“No!” Josh shook his head, blinking against the too-long hair that got in his eyes. He kept forgetting to get a haircut. “No, Dad. I’m not dating a schoolteacher. I’m not dating anyone.”
And saying that was a tactical mistake.
Dad jumped on the opening. “But you should be. You’re bisexual, Josh. Men and women. Surely you can find someone.”
“Oh my God,” Josh muttered, bracing his elbows on the desk so he could hide his face in his hands. “Why did I ever tell you that?”
“I’m just saying, I’d like grandkids one day, and there’s always adoption.” Dad beamed. “You were adopted, and you turned out okay, right?”
That coffee was becoming more of a medical necessity than resting tired feet. “Come on, Dad. Really? I’m not dating anyone.”
“Then what’s so important that you’ve gotten out of bed at three in the morning for the last couple of days?”
Josh opened his mouth, but all that came to mind was Hot Tourist Guy. And even hinting at Hot Tourist Guy would be enough to set off Dad’s bloodhound instincts, which meant he would be lurking at the shop first thing tomorrow morning and for every hour they were open until he ferreted out the object of Josh’s crush.
Josh needed a diversion.
“I’ve been running numbers,” he said, and was rewarded with his dad’s faint wince. “Lizzie helped. The shop’s making a nice profit—really nice—since we started the catering thing.”
“Good,” Dad said automatically, dark brows drawn together. “That’s good, right?”
“Of course.” Relieved that Dad had taken the bait, Josh tried to keep his grin to a minimum. “So maybe we can meet later tonight? Have a talk about what to do with the money?”
“We save it,” Dad said at once, frowning even more. “What else would we do with it?”
Josh took a deep breath, steeling himself. He hadn’t intended to have this talk, but it was better than discussing his unrequited crush on a guy whose name he didn’t even know.
“Put it into the business.”
Dad leaned back in his chair, still unsmiling. “We could put it in the business emergency fund. Stash it away in case some of our equipment breaks. If we need a new catering van. That sort of thing.”
Josh hid a sigh of resignation. With the money already in the business emergency fund, they could reprovision, buy a brand-new van, and have enough left over to repaint and redo the flooring, all while paying their staff a decent wage. But now wasn’t the time to get into the details.
“Let’s talk about it later,” he said, standing up despite how his feet protested. “I’m going to the store after shift for new gel insoles. Need anything?”
Dad looked at Josh, and—shit—that sly light came back into his eyes. “Does your girlfriend work at the store?”
Josh threw up his hands and headed for the door.
“Boyfriend?” Dad called after him.
“We’ll talk more after closing, Dad,” Josh yelled back.
“You can tell me anything! You know that!”
“Thanks, Dad,” Josh muttered, though he was smiling. For a pain in the ass, Dad had his heart in the right place.
The best part of being a politician’s son—possibly the only good part—was the food. Politicians who served lousy food, at least at the state level or higher, were doomed to failure. Today’s barbecue was the best Michael had eaten in . . . Well, he couldn’t remember better, and he went back for seconds. When it was time for thirds, the smiling server passed him a plated sandwich stacked on top of a bowl of plain shredded brisket, no sauce. “For your puppy,” she said, as if Michael couldn’t figure it out.
Fuck the rules, Michael thought, taking the plate and bowl. They were eating on the grass, under a cloudy sky, not in a restaurant, and the food really was top-notch. Kaylee deserved a reward for not even drooling as Michael had gorged.
“She says thanks,” Michael said, then led Kaylee to a table on the other side of the field, away from all the action.
So far, he’d gone unnoticed, speaking to no one of consequence after the stilted initial meeting with his parents and the Knox family. Amanda, sensing a fund-raising opportunity for her shelter, had gone off to network, leaving Michael to eat his lunch in peace. Kaylee helped preserve Michael’s privacy, thanks to absurd prejudice against German shepherds, no matter how silly she looked licking at her fur to get the last bits of brisket and rubbing her muzzle on the grass.
