Mixed Signals

by Cooper West

  Table of Contents

  Blurb

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Epilogue

  More from Cooper West

  About the Author

  By Cooper West

  Visit Dreamspinner Press

  Copyright

  Mixed Signals

  By Cooper West

  Devastatingly handsome pilot Frank Sheldon is doing his best to avoid his inheritance of money, charm, and good looks by rebuilding his life on his own terms after being discharged from the Air Force just before the repeal of DADT. When he unexpectedly meets the eccentric geek Benjamin Kaplan, sparks don’t quite fly, despite Benjamin’s obvious interest. Frank is not one to back down from a challenge, but what does any of that have to do with his sister’s campaign for governor, or the muckraking political website attacking her opponent, who just happens to be Frank’s unlamented, very closeted, ex-boyfriend? It’s hard to fall in love when all you are getting is mixed signals.

  Chapter One

  MARIE, THE girl at the front desk, tittered when Frank walked into the salon. She knew her chances with him were nil, but that did not stop her.

  It never stopped anyone.

  “Mr. Sheldon! Welcome back!” She grinned ear to ear.

  “Didn’t forget me?” Frank gave her one of his friendly smiles that bordered on a smirk. Everyone fell for it and it photographed well, but also looked a little mean, just enough to make people instinctively wary of him. He had been using that same smile-smirk to distance himself from interested parties since he was fourteen, learning to stay on the “friendly” side of the friend/enemy spectrum by making people uncomfortable enough not to get too close, but not so uncomfortable they thought he might be a serial killer. He left that reputation for his reclusive and bearded older brother, who was nearly as handsome as Frank but three times as grouchy.

  “Oh, never!” She tittered again, then pouted. “But Jane got tied up in a really complicated highlights job and is running late.”

  “That’s fine. Let her know I’m here. I’ll wait.” He tugged at his unruly mop of hair. “This needs mowing.”

  “Oh, Mr. Sheldon!” She gave him a sappy smile and ran off to the back. Sighing, Frank sat down. His looks could get him bumped to the head of any line, but he did not want to pressure his longstanding hairstylist by walking back there and laying on the charm. He just needed a haircut, and he was not on duty at LifeFlight until eight that night, so he could wait. He liked the midtown salon because it did not have any pretensions about being a “day spa” or “wellness center.” It was stylish, friendly, and upscale enough to hire knowledgeable and experienced stylists but lacked the ritzy vibe that infected all the classy salons he had been dragged to in his youth. His sister kept pressing him to use her personal staff stylist, but Frank had been coming to Jane for haircuts for years, and he was a creature of habit.

  “Damn it.”

  Frank looked over at the only other person in the lobby, a guy on the bench across from him. He was stocky and a little unkempt in wrinkled khakis and a rumpled polo with coffee stains down the front, so Frank pegged him as someone waiting on his girlfriend and not a salon client. He was frowning at his laptop, which Frank assumed was the reason for the cursing. The guy, who had a curly head of nearly black hair that was chopped and ragged (definitely not a salon customer), started punching the keyboard with extreme prejudice. Frank held his peace, because he knew planes and engineering but did not have any clue about the mystery of computers. The guy screamed “geektastic” anyway, and Frank knew all too well how poorly socialized that subgenus was in general. Instead, Frank flipped through the pile of fashion magazines, hoping against hope for a recent issue of GQ.

  “I can’t believe this! Think for yourselves, people,” the geek snarled. “I’m not here to clean up your messes, holy shit.”

  Frank looked over at the guy again, who was now glaring at his laptop. It was impossible to tell if the guy was younger or a lot younger, because he had the soft, pale physique of a lab rat, a type Frank knew intimately and biblically. His love for soft was the only reason he ever slept with women, and was the reason his last boyfriend had been a cushy biotech engineer with really, really sensitive hands. He only had himself to blame for trying to strike up a conversation, but the geek was adorable and Frank was bored. It was a personality flaw.

  “Bad day?” he asked, keeping his body language neutral because he did not want to be too obvious about hitting on a coffee-stained, hair-challenged geek in the lobby of his favorite salon. The jokes wrote themselves, he thought as he cringed inwardly, thinking of what Jane the hairstylist would say. Worse, she would probably text his sister. Nancy would not be caught dead in a salon—her stylist traveled with her—but Frank did not doubt for a second that Jane’s number was on her speed dial. Probably had been since the second time he came in for a cut, because his sister was nothing if not his most dedicated stalker.

  The guy looked up at him with a surprised expression, clearly noting Frank’s presence for the first time. Frank took the blow to his ego with grace, at least until the guy talked.

  “You’re already good-looking. Why are you here?”

  “Uh… thanks?” Frank squinted, trying to find a better comeback.

  The guy snorted and waved his free hand. “Don’t bother trying to be witty. You might hurt yourself.”

  “Hey!”

  The guy sighed, closing his eyes and turning his face toward the ceiling as if in prayer. It gave Frank a moment to gauge his age better, and he was surprised to realize that he was probably older than first assumed, in his mid to late twenties at least. Frank felt a bit of relief at that.

