by RJ Scott
“Because it’ll make my moms happy.” He dropped his head and answered with heartfelt words. “And maybe they can stop worrying that I don’t have friends in the city, and that I’m wasting away. I hate it, hate myself because I’m the one worrying them, and it’s over something stupid, trivial, and untrue. They think I’m lonely.”
In a soft tone, Gideon suggested, “There must be someone better suited for this. A real friend who could help you out?”
He’s going to think I’m pathetic and lonely as well. But I’m not.
“To be honest, I don’t have that many close friends. You know how it is, you grow up, do your own thing, meet other people. I would have asked Darcy, but he’s a little busy this year, obvs.” He laughed. “And before you have a pity party on my behalf, I am quite content with the socializing I do in this place to then go home and enjoy my own company.”
Silence fell between them as Gideon seemed to scrutinize Rowan, his stance, his face. Was he searching for cracks? Wondering if Rowan’s words were fake?
“Just as friends?” Gideon tapped his finger on his desk. “I don’t have to—”
Please don’t say anything about yesterday.
“No. No. God, no. Just be a friend. And if they suggest otherwise, tell them you’re my boss, that should shut them up.” That’s right, he’s my boss. I don’t want to lose my place at his side. He put his hands together. Who am I doing this for again? Gideon, my moms, myself? “Please, will you help me out?” This is such a flimsy plan. I say it’s for me, for my moms, but I want to ease his mind, his guilt about lying to his family. He’ll see right through me.
“I guess it would mean I wasn’t actually lying to my parents,” Gideon thought out loud.
“Exactly.”
And at the same time, I can ease my own guilt about the kiss. Let me make it up to you, let me share your burden.
Gideon huffed a defeated breath. “Fine. I’ll do it.”
“Excellent.” Rowan perked up and turned on his heel to head for the door. “Oh, and just one more thing.”
“What?”
“How are you with dogs?”
Four
Gideon
“Yes! Found it!” Rowan yelled and thumped his hand on the steering wheel, scaring the shit out of Gideon, who’d slipped into a state of hypnosis as he watched the road outside the window.
“Fuck!” Gideon yelped and clutched his chest before having to hold on for his life as Rowan made his way across the lanes to the exit.
They’d passed five burger chain outlets in the past hour, but none of them had been the perfect one according to Rowan. Finally, he finds one and scares me to death? I knew we should have flown.
His heart was still beating fast when they pulled into the parking lot and Rowan confidently backed into the furthest space from the restaurant as he could find.
“Are you okay?” Rowan asked and patted Gideon’s arm as if he had absolutely nothing to worry about at all.
“You just…you…” Gideon thumbed behind them to the freeway, lost for words. His super organized, calm, efficient PA had morphed into something completely terrifying when he got behind the wheel of his beautiful Lotus. He was a good driver, but fast, and that didn’t make the exiting of the freeway any less adrenaline inducing.
“I know. Cool driving, right?” Rowan said and pushed open his door, climbed out and disappeared for a moment before popping his head back in. “Coming?”
Gideon managed to get out, grabbing his coat and slipping it on before taking in his surroundings. This wasn’t a chain outlet. It was a diner, a sparkling pink and white train car with a neon sign proclaiming it was Jen’s Place.
There were so many questions Gideon wanted to ask at that moment. Why did Rowan have a cramped Lotus? Why was it canary yellow? Why did he drive on the edge of the speed limit the entire time and switch lanes so much? But mostly, why stop here at Jen’s Place? He shut the door and took his time to get the questions in order. This morning Rowan had announced that they wouldn’t be taking Gideon’s BMW on the long drive up the coast to Maine.
His excuses ranged from that he loved driving to that it was his turn since Gideon drove to Darcy’s wedding, and the fact he was hiring Gideon so therefore he was the boss, and Gideon should shut up and do as he was told. Particularly as it was snowing. Gideon had been too wrapped up in the reasoning to even question why the snow was an issue, but he got an answer for that as well. “I’ve been driving cars in the snow since I was ten,” he’d announced and that had ended the conversation because Gideon didn’t even want to know. “Things like that happen in a small town you know,” he’d added as if that explained why he was driving at ten. How in the hell had ten-year-old Rowan even managed to reach the pedals?
