Ace in the Hole

by Ava Drake

  “Am I crushing you?” Christian muttered.

  “Nope. Good. Don’t move,” he managed.

  They lay like that for several minutes before Christian finally rolled away from him and sprawled on his back. “I can’t stand up,” he announced. “You killed me.”

  Stone also rolled onto his back and lazily threw the pile of pillows onto the floor. “You’re dead? Ha. I’m deader.”

  “That’s not a word, and that did not feel like sex with a corpse.”

  He asked humorously, “Are you speaking from experience?”

  Christian snorted. “Zombies aren’t my thing. I like my lovers….” He paused and then said seriously, “…just like that.”

  The words sank into Stone’s soul like summer rain into hungry soil.

  “How about you? Are you okay?” Christian asked.

  “I don’t think I’ve ever been more okay than I am at this exact second.”

  Christian pushed up onto an elbow and stared down at him, more beautiful than any one human being had a right to be. “You’re okay with bottoming?”

  “It’s a good thing I had no idea how awesome it would be with you or you’d have never gotten any good lovin’ out of me.”

  “I suppose there was so much pressure on you to be macho and manly that it never occurred to you to swing the other way.”

  Stone frowned. “While I’m sure that’s probably true and speaks to deep psychological shit heretofore undiagnosed, I honestly think it has more to do with not trusting anyone enough to share myself that way.”

  Christian leaned down and kissed him. It was a slow, lengthy affair that had Stone thinking frisky thoughts before the jangle of Christian’s cell phone on the bedside table jolted them both.

  “Don’t pick it up,” Stone muttered.

  “Gotta. That’s Jill Lacey’s ringtone.”

  He groaned. “I’ll go take a shower while you two formulate your diabolical plan for world domination.”

  “Remember not to shave!” Christian called after him.

  “Roger that!”

  CHRISTIAN answered his phone. “Good morning, Mrs. Lacey. What can I do for you?”

  “I need Stone down here in a half hour to be Jack on a phone interview. And I’m hungry. I want to order that breakfast in bed we talked about last night.”

  “I’ll have him there, ma’am. Order breakfast in about fifteen minutes. He likes his eggs scrambled, and he’ll eat anything else you put in front of him.” In the meantime, he would order breakfast in Stone’s room to keep up the ruse of Stone Jackson being a different person than Jack Lacey.

  The water cut off in the shower, and Christian poked his head into the bathroom. “Hey, Stone. Can you shift to Jack mode for a quick phone interview with Jill?”

  “Sure.”

  Breakfast arrived, and Stone made a point of chatting with the server before the young man left the suite. Christian watched Stone thoughtfully as they shared the meal, trying to gauge his state of mind after last night. He still couldn’t believe that Stone had actually surrendered to him like that. It was as humbling as it was exhilarating.

  “You’re quiet this morning, Christian,” Stone startled him by saying.

  He stirred sugar into his coffee. “Says the pot to the kettle.”

  “Yes, but I’m naturally taciturn. You’re not.”

  “I’m just enjoying the afterglow of an amazing time with my lover.”

  “Ditto.”

  Christian had to smile. That one word captured their whole relationship. The feelings were real, but Stone wasn’t the kind of man to gush about them.

  He could live with that. After what they’d shared, there was no doubt how Stone felt about him. He was a man who would show his feelings long before he would talk about them.

  The phone-in interview itself was uneventful. Jill laughed in genuine amusement at the reporter’s suggestion that Jack was gay and made a sly comment that her problem with him was his eye for the ladies, not his eye for the guys. Stone impersonated Jack’s drawl to a T, responding charmingly that there was no other lady in the world for him but his lovely wife. Stone fielded a few questions about the helicopter crash and was modest when he was credited with saving the pilot’s life.

  Yet again, Stone was doing Jack better than Jack did.

  The phone call ended, and Jill commented, “If you played for the hetero team, I’d seriously consider replacing Jack with you permanently, Stone.”

