by Dev Bentham
He turned to me, his face inches from mine. “It’s nice, yes?”
I inhaled the scent of him, heady, spicy, intoxicating.
Something in me broke, and I took a step back. “If bringing me here is an attempt to soften me up, it won’t work. I’m not one of your drug connections you can seduce into getting your own way.” I was being a lot crueler than I wanted to be, but I had to make him stop looking so inviting.
It worked. The color drained out of his face, and his expression turned to stone. “You always knew how to ruin a good time.”
Without going inside the castle, we walked back. This time the silence was anything but companionable.
“WHEN DID I become such an asshole?” The question kept me awake most of the night. In the morning, Martim wasn’t at breakfast. Tia Bel announced she would assist me with the books. Just the two of us.
It was what I told myself I wanted. So why did it make me feel like crap?
Chapter FOUR
TIA BEL was a more guarded guide than Martim had been, hovering while I attempted to talk to staff. Not helpfully. She could have translated for me. She chose not to. Sometime between when Martim and I had come back from Sintra and Martim’s absence at breakfast, Tia Bel had decided I wasn’t to be trusted. I didn’t blame her. She was right. My job was to get the best deal for my employer at the Sabidos’ expense. The fact that she’d always treated me like family had nothing to do with it.
A conversation with the bellhop sputtered to an unsatisfying end. I thanked him and motioned for Tia Bel to follow me down the corridor.
When I was sure we couldn’t be heard, I whispered, “Is there somewhere we could talk? In private?”
Her eyebrows raised, she nodded. “Of course. Come to the office. We won’t be disturbed.”
I followed the swirls of her clothing down the hallway, thinking, not for the first time, that Tia Bel would make a great drag queen, or rather, a great drag queen might learn from Tia Bel. The drape of her clothing, the scent of lavender, all hearkened back to the femme fatales of Hollywood cinema in the 1940s. Hell, there were times I had wanted to be Tia Bel, all perfume and tulle.
Which made it all the harder when I took the seat she offered me and turned into the inquisitor. “I don’t want you to go to jail, Tia Bel.”
“Jail?” She put a hand to her throat. “What is this?”
“You embezzled. You used the funds we lent you for personal use. It’s the only explanation I can think of for the discrepancy in the books.”
“I did not steal.” She glared at me. “All this belongs to Martim. I would never take money from him.”
I held up a hand. “But you did. Or someone did. In the account ledgers, the renovation costs are padded. Even I can see that.”
“Harvard MBA and now you’re a bookkeeper?” Her mouth pursed. She shook her head. “What a waste.”
I shrugged. “Be that as it may.”
She sank down on a chair. “It is not so hard to understand. I didn’t want Martim, his problems, to be written in black and white. You loved him. Remember? Surely you can understand that.”
“Martim’s problems?” I leaned toward her, as if by inserting myself into her personal space I could extract the truth.
She shrugged. “It doesn’t matter now. So, you are going to send me to jail? You were like a son to me. Times change, eh?”
“Martim is like a son to you, I was just his accessory for a while. And I don’t want you to go to jail. But I do want the truth. You borrowed the money, Tia Bel. If you can’t pay it back, at least give me a reason. Maybe I can find a way to protect you.”
She stood. “You want to know Martim’s business, ask him. Now go. This is still our hotel, and I have work to do.”
I got up. “I’m not the bad guy, Tia Bel.”
“Aren’t you?” She strode to the door and opened it with a flourish. “Please call me Senhora Pataca. That is my name.”
I left the room. She slammed the door behind me. And so I found myself banished to the hallway, staring at a closed door, my guts twisted at the idea of Martim’s problems and Tia Bel’s—Senhora Pataca’s—rage. Whatever Martim’s problems were, they didn’t sound trivial. Not at all.
MARTIM CAME back.
One morning I walked into the dining room and there he was, gorgeous, composed, looking like the master of his surroundings. Which, at least for the moment, he was.