When they left New York, there’d been a sprinkling of snow, a suggestion of a later storm, but the farther north they headed, hugging the ocean, there were fewer signs of snow, although it seemed just as cold to Gideon.
“Why Jen’s Place?”
Rowan clapped his gloved hands together and huffed out an icy breath. “Kev was sick here,” he said and then shook his head fondly. “Good times.”
“Someone you know was sick in the diner?” Gideon stopped on the steps and gripped the railing, his glove sticking to the ice there.
“Uh-huh, Kevin, my big brother, the one with the…that’s for later.” He opened the door and a rush of warmth had Gideon instinctively stepping inside, unsure if he should walk straight back out as the gorgeous scent of burgers and bacon hit him. “It’s my fault really. Mom was ill then so she and Momo stayed in the car with the babies and gave us the money for food. I dared Kevin to drink each flavor of milkshake, and he got halfway through and was so sick it was projectile—”
Gideon covered Rowan’s mouth with his gloved hand. “No more.”
Rowan wrinkled his nose and pulled back from the hand then shrugged off his coat and hung it on a hook.
“Hi,” Rowan called to someone as Gideon hung his coat.
“Hey back, choose a table, honey, I’ll be right over!” The waitress was old enough to be Gideon’s grandma, steel hair short in a bob, laughter lines, and a ready smile. Her badge read Jen, but how likely was it that this diner, which seemed a relic of the fifties, actually belonged to Jen, this very waitress?
Rowan headed through the train car to the back corner, patting the vinyl topped table and then sliding into the booth.
“The family table,” he murmured almost reverently.
“This isn’t the one that Ken got sick all over?” Gideon looked at the immaculate area with a dubious eye.
“Kev, and no, I told you, it reached the—”
“Tell me something else about Kev?” Gideon was very good at changing the subject when it came to any and all explanations of childhood vomiting.
“The black sheep of the family,” Rowan deadpanned. “Criminal record and everything.” The waitress came over with water and menus.
“Back in a bit,” she said and hummed to herself as she cleared the table across from them.
“What criminal record?”
Rowan blinked at him and then picked up the menu and hid behind it. “It’s worse than mine,” he admitted and glanced over the top of the menu briefly.
“Wait, what?”
Gideon knew enough about Rowan to have employed him.
At the interview he’d asked point blank about a criminal record with the addendum that hiring was based on his answer. “No, but my brother Kevin? He’s the one you want to watch out for.” That had been Rowan’s answer, nothing about a criminal life that Rowan had somehow hidden because of course, Gideon had done a background check, which Rowan cleared with flying colors, and he’d assigned the name Kevin to the pile of things he didn’t need worry about.
“Well, when I was ten, we borrowed a car. Legitimate borrowed,” he added with passion as if that was vitally important. “Kev was driving, when suddenly, car met tree in spectacular fashion, and bam, on
e lengthy criminal record later…”
“How can you smile about that? In the interview, you told me that—”
“I’m teasing, jeez, you’re not going to come over as a good friend if you freak out like that when I make a joke.” Rowan shook his head as if he was disappointed in Gideon, but…what the hell?
Gideon very carefully laid his menu on the table. He already knew he wanted a burger, hold everything but ketchup, and fries and add the blackest of black coffees to the order. Anyway, he had questions now.
“Do you, Rowan Phillips, have a criminal record or not?”
“No.” The duh on the end was implied. Where had his respectful PA gone?
“And your brother? Ken?”
“Kev. Kevin. No, not unless you can get arrested for projectile vomiting in an open space—”
Rowan was messing with his head, making jokes that weren’t jokes, driving across multiple highway lanes to get burgers, and something was seriously off because Gideon couldn’t handle it.
“Let’s start this again. I’m here for the next four days, as a friend, and I have to get used to this new and frankly weird sense of humor of yours that is going straight over my head.”
