by Adira August
Someone laughed. Somewhere downslope were more hikers, and one of them had laughed. It seemed very odd to her.
She looked up into calm, patient eyes and imagined she saw concern there. She wondered briefly who it was for.
“Okay, I’m ready.”
Keeping her hand in his, Woodward slid off the boulder, and eased her down. Shouldering the backpack, he led her off the mountain.
HANK BRIEFED BEN for an hour before retreating to one of the guest houses for a shower, shave and change of clothes. He’d been using the ranch as a base of operations since his “death,” late last September.
Originally, Hank had been scheduled to arrive tomorrow morning and Hugo late that afternoon. That’s when Ben would tell him that his husband was alive. Anticipating Hugo’s fury, Ben expected his immediate resignation and assured Hank he’d keep the helo on standby for the two men’s probable abrupt exit.
Hank washed the last of the foam from his face and went nude and damp into the bedroom. He slid open the screen door, stepping onto the lanai, welcoming the soft breeze that dried his skin.
Henry Eustace was beyond exhausted. All he wanted was to drop into the big bed and sleep with the soft island air drifting over him and Hugo’s arm across his stomach. A black silhouette of helicopter in the sky approached the island. As it closed in on the ranch, the distinctive Hart loge was distinguishable on the tail.
Hugo.
Ben Hart shouldn’t be that surprised that his number one made his own schedule and showed up early. Henry Eustace grinned and went to find a pair of board shorts. He was definitely going to get his wish of sleeping companion. But there was one final scene to play out.
“I’M CURIOUS ABOUT something,” Wood said when they were settled at a corner booth in a small diner in Golden. “You don’t have to answer.”
She nodded, ignoring the menu the server put in front of her.
“What stopped you from taking off the collar?”
“I don’t know. I didn’t think about it. Maybe—the first time I put it on I only wore it a day, I think, before I took it off because of a crisis. Because I thought I had all the answers. I think I don’t want to do that again. Not yet, anyway.” She drank off half a glass of ice water. “You’re supposed to make his case, right?”
“My orders are to inform you and answer questions. You are not to be pressured in any way about any decision.”
“You pressured me plenty about sticking with the TPE.”
“Before I told you. I was about to deliver news that could send someone running helter-skelter down a mountain not caring how they ended up at the bottom.”
Avia looked pointedly away when the server came for their order. He ordered huevos rancheros and cola with lemon times two.
“Thank you, Mr. Woodward.”
The persistently lifelessness of her tone concerned him. This woman had impressed the hell out of him. She was a fighter. A strong, smart, selfless woman who, for months after the shooting, had put everyone else’s pain ahead of her own. But after this revelation, she sounded like someone who had given up.
Woodward didn’t really agree with TPE as the best way to take care of her. But Hart knew her better, and it had seemed to be working until he had Wood dump the latest ton lot of emotional plutonium over her head. And he was pissed.
She didn’t have to know right now. Hart could have waited another week or two until she was stronger. Until she didn’t need either of them. And he’d advised Hart of that. But at this point, Avia knew more about his background than Hart did. And neither of them knew the most critical piece. Wood had insisted in this level of privacy when he accepted the job. He couldn’t really complain when the billionaire ignored the advice of a simple driver and security man.
Avia was looking at him, her remarkable turquoise eyes dimmed by grief and artificial light.
“Mr. Woodward, please text Ben my safeword. Right now, if you don’t mind.”
He had no choice. A minute after he’d sent RIVERHART to Hawaii, he received:
TPE DISCONTINUED
TAKE CARE OF HER
ANYTHING SHE WANTS
He put his cell on the table in front of her so she could read it. “Your cards and house keys are in the SUV’s console. He has your phone. I can get you a new one if you want.”
“I can buy my own phone,” she said, noting the time on his cell. “The flight’s in two hours?”
“It’s a private charter, so, whenever we get there.”
She pushed the phone to him. “Please have him cancel it. I’ll let him know when to expect us. Or me, if you want to go now.”
“Us.”
While he did that, she reached into her bag and brought out her scrambled cube, setting it between them. “How many ways are there to solve that?” she asked when he’d finished texting.
“You mean methods, I assume,” he answered. “Many, but they all have basic elements in common. I’d say maybe twenty basic systems with many slight variations.”
“Okay. If you would, find someway to inform me and answer questions that allows Ben to remain the man I thought he was, and me to be with him the way I want to be.”
“Did you think he was flawless?”
A ghost of a smile sparked and died. “Not at all. But I thought he actually did love me. Right now, I feel like a sex toy he’s installed in the corner of his life. The life he excludes me from without a microsecond of consideration. I’d like to stop feeling this way”—she fixed him with a hard stare—“unless I should be feeling this way.”
The server brought their food and put down extra napkins.
Avia sat with her hands in her lap waiting for Wood to respond.
“I don’t know how you want to be with him. So I’ll just tell you what I know in a way that explains why I’m still with him.”
Avia picked up her fork.