  Christian’s eyebrows lifted. She sounded as if she might actually be considering dumping her philandering husband. Which would be disastrous for Christian. She was a huge limiter on Jack’s worst excesses. Without her, Christian hesitated to imagine how difficult Jack would be to control. Or at least prevent from self-destructing.

  Jill and “Jack’s” breakfasts arrived, and Christian was relieved to see a young woman pushing the cart into the suite. Standing in the door to the bedroom, he waved subtly to Stone to have him come out into the living room and put in a Jack appearance.

  Hand over his lower face, Stone-Jack drawled, “Set it up over by the window, will ya, darlin’? The li’l lady likes to watch the ocean. Says it relaxes her.” He waggled his eyebrows suggestively, and the maid giggled as she pushed the serving table over to the big picture window overlooking the beach.

  It ended up taking both Stone and Christian pitching in to eat the gigantic breakfast Jill had ordered for Jack. Eventually, they consumed the evidence of her husband’s presence.

  Stuffed to the gills, Christian announced, “I need to steal Stone for a haircut.”

  As they walked down the hall, Stone muttered, “This is getting to be a bit of a mental ping-pong game, bouncing back and forth between two identities.”

  “Sorry about that.”

  “You’re not the asshole who had to go and boink Chesty.”

  “I’m just the asshole who came up with the stupid plan for you to be two people at once.”

  “I could’ve said no.”

  “Why didn’t you?”

  “Because I was desperate to do anything to stick around. Close to you.”

  “I’ve worried a few times that my attraction to you was why I proposed the scheme in the first place.”

  “Just don’t ask me to eat for two again, will you? My girlish figure can’t take the pig-outs.”

  Christian grinned. The guy had a hot bod, all right, but it was anything but girlish.

  The hairdresser, who’d been specially chosen for lack of ability to speak English, worked quickly, matching Stone’s hairstyle to the one in his official photograph on the Wild Cards website. In a few minutes, Stone was back to being utterly himself. No sign of the senator remained in the chair.

  Please God, let this thing be over soon. Christian was losing his mind trying to stay ahead of the giant snowball as it rolled downhill, gathering speed and volume faster and faster.

  Christian paid the hairdresser in cash and personally escorted her down the back stairwell. It was almost time to walk Stone down to the mini press conference Jill had arranged. She’d called on a few reporters who’d been particularly kind to her over the years for an exclusive sneak peek at the man everyone seemed to think was her husband.

  “Do you remember how to be you?” Christian asked Stone anxiously.

  “Come again?”

  “The only time you’ve been in front of a camera, you’ve had to act like Jack. You may fall into that habit. I need you to be vintage Stone.”

  “What the hell is vintage me?”

  “Macho. A little condescending, maybe even a bit arrogant. The kind of guy who would show off his scars.”

  Stone stared at him in dismay. “Am I that gigantic a jerk?”

  “Not at all. It’s just a façade you put on from time to time when you’re feeling insecure. And we need you to be nothing like Jack.”

  “Insecure?” Stone echoed.

  Startled, Christian looked up. “Well, yeah. Was that too honest for you?”
/>   “No. I’m an adult. I can take the criticism.”

  “I’m sorry—”

  “Seriously. I’m good. Like it or not, it’s true that I get insecure and overcompensate.”

  “We all do.”

  “Stop trying to make it better,” he ground out.

  Not that he’d set out to piss the guy off, but now he really was sounding like vintage Stone.

  Looking worried, Stone’s face emerged from the neck of a tight black, spandex T-shirt. “Do you need me to wear my pistol?”

  Christian considered it for a moment. “No, let’s not go overboard.”

  “No, let’s not.” Stone was sounding outright alarmed now.

  Crap. Stone was overthinking this. He was going to psych himself out. “Just relax. Say something funny or sarcastic.”

  “Holy shit. You do realize you just jinxed me into not having one even remotely clever thing to say, don’t you?”

  “Me? What did I say?” He feigned an overreaction in a desperate, and hopefully not transparent, attempt to rile up Stone.

