by Amy Lane
JACKSON AND Henry showed up at the office around six o’clock, both of them thoughtful and talking quietly as though chewing something over. They came through the door, and Jackson greeted Ellery with an unselfconscious kiss, and then pulled back, frowning.
“Wait, I can’t do that when you’re open for real, right? I mean, that’s unprofessional. Wives don’t do that to their husbands and all that—”
He was still dressed in his scrubs, and he smelled like heat and sweat and the wind that had sprung up that afternoon, pushing away some of the humidity. Ellery took his chin and pulled him into a harder, longer, more body-intensive kiss, and practically purred in satisfaction when the kiss ended and Jackson looked a little dazed.
“If they want me to represent them, they need to be okay with it,” Ellery said, unruffled. “Now you guys are here early—what happened?”
“I finally got out of the broom closet,” Jackson muttered, and Ellery noted the secondary smell of dust and pine-scented cleaner. Henry chortled, and Jackson sent him a sour look. “Just because some of us were literally taking a leak when the fun stuff went down—”
“That was not my fault!” Henry said, holding up his hands. “Oh my God, and it wasn’t my fault they took an hour having sex either. That’s not a quickie! Who taught them how to have an affair!”
Jackson snorted. “Well, if you didn’t write a manual, you can’t complain when people do it wrong.”
Henry rolled his eyes, but his cheeks pinkened, and Ellery got the feeling he actually needed to be poked about this. Sometimes getting the worst thing you’d ever done out in the air made it not quite the worst thing in the world. “I was supposed to write a manual? Now you tell me, after I force flushed all the really important things.”
“You can’t do that!” Jackson complained. “You can’t just erase your… twenties… like they never ex… shit.”
“What?” Ellery, Jade, and Henry all looked at him excitedly, because it was obvious Jackson had had sort of a breakthrough.
“We’ve been trying to figure out Sampson’s father, and we’ve had a glimpse of what Martin was like before he died, but we don’t know what he was like, really, before prison. What was he like before he got John strung out? I mean, he dated your brother, right?”
Henry nodded. “Yeah.”
“How long?”
Henry frowned thoughtfully. “I’m not sure—long enough to make an impression, I guess. Kane hates the guy, but Davy, he mostly feels bad. He feels like he should have seen who he was sooner.”
“But maybe….” Jackson let out a breath. “Maybe he saw the good parts. Everybody has them. Maybe in order to know how he ended up in the trash can, we need to know who he was before he was headed there. Think your brother will talk to us?”
Henry grimaced. “I can call him,” he said reluctantly. “I mean, I hate to drag up past history and—”
“And he’s your brother,” Jade said, flickering a look at Jackson. “He’ll do it, for no other reason than you asked.”
“Fine.” He nodded toward Ellery’s office. “Is it okay if I use your office?”
Ellery nodded, his heart going out to the kid. “Sure.”
HENRY GAVE them the address, and Ellery and Jackson followed him in Ellery’s Lexus.
“Looks a douche move to me,” Jackson muttered. “His brother’s just finishing dinner, settling down for the evening, and we pull up in a Lexus?”
“Whine, whine, whine—crank up the air-conditioning, your hot air is heating up my car.”
Jackson grinned. “You must have had a good day!”
Ellery told him about Andre and Charlie Cabot, and Jackson blew out a whistle.
“That’s rough. I like the way you handled it, but maybe next time, let me do some running before you make that deal.”
“Did you hear what I told you?” Ellery asked, remembering the description of the kid getting out of jail.
“Yeah, I heard. And I’m not saying you shouldn’t try to keep the kid out of jail, but let me do some legwork on Cabot to make sure he’s not going to come back and murder you if this goes south. I get you want to do good work, Ellery, but sometimes the bad guys really are bad.”
Ellery grimaced. Yeah, it was tempting to think Jackson was the only one who tried to rescue kittens out of trees. “Sorry. I’m still getting used to not having you hand me a folder of information before I’m even assigned the case.”
“Well, that really only happened with you, you know.”
