Promise Rock 03 - Living Promises (MM) (9 page)

liked
each other, and they
chose
to be family together.
Jeff gazed at them all like he'd lay down in traffic for any one of them any time they asked.
What made Collin start to warm to the folks there was that none of them looked like they'd ask. But they'd offer to do the same thing for Jeff.
“So,” said Mikhail (aka “snotty little diva”) “Jeff, what are you going to do with this boy if you find him?”
Jeff stopped, a forkful of some sort of wonderful casserole on the way to his mouth. “Do with him?” he said blankly, and Mikhail rolled his eyes.
“And this, this is what happens when you live alone. You have no idea how to care for anything but your own pussies.”
There was a rather stunned silence at the table, and Mikhail slowly turned red. “Cats,” he said belatedly. “Pussycats.”
Kimmy, of all people, started cracking up, throwing half a dinner roll at Mikhail and crowing when he ducked. “Oh. My. God. We need to bring that kid
here
—there are
way
too many gay men in this room if you forget the second half of that word!”
“Pussycat!” Parry Angel clapped from her little high chair. “Pussycat, pussycat, pussycat!”
“You like the kitty cats, Angel?” Deacon asked indulgently from next to the high chair. The little girl grinned at the man who had seemed so intimidating to Collin just a half an hour ago.
“I want a kitty, Deacon!” Parry said with starry eyes, and Deacon just shook his head.
“We've got horses, Angel.”
“I'd take care of it,” Crick said suddenly, and Deacon looked at him, surprised.
“You want a cat?”
“They're supposed to be good for your blood pressure,” Crick said earnestly, and to Collin's surprise, Deacon scowled. Crick returned the look blandly and looked out at the rest of the table, asking Mikhail to pass the milk in what was obviously pretense.
Deacon let out a sigh and shook his head and then turned fondly back to the little girl. “If Crick's willing to deal with the kitty poop, Angel, I don't see why not.” He cast a quick look at the big guy with the curly hair. “Shane, does your contact at the SPCA have any likely victims?”
Shane grinned at Parry Angel, who grinned back. “Always. Yeah, we can find someone for her. Probably half-grown, because it needs to be big enough to defend itself. Can you deal with some scratches, Angel? Kitties get rough!”
“Kitty!” Parry obviously didn't hear anything past the achievement of what seemed to be her fondest dream, and Collin had to laugh.
“My sisters' kids are veterans of kitty wars,” he said into the chuckles around the table. “They'll take all sorts of abuse, as long as it starts with whiskers and a tail!”
“How many sisters do you have, Collin?” Deacon asked in that deep voice of his.
“Four. Joanna, Gina, Charlene, and Paige.” He wasn't aware how expressive his voice was until he heard grunts of suppressed laughter around the table.
“So, uhm, tell us how you really feel about them,” the young black man—Andrew, right?—said from Parry Angel's other side.
Collin didn't have the grace to flush. “I think Joanna and Gina are awesome, but if Charlene had been drowned at birth, Paige might have turned out halfway tolerable, why?”
The table burst out into raucous laughter, and Kimmy turned to her brother, crowing, “Now where was this guy when we were kids?”
Shane's lean mouth turned up at one corner. “Don't look at me— you're the one he would have drowned at birth.”
Mikhail stuck his tongue out at her to emphasize the point, and Kimmy laughed even harder.
“So you own the garage by the diner?” Deacon asked, and the table settled down, and Collin had to keep his eyes from popping. He recognized this. This is what his mother had done to every boy his sisters had ever brought home—right down to Charlene's ex-husband, whom his mother had pronounced a money-grasping asshole. (Collin had also observed that he'd spent some time staring at Collin's ass, but he'd said it to Gina, and so Gina had been the only one to give him the secret highfive when the fucker had run off with his male personal assistant and Charlene's investments from her job as a financial broker. Charlene had spent the last two years blaming Collin just for being gay, and Collin was not appreciative.)
“Uhm, yeah,” he said, knowing he was being put on the spot as a potential suitor for their favorite “brother,” Jeff. “I'm good at cars, took the classes—and I suck with authority. My own business seemed the way to go.”
Everyone at the table nodded, like they totally got that, and he figured that the only soul at the table in a traditional vocation was Jeff himself, so maybe they could forgive him for not being a banker or something.
“Business good?” Deacon asked between mouthfuls.
“Oh yeah—it doesn't hurt that my one employee would work for free if I let him.”