“I DIDN’T EXPECT YOU until tomorrow,” Ben told Hugo who’d strolled into his office and taken a chair. He realized he’d just said pretty much the same thing to Hank and was glad Hugo hadn’t come earlier and discovered Ben with his suddenly alive husband. His heart might not have taken the shock.
“The last thing you did was ask for recommendations to replace me,” Hugo told him. “You never did that before.” He looked around. “If you’re making plans to fire me, at least offer me some refreshment, first.”
Ben ordered a pitcher of iced juice from the kitchen.
“I didn’t ask because I’m planning on firing you,” Ben said, taking the chair behind his desk. “I asked because you might want to resign soon.”
“Soon?”
“Today.”
“Ben, what’s going on? No bullshit, just tell me.”
“Right.” He could feel a hard pulse in his neck and a hollowing in his chest. “There was a good reason and I hope you’ll let me explain. But it’s all on me. I’m the only one to be angry with here.”
“You don’t have to tell me. All the bucks stop on your desk; everyone knows that.”
“They do.” Nerves propelled him to his feet. He turned away for a view of the hills that rose behind the house.
“Well?”
Ben couldn’t face him while he said it.
“Last September, something happened just before the shooting. And afterward I - uh - I saw an opportunity…”
“Oh, good. Drinks are here,” he heard Hugo say.
The clink of glass against ceramic, liquid over ice. Ben berated himself for his cowardice. He must turn around and face the man, accept his judgment.
“Hugo, it’s about Hank.” He pivoted to face Hugo.
“What did you do, now?” Hugo asked his husband, lounging back in the chair next to him. They both held glasses of iced juice and regarded Ben with looks of wry amusement.
“I saw Daisy carrying the tray and thought I’d bring it in,” Henry Eustace said.
“Well, he can’t be all worked up about that. What else?” Hugo spoke to Hank as if Ben wasn’t in th
e room.
He felt as if he wasn’t. As if he was watching a play from standing room. Only he was sitting and couldn’t remember doing it.
“I did spend about sixty-five million dollars of his money.”
“How much?”
Hugo and Hank gave Ben simultaneous withering looks.
“You knew all along?” he asked Hugo. He couldn’t believe it. “All these months and you didn’t say anything?”
“I didn’t say anything?” Hugo rose and leaned over Ben’s desk. “Neither. Did. You.”
He glared until the Alpha Dominant billionaire’s eyes dropped to his hands on the desk. “Of course I knew. Of course he told me. He’s my goddamned husband! What do you think marriage is? You think he’d consent to anything like this without talking to me? Betray me that way? Cause me the kind of grief that strips years from the bereaved?”
He straightened up. “WHAT THE FUCK WERE YOU THINKING?”
“I had to do something,” Ben answered quietly.
“Then you come to the people you can trust, who love you, and stop trying to run the damned world all by yourself! You think it’s Avia who needs a shrink? Look in the mirror.”
Benedict Hart raised his beautiful, stricken face to the man he loved most in the world next to his own father and brother. “Are you leaving?”
“Damn straight. I am taking Hank and locking us in that very nice guest house and not emerging until we’ve made up for five months of rarely fucking. Then Hank’s going to sleep for a few weeks.”
Ben nodded. Okay.
Hugo leaned over again and took Ben’s face between his hands. “How could you think we’d ever leave you?” He kissed Ben’s forehead and stalked to the door, snatching Hank’s hand on the way and dragging him along.
And they were gone.
Ben put his head in his hands and let himself weep in gratitude and relief. But fear was still with him.
Avienne.
AVIA WAS IN REPORTER MODE. She’d gotten her notebook out and made rapid notes in shorthand while Wood explained the plan to rescue the children and answered her questions.
I’m datamining, she thought ruefully. It was what Ben had called their first sexual encounter, the one where they were supposed to learn enough about themselves and each other to decide to go on with a companionship arrangement: sex with no commitments.
Companionship was another thing she only did for a few days before telling Ben she needed more, needed him to change things.
And he had.
The overwhelming feeling of betrayal didn’t abate, but she was no longer convinced that what he had done meant what it felt like. She could not dismiss that the months of his betrayal were also months of caring for her as well as he knew how.
Yet—she didn’t know if this was an anomaly that had coincidentally sprung up at the beginning of their relationship and so permeated it, or if it was something so extraordinary and situational it was unlikely to recur.
And beyond that, what had possessed Hank to go along with it? She asked Wood.
“You said Ben had set things up so no one but he and Hank knew he was alive.”
They’d finished the food and were lingering over coffee.
“He told Denver Health he was sending Hank into a private rehab clinic. Hank was ambulatory; he checked himself out. Ben arranged a stay for him at a private clinic in Prescott under an assumed name.” He poured more coffee from a carafe the server left.
“A week later, Ben put a small death notice in the paper that said Henry Eustace died of a stroke. He held a prayer service at the castle. Said he’d sent the ashes to Hank’s parents.”
“I don’t understand. How could Hank agree to do this? Do this to Hugo and his parents?” She threw down her pencil in disgust and rubbed her eyes.
“Hank’s parents never knew anything about this. They live in Ohio. He went back for Thanksgiving like always. Hugo met him there.”
“Wait. You said Hugo didn’t know.”