  “You’re such a snob sometimes.”

  Yes. Riling working. “I am not a snob! You’re just a… a farmer.”

  “Ooh. Good one. I’m wounded to the quick. Beltway leech.”

  “Death mongerer.”

  And that was how they arrived at the ballroom, which the hotel had provided for Jill’s press conference: bantering and calling each other progressively more rude names. Hopefully it would help Stone be… well, Stone.

  While Stone continued on down the hallway to use a back entrance to the stage, Christian slipped into the main ballroom and paused in the shadows at the rear of the room. He’d been doing his damnedest not to think about what this moment was going to do to his life. But now that the moment had arrived, there was no avoiding it. He was throwing himself on his sword to save the Laceys, each in their own way.

  He was a good employee. Loyal. And Jill really was a grand lady. She deserved at least one man in her life to stand beside her when the going got tough. Too bad it couldn’t be her husband.

  At the end of the day, his being gay wasn’t a big deal. He’d never made any secret of it, and any employer he wanted to work for wouldn’t discriminate against him on the basis of it. But the blurring of the separation between personal and professional: that was another story. In his kind of work, people didn’t mess with that distinction. And he’d obliterated that line in the sand.

  He lurched as brilliant camera lights turned on him suddenly in the back of the ballroom. What the hell? This event wasn’t supposed to start for a few more minutes.

  Horror of the sudden exposure froze him in place. All these people staring avidly at him were going to pry into his personal life in the most invasive and insensitive way they could. They would mount him on a slide like a bug and stare at him through a microscope from every possible angle. And I have to let them.

  He walked between the rows of reporters. The stage looked eerily like a hangman’s platform, and reluctantly he stepped up onto it. He moved to the podium and could almost feel a noose dropping around his neck. He turned on the microphone. The noose tightened around his neck until he could hardly choke out words.

  “Thank you for coming, today,” he started. He choked on a cough, turned away from the mike, suppressed an urge to gag, and satisfied himself with clearing his throat nervously.

  He started again, determined to force himself onward through this nightmare. “Thank you for coming today. We’ll start with a formal statement from Mrs. Lacey in a few minutes. She won’t be taking questions, but I assure you, she will clear up any confusion about the rumors being reported overnight regarding Senator Lacey.”

  A dozen voices shouted, demanding to know why Senator Lacey wasn’t making a statement.

  Christian answered evenly, “Please be patient. Everything will become clear in a few minutes.”

  Someone shouted a rude question at him about how good a kisser the senator was, and he ignored it. But his stomach twisted violently and threatened to heave. That double breakfast had really been a bad idea. He stepped away from the podium without acknowledging the question.

  The lights went off and he blinked to clear his vision. Must. Not. Puke.

  He spied Jill standing off to his right, and he moved over to her. “Are you ready?” he murmured. “They’re in a rabid mood. They smell a scandal, and they’re all salivating over it.”

  “We’ll just have to take the bone away from the dog, then, won’t we?” she answered lightly.

  “Do you need a moment?” he asked gently.

  “Is Stone here?” she asked.

  “I walked down with him. He’s staying out of sight until you do the big reveal. We have to give the media the theatric drama they’re looking for, or else they’ll keep digging.”

  “Cynical much?” she murmured.

  One corner of his mouth lifted. She was every bit as cynical as he was. Particularly when it came to the press. Or her husband. “Okay, ma’am. Let’s do this. I’ll introduce you.”

  He went back out into the bright lights, waited through a momentary electric crisis with someone’s light box, and then made the introduction. Jill stepped up out onto the stage, and he yielded the podium to her with profound relief. Even a few seconds in front of the press gave him the wiggins.

  Jill read a brief opening statement poking fun at the allegations that Jack Lacey had suddenly switched sexual orientations. She’d insisted on writing it herself and had struck just the right tone to make any allegations that the photos were of Christian and her husband seem patently ridiculous.

  She concluded with, “I do, however, have a good idea of how this story got started, and I’d like to clear up the confusion once and for all. My husband recently brought on board a new security consultant who looks a great deal like him.”

