Acrobat

by Mary Calmes

  “Thank you.” I forced a smile. “Did you guys find out something about my hit man?”

  “No.” He took a breath. “The organized crime guys aren’t buying that the shooter was there for Fiore. It makes no sense.”

  “But it makes no sense that he wanted to kill me, either.”

  “Unless he wasn’t there for you or Fiore.”

  But who else was… Michael. My eyes met his. “You guys think that the hit man was there to hurt Dreo’s nephew?”

  “We’re exploring all the possibilities, but the fact is that the kid spent a lot of time with you and—”

  “How do you know that?”

  “We interviewed people in the building.”

  I nodded.

  “So if someone was trying to get to Fiore—to hurt him—they might have gone through his nephew or….”

  I knew what he was fishing for. “Sure,” I agreed, instead of telling him more than he needed to know. “So is Michael safe, or—”

  “He’s safe as long as that was the only guy someone sends.”

  “But why would they? I mean, Dreo’s out of that business now, so I wouldn’t expect to see anyone else.”

  “Oh? How do you know that?”

  I took a breath. “Because he and his nephew are moving in with me, so I kind of have to know what’s going on with him.”

  “I’m sorry, what?”

  I stood up, shoving my hands into the big pocket at the front of the hoodie. “Duncan, I don’t want to have a whole thing. We don’t need to, and we’re so past the time that it should matter to either one of us. You have your life, I have mine, we’re done.”

  He stared at me, and after a minute, I started toward the elevator.

  “Nate!”

  I stopped and turned and waited while he caught up to me.

  “How are you just so ready to let this be over?”

  “Because it’s been over for a year and a half already.” I sighed deeply. “What happened?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean something changed to remind you of us, and that’s why you care all of a sudden.”

  “Oh for fuck’s sake, Nate, I always cared.” He smiled suddenly, his dark-gray eyes glinting. “I didn’t want anything to change.”

  “Duncan, you’re in the closet. I’m not. I need a partner in every sense of the word. You can’t be that guy, and I’m so sorry, but when we broke up, I worked through things and realized what I wanted.”

  He frowned. “You could have made it work.”

  And it was so true that for a moment, I was dumbstruck, because God, who knew that Melissa Ortiz was the damn Oracle at Delphi? Hadn’t she said almost the exact thing? Because if I put my heart and soul into something, I could make anything work. But it took concentrated effort, and instead of doing that, I had given up on Duncan Stiel.

  “Nate?”

  My head snapped back, and I looked at him.

  “You didn’t want to put in the work to make us happen.”

  It was true. I had been so captivated by Duncan, so enamored, so infatuated, that I let his life drown mine for two years. I went along, and when I got tired of it, tired of it just being easy and comfortable and convenient but not love, I ended it. And that was why I had the man in my lobby looking at me like there were still places for us to go. I had let him believe that he was my whole world, let him be everything, and then one day just stopped loving him and walked away. It was something I did, something I had always done—poured on the charm, made myself into the ideal partner, lover, friend, indispensable and irreplaceable, and then, when I got bored or tired or tapped out, instead of fighting, I just quit. It was wildly unfair, and the only people I didn’t do it with were my family. Even my friends complained that I was always around and then just gone. The only reason I was constant with Ben was because he was attached to Mel and she was, even though she was my ex-wife, still my family.

  “Nate?”

  “Jesus, Duncan, I’m sorry,” I told him, reaching out, putting a hand on his bicep. “I’m really so sorry. I don’t know why I… and with us, I mean—I saw things weren’t going to change, but I just gave you the ultimatum that I knew you couldn’t change, and then when you said that was it, I just let you walk out.”

  He was staring at me, and I saw all the pain there and felt even worse.

  “That was my scene, my ending, and I blamed you,” I told him as he put his hands on my face, tipping my head up as he stepped close to me. “God, I’m so sorry. I let you believe that what we had, what we were doing, was enough and then one day just pulled the rug out from under you and told you it wasn’t. Forgive me, please.”

