The door to the study flew open. Jake stood there, still wearing the leather jacket he’d worn on his arrival, but now he sported a large duffle bag on one shoulder. Resentment and anger smoldered on his features, and Donald had a moment’s thought of how like his mother he looked when she’d been in a similar fury. Darcy Stanford had been slow to get angry, but woe unto anyone who’d called its full force upon them, usually some hapless person who’d been cruel to an animal or threatened something she’d held dear. He hid the smile the memory tempted, knowing Jake would never understand. She’d been a woman of strong passions, a believer in causes, and the niggling thought that she would have been fully supportive of Jake in his choices was getting harder to ignore.
“I’ve packed some of my stuff. I’ll be back for the rest later. The cats are in their carriers, Rich. I’ll be down at the barn.” From somewhere down the hall, the wail of an unhappy cat could be heard. Donald’s eyes started to water just from the sound. The glance Jake fired off in his direction could have doubled for a flamethrower, but when he turned back to Evans, he looked suddenly tired.
He’s not sure Evans will come. He thinks I’ve talked him out of it again.
He had a split second to confirm his deal with Evans. If Jake walked out, he wouldn’t be back. Donald knew that without a doubt.
Goddamn that manipulating little faggot. Richard Evans had made him an offer he couldn’t refuse. The irony wasn’t lost on him.
“You’re overreacting as usual, Jake.” Donald cleared his throat, ignoring the smile that blazoned across Evans’s face. Such a bad poker face. “Obviously, this is not the right time for you to change barns. It would be bad for your training, and there’s Tom to consider as well. Moving your base of operation would leave a hole in things here at a time when Tom needs your support.”
“I’m taking Tom with me,” Jake snapped.
Donald forced himself to relax his clenched fists hidden beneath the desk. “Admirable, to be sure. Have you asked him about this? Are you planning to keep him on at the same salary and benefits? Perhaps the simplest course of action would be for you to swallow your pride and stay here.”
“Swallow my pride?” Jake sounded as though he might choke on it instead. “You kicked me out, remember?”
“You must have misinterpreted me,” Donald lied coolly, aware of the sardonic gaze Evans leveled in his direction. “You’ve had a long drive and still have horses to unload when they arrive. I daresay you haven’t eaten yet either, at least, not anything I would consider a real meal. As for the cats, obviously, the place will have to be cleaned before I can stay here again. So, ahem, you might as well put them back… wherever they came from… for now. I’ll go back to the city tonight.”
“Are you, like, deathly allergic or only somewhat allergic?” Evans asked in an odd, speculative tone. “Because they haven’t been anywhere other than on this floor and in my room upstairs. Your rooms should be okay.”
Jake was staring at Evans as though he’d lost his mind.
“I’ve taken an antihistamine,” Donald said slowly. “I just wasn’t expecting to find cats when I arrived.” He tried not to make the word sound like lemurs or zebras but failed.
Evans unobtrusively slipped his checkbook in his back pocket and tapped his cane on the carpet a few times. “Great. Problem solved. I don’t know about the two of you, but I’m starving. We can talk over dinner about what we need to do between now and leaving for Allentown for Jersey Fresh. I take it you’re coming to the Games, correct, Mr. Stanford?”
“I hadn’t thought about it,” Donald confessed. “I mean….” He cast a glance in Jake’s direction and was surprised to see a look of hurt on his face before a mask of blank indifference shut him out. “I didn’t know it was a real possibility until just now.”
“Well then, lots to plan. Come on, Jake, let’s get the cats settled and then go check on the horses. After dinner, we can watch the highlights of the Beijing Games on DVD. Though I don’t know why we call them the Beijing Games when all the equine events took place in Hong Kong instead. Speaking of which, we should go over all the quarantine information again and make sure we’ve got all the forms filled out for the U.K. It would suck if we screwed something like that up and wound up out of the competition because we couldn’t get into the country.
“You are joining us for dinner, aren’t you?” Evans stopped walking as though he meant to do so, and not because Jake filled the door like an angry roadblock.