“I said Ben set things up so he wouldn’t.” Woodward shifted sideways in the booth. “Avia, Henry Eustace thought Ben was having a serious breakdown. He consulted with Hugo, and they decided going along with him was the best way to protect him. Hugo was the one who came up with bedbugs and cockroaches.”
“But they didn’t think to tell me,” she said, wishing she didn’t sound more petulant than hurt.
He stirred his coffee and cocked his head at her. “Who else didn’t they tell?”
“The entire staff, I suppose, but it’s not the same thing!”
“Why?”
“Because Berthe doesn’t suck his dick!” she hissed at him.
“Hank’s?”
She picked up the cube and started flipping it over, banging the side down with each flip.
“You never lost Ben, Avia. Whatever happened, however the relationship was distorted, you never lost him.”
Her eyes filled. She stopped banging and brushed at some wetness on her face. “Help me, okay?”
“Pick up the pencil,” he said. He waited until she was ready to take notes, again.
“A shooting alone couldn’t have affected Ben so deeply. He’d been in a combat situation once or twice before, so it might shake him, but he’d be able to handle the psychological fallout. The things he saw in Macau by themselves would have affected him deeply, but not pushed him past the point of rational thought. It took a combination of things. It took you putting yourself in mortal danger, him feeling he’d failed to protect you by not protecting Talli. All of it combined to warp the solid, sane, base he’d built his life on. ”
“He was impotent,” she blurted out, remembering.
“What?”
“When he came back from Macau. Before the kidnapping. It did affect him really deeply. He was impotent for weeks. He wanted to quit his business, break up the company. Like it was his fault, somehow. So he was already buckling, I think.”
Woodward was nodding. “That makes sense. From what I can tell, Ben Hart is a remarkably well-adjusted man and a decent one. I think it’s almost impossible to achieve great wealth without being a sociopath. He isn’t. But he’s still a man whose life demands he be a superman. He teeters on the constant brink of catastrophic failure. He saw unspeakable evil visited on the most innocent and helpless humans, and they used his own products to do it.”
They sat quietly with their thoughts for a few minutes.
“Can I borrow your phone?”
He gave it to her. She sent a text and waited. “My mom doesn’t answer calls from strangers,” she explained. The phone rang and she put it on speaker.
“Mom, it’s Av.”
“Are you in a bus station?”
“Restaurant. Mom, what do men want?”
A pause. “Avia, what’s wrong? Did Ben do something?”
“Please, I promise I’ll explain later, just tell me.”
“They want to fix everything.”
Woodward put his hand over his mouth, smothering a laugh.
“Why?”
“Avia. You always want the simple answer. They want to fix everything so we’ll admire them and think we need them and stay with them.” She sighed. “They think if they call the plumber we’ll run away with him. But they can get carried away. Did Ben get carried away?”
“A little bit. What do I do?”
“It’s almost impossible to convince a man who really loves you that you love him. Find a way to do that, and he’ll stop making the toilet run backwards.”
“Mama?”
“Yes, baby?”
“I really love you. Thanks, I’ll talk to you later.” She switched off.
“You’re mom sounds like a smart woman,” he said.
“Yeah,” she agreed. She told me I’ve stopped trusting everyone, again.”
“Again?”
Avia recounted her last conversation about protecting Talli and her father dying. “She said trust is a decision we make.”
“That’s true. Mis
trust is a decision we make, as well,” he told her.
She considered this. “Mr. Woodward, are you still with Ben because he needs fixing?”
Woodward shrugged. “He’s worth fixing. You both are.”
Okay,” she said, feeling something inside her slide home. “I’m going to trust you.”
Avia scribbled something in her notebook. She ripped off the sheet and pushed it and his cell across the table.
“Text that to Ben, please.”
He read it. “Are you kidding? I still work for him.”
“Okay”—she took the phone from him—“I don’t want to put you in an awkward position.” Ben’s number was first in the contact list. He answered before she heard it ring.
“This is Hart.”
The sound of his anxious voice almost completely undid her. She had to be strong. “Do you have a pen and something to write on?”
“Av-”
“Do you?”
A long pause. Just when she wondered if he was going to answer at all-
“Yes. Go ahead.”
Fuck, he sounds like he might cry. Professional. Do professional.
“Give me ten million dollars. Today. In a bank you have no ties to where you can’t trace my money, know what I’m doing with it, or get it back. It’s mine. If I never see you again, it’s mine. If I see you every day, still mine. I will owe you nothing and will not feel an iota of gratitude to you for the money. It’s my money and is not your business under any circumstances. Ever. Is that a problem?”
A long pause. He cleared his throat. “It might take forty-eight hours.”
“I’ll wait. And make sure I get one of those black cards I can buy a car with. Let Mr. Woodward know when it’s done.”
“You don’t have to call him that-”
“I’m aware and what I choose to call Mr. Woodward is also not your business. I’ll do what I want, always. And if necessary, I’ll do it with your former money.”
“I’m familiar with the concept.”
She switched off and handed Wood his phone back. “I have to use the restroom. Then let’s go find a place I can buy a new phone.”