I paused in the doorway, watching him, savoring a few seconds of enjoying the sight of him before the inevitable tension descended. So much shared history, so much shared distance. He must have felt me watching him, because when he looked up, his gaze went straight to mine. It was like a rope of energy connected us. And we were both being strangled by it.
Then his face cracked into the hint of a smile. He nodded for me to come over. I did, crossing a crowded dining room that felt like it was empty. Just the two of us. If that were true, if it were just us in the world, no drug dealers, no greedy bosses, what would we be then?
Martim gestured to a chair across the table from him. I slid into it. He shoved a demitasse of thick black coffee toward me. “I told them to bring it when you left your room.”
I took the cup. “You’re spying on me?”
He shrugged. “We’re spying on each other.”
“You talked to your tia.” I took a sip of the espresso—perfection.
“Don’t be angry with her. She can be dramatic, but she means well.” He played with the spoon in his own coffee. “And if it helps, she’s embarrassed that she was rude.”
I shook my head. “I don’t know who’s being rude here. It’s a strange situation.”
Martim nodded.
After a moment he said, “I should not have gotten angry at you. I meant the trip to Sintra to be an apology and—” He shrugged again.
I stared at him. He looked sad and vulnerable, and all I wanted was to touch him. Just once. Like old times. I put my hands in my lap. “I’m sorry for what I said out there. I was out of line. No excuse, except maybe that you wore my legs out on the climb. My thighs have been sore ever since.”
He grinned. “It’s steep.”
“Punishingly so.”
I played with my coffee cup. Martim stared out the window. We didn’t used to have long silences. Not like this.
I cleared my throat. “Look.”
At the same time, Martim said, “I wanted to—” He paused. “I’m sorry. What were you saying?”
“It doesn’t matter. Go ahead.”
He smiled slightly. “This is very hard, isn’t it?”
I nodded.
“So. I will start.” Martim chewed his lower lip for a few seconds before continuing. “I don’t blame you for still being mad at me. I don’t remember those last months together very well, but I am sure I deserve whatever you’re feeling.” I started to speak, but he held up his hand. “Let me finish. I behaved badly. To you, to my tia. This whole mess is my fault.”
How could I stay angry with him when he was harder on himself than I’d ever be? “How is it your fault when you didn’t even know about the loan?”
He met my gaze. “You know what she did with the missing money? With some of it she sent me to treatment—three months in a private rehab place in the UK that cost €5,000 a week. Which was foolish since treatment is free—and supposedly quite good—here in Portugal. But she wanted to be sure I got the best.”
“That’s what she meant by your health concerns?” A knot I hadn’t even acknowledged in my gut relaxed. I didn’t know what I’d been afraid was wrong with him, but at least drug addiction was the devil I already knew.
My stomach tightened again at his shrug. “That was part of it.”
I leaned across the table. “Tell me.”
“It doesn’t matter.” He leaned toward me. “None of it matters except my staff. You’ve met some of them. Good, hardworking people. A rich kid wasting his inheritance, that’s not a story to inspire compassion. But Aya or Mar
ia, don’t make them lose their jobs.”
I sat back, exhaling in frustration. “There’s nothing I can do about that.”
He held my gaze for a few more moments. Then nodded. “Okay. I had to try.”
“I’m sorry.”
“You do what you need to do.” He sat back.
We sat in silence. I knew I should stand up, move away, get to work so I could end this ridiculously torturous time. But instead I sipped my coffee, wondering when the ache would leave my chest.
Martim shifted in his chair. I looked at him. He leaned across the table. His hand landed on my arm, a light, electric, touch. “I need to say something more and then we don’t have to talk again.”
I stiffened. I was tired of being the asshole for just doing my job, and I didn’t want to hear whatever he had to say. He withdrew his hand, but the place where it had been still commanded too much of my attention.
“This is more personal.” He tilted his coffee cup so that the black sludge at the bottom slushed to one side. “It is about you and me.”
