The Losing Game (17 page)

“Is this Grace?”

“Yes. Can you see the resemblance?”

Dante had honed in on a photograph taken at the beach, when Lucas and Grace were in their late teens. Grace’s arm was wrapped possessively around Lucas’s shoulders, her long blonde hair whipping around her face and Lucas’s, in the gusting wind.

“Were you twins?”

“No. Irish twins, though, almost. Fourteen months apart. Grace was oldest.”

“You were close.”

“Yes. We were very different personalities, but we always got along.” The memory returned like a rush of cold air. “When I came out—God, I was only twelve—Grace was very protective of me.”

“I can see.”

“Oh, that one was taken years after, and it wasn’t like there was any drama. I suppose we knew—definitely by the time that picture was taken—that we weren’t going to have our parents long, and that after that we’d only have each other. They were older when they had us, by anyone’s standards.”

“I’m sorry.”

“It’s not your fault.”

“No. I’m sorry that you’ve lost so much, so young.”

“Me too,” Lucas said. He expected tears. They didn’t come. The sadness sat like a heavy weight in his chest, but it was a bearable weight for the moment. More bearable than it had been for a long time.

Dante reached for the latch, and Lucas had a sudden doubt.

“Tonight. It is a date?”

“I was hoping so. Is that all right?”

“Yes. Yes, it is.”

Lucas hastily, awkwardly, pecked Dante on the cheek.

Dante’s car was parked at the curb. He slid onto his driver’s seat with his usual aplomb. Lucas waved him off and leaned back onto the front door, closing it with his shoulders. Then he slid down to his haunches, hugging himself, unable to suppress a grin. How perfect. How absolutely perfect. Lucas wouldn’t have to lie to Dante, not once this was over. And perhaps Dante might even be a little proud of him, for succeeding on his own.

BY NOON,
Dante had returned to Le Plaisir and found a spot to stand on the shop floor, like a spare part, in front of the till counter. Selena sidled in beside him and straightened a pile of pamphlets advertising a fellatio workshop to be held in the basement the following week.

“Nice of you to join us,” she said. There was an edge of amusement in her voice.

“I’m sure everything has been running smoothly in your capable hands.”

He examined his own, twisting at the signet ring on his small finger.

“Now you’re here, do you mind if I grab some lunch?”

“No. Go ahead.”

“I’m only going down to Jim’s for a sandwich. Can I get you anything?”

The churning in his stomach might not have entirely been a case of nerves. “Ham on rye.”

“With lettuce, tomato, and extra mustard?”

“Yes. That would be nice.”

Dante thought, for a moment, that Selena had placed her hand on his arm. When he looked down, there was nothing there. Selena was, in fact, swinging around the oak table in the center of the shop and pushing out of the door. She hadn’t bothered to put on a coat. How she could walk over ice-slick cobbles, in heels, with only her arms wrapped around herself, Dante would never know.

Dante’s stomach recoiled into a knot that hadn’t fully unraveled since he’d left Lucas. No matter how uncomfortable he felt about the GPS tracker in his handset, he had to believe it was the right decision to continue surveillance. He no longer had a choice. He’d chosen to get involved in Lucas’s business, and that left him with a level of responsibility over Lucas’s actions.

“Can someone give me a hand?”

Kit—at least it looked like Kit. Dante could only see the legs—emerged from the storeroom with a stack of boxes.

Dante relieved her of her load. “I thought we restocked these this morning.”

“Apparently”—it was Kit—“everyone wants a bunny for Christmas. In a novelty gift box.”

This Christmas, the dual-action vibrators came in a special anniversary box with bonus tickler included. “Fifty years next year.
Fifty years.
That’s some clever engineering. Imagine how much happiness these little beauties have spread.”

“Little beauties?” Kit shook her head.

Together they restocked the shelves. Behind them Lois worked the till. Dante felt a pang of sadness where he should have been happy. Only yesterday Lois and Kit had picked out a flat they liked, over the bridge, on the mainland. Pending references and the deposit, they’d be in at the beginning of February. The day before Lois had been to her job interview. She wouldn’t know how it went for a couple of weeks or so, maybe not before Christmas, but Dante would wager she’d get the job.