“No!” Jackson’s efficiency was legendary—Ellery hadn’t been the only one clamoring for his skills at their old firm, even before Ellery had sort of co-opted him into his life.
“Well, not everybody wanted the same thing. Langdon liked to give me an annotated list. Pfeist used to expect me to tell him how to win the case. Harrelson, Cooper, and that little upstart hired after you—”
“Morgan?”
“Yeah—that guy? They used to assess the case as a plea bargain before they even knew if they could win it.”
“Lots of lawyers do that,” Ellery defended. He hadn’t liked to.
“But not you. You wanted a complete file, so a complete file you got.”
Ellery smiled a little. “I was sort of hoping it was because you liked me a little.”
“I thought you were a persnickety asshole, but you did rock the power suit, and I was not immune.”
“Oh yeah.” Ellery nodded. “You liked me.” He sobered before Jackson could respond. “How about from now on, I give you two days to research before I meet with a client. How’s that?”
“That’s fair. Tell Jade. She’s good at that.”
He sounded so confident—like it was so easy to just nail down office policy on a drive to work on a case. “Do you know anything about Cabot?”
“Yeah—actually yeah. He’s a drug dealer, but so far there are no bodies at his doorstep, and his boys stay away from schools, which is a rare thing and a point in his favor. I mean, he’s a criminal, but I think your assessment was sound. He wants to do the right thing for this particular person. You want him to do the right thing for everybody. Let’s keep his boy out of jail, and we’ll see how the rest washes out.”
Ellery let out a breath, surprised at how much he’d needed to hear Jackson agree with what he’d done. Funny how Jackson thought he owed it to be the best person possible for him, when Ellery was working hard to be a better person for Jackson. A year ago, Ellery wouldn’t have made that deal with Cabot. A year ago, he’d have taken Cabot’s money, gotten the kid out of jail, and looked the other way.
“We can hope,” Ellery said, because wasn’t that why they did what they did?
“’Course we can. Uh….” Jackson gave that particularly uncomfortable grimace that indicated he was thinking about money. “You, uh, never talk about how long we have to make this little business work. I mean, I get you got a two-year settlement from your firm, and you’re not exactly hurting, but—”
“Theoretically, if it was just you and me, my trust fund could keep us afloat until retirement,” Ellery said. “But besides wanting someone like Jade on my staff, or wanting to hire AJ or Henry and be able to pay them, I’d be really embarrassed if that happened. I mean, my sister just figured out a new way to operate on cancer patients that doesn’t rip a person’s body open quite so badly. So it would be great if I could, you know, be that sort of genius.”
For a moment he couldn’t identify the sound coming out of Jackson’s mouth. Then it hit him.
Laughter.
DAVID WORRALL and Carlos Ramirez’s place was a nice little two-bedroom house, close enough to the college to not cost a fortune, but near enough to midtown not to be in a crappy neighborhood either. The outside was tan stucco, and the lawn in front was watered and neatly kept, with new paving stones and a new driveway showing that the place was maintained fairly regularly.
A giant black Navigator was parked in front of the garage, as well as the newer, more subdued sedan
Henry had driven in to the office. Ellery wondered if his own home had ever looked quite as normal.
They got out, and Henry cocked his head, smiling a little. “They’re in the backyard,” he said. “Playing with the turtles.”
Jackson’s eyes got big. “We get to see the turtles? Do you think we can see the iguana?”
Henry just laughed. “God, yes. You can see through the glass wall in the house!”
“Cool!” He sounded just like a little kid, which charmed Ellery to no end. Meeting all of the reptiles did not fill Ellery with nearly so much glee.
They followed Henry through a six-foot-tall wooden gate into a medium-sized backyard dominated by a giant shade tree. Dug out between the roots and lined with brick sat an outdoor terrarium, with running water, plenty of shade, and a rock in the middle where an indulgent turtle might sun himself.
As one was doing as they entered. And Jackson was not the only one to notice.
“He’s sunning!” said a little girl, who was maybe six, and tiny. She had pointed features with a hint of bronze in her skin and enormous brown eyes, and she crouched over the terrarium in a bright pink bathing suit, with her brown hair in a bobbing little ponytail at the back of her head.
