Hot Target (30 page)

God, he could tell from Robin’s face that his words made it worse.

The hotel phone rang—his wake-up call. Perfect timing.

Robin practically jumped out of his skin at the shrill sound.

Jules picked up the receiver and dropped it back into the telephone’s cradle.

“I’m having dinner in the restaurant downstairs,” he said, trying to be nonchalant, trying to ignore the fact that Robin was inching toward the door, ready to run away as hard and as fast as he possibly could. “If you don’t have plans, I’d love it if you could—”

“That sounds great,” Robin said, surprising the hell out of him. “Thank you, I’d appreciate the chance to, you know, do more research.”

Research.

Jesus.

“Well, okay,” Jules said. “Let me grab my tie.” He also needed to check his face for beard burn in the bathroom mirror, put a little lotion on if he needed it.

Yeah, he needed it.

Robin did, too.

Jules brought his moisturizer with him out of the bathroom, squirted some into Robin’s hand. “Chin,” he said.

Robin looked into the mirror on the closet door. “Oh, fuck,” he said, looking more closely. “God, I never thought of that. Thanks.” He let out a laugh, and it was just on the verge of hysterical. “See, I’m learning as I go. This is valuable information.”

Right.

Valuable information.

No doubt about it, as far as “I’m not really gay” excuses went, now Jules had heard them all.

“You know that I take this very seriously, sir,” Cosmo told Tommy Paoletti as they stood on the beach. “And the opportunity to make this kind of money is . . . I appreciate it very much.”

“I know,” Tom told him.

“I’m just not . . . comfortable,” Cosmo said, “being on the payroll for this particular job.”

“There are lots of other—” Tom started.

“I’m not looking for reassignment,” Cosmo told him. “I intend to, um, stay as close to Jane—Mercedes—as possible until we catch this asshole. And, uh, afterward, too. . . .”

Tom laughed as he looked out at the sunset. “Okay. I’m finally getting the picture. It took me a while, but . . . Okay. Holy shit, but okay.”

“I need to apologize,” Cosmo said. “For behaving in a less than professional—”

“You don’t need to—”

“I do,” Cosmo insisted. “The client should be off limits, and I failed to . . . I have no excuse. But Jesus God, I’m smitten, sir.”

Tom carefully kept his eyes on the horizon as he nodded. “I can see that.” He was silent for a few moments. “You know, Cos, when Kelly told me she was pregnant—it was unplanned—I thought I’d reached a point in life where nothing could surprise me anymore. The impossible could happen—it
had
happened too many times—so just throw any and all expectations and assumptions out the window and enjoy the ride.” He turned to face Cosmo and held out his hand. “This is a surprise, but it’s like the one Kelly gave me—one of the nicer ones. I wish you the best, Chief. I wish you’d stay as part of the team, though. I don’t have any problem with what you and the client do on your time as long as you’re discreet.”

But Cosmo shook his head as he shook Tom’s hand. “I don’t want there to be any misunderstandings between Jane and me. She’s . . . amazing. I want to make sure she knows that I’m serious.”

Tom laughed at that. “Because you’re so frivolous the rest of the time?”

Cosmo smiled. “She doesn’t know me that well yet. I just . . . have to do it this way. I’m sorry, Tommy.”

Tom slapped him on the back. “You’re forgiven.”

“Thank you,” Cosmo said. “Now. With that said, I’d like to be kept in your information loop. Because I am going to find this motherfucker before he hurts Jane.”

Robin was freaked. Out.

He sat in the hotel restaurant, across the table from Jules, pretending that he wasn’t on the verge of a nervous breakdown. He couldn’t even read the menu. He just sat there, holding on to it, while Jules asked the waitress about the seafood special.

He held the menu until his drink came, and then, after ordering somewhat randomly—a salad, a steak—he held on to his drink. “I’m going to need another pretty soon,” he told the waitress.

“Please don’t be offended,” Jules said after she left to place their orders. “I wouldn’t say this if I didn’t care about you, but you may want to consider the possibility that you have a problem with alcohol.”

“Yeah, but no,” Robin said. “See, Hal drank a lot, so . . .”

Jules gazed across the table at him. “That’s why you drink? Because Hal drank?”

