She blew out a long sigh. “I don’t want to go to Hong Kong, and I don’t want to live with Uncle James and Aunt Emma.”
“Do you plan to go back to the States when the cruise is over?”
“I think my return flight’s in four weeks, not three.” She frowned, bit her lip, and mumbled, “Why are you asking?”
“What about staying in Nice for a while? Or Monaco? I have a condo in Monaco and a house in Nice.” Terry didn’t look her way, his gaze fixed on a hairpin bend looming in the distance.
Her eardrums did a Niagara to her hearing, the roar drowning prepositions, adverbs, definite articles, so she had to concentrate and go over the words in her head.
“Su-Lin?”
Questions mushroomed in her mind and ate her words before they could jump out.
Terry hit the turn signal and swerved the SUV into the shoulder traveling along the narrow space until it widened. Gravel spit at the vehicle’s tires and running boards, clinking unharmonious pings.
For long seconds, the
ticktocking
of the turn switch competed with their tangled, audible breathing for the highest source of tension. Leather squeaked in protest as he swiveled in the seat and snapped the keys out of the ignition.
One rough fingertip curled her chin to him. “I don’t want you to leave.”
Joy had her throat pulse leaping, but she’d tried to picture them together after the cruise and seen a woman more alone than not.
“What would I do when you’re at sea?”
Su-Lin couldn’t fathom the expression in those stormy eyes or tell from the firm set of his mouth, not tight, not loose, if she’d angered him. “Whatever you want. Come with me? Stay in Monaco or Nice, explore the city?”
“What would you prefer?” Frustration fretted the words out.
“Ah, darlin’, don’t you know by now?” He unsnapped her seat belt. “I can’t talk with you so far away.” Flipping a switch, he shoved the steering wheel up, reached over, and hauled her into his lap. He knuckled her cheek and locked their gazes. “If I had my way you’d never be out of my sight. But you’re young. You should be enjoying life, going to the clubs. Doing wild twenty-one-year-old things.”
Heat from the pad of his thumb glazed her face and a cinder did a slow burn, which tindered and sparked and burst into a blaze, warming her from inside, smoothing the roughened edges of her soul. She nestled her cheek into his palm and kissed the center of his hand.
“If I had my way, you’d never be out of my sight either. I would wake up with you beside me. Watch you fall asleep at night. I could give you massages when you’re tense.”
The twinkle in his eyes widened her smile, and they both burst out laughing.
“I take it that’s a yes, Miss Su-Lin Taylor?”
“It is, but it comes with a caveat. No, don’t look like that, I’m not asking for anything from you. I want to teach gymnastics to children. I think Suresh’s idea could work for my sport too. I’d thought of doing it back in the States, but I could do it here. Maybe we could find Adria.” His incredulous blank stare arrested her words. “Adria is the Gypsy girl who stole Thomas’s watch.”
“Thomas’s Rolex watch,” Terry corrected. “Darlin’, must your first project be child thieves?”
Tracing the lifeline on his callused palm, she peeked up at him. “I want to do something useful with my life. Uncle James is setting up a trust fund for me. For the first time ever, I won’t have to worry about money. Adria’s shoes had holes. You should have seen the way she looked at the food I gave them. It broke my heart.”
“You’re such an innocent soul, so guileless.” He brushed their lips together. “Okay, we’ll ask Suresh more about the setup of his charity and see if we can do something similar. Will that make you happy?”
“Very,” she replied, thinking how luck and fate had conspired to bring him into her life. “They’ll be angry, won’t they?”
“Your relatives? You know it, darlin’. We’ll just have to find a way to break the news to them gently.”
“Especially after this scare with Uncle James,” she said. “How do you think your friends will react?”
“Harry’ll be jealous, but happy for us.”
Looping her arms around his neck, Su-Lin delved her fingers into his hair. “Terry?”
“Su-Lin?” He tweaked her nose.
“This does mean we’re going to live together, right?”
“Right as rain, darlin’. What’s in that whirring mind of yours?”
“I don’t like the idea of all these people being angry about the two of us. It’s not good chi. Everything’s okay with you and Thomas now, isn’t it?”
“It feels as if we’ve never been apart. Yet we’ve wasted so many years.”
“I like him a lot. He wants to tell your father about being gay.” Terry’s head whipped back, and his skull
thunked
the car door. “He didn’t tell you?”