  The guy sighed again and opened his eyes before speaking. “Sorry. So very sorry. Okay? Better now?”

  “Not really.” Frank faced the guy head-on, crossing his legs and arms simultaneously. “Is this how you usually make friends?”

  “I don’t usually try to make friends with people like you.”

  Frank bristled. “Oh? People like me? And what kind of people are those?” He knew his glare was intimidating, because no one got out of a career as an officer in the military without a lot of practice at being an asshole.

  He shrugged. “Beautiful people. You know, with the hair… and the clothes… and the, the… pretty.”

  Frank blinked. He had been waiting for “gay” or maybe even “rich” but not that. “The pretty,” he repeated.

  “Yes, don’t even pretend that you don’t know what I mean. Give me some credit.”

  The thing was, Frank did know what he meant. Even in his midthirties he could make people stop in the middle of the street just to watch him walk, and he knew it. Uncle Peter, the New York fashionista, still begged him to go into modeling, frustrated by his nephew’s “lack of vision.” But Frank preferred flying, and had said so, loudly, to no avail, for years. The worst thing
about his good looks was that people assumed he did not want to do things like fly planes or have a career. Even his family thought he was ridiculous, and they were workaholics all down the line. His personality had always been incidental to his looks, and the thing Frank missed most about being in the Air Force was that being so damn good-looking had not been a handicap for a change. If anything, his fellow USAF officers usually just gave him a ration of shit about it before changing the topic to airplanes. So, yes, he had to give the guy credit for acknowledging the obvious.

  “Yeah, okay. Fine. Credit given.” Frank nodded, uncrossing his arms.

  The guy stared at him. “Really?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Okay then.” The guy paused, studying Frank closely. “Just, you know, people like you are usually humble about it. ‘Oh no, I’m totally average!’” The guy falsettoed with a fair imitation of Marie.

  Frank laughed. “Not my style.”

  “Oh. Okay. That’s, uh, new.” Then the guy’s laptop made an annoying pinging sound, and he focused back on the screen. After a moment, Frank realized that he did not exist in the guy’s world anymore. That disappointed him, because the more he looked at the guy, the more attracted he became. Despite his choppy hair and generally terrible attitude, he had luscious, smooth olive skin and dexterous fingers and absolutely gorgeous eyes, which were either light brown or hazel. Frank really wanted to know the difference, and that was the only excuse he had for speaking up again. Damn his personality flaws.

  “Hey, what’s your name?”

  “What? Who?” The guy looked up, confused.

  “You. Name?” Frank pointed.

  “Dr. Benjamin Kaplan. And no, you can’t call me ‘Ben’ or ‘Benji.’ It’s Benjamin. Or Dr. Kaplan. Whatever you’re, uh, comfortable with.” Benjamin looked really uncomfortable himself, his eyes sidling off to his laptop, as if it were some kind of actual escape route he could crawl through to freedom.

  “Frank Sheldon.” He held out his right hand, which Benjamin took suspiciously. Frank wondered if the geek had recognized him or not. It was hard to tell, and that in and of itself was unique and interesting.

  “Nice name.”

  “Sometimes,” Frank sighed, grimacing. He had a beautiful name to go along with his looks, and he hated it: Francis Devonshire Sheldon III (technically, after his maternal grandfather, but it was not as if anyone bothered to ask once he got to his last name). It was something that fit in well at boarding school but not so much with the Air Force. At least he had managed to get everyone in his units to call him Frank, something he somehow managed to make stick once he was back to being a civilian. Except, of course, with his family.

  He did not think he would have minded so much, if he had been born a little plain like his older sister, or a little too smart like his brother. Nancy went into politics, because no one expected her to be pretty, and Geoffrey went into academia because no one else would have him. The baby of the family, Francis was someone who people called beautiful—or handsome, depending on his age and how drunk they were—and so everyone expected nothing from him because he had the name and the looks and charm and the trust fund. What more could he need? What kind of idiot would want more?

  Even the dishonorable discharge did not tar his feathers much with the progressive movers and shakers that made up his family’s peers. He was more a cause célèbre, which he milked because it seemed like the right thing to do for a good cause. He had found vicious pleasure in helping repeal the Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell policy that got him kicked out of his career. The fact that he had done it mostly by showing up at fund-raising campaigns his sister had organized for LGBTQ+ nonprofits and drinking wine was just a bonus. He looked really good in the photographs people took for websites and newspapers, and that had been his primary job for the most part.

  He realized he was still shaking hands with Benjamin, and it was more like holding hands the longer it went on, but Benjamin was not giving him the usual starry-eyed, lustful expression Frank got in those situations. Instead, Benjamin looked at him as if he was studying a bug under a lens. An ugly bug under a very thick glass.

  Frank gently pulled his hand back.

  “Nice to meet you, Benjamin.”

  “Sure.” Benjamin nodded once, then turned back to his laptop.