  He took a breath and bent toward me at the same time I eased free and stepped back.

  “Nate?”

  I shook my head. “The fact remains that we’re in two completely different places in our lives. And now, finally, I’m ready to take the leap, the big one, the real one, and not run and not turn myself inside out and make myself into something I’m not.” There were no tricks needed, no midair trapeze work, no acrobatics without a net to impress and keep Dreo Fiore. I could do it without theatrics, with just me and my heart. “You need to find a guy who can live with what you can give him, and that’s not me.”

  “I want you back,” he said softly, reaching for me again.

  I moved further away, too far for him to touch. “I need more than you can do, Duncan, and the time where we could have maybe worked at it is over. You know that.”

  The muscles in his jaw were clenching.

  “You went from having what resembled a home life with me to screwing guys in bathhouses again, so I totally get that you’re grieving for that piece that we had. You don’t wanna do the nameless, faceless fucking anymore,” I advised. “I understand it, but don’t confuse the little life we were sharing with the big romantic Hollywood blockbuster that you could have.”

  He let out a quick breath, and suddenly he was smiling.

  “Move, start a life, get out of Chicago. There’s nothing keeping you here. Go and find a place where you can be a cop and come home every night to the guy of your dreams. It’s not me, and you know that just as well as I do, but it was as close to good as it’s ever been for you when you were with me, so that’s where this is all getting screwed up in your head.”

  Long, heavy sigh as he looked at me with his gorgeous charcoal eyes.

  “If I had loved you more than I loved myself, I wouldn’t have been able to let you walk away. If you loved me more than yourself, you would have never left,” I clarified for him.

  His eyes locked on mine for long moments before he turned away. He didn’t look back, didn’t turn around before he went out the door. Before, when he had gone, I had always thought that our paths would cross again. This time the parting felt permanent. We were two very different people, and it hurt and it was sad, but both of us made sense, which was why neither of us could give in. I couldn’t thrive in his world; he couldn’t be himself in mine.

  When I got back upstairs, I slipped in and realized that no one had even noticed I was gone. Walking to my bedroom, I sat down on my bed and stared outside at the pouring rain.

  “Hey.”

  I turned toward the door, and there was Dreo, leaning on the doorframe.

  “You were talking to that detective for a long time downstairs.”

  “How did you know?”

  He levered off the frame and crossed the floor toward me. “I went to check on you and saw you guys talking. Melissa filled me in on him when I got back. She recognized his SUV parked outside.”

  “Oh.”

  “So, what?”

  I shook my head. “Nothing, just same old stuff.”

  He nodded, reaching me and sitting down beside me. “So what did he want?”

  “Just to talk about the hit man on the fire escape.”

  “And?”

  “Nothing else. They just still don’t think he was there for you.”

&nb
sp; “That makes no sense.”

  I shrugged.

  “Then who?”

  “Maybe Michael.”

  “Michael?” he echoed.

  “Yes. They think the hit man might have been after someone close to you.”

  “As a warning?”

  “Maybe.”

  “A warning for what?”

  “I don’t think they know, or Duncan would have told me.”

  “So then it could have been you,” he suggested.

  “But no one knew you thought I was pretty,” I teased.

  His eyes were hot and wet. “Anyone who really knows me, knew.”

  “Yeah?”

  His eyes searched mine. “Yes.”

  “I like that,” I murmured.

  There was a quick shrug of his broad shoulders. “Except that obviously someone was paying better attention than I thought, and I don’t want you hurt.”

  “But like I told Duncan, there’s no reason for any of it now.”

  “Unless the point is to just hurt me by hurting you or Michael.”

  “Who would do that? How is that logical now?”

  “It’s not anymore.”

  “So we have nothing to worry about,” I said before wondering, “I wonder if anyone went after anyone that Sal cares about?”

  “I dunno. He never said anything, and when I told him that day after you left, told him and Tony, neither one of them remembered seeing anybody around.”