“Yes. I, um, yes. I’m interested to hear how Rolex went. It would appear Pegasus performed very well, so I don’t understand why you didn’t actually win the competition.” Donald crossed over to join Evans at the door.
“Well,” Evans said slowly, in the tone of someone explaining something to a small child, “even though she went clean in the cross-country and stadium portions, she still placed only so high in the dressage. Basically, the dressage score sets you up for the rest of the event. If you have a great ride in the other phases, you pretty much have to hope anyone who got a better dressage score than you did makes a mistake in order to beat them.”
“Ah,” Donald said. “I understand now. You can’t win on dressage alone, but if you don’t have excellent dressage skills, you can’t place high enough to win either. Hence the balancing out of the three phases.”
Evans gaped at him. “You don’t… you have some of the finest sport horses in the country and you don’t even watch them compete?”
“I think Dad has only been to a trial once. When I was fourteen.” Jake’s voice was brittle. He shouldered his bag more firmly, as though he wasn’t certain he was staying. “He doesn’t have time for that sort of thing.”
He doesn’t have time for me.
Donald heard the words as surely as if Jake had said them aloud, and saw in Jake’s face the hostility Evans had alluded to.
“I’m sure that’s not the case,” Evans said. The frowning glance he shot Donald’s way spoke volumes.
The disbelieving look his son gave Evans was worse, however.
“I stopped going because it terrified me to watch you,” Donald heard himself say. “I was afraid you’d get killed. If I’d gone more than once, I would have forbidden you from ever getting on a horse again.” The admission surprised him, and he could see from Jake’s face he was taken aback as well. “The horses were your mother’s passion. I seriously considered selling them and the farm after her death, but they were the only thing you seemed interested in. You were quite the sullen and uncommunicative child. Except when it came to the horses.”
“Are you serious?”
Donald looked at Jake, who was frowning at him. He sighed before answering. “Yes, Jake, I’m serious. It terrified me to watch you go galloping down to those big fences at what seemed like a hundred miles per hour. People die in this sport every year. Why just last month, that young woman and her horse were killed in a fall at one of the big trials. And then that actor, I forget his name, but wasn’t he paralyzed from a fall at an event? I think of that every time you get on a horse.”
“But you didn’t stop me.” Jake’s expression could have burned holes in steel, only Donald had no idea what he was thinking or feeling.
He took a sip of his Scotch, stalling for time. “No.”
He couldn’t say what he wanted to say. That he loved his son too much to deny him anything.
Not true. You’d deny him Rich Evans. His sexuality. Even the horses, should he defy you. How is that love?
Donald drank more Scotch.
“Well, if you don’t come to the Olympics when your son is competing, people will talk.” Evans made shooing motions at Jake with his cane while at the same time beckoning Donald to come along with them.
Jake tossed a hand in the air and looked around as though questioning the sanity of the universe as he went back into the hallway. As Donald came abreast of him by the door, Evans leaned over slightly and spoke out of the side of his mouth. “You, ah, won’t cash that che
ck right away, will you? I have to move some funds around first.”
Donald caught Evans’s gaze upon him, feeling the intensity of his concern thrum between them. He had a grudging respect for Evans, but it didn’t change anything. “This isn’t over between us. Not by a long shot. But no, I won’t cash the check right away.”
The relief was evident not only on Evans’s face but in the way tension oozed out of his entire body with a sigh. “Good, good. Right, then, dinner and a movie!” Evans indicated the door.
“How’d you get him to change his mind?”
Rich looked up to see Jake leaning in the doorway, rubbing the back of his neck with one hand.
“He wanted to change his mind. He was unpleasantly surprised that you were willing to take him at his word when he told you to get out. He was looking for an excuse to backpedal. I just gave him one.” At the sound of voices, Pinky lifted his head from where he was napping and murpled on the off chance food was involved. Brain merely flicked his tail a few times and looked at the other cat with a feline sneer of disgust.
“Uh-huh.” Jake slowly rolled his neck around to either side and then folded his arms across his chest as he pressed his hip into the frame. “So you say. I’m thinking there’s something you’re not telling me.”