“You ridiculous goofball,” he told her before taking another bite of his sandwich. Her tail wagged once before she abruptly stopped, raising her head, ears perked forward. Chest going tight, Michael followed the direction of her gaze, then relaxed in his seat when he spotted Amanda.
She took the empty seat beside Michael, Kaylee sprawled in the grass between them, and said, “God, I love taking money from rich assholes. Especially when they’d hate the cause if they only read the fine print.”
Michael put down his half-eaten sandwich and swallowed. “What fine print?”
“We help all victims of domestic violence.” Amanda’s grin went sharp. “Married, unmarried, het, gay, lesbian, trans, you name it.”
She was the only family member who knew he was gay. He’d come out to her years ago, when he called her from Misawa Air Base in Japan to wish her a happy eighteenth birthday. She hadn’t come out to him in return, but she’d declared that she was changing her major from politics to gender studies, which was almost as radical, as far as their parents were concerned.
“Good for you,” Michael said, and they shared a conspiratorial grin. Subverting their parents’ political machinations was one of the few pleasures their strange childhood had offered.
“So what are you up to?” Amanda glanced down at Kaylee, hands twitching in a familiar way, though she didn’t try to pet. “Tell me a Frisbee is involved.”
“Only a little. We just got there,” he reminded her between bites. “It took two days to get up here from DC.”
Amanda deliberately looked away from him and down at Kaylee. “Don’t like flying anymore?”
He pushed his plate away. “Too . . . confined. A train, it’s easier to think I could get out if I needed,” he said honestly. “I just had to overnight in Boston so I could switch lines.”
She gave him a quick glance. “You drove here, though, didn’t you?”
“It’s night driving that I can’t handle.” Michael turned his wrist, watching Kaylee’s leash swing back and forth. “That’s like when it happened. The convoy attack. A late-afternoon dust storm. Even less visibility than at night.”
“Mike . . .” She put a hand on his shoulder and caught his eye. “Are you . . . okay? Really okay?”
Define “okay.” He shrugged and nodded down at Kaylee. “She helps. We do a lot of training.” He smiled. “I think she’s smarter than you and me put together.”
“You were in a dog training school in DC, right?” When he nodded, she asked, “Do you have one here too?”
“No, but I can call the trainers if I have questions. And we’re mostly polishing behaviors.”
“That’s not—” She cut off with a sigh. “Your school had a whole class of students. You were with people. Not at home . . .”
Alone. She didn’t say it, but Michael heard it. He sat back in his chair and gave her a smile that he hoped was reassuring. “We’re going out every day. Lots of walks—not just so she can do her business. My trainer even said it: having a service dog means you’ll make excuses to get out of the house.”
She grinned. “And go where? Isn’t the island kind of dead compared to DC?”
“Yeah, but I like the quiet.” Michael smiled at the thought of going back there in just a few hours. Maybe sooner. Maybe in time to stop at the bagel place and pick up dinner. “We can go into town to shop or go to restaurants. It’s good. We both need the exercise.”
Amanda snorted and looked him up and down. “Another twenty pounds is what you need.”
; “I just ate,” he protested, pointing at the empty plate. “And I got a bagel and coffee this morning before driving up here.”
“Mike . . .”
“Come on.” He kicked at her shin. “You should be glad. First time in our lives you’re in better shape than me. Are you working out?”
Amanda was practically glowing from the praise, though her shrug was casual. “Yeah. I kept up with cross-country, but I added in weight training last fall. I have a personal trainer and everything.”
Smirking, Michael nudged her again. “Great. At least our father’s probably happy with you.”
“Yeah, right.” She rolled her eyes. “They wanted a son. Two sons would’ve been better.”
“You were the one into sports and fast cars. Me, he never understood. I was a nerd.” It didn’t come out bitter. The only thing Michael had liked about boarding school was his advanced placement in most classes. Well, that and the library. “I wouldn’t have even played soccer if not for the tight shorts.”
“And the bathing suits on our summer vacations, huh?”
Michael snickered. “Of course.”
