“Oh, my God!” Caleb heard his own deep grunt and released, and smelled Tarkan’s passion as the other man came all over his own belly. Their hips bucked together, their cries entwined. Finally, Caleb released his death grip on Tarkan’s shoulders and slid his arms around the other man’s taut body. They stayed close, front to back, as their breathing calmed and the sheen of sweat dried between them. Caleb pressed his lips to his lover’s salty shoulder and pulled out, taking off the condom and wrapping it in a napkin he grabbed from the table.
Tarkan stood and faced him. Caleb was stunned to see the tall man’s eyes shining with tears. He tugged him close. “Did I hurt you? I’m so sorry...I....” Tarkan shook his head against Caleb’s shoulder, tilted his head back and stared deep into his eyes. Caleb’s heart beat faster.
“No. That was amazing. I...well...let’s eat.” He grinned and pulled his shorts up, helping Caleb reassemble his zipper, lingering over his slowly softening shaft in a way that promised more fun to come. They sat, drank wine, talked, laughed about Caleb’s near-miss with Emre, Tarkan’s brother and fed each other the rich lamb, crisp cucumbers, delicate rice and currants. By the time they had boarded the boat again, it was dark. They’d managed to fit in another hard fuck, this time spread out on the floor in front of the fireplace, and Caleb was utterly, completely, hopelessly in love.
***
Caleb startled awake, his lover’s soft brown eyes appearing to him the moment the plane touched down in the U.S. As soon as they appeared, they were gone, making his gasp with anxiety. Yanking his leather bag down from the overhead bin, he shouldered his way out, setting his face such that no one questioned his rudeness.
One foot in front of the other, one more foot and I’ll be out in the terminal, find a fucking television and see
….
“Sir!”
He spun around, annoyed. The attendant was there, holding his phone. “You left this.” He yanked it from her hand. Her eyes were full of tears.
He gritted his teeth and continued the endless journey out of the plane, up the jet way and out into the hustle and bustle of LAX. People milled around, eating, drinking, going about their business. Caleb found someone in a uniform.
“Where is the nearest television?” The man frowned at him. He must look and sound like a crazy person, but he didn’t care. The uniform pointed to the massive screen right behind him. He heard it before he saw it, the calm tone of the CNN talking head booming out over the gate area.
“The Turkish capital Ankara has come under terrorist attack. Parliamentary offices were bombed and nearly destroyed. Hundreds are feared dead. It is believed the military was the target of the attack as details are emerging about an entire Turkish military battalion stationed there being completely decimated.”
The screen was awash with devastation. The camera jerked, jiggled, and showed the same image over and over again. A dazed-looking woman, covered in dust and blood wandered in front of the camera as a policeman intercepted her, rushing her away from what used to be the Parliament building. Her wail of utter terror and pain, on an endless loop on the huge screen reflected exactly how Caleb felt.
His vision darkened from the edges inward. Hands guided him into the nearest seat. For the next thirty minutes, he stared at the screen and watched his life end, over and over again.
***
The coffee cup slid out of her hands and Elle’s knees buckled. The screen that remained tuned to MSNBC in their large conference room was usually just background noise. But today, of all days, as she guided her staff through the plan for their upcoming shareholders meeting, her eyes were drawn to it. Breaking news was hard to ignore.
The staff stared at her. Then all heads swiveled as one to look at the carnage in the Turkish capital as reflected on the screen. There were gasps, a few “holy shits,” and when she dropped into her chair, many of them sprang up and tried to help her. It was absolutely unfathomable. It could not be happening.
Turkey was safe. Its large standing military had not incurred any sort of terrorism for over twenty years. It was in firm control, which in turn caused its own problems. But someone, some group, had broken through. And the dazed woman, wandering from the wreckage of the parliament building before being hustled away, her wails of recognition and fear, was a perfect representation of how Elle felt. Her skin burned, her head pounded.
She had to reach her husband.
Elle’s third in command, Ruth, handed her a phone, Emre’s number already dialed. But Elle hit the button to end the call. He was at that moment defending his dissertation, only a few weeks from receiving his PhD in economics from UCLA. A tear slid down Elle’s cheek. She glanced at her watch.