  I thought about that for a moment. “That’s strange, right? Why you and not Tony? Why you and not Sal?”

  “And why after Mr. Romelli was killed? It would make more sense before he died to threaten us or him.”

  “None of this makes any sense.”

  He smiled. “So what are you thinking?”

  “I just wonder, maybe someone wanted to hurt just you?”

  “Like who?”

  I turned to look at him. “I don’t know. Maybe Mr. Romelli’s son?”

  “Joey?”

  “Why not? He hates you, he hates the fact that you told his father you were gay… it makes sense that it would be him.”

  “Nate—”

  “He was horrible today. The things he said to you were obscene.”

  “Yeah, but you don’t think that’s a huge jump from hating that I’m gay to sending someone to kill you or Michael?”

  “Putting out a hit on you, you mean?”

  “Oh, look at you sounding all made man over here.”

  I bumped him with my shoulder. “I’m worried. It doesn’t make sense, and I hate things that make no sense.”

  He nodded. “So, your ex, huh?”

  “Yeah.”

  “And all he wanted you for was to talk about the hit man?”

  I turned to look at him. “There was a little more.”

  “How much more?”

  “I promise it’s not important.”

  His eyes searched mine.

  “Tell me what you’re thinking,” I requested.

  “Okay, what are you doing with him?”

  “I’m not doing anything with him,” I said, smiling at the man I was planning on being around. “I’m doing everything with you, Mr. Fiore, if that’s what you want.”

  He took my hand in his, and as I stared down at our entwined fingers, I noticed, as I had on many occasions, how strong they were. The veins that ran from his fingers, corded wrists, and sinewy forearms—the man was powerful everywhere but able to be gentle at the same time.

  “What are you thinking?”

  I smiled before I lifted my head to look into the deep, dark brown eyes. “That you’re just gorgeous all over.”

  His grin was wicked as he reached over and slid his knuckles up the column of my throat. It was so nice to be petted; I let my eyes flutter shut to savor the feeling of his skin stroking over mine.

  “Here’s the thing, I want us to do this for real. I wanna be here, and I want you all in, 100 percent. Mel says I have to demand it if I really want you.”

  My eyes drifted open. “Is that what she said?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Well, I can suddenly see my life with you in it, Mr. Fiore, so all the tricks I’ve done in the past to impress people, I’m going to give that up and concentrate my efforts on making this work.”

  He leaned close, kissing me softly, tenderly, sucking at my bottom lip just enough to send a throb of heat through my body. “Don’t stop doing all your tricks… tesoro… I have many positions I plan to put you in.”

  I chuckled, my eyes drifting closed again as I parted my lips for his kiss.

  “You submit to me so beautifully,” he whispered before he claimed my mouth.

  The kiss was drugging, and he tasted and explored, licking, nibbling, biting, making sure he missed nothing as he pressed me back down onto the bed.

  “Nate,” he gasped, panting for breath as he lifted off me, his mouth still hovering over mine. “You have to tell me if you want my ass.”

  I chuckled. “Crudely put, Fiore.”

  “But you got my point.” He smiled back.

  I licked my lips and saw the ripple in the corded muscles in his neck, heard the low sound in his chest, and watched his eyes narrow. The thrill of being desired was almost too much to bear. “If you want that, I’ll do it for you. But if not, then submitting to you… that’s so good.”

  He looked like he was in pain. “Is it?”

  “It’s—we all have what we like best.”

  “Yes, we do,” he agreed, his lips hovering over mine. “I’m gonna kiss you before we go back out there.”

  “Please,” I whispered.

  And he bent and took me in his arms.

  Chapter 12

  I WAS surprised when I showed up at the Four Seasons hotel the following day that Sanderson was actually stunned to see me.

  “You actually thought I wasn’t going to show.” I rolled my eyes.

  “Yes. To make me look bad. I see no end to your machinations.”