“Speaking of sons . . .” Amanda trailed off for a couple of seconds—long enough that Michael almost spoke up—before she said, “Are you going back to Dartmouth? You know they’re going to want you to at least start working for the family law firm.”
“As a stepping-stone to a political career. Fuck that,” Michael said bluntly. “I don’t want to be a lawyer any more than you did.”
Amanda gave an exaggerated sigh. “You should’ve heard the absolute shit I got for changing my major. Though I guess it wasn’t that bad, compared to you. They’re more interested in me marrying into the ‘right’ family than getting a law degree.”
“And the whole marriage-grandchildren thing?”
“Not happening. Ever,” she said, her voice so frosty, Michael shivered. “But that reminds me . . . I’d come visit you this summer, but I’m leaving for a while. On my birthday, in fact.”
“You are?” Michael did the mental math and realized she was turning twenty-five, which meant— “The trust fund? Taking advantage of your windfall?”
Her mouth twitched. “Sort of. I’m going overseas for a year. It’s all part of my gender studies degree.”
“Which you completed, didn’t you? Or did I send you a graduation present you didn’t earn?”
She smacked his arm. “I graduated, you jerk. But, you know, some stuff I learned . . . It’s, um . . . Things that are multicultural and all . . .”
Michael stared at his usually eloquent sister, for a moment worried that his own aphasia was taking a new turn, making him perceive someone else as stumbling and losing their words. But no, this was all her. “What—”
Kaylee surged to her feet in warning, and Michael snapped his mouth shut. Amanda frowned at them both, then looked over her shoulder. The man heading toward them was dressed in a carefully casual way, with a sport jacket hanging open over a button-down, top two buttons undone. He had a practiced smile that was as artificial as his hairline.
“Shit,” Amanda muttered, barely moving her lips as she turned back to Michael. “That’s Wilkins, Dad’s—”
“Chief of staff,” Michael finished. Time to pay for those barbecue sandwiches he’d eaten.
“Mr. Baldwin! And Miss Baldwin,” Wilkins called cheerfully, earning a thunderous scowl from Amanda, who’d once treated Michael to a twenty-minute rant on the inherent sexism in gendered courtesy titles. Especially “miss.”
“What?” Michael asked sharply, just as he’d done on the phone, though this time it was intentional—a way to head off Amanda’s imminent explosion.
Wilkins was easier to ruffle in person than over the phone. He blinked once, then rallied and flashed his smile again, focusing on Michael. “Glad I found you. The governor wants to see you. Just a quick private chat.”
Everything inside Michael’s head screamed No! He glanced down at his plate, but all that was left of sandwich number three was a bit of crust. No help there. If he tried to stick with Amanda, that would just drag her into whatever his father wanted. And nice as it would be to have an ally other than Kaylee, Amanda didn’t deserve that. She was already too close to their parents.
So Michael stood and said, “Sure. I have a couple of minutes.”
Wilkins’s frown was baffled. “A crate of . . . what?”
Amanda shot Michael a quick, alarmed look before turning to Wilkins. “He has a couple of minutes,” she said sharply, as if daring Wilkins to ask.
Shit. Had Michael glitched? His heart kicked hard against his ribs. He could’ve sworn he said it right.
Kaylee leaned against Michael’s leg, never turning her attention from Wilkins. Michael scratched between her ears and told her, “Kaylee, leash.” She ducked and picked up the leash to offer him the handle.
“Aw, that’s such a cute little doggie,” Wilkins said in a baby voice. “Does it do any other tricks?”
“She doesn’t do tricks,” Michael snapped. Amanda did a half-assed job of hiding her laugh with a cough. Wilkins’s face flushed, and he turned to head to the house.
Michael had to take a couple of breaths to calm himself. His father was hard enough to handle without piling anger and disorientation and aphasia on top of everything else. He was tempted to slip away—three cheers for strategic parking—but that would just make things worse. His parents might well demand he move from the island to the family farm “for his health” or some bullshit.