“That was all a million years ago.” I kept my eyes on his cup. Maybe if I didn’t meet his gaze, he’d get up and walk away and we wouldn’t have to have this conversation.
“Yes.” The cup clattered as he dropped it back onto the saucer. “But I still need to tell you how sorry I am. I don’t remember everything from those last months together, but I think I did terrible things to you.”
Then I did glance up at his face. He stared out the window at the rainy street.
I cleared the lump out of my throat. “We both behaved badly, Martim. We were kids.”
He glanced at me, his gaze sad. “You were good to me.”
I snorted. “Hardly. I kicked you out on the street in the middle of winter. You had nowhere to go.”
“That was a good thing.” At my look, he added, “I didn’t think so at the time, but now I can see that you had to do it for your own sanity, and who knows, it could have been enough to get me sober. It isn’t your fault that it didn’t work. There was nothing you could do, querido. It wasn’t yours to fix.”
“And now?” I thought about Tia Bel pouring illegally borrowed money into treatment centers to get him off drugs. She deserved this amends much more than I did.
He shrugged. “I’m okay. At least for today.”
A ray of sunshine broke through the clouds and lit up the side of Martim’s face. He was so beautiful I had to get out of there.
The chair legs awkwardly scraped the floor as I stood. “I need to get to work.”
He gazed up at me, those kind eyes sad as he gave a little half nod.
It wasn’t fair to leave it like that, without even acknowledging his apology. I knew that. But still I turned and walked away without glancing back. He’d had months in treatment to practice these kinds of conversations. It would take me more than a few moments to figure out how to respond.
I’D BEEN studying the books all morning, trying to find something Martim could sell to fend off the foreclosure, when I looked up to see him standing in the doorway, a laptop under one arm and a cup of espresso in each hand. He raised one of them in a questioning gesture that took me back to that crummy Cambridge apartment we’d shared all those years ago. I could picture Martim then, his hair longer, his face not so thin but with dark circles under his eyes, leaning in the doorway of the kitchen with his weight on one gorgeous, naked leg, inviting me to—I shut down that mental image. This wasn’t a reconciliation. Martim hadn’t contacted me in all the years in between. He wasn’t offering anything other than a cup of coffee, and if he was, it would only be to save his hotel.
“We can pay you back.” He said it quietly as he set the coffee down beside me. “It will take some time, but let me show you the numbers.”
“You don’t have time. The contract is clear. If you haven’t made good on your back payments by the beginning of May, Rex can force you to sell.”
“To him.” Martim pulled a chair over beside me.
There was no use denying it. “Could you borrow from someone else?”
He gave me a look, not bothering to reply. We both knew that my company was the corporate equivalent of a loan shark. No one came to us if they had the credit or resources to go somewhere else.
Martim flipped open his laptop. The computer sprang to life with a spreadsheet already up. “In the past six months, since I came back, we have started cutting costs. It is beginning to pay off, and as the economy improves, we will only get stronger.”
Martim sitting close beside me, discussing cost benefit strategies and pointing to the calculations on his spreadsheet, was so much like our first days together, before his father died and everything fell apart, that it took me a few minutes to focus on what he was saying. But gradually he pulled me in. Along with the other expenses, some of the borrowed money had gone to renovating the heating system, making it much more efficient. Over the course of a year, the savings would be significant. In addition, Martim had studied the hotel’s use of everything from pastries to soap, and implemented strategies to minimize waste. It was impressive. The more he talked, the more animated he became.
And the more I slumped into my chair, thinking about how pleased Rex would be to acquire such an efficient place—one he’d make even leaner by cutting half the staff. The numbers on Martim’s spreadsheet pulsed. I glanced at him. He looked beautiful, fragile. A halo of light spiked out from his curly hair.
I closed my eyes. “Shit.”
“What?” Martim’s touch was light, like a hundred pinpricks on my arm.
