The Way Things Are (9 page)

“Your family parties must be boring as hell.”

“It depends on the amount of beer involved.”

Sure enough, Brandon stepped out of the car. He paused before closing the door, staring between Patrick and Jay and Ken. Ken left the engine of the probation vehicle running to keep the lights flashing, then got out to try and defuse Brandon.

“Of course, I forget that my brothers tend to treat the police radio band as their own personal walkie-talkies.”

“Another brother?”

“I’m afraid so.”

“Hi, Ken.” Brandon mirrored his smile, but Ken could tell from his posture that he was nervous about the situation.

“Brandon, this is Patrick Connelly. His son Jay’s one of my clients. What are you doing here?”

“Working a double. I’m on my way down to Mal’s scene. Just thought I’d stop and see why you’re blocking traffic.”

“Am I blocking traffic?” Ken made a show of looking on either side of the van. There were no other cars behind it.

“Yeah. Malcolm called while I was on my way over, asked me to check and see if you needed any help.”

“Give me a little credit, please? I’m managing to block the entire lane just fine on my own. Thanks, though.”

Brandon glanced at Patrick and Jay again. Ken was relieved when he saw his brother relax. “Fair enough,” Brandon said, leaning against the open door and watching them carefully. “Carry on.”

Ken hurried around the car where Patrick stood, his expression a strange mixture of confusion and humor. “So you go get your truck, and I’ll meet you two back at your apartment in about forty minutes?”

“No,” Patrick said simply. “Jay hasn’t eaten since this morning. I haven’t eaten since last night. I’m going to take him to get some food and then I’m going to take him home. Then I’m going to work.”

“The guards made sure he had breakfast,” Ken said. “And I think the Port’s going to be closed tonight.”

“I didn’t say I was working at the Port. Tonight, and it’s
night
already, isn’t good for me.”

Ken recognized the challenge in Patrick’s reply. He was being defiant, but not to be an asshole. He wanted what every teenager on Ken’s caseload wanted when they were stressed—to be able to exercise some control over the situation. “All right. I need to do a home check, but it can wait. I supervise Saturday community service hours at the Seattle Animal Shelter on Fifteenth Avenue. Bring Jay there at nine o’clock tomorrow morning. He can start on his community service and we can sort out the home check and the classes he’ll be signing up for afterward, okay?”

Patrick stared at him for a moment, and Ken couldn’t decipher the expression on his face. “The animal shelter will work,” he agreed.

Chapter 4

T
HE
MUSIC
was loud enough that it made his eardrums throb. The doors were thrown open, letting the pulsing rhythm and the roasting heat pour out into the street. The heat near the dance floor was almost suffocating, and Patrick envied the large bear of a man Corbin had working the front door.

Patrick kept his arms folded across his chest and scanned the diverse crowd as it gyrated around him.

Corbin Hollis, dressed in skintight leather pants and a fishnet tank top, appeared at his side with a bottle of water. “No passing out on me!” he shouted over the music. “Not until after closing time, anyway!”

Patrick took the water and chugged half of the bottle. “I’m not going to pass out. I’m fine.”

“Good. That means you can dance with me.”

Patrick had been expecting Corbin to ask all night. “Hell no. You just want the guy you’ve been drooling over to get jealous.”

“What?” Corbin looked stunned and insulted for a moment, then tried to discreetly turn toward the front door. Patrick had seen him staring at the large bouncer every chance he got. Corbin leaned close so he wouldn’t have to shout, but his eyes stayed glued to the bouncer. “You think it would work?”

Patrick glanced toward the door too. The brooding man he was so envious of was waving patrons through without even checking IDs, his focus entirely on them.

“His name’s David, right?”

Corbin smiled and sighed. “Yeah.”

“It won’t work,” Patrick said, shaking his head. “He’s been jealous since the first night I came in to help you out. But he seems like a good guy. He’s actually capable of controlling himself, anyway. If you want him to do something besides glaring at me, you might have to take the initiative.”