Amanda reached out to him, but Kaylee body-blocked her by turning to face Michael, smacking her tail into Amanda’s arm. Michael waved Kaylee off with a quiet, “Good girl,” and took hold of Amanda’s hand.
She looked up into his eyes, her face grave. “Remember,” she said in a solemn voice, “no biting.”
“Kaylee doesn’t bite,” he protested automatically.
One corner of Amanda’s mouth twitched up. “I was talking to you.”
Michael rolled his eyes, but her humor, bad as it was, shattered the tension choking his breath. He laughed roughly and said, “Actually, yeah, you were. What were you saying?”
Her smile turned regretful. “Don’t worry about it. Are you going to try to get out of here?”
She knew him too well. “Yeah,” he said, leaning down to kiss her cheek. “Sorry to abandon you—”
“Go,” she insisted. “I’ll send you a postcard from Thailand or something.”
“Be safe,” he said, wondering what was so interesting in Thailand, though only for a moment. He picked up his bag and told Kaylee, “Let’s go,” then hurried after Wilkins, feeling like he was headed for a firing squad.
Two o’clock in the afternoon was early for social drinks in any sphere but business or politics. Michael wasn’t surprised to find his father had a Scotch in hand. Liquid sloshed when he waved the glass at the bar in the corner of the Knoxes’ sitting room, playing host. “Something to drink, son?”
“No. Thanks.” Michael flinched at a loud thump and twisted to glare at the door Wilkins had pulled closed, leaving his father and him alone in the sitting room. “What’d you want?”
The governor leaned back in his chair and crossed one leg over the other, the very picture of casual, competent power. “You’re walking without your cane.”
So it was going to be an interrogation. Carefully, Michael said, “For the last month.”
“Settled into the house all right?”
Michael shrugged. “The barn.”
A flicker of irritation appeared on his father’s face, then disappeared. “Uh-huh. Did you get a chance to meet Elijah Knox? The veteran from the Vietnam War?”
Michael nodded. They’d been introduced by one of the older Knox children, though Elijah—who answered exclusively to Captain Knox or Grandpa—probably couldn’t remember. The captain seemed to think it was the late seventies, when he had been a pilot for a local airline that had gone out of business ten or fifteen years later. A nurs
e had been in close attendance through Michael’s whole meeting, probably to keep Captain Knox from getting out of his wheelchair and wandering off in search of his plane.
“Good,” his father approved. He took a sip of his drink, and Michael could feel his stare. “And what are you doing with yourself these days?”
Michael had seen that question coming six months ago. It had taken him three months of role-play with his therapist to be able to meet his father’s eyes and say, “I’m continuing my recovery, as my doctors directed. Just because I’m out of the hospital and on my feet doesn’t mean I’m fully healed.”
His father could spot a memorized speech at fifty yards. His eyes narrowed, and Michael looked down at Kaylee, trying to hide the way his chest went tight again. He wanted out. He needed to get out.
“But what are you doing?” his father asked. “There’s nothing on that island outside tourist season. None of the other families are there yet, are they?”
Michael clenched Kaylee’s leash hard, focusing on his memory of Josh’s warm smile just this morning. It was no surprise his father dismissed the town’s full-time residents as if they didn’t exist—and Michael had no desire to correct that impression.
“I’ve been working with Kaylee,” he said. “I have to keep up her training.”
His father frowned in that “baffled and unhappy about being confused” way of his; he didn’t like not being in the know. “And?” he finally pressed. “What about your . . . What was it? Those movies you used to always watch.”
Leather creaked under Michael’s fingers. He’d spent his childhood immersed in sci-fi movies and comic books, but when he awakened in the hospital, he had . . . lost his love for most everything. Shows he once enjoyed were remade into shadows of what they’d been. Comics were regurgitated storylines or bizarre crossovers. He didn’t have the mental energy to get invested anymore.
“I work with Kaylee,” he said, the words coming slow and hard, like pushing a boulder uphill. Fighting the weight of his father’s disappointment.
Change of Address Page 5