There were too many endings in his life, and the one beginning felt too tentative and fragile to pin any hopes on.

“Dad?” Kit peered up at him through her heavy fringe. “Are you all right?”

“Yes, I’m fine.” Dante took a deep breath. Perhaps he was hungrier than he thought. “I’m going out for dinner tonight. With Lucas Green.”

“Since
when
?” Kit’s mouth fell open.

“Since I went out this morning.”

Dante found himself smiling, despite the gut-churning, and the weak knees, and a dizzy lightheaded sensation that felt uncannily like his feet were an inch off the floor.

“So that’s where you went.” She put her hands on her hips. “You sly old dog.”

Lois was waving. “What’s going on? Spill the beans.”

Kit sidled over and made a show of whispering (loud enough for the whole shop to hear), “Dante’s got a d-a-t-e tonight. With blondie.”

“You have? Does that mean…?” She was distracted by a customer, but Dante could see her concern, or confusion. He wasn’t sure what the frown meant.

His stomach rolled over again. He got back to the vibrators, for something to do, and to take his mind off the surveillance he still had going outside Lucas’s house and the GPS tracker on his phone.

Maybe tonight he should confront Lucas. Confess. Tell him he was doing it out of worry for his well-being. Which he was.

But that isn’t the whole truth by a long shot. What about the bet, Dante? It might be off now, but what does it say about you that you placed it in the first place?

“Are you sure you’re okay?” Kit was clutching his hand. Tight.

“Yes.”

“A bit nervous?”

“You could say that.”

“Best to stay busy, then. So you don’t think about it.”

It wasn’t difficult. Dante ended up hastily eating his ham on rye in the storage room, chased by a cup of lukewarm tea. The post-lunch rush had him, Kit, Lois, and Selena going full pelt until closing.

At five, he stopped by his office. He put the monitor windows on sleep mode, closed the door, and went up the three flights of stairs to his private rooms. He showered, shaved, and perfumed. Standing in his bedroom with a towel wrapped around his waist, he took a long, hard look in the full-length mirror hung inside his wardrobe door. He pinched the flesh that sat above the line of the towel on his side. He flexed his pectoral muscles. They lifted and bulged, less than they used to.

Next week he’d get back to the gym.

If he got things right with Lucas, he might soon have to bare this flesh. Expose himself more completely than he had in Lucas’s kitchen. It had been a while, hadn’t it? He looked at the rug and the bed and the faded curtains. When was the last time another man had entered this bedroom? How many
years
?

The suits hanging in his wardrobe seemed too austere. His shirts offered little more to temper the blacks and grays. A man with skin as dark as his could wear a splash of color. He picked out the purple paisley tie Lois had bought him for his birthday and another of deep red color-blocked silk. He held them side by side, eyeing first the purple, then the red.

Footsteps sounded on the stairs, then a knock on the door.

“Come in.”

It was Lois, wearing her worried face. She clung to the doorframe.

Dante heaved a sigh. “Which tie?” He held up the shortlisted candidates.

“Neither.” She came into the room, pulled them from his fingers, and returned them to their hanger. “Don’t wear a tie. Let him see a bit of neck.”

“He doesn’t want my help,” Dante said, answering her question before she could ask it. “This is a bona fide date.”

Her eyes lifted. Her mouth turned down. “I take it he doesn’t know about the cameras.”

“Or the GPS tracker on his phone,” Dante added wryly.

Lois took a long moment to reply. “You have to trust yourself.” She nodded as if affirming her conclusion to herself as well as Dante. “You’ll do what’s right by him. You always do in the end.”

There was no recrimination in her voice. She would never know how much that meant. He’d made so many mistakes that had ended up hurting the people he cared for most.

“What are you and Kit up to tonight?” he said.

“Kit’s going out with Sharps. I’m going to have a quiet night in with Tony Stark.”

“Again?”

“He never gets old.”

Lois left Dante with a tender backward glance.

Before Dante left the house, he deliberated over whether to pack his field gear into the boot of his car. It wouldn’t hurt to be prepared, and he didn’t believe it was tempting fate. Dante’s grandfather had been a superstitious man. An educated immigrant from Nigeria, and raised a Roman Catholic, he had brought to Britain some of the traditions of his Igbo ancestors. Dante’s father, Gabriel, had no time for what he dismissed as nonsense—religion and superstition alike. It was one of the few traits Dante and his father had shared.