“Is he sunning?” Henry asked, and it was like watching a theater performer drop his mask. “Frances, this is my friend Jackson and his friend Ellery. Can you tell us the turtles’ names?”
“This one is Flower,” she said, pointing to the one on the rock.
“What’s the other one?” Jackson asked, squatting down next to her.
“That one’s Flower too. All the turtles are Flowers because they all try to give flowers to each other.”
“Heh heh heh… Bunny, you know we don’t like to talk about the turtle flowers.”
Ellery looked up to see one of the most beautiful men in the world. His hair was a wheat gold, his eyes wide and blue and innocent, and he had a mouth like a little cupid’s bow. He was built rangy and lean, but his biceps and chest bulged through his T-shirt like someone who really cared for his body, and his thighs under his cargo shorts were works of art. As he set down the ice chest he was carrying and held out his arms for the little girl to hop into, Ellery had the wholly inappropriate thought that he’d like to do the same.
Next to him, Jackson cleared his throat. “You’re drooling, Counselor.”
Oh, how embarrassing. “I’m so sorry,” he said, trying to hold on to the social niceties. “We didn’t mean to barge in. I’m Ellery Cramer and—”
“And he was totally boning on you, Dexter.” If David Worrall—because that must have been Henry’s brother who had just emerged from the house—was the most beautiful man Ellery had ever seen, Carlos Ramirez was the biggest ball of testosterone he’d ever been subjected to. Dark-haired, dark-eyed, with a jaw carved from granite and shoulders as wide as a car, Carlos Ramirez looked like he could crush a man into the ground with one casual swing of his fist. But as it was, he took the little girl from his husband and rubbed noses with her, making her giggle.
“He totally was,” Jackson said, smirking. “You’ll have to forgive him, guys. He’s usually better trained than that.” Jackson extended his hand. “Jackson Rivers—pleased to meet you.”
David and Carlos shook hands with them while Henry took the little girl from Carlos and crouched down and talked to her about the two turtles named Flower.
“So, Flower?” Jackson said, one eyebrow arched, and to Ellery’s surprise, both men—men who had probably been front and center, naked and fucking, on the Johnnies website in their younger years—turned a dull red.
“It’s a… thing,” Carlos said. “It’s… it’s a thing they do. When they’re, uh… mating.”
David squeezed his eyes shut. “Oh my God.” He cast a quick look at Frances to make sure she was engaged with his brother, then dropped his voice conspiratorially. “Turtle dicks look like giant black flowers. It’s totally gross. And we’ve been trying to explain this to her teachers for the last two years. That’s two teacher conferences so far where we’re giving turtle anatomy lessons, and teachers are patting us on the head because why would two men think they could raise a little girl anyway!”
Jackson covered his mouth, palm out, and smothered his laugh, and suddenly Ellery wasn’t looking at David Worrall anymore.
“That’s hysterical,” Jackson sputtered. “Oh my God. I’m gonna be telling my brother that—he’s got three kids and two giant dogs now. And he thinks he’s got it rough.”
“Dogs?” David said wistfully. “What kind of dogs?”
“They’re American boxer-Labrador retriever mixes,” Jackson said, and Ellery grimaced. Kaden and Rhonda had gotten the dogs for protection after bad guys had infiltrated their house last winter. Each one was roughly the size of a Honda Accord. “They’re not fully grown yet,” Jackson continued, “but they might end up being hundred-and-fifty-pound dogs.”
“Really?” Suddenly Carlos was interested. “I never knew dogs got that big! Dexter—”
David Worrall’s shoulders slumped. “Baby, your turtles are gonna break our house. I wouldn’t mind something furry besides the bunny either, but, you know….”
“Grown-up things.” For the first time, Ellery realized that Carlos was maybe ten years younger than his husband, and something pulled inside him. These were young men, dealing with this very little girl and all her pets and their own porn-star past.
“How’s the bunny do with all the other animals?” Jackson asked, and Carlos grimaced.