“Cancel everything,” she barked at Ruth and ran toward her office to grab her purse and keys. “I’m going to the airport to meet Caleb.”
“Wait! Elle! A driver should be leaving right now. Let me catch him and you can ride along.” The woman clutched her arm and Elle stared down at the hand on her bicep. The surrealism of this moment—the moment before her husband found out his twin had been killed in a brutal bombing, weeks before being discharged, almost paled in comparison to what she was going to face with her friend Caleb. “You shouldn’t be driving.” The woman’s soft voice brought Elle back to the present. She clenched her eyes shut.
“You’re right. But if Emre calls here, put him through to me. And somebody call my house, tell the nanny to turn off the television. I don’t want Ayla to see this.”
Her daughter was devoted to both her uncles Caleb and Tarkan, even from only meeting the latter a couple of times. She was fascinated in her young way with a man who looked exactly like her beloved father. Tarkan always sent her little blue beads from Turkey, which she collected in a box on her bedside table.
The
Nazarlik
, or “God’s eye” tokens were meant to be good luck charms, keeping one safe if worn or displayed around the house. Most Turkish children wore a small one pinned on them everywhere they went. Ayla was too young to understand the danger Tarkan was in, but once she made Elle put one of the blue beads in an envelope and mail it back to him. So he could be safe, too.
Elle choked back a sob and gripped the railings of the elevator that took her down to the parking garage. She always operated best under pressure, and her natural inclination to solve problems kept bumping up against the hard reality that this was one situation completely out of her control. She could only comfort the ones left behind.
***
Caleb lurched to his feet, unable to watch another minute. His shirt was soaked with sweat, his face stiff with unshed tears. But he let them flow unabated as he moved away into the terminal teeming with people merely going about their daily business, unaware that his entire existence had been ripped to shreds. A few people hovered around other TV screens, but mostly they walked, talked, ate, worked, and lived their lives.
He had to sit again, or he’d fall. His throat ached and the underlying nausea he’d fought for the last two hours of the flight made him choose the men’s room instead of a seat. Crashing against the metal partitions in his haste to puke into a toilet and not all over the floor, he emptied the contents of his stomach then leaned back onto the stall door. He stood and held an arm to his face. When he smelled Tarkan’s scent on his shirt, he had to brace both hands against the stall walls and remind himself to breathe.
“Hey, you okay in there?” Someone tapped on the door.
Caleb groaned and fought the urge to yell. “Um, no, but I’ll be….” He leaned over to dry heave a few more times, wiped his mouth and exited the stall. A security guard eyeballed him, probably wondering what drugs he’d taken. After rinsing out his mouth, he met his own bloodshot stare in the mirror.
His beloved was dead. And he had to continue to put one foot in front of the other. He had to get his luggage. He had to go back to work. Caleb stifled a sob and felt the world continue to narrow, giving him nothing but a dark tunnel of vision as he plodded through the terminal.
Elle stood down by the baggage claim, the sight of her familiar face his undoing. He crumpled into a chair and she held him, rocking back and forth, and crying with him as the sea of busy airport humanity flowed around them.
Chapter Two
Two Years Later
“You are nuts, you know that?” Caleb threw up his hands in disgust.
“What? I think it’s a great idea.” Elle poured him another glass of red wine. They sat at the table in her kitchen. Ayla was banging on the piano, “practicing” in the next room. He took a sip and looked at his friend. She was pregnant again, nearly seven months, and in dangerous territory as a forty-four-year-old woman. But she positively glowed and if a healthy baby could be conjured by sheer force of will, then by God, Elle would make it happen. His throat tightened at the sight of Emre as he stood at the counter and sliced vegetables for their dinner. It still seared his nerve endings to look at him. Took him months after the horrible funeral to even be able to be in the same room as the man whose scarily identical twin had been his lover for so many years.
Elle patted his hand. “Well, you can yell later, but here.” She slid a plain white piece of paper over to him. Caleb glanced at it, familiar with Elle’s email printouts. Keeping track of her life was his job after all. But when he read the words, he closed his eyes, and tried to keep the anger out of his voice.