“No, he didn’t. It’s not a good idea. Nothing good will come out of him telling our father. Like any proper English lord, he’s as homophobic as they come.” Terry’s lips curled at one corner. “Probably because he’s terrified some ancient taint runs in his blood.”
“What are you saying?”
“Ah, darlin’, the English aristocracy is well-known for its sodomites. Have you never heard the old joke?”
“No,” she answered, shaking her head.
“What’s England’s biggest export?”
“Prince William?” She giggled, waggling her eyebrows.
“Try again.”
“I don’t know, you tell me.”
“Sodomy.”
“Sodomy?”
“Buggery, actually, is the politically correct answer.” He shrugged.
“Oh.” Her finger traced the outline of his full lower lip. “Then he isn’t going to take Thomas’s coming out very well, is he?”
“I can safely predict his reaction. Hostile and vicious.”
She hugged her arms. “It’s getting cold.”
“And dark.” He stabbed the switch and the passenger window slid shut. “Harry and Suresh are probably wondering if we’re lost.” Setting her down on the soft leather, he straightened.
“It doesn’t bother you at all?” She snapped the seat belt into place.
“Thomas being gay?” He stuck the key into the ignition and turned it. “No, not anymore.”
“Anymore?” She folded her legs to the left and unbuckled her stilettos.
“Thomas is my identical twin, my other half. He told me on our sixteenth birthday. I was just coming into my own as a male. It felt as if he’d betrayed my manhood.”
“He said you hit him.” She swept her eyes sideways and nibbled on a finger.
“I beat him unconscious and then my father beat me unconscious for injuring his precious heir.”
Laying a hand on his forearm, she blurted, “You were jealous of Thomas, weren’t you?”
“One of the secrets of my black soul,” he said. “Thomas takes after my father. He’s an academic virtuoso, an accomplished musician and painter, and a successful barrister. They have the same interests. I hated school, hated being stuck inside a classroom, listening to someone drone on and on about algebra, or some equally abstract concept.”
“Do you take after your mother?”
She tried to read his expression, chasing the taut line of his mouth, the white knuckles clamped around the steering wheel.
“At one time, I thought I did. She was an excellent horsewoman. Everyone admired her seat. She taught Thomas and me to ride.”
“Not your father?”
“Oh, he can ride. Make no mistake about that. He can hunt with the best of his peers. But he prefers politics and books and drafting laws or changes to laws. Thom loves that stuff too.”
“But you don’t,” she stated.
“No, I like a neck-breaking gallop on a wild coastline. Sailing a ship in a storm. Fighting the elements.”
“You’re a natural athlete, anyone can see that. And your mother was too, am I right?”
“She didn’t hunt, couldn’t abide killing for fun. But she was an expert markswoman and competed in the Olympics. She fenced, and she organized local archery tournaments. I remember the first time I beat her. I must have been all of ten.” He shot her a wry smile.
“It sounds like the two of you were close.”
“I wish I could remember her face more clearly. She had the bluest eyes, the exact shade of wild forget-me-nots.”
“How old were you when she died?”
“Thirteen years, three hundred and sixty-four days.”
“She died two days before your fourteenth birthday.” Su-Lin’s voice wavered on the last two words.
“Two days before Christmas she went to bed with a bad headache and never woke up. Much later we found out she had a brain tumor, which caused an embolism.”
Su-Lin bit the inside of her cheeks so hard she tasted blood. And it didn’t help, not for a second. Tears streamed down her cheeks; she tried to swipe them away before Terry noticed, but couldn’t stifle a hiccupped sob.
“Don’t shed tears, Su-Lin. It’s true what they say. Everything happens for a reason.”
Turning in her seat to face him, she asked, “What good could ever happen over your mother dying so tragically?”
“She never lived long enough to see the lousy human being her son turned out to be.”
“You did what?” Thomas’s jaw snapped back into place. “Clarify the situation, brother. Pray tell, exactly what does ‘I asked her to stay after the cruise’ mean?”
With deft twists of his fingers, Terry buttoned the preknotted cravat around his neck and grimaced at the pouf of white lace foaming over his charcoal evening coat. “Exactly what I said. I asked her to stay, and she said yes.”