“What can I get you guys?” Thank God for the waitress.
“Thank you. I’ll have a burger, plain, ketchup on the side, fries, and a black coffee,” Gideon summarized, and she gave him a smile before turning to Rowan.
“Right,” he said and sat back, patting his belly. “I’ll take the Jen’s special, add three onion rings, a spoon of extra relish, one pickle on the side, and I’d like an Oreo Christmas mint milkshake, a coffee, extra cream, and a side order of fries with cheese.”
“Got it,” she said and didn’t comment once on that convoluted order.
He leaned forward as if he was sharing a secret, and Gideon couldn’t help but lean in as well. “Last Christmas,” Rowan faux whispered. “I stopped in and they’d run out of the relish. It wasn’t the same. Summer before that, the A/C was on the fritz, but the burger they gave me,” he smacked his lips, “it was intense and worth sitting in the heat to eat it.”
“So this is a thing then, every time you go north you stop off here?” Gideon asked.
“Not every time.” He lifted his T-shirt and patted his flat belly. Gideon refused to look. “Need to keep trim,” he added. “Anyway, I thought I should show my friend the best spots between the Big Apple and Maine.”
“We drove straight past Boston,” Gideon pointed out.
“Boston doesn’t have a Jen’s Place.”
That seemed to be conversation over. However, an awkward silence was something that Rowan never let happen in the office, and it appeared to be the same outside of that space as well.
“So, Kevin is the oldest of us. He’s a lawyer, has a wife, Esther, and two kids. He went full white picket fence, apple pie life once he moved out.” Rowan rested his chin in his hand and stared out the window.
Gideon tilted his head. Rowan had a weird expression, and he couldn’t work out if Rowan was happy or sad talking about his foster brother.
“Then there would be Sarah and me. We’re the same age, and Mom and Momo took us on at about the same time. Sarah’s a beautician. Her partner is Jamie, and they are currently fostering twins, Bella and Jacob, whose birth mom must have had a thing for shifters.”
“Huh?” Rowan did this all the time, threw in random things and then looked at Gideon expectantly as if he should know what Rowan meant.
“Go Team! Jacob? Twilight? Vampires?”
“Oh.” Gideon knew about Twilight, had seen posters for the movies, and that was about the extent of his knowledge.
“And then there’s Ava who, apparently, is bringing her boyfriend along with her this year, some guy named Lloyd.” He quirked his eyebrow and pouted.
“Is that why—”
“Now I’m not judging but let’s just say Ava can be a bit loose and free when it comes to life and people.” He bit his lip. “She dances at a club and is a terrible flirty drunk, so you should watch yourself.” Rowan chuckled.
“And she’ll be there at your moms’ for Christmas?”
“Yes.”
“With her boyfriend?”
“Once a flirt always a flirt.”
Gideon sighed.
“Kevin and Sarah and their families will also be there.”
“That’s a lot of family.” Gideon sat back in his seat and attempted to form a list that he could remember. Kevin, Sarah, and…the dancer with the boyfriend. Only Rowan wasn’t letting up.
“It is. There were other kids over the years, some before us, some after, a lot of short-term foster placements. I’ve no idea where they are or what they’re up to now. For us four, I guess we got lucky, or maybe not for someone looking in from the outside.”
Gideon leaned forward in his seat as he listened.
“We didn’t have places to go back to but instead we became a family. Moms adopted us.” He smiled. “Speaking of which, I suppose I should add more names to the list you’re trying to etch into your memory.”
“I wasn’t,” Gideon bit back.
“I can hear those rusty cogs creaking. You should know my moms’ names. There’s Gill, Mom, and Jodie, who we kids all call Momo. I’m not giving anything away about them. You’ll have to wait to meet them yourself.”
So many names.
“They must be cool to have taken on so many kids.”
“They have big hearts,” Rowan confirmed.
Food arrived then, interrupting the conversation, and organized Rowan came back out to play. Everything on his plate and around him was laid out just so, and he realized Gideon was staring when he was about to take a bite of his burger, and he caught him.