“We had to move him out of Frances’s room,” he said, and nudged Jackson to look into the big picture window that protruded from the outside of the house. “See? Mrs. Darcy the iguana and Tomas the snake get along pretty well together, but any furry thing we put in that room thinks they’re gonna be dinner. Poor thing was going bald.”
And then Jackson, who had been almost incandescent with joy at the turtles, practically exploded. “A snake! Oh my God! Ellery, they’ve got a snake! And the iguana! Look at that!”
“It’s a big sleeping lizard,” Ellery said, trying to contain his horror. The glass enclosure looked two ways. That little girl was apparently comfortable sleeping with a ginormous scaly lizard.
“Yeah,” David muttered, giving his husband a covert glance. “And a snake that’s got a thing for my balls.”
Ellery stared at him, feeling his equipment shrivel at the thought.
David Worrall nodded as though it was exactly as awful as Ellery was picturing. “I’m saying.”
Carlos looked up from the window, face alight with joy that he’d found someone to share his pets with, and David gave him sort of a besotted smile.
“So, uh, Mr. Rivers, you got any pets of your own?”
“We have a cat,” Jackson said, staring at the iguana with pure lust in his eyes. “He’s sort of a furry food vacuum. We like him.”
David had been honest with Ellery, so he thought he’d return the favor. Sub voce, he murmured, “Three legs, missing teeth, and missing parts of both ears.”
The naked gratitude on David’s face was his reward. “You understand,” he murmured, and Ellery nodded.
Yeah, he got men who loved things that other people might find unlovable. He knew what it was like to love that guy, and how you’d change the shape of the world, or the shape of your house, to make them light up like the sun.
After a moment of quiet, during which neither Jackson nor Carlos seemed to notice time passing, David looked at Ellery with regret on his face. “So, I understand you guys might need to ask some stuff?”
Damn. Ellery really had been enjoying himself.
“Yeah. Maybe have Henry take the little girl inside?”
David nodded. “Yeah. Henry—”
“On it!” Henry whirled with Frances in his arms. “C’mon, bunny. Want to help me make the fruit salad?”
“But Unca Kane already chopped up the fruit!” she protested.
“Yeah, but has he added the Cool Whip
and yogurt?”
“You can do that?”
Henry called to his brother. “You do have Cool Whip and yogurt, right? I’m not going to have to make this up as I go along?”
David grimaced. “Yeah, yeah—don’t get used to fake whipped cream in our refrigerator, though, okay?”
“I won’t get used to it,” Henry said to Frances. “I’ll just bring it myself.”
Frances erupted into giggles, and the two disappeared into the house.
“There’s also sandwiches to make,” David said. “I just bought us about twenty minutes, and then you’re welcome to join us for dinner.”
“That’s not nece—” Jackson said, popping up from his animal trance to be his usual no-debt self.
“That would be great,” Ellery said rashly. “As long as you still want us here after this super uncomfortable conversation, we’d be honored.”
“Didja hear that, Dexter?” Carlos said, happy as a puppy. “We got company for dinner that’s not just your stiff-necked brother.”
David grimaced. “Carlos and Henry. Not great friends.”
Jackson grew from enchanted kid to somber adult in less than a heartbeat. “They both have reason, I would imagine.”
“How much has he told you?” David tilted his head carefully, and Ellery recognized the universal need not to tell tales on your brother.
“He told me why he left the military,” Jackson said, “and what sort of shape he was in when he came knocking on your door.”
Carlos shifted, looking uncomfortable. “Yeah, that was the only reason I didn’t kick him out, I’ll be honest.” His jaw hardened. “Dexter’s dad is a piece of fuckin’ work.”
“That’s not what they’re here to talk about, though, is it?” David said quietly. “You need to know about Scott.”
Carlos shook his head. “Dexter, do I have to be here for this? I’d literally rather help your brother cook dinner, and you know that’s fuckin’ somethin’.”
David nodded quietly. “Here, let’s go get a drink.” He paused, and as Ellery and Jackson were heading for the table, Ellery saw David put his hand on the small of his husband’s back, talking softly. Carlos nodded and kissed his beloved on the cheek, the moment so pure, so honest, Ellery had to look away.