Robin focused on his glass, the ice, the whiskey. It was too unnerving to gaze back into Jules’ eyes. It was even more unnerving to find himself staring at Jules’ mouth, remembering what it had been like to . . . “Yeah.”

Jules laughed. “That’s such a load of shit, and you know it.”

“You said yourself that you’re not an actor,” Robin pointed out. “You have no idea what it takes to get into character, to actually become someone else. You have to give up part of yourself so that the person you’re playing can really come alive.”

How could they just sit here, talking like this, after . . . Was Jules still thinking about it, replaying it, remembering?

“So, in order to play Hal,” Jules asked, “you’re giving up the sober part of yourself?”

Kissing a man was different from kissing a woman, but not that different. Although the embrace—
that
was different. Jesus Christ. Robin had become aroused almost instantly. And Jules certainly must’ve known it—how could he not have?

And God, he was still . . . He still wanted . . .

Something. He definitely wanted something, he just wasn’t sure what.

“Are you all right?” Jules asked, concern in his eyes. Concern and kindness. “You want to talk about it?”

The waitress chose that moment to bring over their salads, and Jules smiled up at her, thanking her, watching until she was out of earshot before he spoke again.

“You’re freaking because you got turned on, and you know that I know it,” Jules guessed correctly. “Why is that such a bad thing? I’m flattered. I’m actually feeling pretty good about myself right now—sexy enough to rev up the straight guy, you know? And if you’re worried that I’ll say something to—”

Robin couldn’t keep it in any longer. “Do you think I’m gay?”

Jules didn’t answer for several long seconds. “That’s not a question I can answer for you,” he finally said. “What I do know is that you’ve been spending a lot of time doing, well, something that feels an awful lot like pursuit. You know. Of me.”

Pursuit? “What, a straight guy can’t be friends with—”

“I have plenty of straight friends,” Jules told him. “I’d be happy to file you in my address book under friends, comma, straight. But you keep giving me signals that say you aren’t going to be happy if I do put you there, so . . .” He shrugged.

“I love women,” Robin said.

“I do, too,” Jules said. “I just don’t want to have sex with them.”

“Have you ever . . . ?” Robin asked.

“Yeah,” Jules said. “When I was in college. With a friend. Experimenting.”

“And, what?” Robin asked. “It didn’t work? You couldn’t . . . ?”

“Oh, I could, and I did. It was sex,” Jules told him. “Yee-hah, you know? I was nineteen. What was that line? ‘I would have fucked a tree if I could’ve.’ ” He laughed. “She was hot. She was wonderful, too. I loved her to pieces, but . . . something was definitely missing for me.”

Missing for me . . . missing for me, for me, for me . . .

“Still—” Jules kept going, as if he didn’t hear the reverberation, as if he were completely unaware of the profound significance of the words that had just left his lips. “I probably would’ve tried to fake my way through a hetero relationship, marriage even, if I didn’t have the parents I had.”

Something was definitely missing for me.

Jules broke a breadstick in half, ate a piece while Robin downed the rest of his drink and tried to listen.

“They were really supportive of me,” Jules continued. “My dad managed to be . . . Well, he died when I was fourteen, which was rough, but . . . He wrote this letter that my mom gave me when I came out—you know, when I first told her I was gay. Turned out they both knew before me.” He laughed. “I must’ve been a flaming five-year-old.”

Something was definitely missing for me.

“But they loved me. They made me feel safe and secure about who I was, and just kind of sat back and waited to see if I’d figure it out. When Dad got the news that he needed to have the triple bypass, he, uh, pretty much knew his chances of coming out of surgery were slim, so he wrote this letter to me, telling me that he knew I was gay, and that although he wouldn’t have wished this for me—because it meant my life was going to be tougher than he’d wanted—he also knew that this was the way God made me, this was the way I was supposed to be. He wrote that he loved me, he would always love me. And he hoped I’d find someone wonderful to spend my life with, maybe even have the chance to get married and have a family of my own someday.”

Something was definitely missing for me.

There were tears in Jules’ eyes, and he forced a smile, blinking them back. “Yikes. Sorry, I don’t talk about him very often. I just thought you might want to know that coming out doesn’t always have to be traumatic. Like it was for Adam—getting kicked out of the house when he was sixteen. His father still doesn’t talk to him. I can’t imagine that. I can’t imagine having a child and . . . What’s your father like?”