“Migraine.” I was whispering, as if that would help me hide from the oncoming pain.
“Oh.” I heard the laptop snap shut, and I heard the worry in his voice. He’d seen my migraines at their worst, before the magic pills came along. I opened my eyes and met his gaze. For a moment we were two men who knew each other well, sitting quietly with the sounds of Lisbon in the distance. He looked concerned. I felt embarrassed. There had been a time when I could feel vulnerable around him, but that was long ago.
“In my room I’ve got some meds that will knock it down.” I stood, gritting my teeth against the wave of dizziness. The pain was distant, but I could feel it coming nearer. My temple pulsed in response to the thundering hooves of the evil animals that were galloping out of the ether toward my brain.
“I’ll help you.” Martim got up. His hand grazed my sleeve, as if he went to grasp my upper arm but had second thoughts.
I shook him off. “I just need to get upstairs.”
“Don’t be an idiot.” This time he did take hold of my arm. He propelled me toward the stairs, and I was too preoccupied with the evil herd to be able to muster much of a defense. I knew from experience that they’d be stomping around inside my head within fifteen minutes. Which was exactly how long I had to get upstairs, find my pills and a glass of water, and sit on the side of my bed until the first spike of pain crushed my frontal cortex. If all the planets aligned and I perfectly timed swallowing my pill, in a few hours the beasts would leave. On the other hand, if I got it wrong or the migraine gods rebelled, I’d spend the next couple of days lying in my own sweat, punctuated by trips to the bathroom to empty my guts.
Martim walked me to my room. While I dug around in my suitcase and produced the prescription bottle, he filled a glass with water and set it on the bedside table. I dropped my suit jacket over a chair and loosened my tie. He pulled the curtains closed. I sat on the edge of the bed and watched him in the dim light.
He crossed the room and knelt in front of me. “You have the right medication?”
I held up the bottle. “I can’t take it until the pain actually hits.”
“So we wait.”
“Go. You have work to do. I’ll be fine.” I didn’t have the strength to keep myself from staring into his green eyes.
“Eventually, of course. Now give me your foot. We should get your shoes off.” His lips twitched into a crooked smile. “I don’t want you
putting holes in my sheets.”
“Your sheets? This is my room, isn’t it?”
He shrugged. “They are all my sheets. For now.”
With that the first hoof hit my brain, sending a bolt of pain so sharp I had to squeeze my eyes shut against it.
Martim picked up the water glass from the bedside table and held it out to me. “You can take your pill now, no?”
“Thanks.” I downed the pill, hoping everything would work out and I’d get to keep it down.
Martim’s hands were gentle as he slid off my shoes. I lay back on the bed. He pulled a blanket over me. I closed my eyes as the herd descended. A few minutes later, I heard the door softly close and I was alone with my pain.
THE MIGRAINE gods smiled, I didn’t throw up, and the medicine worked its magic. I crawled out of bed and sloughed off my sweat-soaked shirt. The clock said I’d been out of commission for a little over two hours. It felt like ten, or nothing. Time warps in the pain zone. I rolled my head tentatively, checking all the corners of my brain. The pain was gone. All that was left was the feeling that my head was a hollow, echoing drum. I didn’t expect to think clearly anytime soon.
I stood up, then had to wait for the dizziness to ease before making my way to the bathroom. All I wanted was a long cool drink and a warm shower. When it had been a long time since I’d had one, I thought of migraines as an annoyance that decreased my productivity. Inside them, I just endured. But in the hours afterward, migraines boiled life down to a thoughtless oblivion filled with sensations and relief.
When I next looked at the clock, an hour had passed. I was clean, hydrated, and dressed in jeans and a sweater. I didn’t want to give anyone the impression I’d be able to work again today. My best bet would be to sneak out of the hotel and lose myself in the streets of Lisbon until I could think again.
There was a soft knock on the door, and Martim poked his head around the corner.