Thomas threw his hands up in the air and slapped one palm against the tight ivory breeches encasing his thighs. “Read my lips. Are you two moving in together?”
“Frick,” he groaned and grabbed the edge of a tall, round mahogany table. For the first time ever, his knees declared war on his body weight, and Terry scowled at the offending joints. He swallowed, then croaked, “Yeah, I guess.”
They’d decided, in light of the outstanding balmy breezes and crisp, pine-scented mountain air, to leave the windows of their deluxe suite open. La Bastide Saint-Antoine, the charming boutique hotel Suresh had booked them into, had enchanted Su-Lin.
His lips curled at the memory of her quiet enthrallment, the way her emerald eyes widened as her golden fingers stroked a period chintz vase. The way her nose scrunched as she sniffed the elaborate four-foot curling floral arrangement sprouting out of its center.
He’d wanted to take her right there and then. Love her slowly and long, show her in actions how special she was to him. When she’d agreed to stay on and live with him, Terry had to call on reserves of discipline he didn’t know he had to contain the urge to roar and beat his chest.
During the hour-long journey, she’d peppered him with questions. What was his house like? How often did he go out on charter? How many bedrooms did the condo in Monaco have? He strung out each answer praying she wouldn’t ask the one he dreaded. Why hadn’t he used a condom? Wishing he knew the answer, Terry shoved the implications of that deliberate act aside.
“Geoff mentioned something, Ter, and although I know how paranoid he is, I think we could note it a bookmark.”
Terry shook his head, his thoughts returning to the present.
Their boyhood chum had recently taken up an advisory position at the Met in the old MI5 division of the UK’s Scotland Yard. Geoff’s naturally suspicious nature had rocketed into the stratosphere. Proving the theory, a little knowledge is a dangerous precedent, Geoff’s awareness of worldwide terrorist activities colored his every public interaction with strangers and made his childhood friends decades weary.
“Spit it out then. A little heavy on the aftershave, Thom. You might want to tamp that down a bit.”
Muted classical music floated in on a soft, uplifting draft, and a hint of evening chill laced the whirling waft. “I’ll have you know it’s Su-Lin’s favorite, Cool Water.” Thomas waggled his eyebrows. “I’ll even let you have some.” He waved a hand to the right, and although the wall curved and the bathroom couldn’t be seen from where they stood, Terry understood his twin’s meaningful gesture. Tempted, but discomfited that Thomas knew such an intimate fact about his woman, Terry opted not to surrender.
“Scuttle it. What’s up with Geoff?”
“You can’t smoke or drink if you’re taking nitroglycerin. Su-Lin mentioned to both of us her uncle had a cigar last night, and you saw how much wine he went through at dinner.”
Terry shook his head and said, “Our boyo James is not what I’d term a disciplined man. The fricking man pants at a slow crawl. He’s at least eighty pounds overweight, and his only exercise is when he shovels a loaded fork into his mouth.”
“I know, I said the same thing. But you know when Geoff gets something buzzing.” Thomas tapped his skull with a forefinger.
Terry weighed Geoff’s suspicions against James’s obvious excessive personality; he grunted and shook his head. “It’s probably because I asked Geoff to run James by his Hong Kong connections. That could have set him off.”
“Maybe.” Thomas’s cell phone vibrated; he flipped the screen open, glanced at the LCD display, and then snapped it shut. “It also could be Geoff going into overprotective mode too. He wasn’t too pleased when James objected to you and Su-Lin being together. The strange thing is I can see her aunt disapproving, but the uncle? I don’t know, but it doesn’t jibe.”
“It scared Su-Lin silly, that near heart attack.” Distracted by the persistent cell phone vibrating on a lace-covered dressing table, Terry angled his jaw and said, “You can take it. I’ll leave if you need the privacy.”
“No, it’s not important.” The grim line of Thomas’s mouth belied his trite answer, and he shrugged as if his shoulder muscles had corded into a rubber band stretched to bursting point.
“Getting back to Su-Lin, how are you going to handle Lockheed?”
“Let’s face it, after that tirade on the
Glory
, he’s not about to give his blessing to Su-Lin staying in Nice.”
“Agreed. He’s liable to have a genuine heart attack when you two announce you’re moving in together.”
“I wish you’d stop saying that.”
Thomas peeled back the convoluted layers of white ruffles covering his fingers, scraped the material over his wrist, and swore.