Beside him, Corbin pouted theatrically. “I’m working on it. Which is complete and total bullshit, of course. I tried inviting him upstairs once and he shot me down. Since then, he won’t even be alone with me in the back room.”

“Sorry.” Patrick gulped down the rest of the water. “But you are his boss. It’d be weird.”

“That’s never stopped everybody else,” Corbin pointed out.

Patrick risked another glance toward the door, where the lead bouncer was still glaring at them. “Maybe it’s the ‘everybody else’ bit.”

Corbin rolled his eyes. Even in the darkness, his light blue eyes glimmered, courtesy of the metallic makeup he wore. Even Patrick had to admit the odds of any single guy refusing a no-strings-attached hookup with Corbin were slim. He’d given in more often than not when they were teens, but once they’d become friends, it had felt more awkward than gratifying.

In the years since Patrick had left Seattle, they’d grown into two very different men, but Patrick wouldn’t trade their friendship for anything. They had grown up together, sparring at the boxing gym Corbin’s dad had built from the ground up. When Jay was born and Corbin went off to college in California, there had been years where they’d only managed to keep in touch with postcards and random e-mail, but they had the type of bond they could instantly rekindle.

Corbin took the empty bottle of water and chucked it into a recycling bin, then grabbed Patrick’s elbow. “Come dance with me?”

Patrick smirked. “You remember what happened last time we danced together, right?”

“Yes! But that’s the awesome thing about owning my own place! I promise I won’t kick us out!”

Corbin tugged on his arm, but Patrick planted his feet. “How am I supposed to keep an eye on the crowd if I’m caught up in it?”

“Call it a break?”

“Oh shit! I do need a break. I’ve got to call Jay and make sure he’s still home.”

Corbin tugged on Patrick’s arm harder. “After!”

“No. It’s too hot. Plus what will people say? I’ve got the black security T-shirt, remember?” Patrick pinched the collar of his shirt.

The moment he saw the evil gleam in Corbin’s eyes, he regretted mentioning the shirt. Corbin dove toward him, tugging the hem of his shirt up. His dearest friend wasn’t gentle about kneeing him in the stomach and tugging him forward. Knowing Corbin wasn’t going to give up, even if it meant ripping the T-shirt to pieces, he bent over far enough for him to get the shirt off over his head.

“You bastard!” Patrick shouted. He made a halfhearted grab for the shirt, but Corbin flung it off the dance floor and somewhere into the darkness.

Corbin grinned and dragged him into the pulsating crowd. “Any more excuses?”

“Besides the fact that I can’t dance?”

“I’ll dance!” Corbin shouted. He poked Patrick in the stomach as he began to move in time with the music. “You just look hot and move your hips a little.”

They danced through three songs before Patrick managed to maneuver them to the edge of the crowd. Even though he was no good at it, Patrick had fun anyway. Every time Corbin danced close enough to talk, he made a joke and let the music carry him a bit farther away again. By the time Patrick managed to escape, he was drenched with sweat and panting. Corbin clung to his arm, limping off the dance floor dramatically.

“I warned you!” Patrick shouted over the music. “I’m no more graceful now than I was at eighteen!”

Corbin rubbed his abused foot through his shoe. “Ha! If I could convince you this was a sparring match, every guy here would freeze just to watch you move.”

“No, in a sparring match it’s okay to hurt the other guy. Why, by the way, am I the only guy working here who knows you fight?”

Corbin pretended to laugh. “What?”

“Don’t play dumb. The regular bouncers treat you like you’re breakable. I made a comment last weekend about you being able to hold your own in a fight and the bouncers and the bartender I was talking to looked at me like I’d made a bad joke. If you hadn’t kicked my ass that afternoon, I would have thought you were just out of shape like me. What gives?”

Corbin’s carefully mastered smile cracked into a serious frown. “It’s not part of the image, that’s all. I don’t dress up like this to go work out, and I don’t bring any of
that
here.”