The sentence hung between them, and Rich realized Jake must think he’d made some kind of deal with his father again. The fact he had made him slightly uncomfortable. It wasn’t what Jake thought though. Everything should be okay.
“I might have mentioned that in addition to how the media would wet its collective pants over his kicking you out because you’d taken a gay lover, it would orgasm when I mentioned the part where he’d paid me off too. Like some Regency ne’er-do-well paid to leave the wealthy heiress alone.”
“Ouch, you play hardball. By the way, I resent being the heiress here.”
“Learned from the master,” Rich quipped. “And if the glass slipper fits….” He shifted his feet under the covers as he spoke. Pinky turned his head alertly, his eyes dilating into black holes as he watched for more movement. Ignoring the cat, Rich frowned up at Jake. “Is your neck bothering you?”
“A little,” Jake conceded with a shrug. “It was a long drive today.”
Rich laid down the book he’d been reading and shifted to the edge of the bed, shooing off Brain, who gave him a low growl before he dropped down to the floor with a thud and slunk under the box springs. Rich slipped out from underneath the covers and swung his feet onto the floor. “Come here. Why don’t you let me work on that?”
“That’s what I pay Rowan to do.” Jake hovered at the door like a stray cat that thinks the offer of food might be a trap.
“I don’t see Rowan here, do you? Sit.” He patted the bed in invitation. “I do give excellent back rubs, if I do say so myself.”
“Planning a second career, are you?” Jake remained in his casual slouch in the doorway, but Rich knew better than to think he was actually relaxed.
“Huh. Maybe once upon a time.” Rich watched him for a moment, then rubbed his fingers together. “Here, kitty, kitty.”
Jake shot him a sour glance. “You don’t really think that’s going to work, do you?”
Rich shrugged. “It was worth a shot. Do you want a back rub or not?”
Jake narrowed his eyes and twisted his lips to one side in suspicion.
“Just a back rub, Scout’s honor.” Rich held up three fingers in a salute.
“I didn’t know you could read minds.”
“Not everyone’s. And not always yours. But I know you’ve had a lot of shocks today, and you’re probably thinking committing to a massage is somehow committing to more, and it’s not. That’s all.”
“Yeah, well, I’ve lived a pretty drama-free life for the last few years. I’ve gotten used to it.”
There it was. In the aftermath of the confrontation with Donald, Jake had had time to calm down, to think better of turning his back on everything his father represented. Rich didn’t know why he was surprised. He shouldn’t have been, and yet somehow he’d thought Jake had grown up a little since the last time they’d done this dance.
“And you can have it again.” Rich aimed for cool control and hoped he didn’t sound as though he was in a snit. “We don’t have to have a relationship, Jake. We can just be coach and athlete if you like. Or I can leave altogether. Your choice.”
“I didn’t say that.” Jake pushed himself off the doorframe and took a step into the room, only to pause and rub the back of his neck. This this time it looked as though the discomfort was emotional rather than physical. “I’m just not good at this, okay? I’m going to make mistakes.”
“You’re talking to the Fuckup King here.”
A glimmer of amusement appeared in Jake’s eyes as he took a seat beside Rich on the bed.
“I’m glad you find me so funny. Dork,” Rich said, pushing at one shoulder.
“Dick.” Jake tapped him none too lightly on the back of the head. “Aren’t you afraid you’ll get cold?”
Rich glanced down at his clothing, an old gray T-shirt and a pair of navy briefs. “Not likely. Someone around here isn’t shy about turning up the thermostat.”
“Not like you,” Jake said. “That old place of yours was like a freezer. There used to be ice on the inside of the windows in the mornings.”
“Hey, it cost too much to run the heat,” Rich said. “Besides, I had you and your nuclear-reactor metabolism to keep me warm.” He reached for Jake’s shirt, one of those black nylon sports tops with long sleeves that zipped at the neck. “This needs to come off.”
Jake huffed a sigh hard enough to blow a fringe of his hair upright and unzipped the shirt. He crossed his arms at the waist and pulled it off over his head. Tossing it to the floor, he said, “I don’t have any oil.”