“What?” Terry grumped.
“Remind me to get a new watch tomorrow.”
“I wish you hadn’t bumped into those Gypsy kids. Now Su-Lin wants to find the thieving girl and set her straight through gymnastics. And I have this gut feeling nothing will stop her. She has this theory that within seconds of meeting someone, she knows what part they’ll play in her life.”
“I wouldn’t berate it too much, brother. Look where it’s gotten you. How many intelligent, sensitive women would commit to being tens of thousands of miles away from the only home she’s known on the basis of what, five days?”
“Seven days,” Terry corrected. He picked up an exaggerated winged cat-eye mask. “Do we really have to wear these bloody masks?”
“The mask is the easy part. I hate the wig.” Thomas adjusted the ornate white-powdered hairpiece. “It’s bleeding sweaty under this thing.”
“If Su-Lin hadn’t been so taken with this bloody costume, I’d be in khakis, a sweater, and loafers. These shoes make me feel like I’m in fricking
Lord of the Dance
.” Terry glared at the offending lavish, zircon-encrusted buckle covering his black patent shoes.
“At least your buckle isn’t a rose,” Thomas said, and his chin met his chest as he studied his footgear. “I may be gay, but I’m no bleeding queen.”
“Jaysus!” Terry yelled, as a cuckoo popped out of an old-fashioned standing grandfather clock behind them.
“Bloody hell. It wasn’t so much the awful chirping as it was seeing that thing pop out.”
“If I’d had my Ruger out…” Terry trailed off; he aimed a pointed finger at the clucking canary bird and said, “One shot.”
“You favor Rugers now?”
“I like the size. No one can tell if you’re carrying.”
“Are you? In that costume? These bleeding breeches are skintight, and the jacket and waistcoat, the tailor adjusted both.”
“Not mine. And I took a size larger jacket. See.” Terry shrugged out of the coat and turned around.
“Ingenious design. It looks like a woman’s jogging bra with only one cup under the armpit. Seriously, Ter, why in bloody hell would you need a gun here? In rural France at a masquerade ball?”
“I always carry. You never know. And lately, I have this back-of-the-neck feeling someone’s tailing me. Had it in Nice, had it last week in Antibes.” Terry thumbed the spot between his first and second vertebrae.
“Why would someone tail you? Unless it’s Carol-Ann? Besides me and Geoff, does anyone else know about her and you?”
“Frick, I hope not. The more people know, the more likely the chance it’ll leak to the press.” And Su-Lin would know all the ugly truths about him. For a second, the image of the look of disgust on her sweet face when she discovered the real Terrence O’Connor stained his pupils. His stomach griped.
“I’d watch our father’s interactions with Su-Lin if I were you, Ter. He’s drinking again, and you never know what he’ll say if he gets her alone.”
A vision of his father’s enraged face that last night years ago seared the air in front of Terry, and he squeezed his eyes shut as if that could blinker away the past.
Thomas snared his wrist. “He doesn’t get physical anymore. Actually, over the last six months, it’s as if his anger’s fizzled away.”
“Su-Lin told me you’re planning to come clean with him. Why?”
“I’m tired of living a lie. A brain tumor is a potent wake-up call. If I only have a limited time left” -- he held up a hand -- “let me finish. If I only have a limited time left, then I want to tie things up. He needs to know I’ll never produce his heir, and it’s time you two made peace. I don’t expect a fairy-tale ending, but if he doesn’t recognize you, the line ends with me. Frankly, I can’t sully Mama’s memory with that. She deserves better.”
“You know what target to hit,” Terry said, fiddling with the lace frothing from his cuffs. “Okay, okay. I’ll try and mend fences, if the old man will let me. Where do you and he stand, Thom?”
“We’ve developed an amicable relationship over the last eighteen months. Carol-Ann started flaunting her affairs almost five years ago, and Father retreated to the estate. He stopped attending Parliament. A couple years later, Mrs. Bertram phoned me to tell me he wasn’t eating. I was worried. I went to see him. He was listless and seemed so defeated.”
Terry snorted; he couldn’t picture his father listless, far less defeated. “And now?”
“I persuaded him to work with me on an amendment to the laws of inheritance. We have dinner weekly at his club. Occasionally, I join him and his friends for a game of billiards. Like I said, amicable. No life-changing topics.”