In a hard, silver case, Dante packed his SilentSole boots, the Kevlar jacket, and the night-vision glasses. He locked them into the boot of his car and slipped on his regular leather gloves.

It paid to be prepared. In this case, at this present moment in time, it paid to be prepared more than it paid to be honest. Because Dante wasn’t the only one holding back on the truth. It wouldn’t do to forget that.

Lucas had followed Shaw to the Blue Bell, odds were, more than once. Odds were, he would do it again. Which ultimately led Dante to the conclusion that the odds were, Lucas’s night sorties were leading somewhere that ended with a dead body.

Not too many weeks ago, Dante might have blithely fooled himself into believing he could sit back and watch the show, with a wager thrown in for good measure. Then—because this of course was so much better—he’d offered to help Lucas to do the very thing he knew firsthand would be his ruin.

Never in his life had Dante’s head been planted so firmly up his arse.

“WELL.” DANTE
turned a full and increasingly horrified circle with his hands on his hips. “This is… unexpected.”

The Hope & Anchor was decked to the rafters in an explosion of red and green. Holly, pine, and mistletoe fought swathes of tinsel and ribbon, weighted with baubles and lit with pinpricks of colored lights. A barman in a snowman jumper sported felt antlers and a flashing red nose.

Kitsch, Dante could tolerate. Tacky, he could not.

“Would you like to go somewhere else?”

Lucas’s tongue was poking all too suggestively into his cheek. In this place, it was liable to get him mistaken for a strip-a-gram, especially in those jeans.

Lucas in jeans. Looking him over, Dante’s mouth watered
again
.

“I think it’s a little late for that, unless you don’t care to eat tonight.”

Dante searched the bar. Vera had been close to eighty years old the last time Dante had been here. He’d stubbornly assumed she’d be here forever. He didn’t want to think about the possibility that she too had gone to meet her maker.

Lucas linked his arm through Dante’s, and Dante’s heart made that same nervous leap it had so many times the last few days.

“Why don’t we ask for a quiet table upwind of the music? Round there?” Lucas pointed to a far corner of the pub with a fireplace filled with a bioethanol box alight with a green flame.
Tacky, tacky, tacky
. Dante thought he might break out in hives. Except Lucas hadn’t let go of his arm, and the weight of him pressing against his side, and the scent of his aftershave, and the riveting sensation that any second Lucas was going to slide his fingers down Dante’s arm and take his hand, made this whole glittering extravaganza pale into insignificance.

“I’m sorry. This isn’t what I’d planned.”

“I won’t hold it against you. Look, that couple seem to be having a quiet night of it. Let’s ask if we can sit over there.”

Tucked around the corner, a couple about Dante’s age—he saw the wedding bands catching the light—leaned toward each other. One of the men was signing. The other had a similar look to Lucas, if more feminine and pretty. Not Dante’s type, but he saw the appeal.

Dante had a quiet word with a member of staff in green-and-red striped tights, and secured the empty table next to the couple in the corner.

In the eerie glow of green firelight, Dante and Lucas perused the menu and ordered, allowing Lucas to become the focal point of Dante’s attention. Particularly his hands and wrists, and that enticing knob of bone that protruded from his cuff. The thought of winding silk around those wrists, and Lucas yielding to his caress, had Dante salivating like a hungry dog.

The food, thankfully, had not followed in the direction of the pub décor. They started with a butternut squash soup, garnished with croutons and a dollop of sour cream. Simple, elegant, and delicious. Dante relaxed his shoulders and inhaled the aroma of winter spices.

Lucas hummed his appreciation of the fare. Dante quietly sighed his appreciation of Lucas, in a silver-gray shirt embellished with a subtle floral print. The color suited him, brought out the color of his eyes and his hair. He didn’t appear to use a styling product, and Dante liked that, and the way fine strands slipped forward over his forehead.

“I like what you’re wearing. Would this be typical on a night out for you?” Dante winced. He hadn’t meant for the question to sound like an interrogation. He just happened to be glad Lucas hadn’t worn his ugly sheepskin coat since the night they first met.