  “Frank Sheldon!” Jane burst into the lobby like a whirlwind, pulling Frank up and dragging him to her station. “What the hell! Your hair’s a mop! Your cowlicks have gone rogue!”

  “Thanks, Jane. Good to see you too.” Frank leaned over and gave her a polite peck on the cheek. She pushed him away, laughing.

  “Stop stop stop! First! We wash!”

  Frank was frog-marched to the sinks in the back by one of the interns, a young guy with pink and purple streaks in his hair who flirted mainly by blushing profusely at everything Frank said. Jane shooed the boy off as soon as Frank was settled back in her chair, though.

  “I see you were bonding with our resident geek.” Jane smirked and snapped her scissors.

  “Not your usual clientele,” Frank countered, admitting nothing.

  Jane nodded, rolling her eyes before starting on his hair. “He’s Rachel’s brother. Carting her around since ‘the incident.’” Jane air-quoted with one hand, the other holding scissors, and Frank was both unsurprised and dismayed to realize that he knew exactly who she was talking about. Rachel was the newest stylist on staff and managed to score a DUI on her birthday a few months earlier. “The incident” also totaled her car, and it was just dumb luck that no one was hurt—a fact Frank had spoken to her about at some length when he found out, including graphic details on the types of life flights he usually ran from accident scenes like hers. She had avoided him ever since, but he did not care as long as she learned her lesson. He wondered if she had complained to her brother about him.

  “Nice guy.”

  Jane snorted. “We’re talking about the same person?”

  “He’s helping his sister out. Can’t be all bad.”

  “Yeah, I guess. Not like he’s got a job anyway.”

  Frank knew to let it go. He knew that if he did, Jane would not keep talking about it. He knew that, but some devil was on his shoulder, reminding him of Benjamin’s incredible eyes and his soft-looking skin and his sharp, irreverent mind. “So what does he do?”

  “Some kind of website thing. Says he makes money off it. I don’t know, we mostly hope it’s not porn. But what he really does is, get this, design 3-D video games!” She laughed.

  Frank grunted noncommittally, hoping he would take his own advice and stop the madness. “Yeah?” he asked, and wondered when he lost all control of mouth.

  “Hasn’t sold anything; he says once he does he’ll be a billionaire. Sure.” She laughed again. “Oh hey, you on duty? I didn’t think to ask.”

  “No, not on until eight tonight. Got the night shift for a few weeks since the usual guy is out on paternity leave.”

  “Okay then. Any interesting stories?”

  Frank reviewed the last few life flights he had done over the past month but shook his head. Sometimes—rarely—there was a funny or at least interesting story to tell, but lately everything had been tragic car accidents and house fires. Jane grimaced sympathetically. Her husband was an EMT, and she understood that sometimes not talking about it was the only way to deal with it, which was one reason Frank stuck with her. Too many people thought his work was heroic and interesting, when it was just a pilot job with a body count. In that sense, he thought, it was not very different from being in the military.

  “Sorry, let’s talk about something else,” Jane said, looking at him with understanding. They moved on to new restaurants, and Jane grilled him about his (nonexistent) dating life (probably to report back to Nancy, he was pretty sure), and Frank volleyed the jokes in all the right places. When he finally walked out, Benjamin was not in the lobby anymore, and that was the first time Frank realized he had been looking forward to seeing him again.


  Chapter Two

  FRANK HAD not looked forward to this meeting. He had successfully ducked out of it twice already, but this time, his sister had made an unholy alliance with their father. As usual. What Nancy wanted, she always got, especially when it came to their father.

  “It’s admirable, of course….” Frank’s father trailed off, waving around the hand not cradling his whiskey. Dr. Alexander Sheldon was not much of a social drinker, but Frank noticed that his father seemed to clutch a drink every time they had this discussion. They were sitting in his father’s personal den, a large east-facing room with a sizable fireplace that was burning huge logs merrily despite the fact that it was only early September. It was their main home, the “family estate” that was probably going to Nancy once the old man kicked off, and was best used to intimidate pretty much everybody. Including Frank (although he refused to admit it), squirming on the antique horsehair wingback chair and facing his father in much the same way he had since he was old enough to crawl into that very chair.

  “Admirable. Sure. Looks good on Nancy’s press releases, her brother the lifesaving pilot and former military hero. Right?”

  “Damn right,” Nancy said with a glare, standing by the tall french doors and cradling her own whiskey. It was in that moment that he realized she had an ulterior motive, that this was not another typical intervention, and it put him on guard although he could not imagine what she was aiming for. She was sly and foxy, but Frank had grown up with her, and he knew her tells. It was moments like that where Frank could see her stunning physical resemblance to their mother. His sister had inherited their father’s high-powered personality, but physically she had their mother’s delicate, pale Irish complexion and auburn hair. Between the two of them, Frank was the better-looking one over all, but only by a thin margin. In her eyes it was his one unforgivable sin.

  His father missed the sarcastic byplay and nodded solemnly. “Yes. I agree. There are benefits. No doubt. But it’s hardly… hardly up to your potential.”