“When’re you planning to tell him about the operation?”
“I’ve been waiting for the right moment. I wanted to make things right with you first.”
“How do you think he’ll take the news?”
“Which part? Me being gay or the tumor?”
Terry rolled his eyes. “The tumor, Thom. Being gay isn’t life-threatening.” At his brother’s raised eyebrow, he added, “AIDS and being homosexual aren’t one and the same, and we both know that.”
“I’m more curious as to how he’ll react to Su-Lin moving in with you.”
“He’d better not spout the same crap her aunt did. Do you know she actually told her that a peer of the realm wouldn’t marry someone of mixed blood?”
“You’re thinking of marriage?”
“She wouldn’t have me, not once she finds out about our dear stepmother.”
“You’re going to tell her?”
Terry flipped the brass lock on a cherrywood humidor. “Carol-Ann’s in France. Suppose she shows up? Or worse, finds a way to accidentally” -- he mimicked quotation marks with his fingers -- “bump into Su-Lin? My goose is cooked then.”
“It’s a tricky situation.”
“Tell me about it. No matter what I do, I’m screwed. If I tell her, that’ll be the end of us. And if Carol-Ann finds her, that’s the end of us.” He closed his eyes. “Plan B is what I’m going with: keep her plastered to my side or have someone shadowing her when she’s out of sight.”
“Are you serious?”
“Dead. I had Austen follow the lot of you when you were in Nice.”
“Why?”
“Probably straight paranoia. Nothing I can put my finger on, just the lingering suspicion something’s not right.”
“Trust your instincts, Ter. I’ve always regretted when I didn’t.”
“I plan to.”
“Shall we go down?”
“Yes. I have to find the kitchen and speak with the caterer.”
“The caterer?” Thomas halted midway to the door. “Did I hear right?”
“Su-Lin’s allergic to macadamia nuts and bacon. She accidentally had something with her vegetables last night and was as sick as a dog this morning. She should be wearing one of those medical warnings. I’ll speak to her about one tonight.”
“Never heard of anyone being allergic to bacon. Nuts, yes, but bacon?”
“Her lips turned blue at one point. Scared the daylights out of me. I’m monitoring her food from now on.”
“You do realize you’re obsessed with her?”
“Yes,” he said and rolled his eyes. “I’m past the point of simple obsession. I watched her breathe for a couple of hours this morning. Almost put a mirror under her nose just to make sure.”
“I know the enfant terrible peculiarity only too well, Ter. It’s called love. It’s the worst thing in the universe, the only thing worth living for, and it plays havoc with your mind.”
Arrested by his twin’s turned-down lips, the dreary crinkles bracketing the corners of his eyes, Terry recognized a cognizant soul.
“You too,” he said. “Love stinks, the proverbial wisdom says.” He cricked his neck. “Nothing a stogie can’t blinker for a few minutes. Want one?” Terry asked, proffering a sable Churchill cigar.
A half smile sprouted at Thomas’s mouth. “I didn’t know how much I’ve missed you until now. Thanks. Is this for when the men retire to the smoking room?”
“Come again?”
“We’re recreating a Regency masked ball to a T, including dance cards, midnight buffet, a card room, and the den’s the place for port and cigars.” Thomas appeared to enjoy his reaction, grinning when Terry’s lips curled toward his feet.
“Jaysus. This promises to be a long, long night.”
“Be grateful Suresh nixed the idea of period music save for waltzes.”
“Fricking hell, dancing. Make my night, why don’t you? There better be good scotch if I have to take to the dance floor.”
“Chin up, brother. You can disappear with Su-Lin as soon as the dancing starts. Her aunt and uncle aren’t here, remember? No chaperones.” Thomas jabbed an elbow into his twin’s rib cage. “See, good news somewhere. We may as well get going.”
“I haven’t danced since our bloody lessons with that fricking dance master.”
“That was sheer torture.” Thomas gave an exaggerated shudder. “Do you know what Su-Lin’s wearing?” he asked as they strode out of the suite.
“No, she wanted to surprise me,” Terry answered and stopped dead at the top of a three-story staircase burdened with a wide landing on the middle level.
“Did you have any idea so many people were coming?” Thomas’s hushed question mirrored Terry’s stunned shock at the throngs milling the packed ballroom.