“I saw some hand lotion in the bathroom.” Rich stood, placing his hand on Jake’s warm shoulder for balance. “Make yourself comfortable. I’ll be back.”
When he returned, Jake was facedown on the bed, his arms folded above his head. It was really ridiculous how that did it for him, kind of like a bulletproof kink. Jake had a gorgeous back, broad across the shoulders, tapering down to lean hips and a perfect, tight little ass. With his arms above his head, every muscle in his shoulders was clearly defined as well. They were the strong shoulders of someone used to steering a half ton of contrary horseflesh and toting bales of hay. Maybe most people didn’t have a thing for backs, but ever since he’d seen Jake in a tux at one of the year-end awards banquets, Rich couldn’t help picturing the many ways in which Jake’s back was just perfect. Especially now with all that bare skin.
Pinky was on the foot of the bed; he lifted his head and yawned widely at Rich’s return, pink tongue curling up between sharp teeth as his whiskers bent forward.
Jake had taken off his boots and socks but was still wearing jeans. He turned his head sideways to look at Rich as he crawled on the bed beside him. “You know what you’re doing?”
“I’ve been the recipient of enough massages. I think I can safely say I won’t hurt you.” Rich grimaced behind Jake’s back as he positioned himself first on his knees and then carefully moved astride Jake’s hips. The firm muscle between his thighs felt good, and his cock was pleased at the position without being fully aroused. Cautiously, he lowered his weight until he was resting on Jake’s pelvis, being careful not to put too much strain on his lower back. “This okay?” he asked.
Jake murmured his assent into the pillow.
Rich squirted a healthy dollop of lotion into his hands, and dropped the bottle beside his leg for easy access.
“I’m not going to smell like gardenias, I hope?” Jake sighed as Rich’s hands made contact with the muscles in his shoulders.
“Nope,” Rich said cheerfully, rolling his hands into the firm bands of Jake’s trapezius muscles and pushing his thumbs up into Jake’s neck. He couldn’t tell if the groan Jake made was one of pleasure or pain. “This on
e’s made from goat’s milk. So you should smell like the barnyard. Oh wait, that would be normal for you.”
“Hah. Funny man. Don’t give up your day job.” He finished his sentence with a grunt as Rich worked on a particularly tight knot.
“Shit, do you always go around this bunched up?” Rich worked his way up to the long, corded muscles in Jake’s neck, and this time, Jake flinched at Rich’s touch.
“It’s not usually this bad. The long drive pissed things off. Nothing a hot shower and some ibuprofen won’t fix.”
“Hmmm.” Rich isolated one of the ropey muscles in Jake’s neck and rolled it between his fingers. Jake fisted the bedspread with one hand. Underneath him, Rich could feel the muscles in Jake’s ass tighten as he dug into the mattress with his toes.
Sighing, Rich sat back on his heels and rested his hands against his own thighs. “Am I helping or making things worse? Do you have a massage scheduled for tomorrow? The horses will have the day off to recover from the trip. I’m thinking you need the same.”
“Rowan couldn’t come tomorrow. She’ll get me later in the week. I’m fine, Rich.”
“You don’t seem fine to me. Now’s not the time to fall apart, bucko.” Rich poured more lotion and began to work on the middle of Jake’s back. Muscles seemed to melt under his fingers, and he spent some time just helping Jake relax. He knew it was working when Jake loosened his grip on the bedding and his breathing slowed.
Rich worked in silence for what seemed like a long time, though it couldn’t have been more than fifteen minutes or so. His hands were beginning to cramp, however, and his leg was becoming increasingly annoyed at the way it was folded under him. How massage therapists did this all day long, he’d never know. From time to time he rocked forward to improve the circulation in his legs, shifting to reach higher on Jake’s back as well, and occasionally the shaft of his cock would nudge along the groove of Jake’s ass. It was nothing more than pleasant, fabric-covered contact, and Rich was okay with that. They’d both been up since six a.m., and Rich paused in the kneading of Jake’s muscles to give a jaw-cracking yawn.
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