“You have no business….”
“I beg to differ with you.” Emre wiped his hands on a towel, came around to kiss Elle’s cheek and accept a glass of wine from her. “We have every business. You are our family. It’s all sorts of our business. Sorry, it’s a—”
Caleb held up a hand. “Don’t say it. I know. It’s a Turkish thing.” He slumped back in his chair and picked up the paper, staring at the invitation from Madame Evangeline to join his date on a boat in the Mediterranean for a five-day blue cruise. “Just because this 1Night Stand thing worked out perfectly for you two doesn’t mean….” He groaned and stood, taking his wine into the other room so he wouldn’t yell, curse, or throw things like he’d done for a solid year after Tarkan’s death. A small body wrapped itself around his legs.
“Uncle Caleb! Where have you been? Are you mad at us?” She clutched one of the small
Narzrlik
charms in one hand. “Here. This will make you happy again. It’s from Uncle Tarkan.”
He knelt down to stare into Ayla’s brown eyes. She sported the stubborn look he knew well from years spent with her mother. He tucked a wild curl behind her ear. “I’ve missed you, too. I won’t be gone like that anymore, I promise.” Swallowing hard, he pocketed the blue glass bead. “Thank you for this.”
“Yay!” She clutched his neck and nearly pulled him over with the force of her hug. He blinked back tears and crumpled the 1Night Stand invitation into a small ball in one hand. There was no way he’d ever set foot back in Turkey, much less onto a boat like the one he’d shared with his one true love a week before the man had been blown to bits in the line of bullshit duty.
No fucking way
.
***
Elle sighed and sipped her tea, flinching when the baby gave her kidneys a whack. Emre put his hands on her shoulders. She leaned back into him and put one of his hands to her lips. As she watched her friend carry her daughter into the other room for what would undoubtedly be endless rounds of Chutes and Ladders, she tried to banish anger at his stubbornness. Her husband kissed her neck. Elle’s skin pebbled at his touch.
“
Seni seviyorum
, Elle,” he whispered, cupping her full breast in one hand. She sighed and watched the Viking-like man who’d worked for nearly twenty years for her hunch over the board, as intent as her small daughter over a silly game. Tall, blond, gorgeous, gainfully employed, wealthy, and with a great sense of humor—at least until a couple of years ago. He must have sensed her looking. He looked over and gave a thumbs-up. She smiled. He was the most amazing human being on the planet and she wanted so badly for him to be happy again.
Emre patted her seventh-month belly, laughing when the baby gave his hand a firm shove.
“My son.” He grinned. “He’s strong.”
“Shut up, you sexist Turk. We don’t know it’s a boy,” Elle grumbled. “Besides, I’m the one getting pummeled. Where’s dinner?” She smacked Emre’s tight ass and smiled when he gave a one-fingered salute in reply.
“You’re going to have to be more convincing.” He jerked his chin in the general direction of the living room. “He won’t go. I told you that.”
Elle shrugged. “I’ll figure it out. He’s got to break out of this. This is the only way.”
Emre poured oil into a pan for the vegetables and brought the rack of lamb out of the oven. It smelled amazing. Elle’s mouth watered but she grimaced when the baby did an acrobatic flip and shoved a few organs out of the way. She rose to her feet and groaned. Emre gave her a sheepish look as she walked over to him.
“Yes, this is your fault.” She smiled into his handsome face. “Now feed me before this baby beats me to death from the inside.”
He put down the spatula and pulled her close, burying his nose in her hair. She loved him with every fiber of her being, grateful for what he’d done to bring them together. She sighed and wrapped her arms around his slim hips. They all missed Tarkan so much, but no one as much as Caleb, sitting in the other room, letting Ayla win game after game. Her husband had come to terms with it in his typical stoic way, but Elle knew their younger sister was having trouble coping back in Istanbul. She had invited the girl to come to California to stay for an extended visit several times in the last couple of years, but Elle’s in-laws were understandably holding her close, unwilling to let her go. She sighed.
“Stop trying to fix everything.” Emre leaned back and kissed the tip of her nose. “He’ll find peace his own way.”