“That’s big,” Gideon murmured, which was possibly the lamest thing he’d said all day.
Rowan winked. “I can take big,” he deadpanned. Gideon spent the next ten minutes not staring at Rowan and concentrating on his own burger, feeling as if that had been an inappropriate exchange one minute and then wanting to snort with laughter the next.
Rowan confuses me.
But he’d never gotten close enough to colleagues to exchange sexually charged banter before, and he wasn’t going to start now. He and Rowan were pretend friends, while being sort of real friends in a similar fashion so not everything was a lie. Finding Rowan cute or funny or being attracted to him in any way needed to be left at the door. Outside the door. Or in the next state.
Also, he was out of his depth here. He genuinely believed he could wing this as he did with any awkward situation, using a mix of politeness and having interesting subjects on hand to chat about. Only the closer they got to Rowan’s home, the more nervous he was feeling. Rowan knew everything about Gideon, but it was debatable how much Gideon knew about his PA at all, other than the fact he was friends with Darcy, was ruthlessly organized, and had a family that would put the Waltons to shame.
They climbed back into the car and for the remainder of the journey, Gideon dozed off, his head against the window. Every so often waking to hear Rowan singing along to the radio or witnessing pockets of snow that dressed some trees in a dusting of white. Maine didn’t always get snow, that much Gideon had researched so he could pack accordingly, but it was due this year for some, which would add to the Christmas spirit he guessed. If only he could chill, then maybe he’d have the first proper vacation since…he couldn’t remember when.
“We’re here.” Rowan was excited, bouncing in his seat like a kid and then parking next to a beat-up jeep and whooping. “Let’s go.”
He couldn’t see a house, just parking, trees, and an inch of snow until they rounded the corner and faced a stunning cabin of wood and glass, perched on a hill looking over a valley.
“My moms’ place,” Rowan said and pointed down the hill. “We’ll have our own cabins down the hill. Look! The dogs know we’re here!”
Two Border Collies jumped up at the gate seeming as if at any moment they
were going to leap. One word from Rowan though, and they sat down, wagging their tails and wriggling with excitement.
I like dogs. I can handle dogs. But I’m glad Hilda could take Kimi in for a few days again.
“Left is Deon, right is Dog, the rest will be around in a moment.”
Two more dogs came tumbling and chasing around the corner of the large cabin, sliding and piling to a halt next to Deon and Dog. One was big and shaggy, dark fur and bright eyes, and he parked his butt calmly at the back, but the other one, a tiny terrier, was all over the place.
“That’s Bear at the back, and the little one is Widget.”
“Bear, I’m gonna remember,” Gideon admitted.
“Yeah, he’s a Newfie. Sarah found him tied up and abandoned at the gate when he was a puppy, people around here know about the barn, and that we’d never turn away a dog and since our moms got a license for the dog fostering it’s been mad.”
“So wait, your moms now foster dogs?” Instead of kids or as well as? How did I not know this?
“Yep. They moved out here a year or so before I left home. There’d always been a dog or two in the family, but once they got out here, after some time and with all the space, they swapped angsty teenagers for troublesome pups.”
“And these are rescue dogs?”
“No, these are family dogs. We just never seemed to find the right home for any of them, so they ended up staying.”
Gideon glanced from dogs to cabin and back to Rowan. “All of them?” It was effort enough for him to look after a single cat.
Rowan shrugged in that ‘what can I say’ kind of way and then carefully unlocked the gate. “Sarah lives in town, and as I said she fosters now too, so she and the kids come and help out from time to time. Guess you could call the dogs therapy.” He waved his hands to encourage the dogs to back up. “Stay,” he ordered then held the gate open and ushered Gideon through.
Gideon regretted his life choices as he stepped inside. Wearing a suit seemed practical back in New York, after all, he wanted to make an impression, but now, with the dogs bouncing from paw to paw in anticipation, how long was his suit going to last? He braced himself for the onslaught of four dogs, but instead they bounced all over Rowan and didn’t pay much attention to Gideon at all. The odd sniff, a gentle nudge to his leg, but this was calm.