Robin shook his head. “I don’t really know him.” He sent Robin a birthday card every year—on Janey’s birthday.

As he watched, Jules ate more of his salad. “What would he say, do you think, if you told him you were, you know.” He met Robin’s eyes. “Gay.”

Something was definitely missing . . .
All his life, something had been missing.

But it hadn’t been missing when he’d kissed Jules.

Robin had to hold on to the table with both hands.

“You okay?” Jules asked.

Robin shook his head, no.

Jules put down his fork. “You want to go? We can go. We should probably go.” He looked across the room, searching for their waitress.

Robin had had sex more times with more women than he could count. Beautiful women. Hot women. Smart, sexy, successful women who could have written how-to books on keeping men satisfied in bed. He’d started when he wasn’t quite fourteen, and by age twenty-four he’d had more sex than most men had in their entire lives.

And yet it all paled in comparison to that amazing, incredible, mind-blowing kiss he’d shared less than an hour ago.

With another man.

Robin stood up. “I’m sorry, I have to—”

Jules stood, too. “Sweetie, wait for me.”

“I can’t.” He bolted for the door.

Jules caught up with him, caught his arm. “Robin—”

“Don’t touch me!” Jesus, he’d shouted that. In the middle of a restaurant.

Everyone was staring. The waitress and maître d’ both hurried over. “Sir?”

Jules held his hands out, low in front of him, as if confronting a dangerous animal. “It’s going to be okay. You’re going to be okay. I promise you. You just need to slow down, take some time—take a lot of time, take as much as you need—to figure things out. You know, it’s possible that you’re going to be happier when—”

Robin did the only thing he could do—he turned and ran away.

Because after kissing him, Jules obviously thought—no, he didn’t think, he
knew
—that Robin was gay.

Sophia Ghaffari was even prettier than Cosmo had remembered.

As he got himself a cup of coffee and carried it back with him into the beach house’s spacious living room, Kelly Paoletti widened her eyes at him. Her unspoken message was very clear.
Why aren’t you talking to her?

He just shook his head.

He’d stayed silent through four slices of pizza, biding his time before he could make his excuses and leave, eager to get back to Jane’s.

To Jane.

Murphy’s wife, Angelina, was telling a story about the rustic hotel where they’d stayed in St. Thomas on their honeymoon. When it had rained, a river flowed through their room, from the bathroom and out the door.

She was a perfect match for Murph, quick to laugh, with a sparkling smile and long, dark hair. She was as tall and as full-figured as Jane, too—no petite little thing to be doubly dwarfed by Murphy’s bulk.

“. . . palmetto bugs the size of baseballs,” Angelina was saying. “I swear, there was one with two heads. We slept with the light on in the bathroom, because the thought of running into Push-me-Pull-you Junior in the middle of the night was just too awful.”

“Two heads?” Sophia was skeptical.

“One on each end,” Angelina insisted. She looked at Murphy. “Back me up here.”

“I saw it, too,” Murphy said. “Although I’m still not sure it wasn’t two separate bugs doing some kind of kinky bug thing.”

“Bugs don’t have sex,” Angelina said. “Okay? Let’s start right there. They lay eggs. It’s all very noninteractive.”

Kelly motioned for Cosmo to join her in the kitchen. Good timing.

“I have to go,” he told her as the door swung shut behind them.

She was stunned. “What’s wrong with you? This is fate—you coming here to talk to Tom on the same day that I just happen to invite Sophia—”

“You just happened to?” he asked.

“Well, I may have overheard Tom leaving a message, asking you to come out here tonight. . . .”

Cosmo hugged her—which was very weird. It was like hugging with a basketball between them. “I love you,” he told her. “Thank you so much, but . . . You know how I said I really didn’t like Jane—Mercedes Chadwick? Well, I got to know her, and . . . She seems to like me, too. . . .”

Her eyes widened, and she laughed. “Really? Oh, my God, she called here tonight, looking for Tom.”

“She did?”

Kelly nodded. “It was a little strange. The phone call. I mean, I’m sure she’s nice, but . . .”

Cosmo took out his cell phone, dialed Jane’s number. “She called me, too, while I was talking to Tommy, but when I called her back, I couldn’t get through.”