  Who had that kind of time? “Where are we going?” I asked, the irritation filling my voice.

  “We’re supposed to go to the front desk and have the hotel catering manager paged. She will be with Greg Butler’s event coordinator.”

  I lifted my hand like I would follow him. Halfway there, I heard my name called. Turning, I saw Gregory Butler and at least twelve other people walking toward me.

  He looked the same as he had five years ago, when he was in my class.

  “What’re you, like, all of twenty-five?” I called over to him.

  “Twenty-six, actually.” He smiled, stopping close, extending his hand. “It’s really good to see you, Dr. Qells.”

  Same brown hair, same blue eyes, same ordinary, handsome, all-American goodness face. Even the freckles across the bridge of his nose added to the apple pie image. I took the hand and squinted. “Tell Professor Vaughn here that I didn’t put you up to this.”

  He squeezed my hand tight, not letting go as he turned to Sanderson. “I took over from my father just this year, Professor, and when I did, I got control of all the charitable dollars at my company’s disposal. I’m building a homeless shelter downtown in March of next year, and we made a lot of other donations, but on top of my list was my alma mater, even though I barely made it out.”

  I grunted as he finally released my hand.

  His smile was huge. “Dr. Qells took me in his office one day and told me that if I didn’t do some work damn soon he was going to flunk my lazy ass.”

  Listening to everyone gasp at once was fun. I scoffed; Gregory’s smile lit his eyes.

  “I reported him to the dean,” he told the entourage and Sanderson while he kept his gaze locked with mine. “And the dean told me that I must have misheard, because that kind of behavior was completely foreign to Dr. Qells.”

  I waggled my eyebrows for him.

  He nodded, tipping his head to the side. “When I went back to class the next day, I asked Dr. Qells if he knew who my fa
ther was, and he told me that the only use he had for my father was if he knew anything more about Milton than I did so maybe he could tutor me.”

  I laughed softly at the memory.

  “God, I hated you.” He shook his head.

  “You weren’t my favorite either.” I snickered. “If we’re keeping score.”

  His sigh was heavy. “First time anyone ever stood up to me, told me where to go, and gave me an ultimatum. I had no idea I could be treated like everybody else.”

  I grinned.

  “I never worked so hard in my life.”

  “It was strong C at the end,” I told him.

  “It was a bitch to get,” he told me.

  “But it was earned,” I assured him. “If you hadn’t screwed around at the beginning, you probably would have gotten an A. You had quite the grasp of Chaucer especially.”

  He reached out and took hold of my shoulder. “Walk with me.”

  The hotel was beautiful, the atrium, the chandeliers, the marble floors, the staircases—and the grand ballroom where the feast would be held was breathtaking. There, waiting for us, was Katherine Abrams, Greg’s fiancée.

  “Oh, Dr. Qells.” Her smile was dazzling, as was she. “Such a pleasure to meet the man who made such a difference in Greg’s life.”

  “I had no idea I had.” I smiled back.

  She took my arm after we shook hands, holding on. “You did. He always tells me it was you. His father will be here the night of the party, and he’d like a word as well.”

  “Of course.” I patted her hand in the crook of my arm.

  “You see”—Greg was smiling—“I was going to be a trust fund baby or what I am now. Everybody likes the after, Dr. Qells. Before you, I guess I was kind of a malcontent.”

  “You were a slacker.”

  “I am better now for having known you.”

  I chuckled. “Who knew I was a saint?”

  “You’re an ass,” Greg assured me.

  “Greg!”

  “Oh, he is.” He made a face at Kate. “And he knows it.”

  “I am,” I agreed with him, grinning at her. “I know it. Ask Sanderson.”

  “Who?”

  I pointed behind me, and the introductions began. The thing was, she didn’t care. She had absolutely no interest in Sanderson Vaughn at all, and she was one of those women who was insanely sweet and proper, but still, you knew it. She really cared about finding out if I was bringing anyone with me to the party.