  Noah thinks that he’s a star

  But lives inside his mama’s car!

  Thankfully, after Judah got his usual hard cider, he joined Noah at the table.

  “You can’t just leave like that. We had no idea where you were.”

  “It’s a small town, Judah. There are only two or three places I could be. So, what’s the verdict? Am I packing my bags? When is the Raines family moving in?”

  His best friend shook his head. “They’re not. We told them no.”

  Now that deserved a drink, even if a watered-down one, and Noah raised his glass in a mock-toast and took a swallow. “I’m shocked. The presentation wasn’t convincing?”

  “Oh, it was convincing enough. We’r
e doomed, absolutely doomed, if we don’t find a source of money to renovate the place, and they knew how much money it would take, down to the dime. I don’t know how they did it, but they knew about repairs we’d need that we hadn’t even thought of. And all the expenses of running the business, and all the—”

  “They were just trying to scare you.”

  “I know.” Judah rubbed his thumb against his bottle’s label, making the corner curl up. “It worked. I’m scared.”

  “Don’t be,” said Noah, thinking back to this afternoon on the bridge. “They’re manipulative. It’s all a show, trying to get you nervous, off-balance, so they can get what they want.”

  “Where did you go, you and Mr. Raines?”

  “Nowhere. But trust me, he had a little presentation for me all his own.”

  Judah’s bottle froze in the air before reaching his mouth. “He had a…presentation? What, did he have a Secret Seduction Plan all his own? But that should’ve been perfect, right, because then—”

  “Oh Christ, Judah, do you mind? That was just stupid of me. I don’t know what I was thinking. What, I was going to bat my eyelashes and he’d back off? No. No, he didn’t do anything like that. There wasn’t any— Ugh. No. It was all mind-games. I’m sure billionaires must be great at those, it’s how they make all that money.” He looked into his glass, the thin sliver of ice floating on top. “How is Liam?”

  “Pretty shaken. Mama’s babysitting Roo, and Mason took Liam out to talk. It’s not every day the big dream of your life gets shattered like that.”

  “It’s not shattered,” insisted Noah. “You’ve still got the house. You’re not selling. You’ll find a way.”

  Judah set this bottle down. “You mean, we’ll find a way.”

  “That’s what I said.”

  “No, you said you’ll. Like there’s a we separate from you. Like this is a Cooper problem instead of an us problem.”

  He poked at the ice-sliver with his fingertip. “Isn’t it? Come on, Judah. The last thing you need right now is to be supporting me during all this.”