“Joshua Spencer?” Deacon asked, and Collin realized that the guy was grilling him using as few words as possible. He wanted to whistle. This man was
good
. And cute. God—
so
cute. Collin would have bottomed to be nailed by
that
, but he got the feeling that injured or not, Crick would kick his ass through several states if he even suggested it, so he didn't.
Collin took a bite to fortify himself and nodded. “Yeah. Man, I
love
that guy. He's like a full helping of roast-beef awesome. When he realized I was using computers and shit to do my diagnostics, he started taking the classes to learn how to use the equipment online—and I hadn't even hired him yet. He just wanted to know how it worked. He talks to cars like they're people, and he talks to people like they're not stupid. If he hadn't wandered into the garage when he did, I would have been just another fuck-up with a failed business, that's for damned sure.”
“He didn't wander in,” Crick muttered. “That was Deacon's doing.”
Collin almost dropped his fork. “I'm sorry?”
“He's full of shit,” Deacon said, suddenly so red that his nose and ears almost glowed. There was something not quite healthy about that glow, and Collin looked at Jeff to see if he noticed. Jeff had his head cocked toward Crick, though, and didn't seem to.
“No, remember? It was right before Jon and Amy's wedding. You were talking to Patrick about the new business opening up? You told him that you wished the kid opening the place had someone like you had Patrick, and Patrick said that he knew a guy who was itching to get out of the house. You were the one who suggested it—I was there!”
Collin looked at the house patriarch with fascination. He hadn't stopped blushing, and he couldn't seem to find his tongue. “Patrick's a good man,” Deacon mumbled. “I couldn't have made this place work if he hadn't been there those first years.”
“Who's Patrick?” Collin asked, and Deacon shot his partner a miserable look when Crick didn't answer.
“He was my father's best friend,” Deacon said, taking a deep breath, like it was difficult to fill his chest with the thought. “If he hadn't been here when Crick was off in Iraq, The Pulpit never would have made it. And by the time he was ready to retire, Andrew was here and saved our lives all over again.”
“I know it,” Andrew said with mock arrogance. “I really am a gift from God.”
Deacon shot the young man a grateful look, and some of that terminal blush faded. “And you're humble too,” he said dryly.
Andrew shot him a grin that told Collin that maybe Andrew had needed The Pulpit as much as Deacon had needed Andrew.
“Well, I'm grateful,” Collin told them frankly. “Not for you, Andrew, but you seem very nice.” He waited for the smart-ass to fade for a minute. “Joshua is pretty awesome—it was solid of you to think of me.”
Deacon shrugged. “Small businesses need to stick together.”
“And of course, Levee Oaks could always use some more gay!” Collin popped back nicely.
He was gratified to see Deacon crack up, even if all he said was, “That too,” with a rather conservative lift of his eyebrows.
As the dinner progressed, Collin started to see how the whole table could be gathered there to make this one man happy. Everything from buying a baby a kitten to a casual helping hand for a stranger—Deacon Winters was actively and quietly making the world a better place through simple kindness.
It was something Collin, who'd had to work long and hard to conquer his own basic self-centeredness, had no choice but to admire.
Dinner ended in a clatter of banter, and Collin found himself sideby-side with Jeff as they did dishes.
“How'd we pull clean-up?” he asked, trying to get Jeff to smile. He'd been quiet and preoccupied through much of the last of the meal.
“We weren't around for prep,” Jeff answered automatically. “How fucking hard is it to find one lousy teenager? Seriously? This town is the size of a condom machine—man, two quarters, a twist of a knob, that kid should have fallen into our laps by now!”
Collin had to laugh. “You have cats,” he said, pulling the topic from the clear blue something—anything to distract the poor guy.
“This is important because…?” Jeff paused in the act of drying a dish to stack it in the cupboard, one hand extended dramatically with the towel.
“Just making conversation. The little guy, Mickey….”
“Mikhail.”
“Didn't his boyfriend call him „Mickey'?”
“Do you want that man-mountain to kick your teeth in?” Jeff's expression was totally serious.
“Not particularly.”
“Then you'd better call him Mikhail.”
“Okay, Mikhail. Whatever. He said you had pussies. I'm going to take a flying leap in logic and assume that's the only kind of pussy to get past your front door.”
Jeff's expression fought between fondness and indignation. But it had truly been a shit-kicker of a day for him—Collin could tell by the way he shook himself, like a long-limbed puppy, and settled on fondness.