Patrick had to assume Corbin meant the competitive boxing program his father had given up all hope of passing on to his son. Corbin had been training in his father’s gym since he was old enough to take his first steps, and he’d had the talent, instinct, and dedication to be a champion. But he’d never had the desire. He’d kept training each afternoon so he could spend time with his father and maintain the slender, tightly muscled build he was so proud of, but he hadn’t lived for the thrill of a fight the way Patrick once had.

“Besides,” Corbin went on, “David wouldn’t pay any attention to me at all if he didn’t think he had to keep his boss safe. Oh!” Corbin poked him in the ribs. “Don’t look, but there’s a tall brunet over by the bar who looks like he wants to flay me alive. Or you. It’s kind of hard to tell.”

Patrick turned toward the bar instinctively.

Corbin smacked him in the shoulder. “I said don’t look!”

All of the laughter and ease he’d felt after dancing with Corbin vanished as he took in the familiar face at the bar. Jay’s new probation officer was standing there, a clear drink in his hand and a furious expression on his face.

Patrick stopped cold. “You just had to throw my shirt, didn’t you?”

“I can’t conceive of any way having a shirt would help you get that look off his face.”

“He’s Jay’s new probation officer,” Patrick hissed. “And I blew him off when he wanted to do a home check tonight because I said I had to work. The shirt might have helped!”

Corbin pouted a little. “Oh. Well, ignore him and go drag some kegs around behind the bar. That’ll make it look all official. Besides, he’s got a drink in his hand. Odds are he’s here to have a good time, not to find you, so just pretend you don’t even see him.”

Patrick turned away from the bar and the glaring brunet. “It’s not that simple.”

“Sure it is. Avoid eye contact and go grab another T-shirt from the back. Bring out something big and heavy, and then you’re obviously working. At an awesome job with an incredibly sexy boss, but still definitely working.”

“It’s….” Patrick choked on the explanation. “He’s….”

Corbin’s eyes flashed toward the bar and his smile became a bit softer, a bit more understanding. “Oh. Really? Isn’t he a bit…?” Corbin leaned back and regarded the man with an appraising, and obvious, eye. “I guess he’s okay. If he managed to get rid of that stick-up-his-ass expression, he’d be kind of hot. Not my type, but whatever….”

Patrick rolled his eyes. For all of the muscle he’d spent his teenager years building and his natural bulk, he wasn’t quite big enough to qualify as Corbin’s type. “The guy is not just hot,” Patrick tried to whisper over the music. “His voice is….” The memory of Ken Atkins’s voice was enough to cut through his exhaustion and make his cock twitch. “If you could turn sex into a sound, it’d be his voice.”

Corbin smirked at him and punched him in the shoulder. “I take it back. Ignoring him is not the way to get what you’re after.” He trailed his gaze up and down Patrick’s chest. “Neither is replacing your shirt.”

“I’m….” Patrick shook his head frantically. “He’s Jay’s probation officer, or whatever the hell they call themselves when they work with kids. It’d be….” He shook his head again. “It’s just a no. It’s an absolute—what the hell are you doing?”

Corbin slipped in front of him and set him hands over Patrick’s, then wrapped Patrick’s arms around him. He dropped his head back onto Patrick’s chest. “Just an experiment. You trust me, don’t you?” Patrick felt Corbin’s hips rock against his, forcing him to sway in time with the music.

“With my life,” Patrick said hesitantly. “With Jay, even. But I’d still like to know what you’re doing.”

“Trying to read your sexy probation officer.”

“Somehow I don’t see this helping.”

“Oh? See for yourself,” Corbin said, nodding toward the bar. “He looks jealous to me.”

Ken Atkins had half turned toward the bar. His drink was gone and he’d shoved his hands in his pockets, his shoulders bunched up. Patrick assumed he wasn’t even looking in their direction anymore, but he caught a glint as Ken’s eyes flashed toward them in the mirror behind the bar.

Patrick felt something in his gut tighten.

Corbin rocked his hips forward, putting a few centimeters of distance between his ass and Patrick’s body. “Cock tease,” he grumbled. “Shoving that thing against me when you don’t intend to do anything with it.”