  Christian felt Stone’s presence beside him without having to turn his head to look. “Are you ready?”

  “As I’ll ever be.”

  Jill continued out on stage, “Mr. Jackson happens to be dating Christian Brandeis, a man you all did identify correctly in the pictures. Gentlemen, I’d like to introduce you to Stone Jackson, my husband’s new bodyguard.”

  “Go get ’em,” Christian murmured.

  Stone rolled his eyes and stepped out on stage. Shit. He was walking like Jack.

  “Less swagger, less swagger!” he whispered frantically.

  Stone’s stride shifted to something more akin to marching. It looked stiff and unnatural, but at least it didn’t look straight off a west Texas ranch anymore. Every light in the room trained on Stone.

  He stepped up to the microphone and said uncomfortably, “I’m not sure what all the fuss is about. I wasn’t aware that it was newsworthy stuff for two guys to share a kiss on South Beach at sunrise.”

  A faint chuckle passed through the group of reporters.

  “But you don’t look gay,” a woman in a pastel pink Jackie O suit said in a wondering voice.

  “And exactly how does gay look, ma’am?” Stone bit out.

  Perfect. He sounded irritated, and when he got irritated, he got intimidating. Indeed, Stone gripped the edges of the podium, unconsciously flexing his biceps in a heart-stopping display of muscle, and he leaned forward a little, staring down the unfortunate woman.

  “Well, I’m sure I don’t know,” she huffed.

  “Tell us how you met Christian Brandeis!” someone shouted.

  Stone frowned. “In a bar. Arguing over how to properly drink Jack Daniels.”

  “How long have you known each other?”

  Stone’s frown deepened into a dangerous as hell scowl. “I don’t see how that’s any of your business. I’m here today to let you know you got your facts wrong, and that’s all. Christian Brandeis is my boyfriend, not Senator Lacey’s. If you need to know more about me, then I’d suggest you contact my employer, Wild Cards, Incorporated, in England. It’s a high-end private security firm.”

 
; “Reenact the kiss!” someone shouted.

  “What? Are you with Penthouse or something?” Stone demanded. “You’re gonna have to pay for that shot, buddy.”

  The mainstream media reporters snorted, enjoying the putdown of whoever had asked the question. Must have been some scandal-rag reporter who’d shouted the request.

  “So. I expect you all have actual news to cover, and I have a job to get back to. It’s been fun, boys. Let’s not do this again soon.” And with that Stone strode off the stage, looking every inch the dangerous security type.

  He joined Christian and Jill in the wings and muttered a single word to them. “Move.”

  They turned as one and hurried to the exit.

  “Go right,” Stone ordered.

  They hurried down a short hallway to the kitchen, wound through the maze of prep tables, and hustled into a service elevator at the back of the kitchen used by the room service staff.

  The elevator door shut, and Jill demanded, “Why the emergency exit?”

  “That guy who asked for the kiss was going to jump us in the hallway. He was pissed at my mouthing off and embarrassing him, and he had a look in his eye. He’s going to dig for more dirt.”

  Christian frowned. “Jack will need to make an immediate appearance. Someplace public but where we can hold back the press. Mrs. Lacey, I’d suggest you be seen with him, as well.”

  “Clearly I’m in need of some retail therapy after all this silliness,” she declared. “Jack 2.0, you and I are going shopping.”

  Christian laughed at the long-suffering look that came over Stone. He’d obviously been dragged on shopping sprees with celebrities before and knew what misery lay ahead of him. “Thanks for taking one for the team, man,” he teased.

  They got back to the suite, and he helped Stone comb his hair into a semblance of Jack’s usual conservative style. Stone shaved and then put on one of Jack’s suits. Even Jill started when he came out of the bedroom. The transformation was amazing.

  A pair of security guards lent by the hotel were going to act as bodyguards for the day, and the upscale mall that Jill had chosen for the outing had already been notified to have its own security personnel hold back any press that tried to get close to Jack.