“Yeah, I've got two cats, Con and Katy. They're….” Jeff's wide, expressive mouth curved into a grimace of absolute infatuation. “They were both gifts. It's like people went out of their way to give me pets that were so huge, moving would need a writ from the wildlife foundation. Con doesn't just sit on you, he sits on you, around you, and over you. And you'd better bring your breathing mask if you want to pet Katy. If I brushed her every day I could probably spin enough yarn to knit a sweater.”
“Are you feeding her the right kind of food?” Shane asked anxiously as he came into the kitchen with the casserole dish for Collin to wash. Jeff's expression changed from animation to exasperation to a sort of kind indulgence.
“Yes, man-mountain, I'm feeding her the anti-hairball shit you bought me. Con too. That's not going to change the fact that she's a big hairy beast who weighs over twenty pounds and whose ancestors were probably domesticated for their wool!”
A slow grin split Shane's broad, handsome, placid face. “Best birthday gift
ever
,” he pronounced, and Jeff rolled his eyes.
“Maybe,” he grudged, but Shane wasn't fooled.
“Hey, Mickey!” he called. “I told you a cat was better than a gift card to Forever 21!”
Mikhail's voice drifted in from the living room. “For him, maybe. That's because he's already bought out the whole store!”
Collin looked at Jeff from under hooded eyes. “You do like your pretty clothes, don't you?”
He was rewarded, and handsomely so, when Jeff blushed. His complexion under the tan was unexpectedly fair, and the blush swept up his cheekbones. A couple of freckles and a tiny mole that Collin had never noticed appeared on the side of his cheek.
Jeff floundered for words for a second, and Collin was about to make a classic move—the patented “quick-kiss,” in which he took advantage of that downturned face and Jeff's uncertainty and touched lips just long enough to make him think of later—when Shane hollered from the front room.
“Jeff! Calvin just buzzed me. They've got Martin in custody, man—we've got to go get him quick, or he's going to have to spend a night in lockup!”
Aw, fuck.
“Aw, fuck!” Jeff turned around and trotted out of the room, shouting, “Goddammit! Does anyone have any fucking shoes?”
Clear as day, a small, piping voice echoed, “Fucking shoes!” and then Deacon's soft baritone, with, “Goddammit, Jeff, canya try not to teach her that word when Crick failed?”
“Fucking shoes!” Parry Angel sang. “Fucking shoes, fucking shoes, fucking shoes!”
Deacon's voice rumbled softly, but Collin was too busy cracking up to hear how he handled the little girl's new vocabulary word. He pulled himself together and dried off his hands, wandering into the living room in time to watch Deacon organizing the troops, the unrepentant little girl bouncing on his lap.
“Andrew, you up for this?”
“Got nowhere else to be, sir!”
Deacon rolled his eyes. “Crick….”
“Yessir! Stop calling him „sir', Andrew!”
“Nossir!”
“Jesus!” Deacon swore, and then looked down at Parry Angel, who beamed up at him.
“Who's Jeebus?”
“Someone who's not going with Jeff. Kimmy—did you call Lucas?”
“No, Deacon—but I'll have him meet us there.”
“Good. Jeff, you've got Andrew, Kimmy, and who else?”
Jeff sighed and rolled his eyes. “Shane, of course.”
“Hey!” Crick protested, and Jeff shook his head.
“Really, Crick, this kid has a temper worse than yours. You two in the same room together is a bad idea, okay? Besides—Shane can pass. He's not going to freak Martin out, okay?”
“Shane can pass?” Crick muttered indignantly. “Shane can
pass
? I spent two years in the fu—rickin' United States Army in the height of Don't Ask, Don't Tell, and
Shane's
the one who can pass?”
One entire side of Jeff's face crinkled up in disgust. “Don't get your lacy panties in a wad, Lieutenant Princess. If the Army couldn't figure it out, that's
their
bad. Besides. Shane's friend is the one who's going to spring the kid, and I'm not bringing the whole fam-fu-rickin'damily, right?”
Crick sighed. “Right. Right. I just hate….”
“Being left behind,” Jeff finished sympathetically. “Well, sorry, Buttercup, but the rest of us have to go.”
And that was it. He was just going to walk out the front door and leave Collin there, in a stranger's house, to say goodbye. Shit! Or he would have, if Shane hadn't looked up at his little diva and grimaced.
“Hey, Collin—I hate to squander your ride on him, because he doesn't know sh—quat about cars, but could you take Mickey home?”
“I can walk, big man. It's no big deal,” Mikhail said indulgently, but Collin saw an opportunity to pump the little dude for information, and he wasn't going to let it slide.
“No, no, that's okay,” he said, as casual as a stalker in a park. “I'll take you. I live nearby, it's no big deal.”