The Current Between Us (9 page)

Trent dropped down heavily on the bed, sitting on its edge. He looked at the laptop, and released a big sigh. His hands came to rest between his legs as he decided unsettled might be a better word to describe what went on inside him. He would chalk it all up to Em’s birthday, but this year, for some reason, it seemed a little harder to bear. He missed his sister. He missed their time together and he missed her as his friend.

If he were b
eing honest with himself, it also didn’t help he couldn’t get his mind off how totally hot Gage Synclair was in real life. Dear God, could the man look any better? Hell, he knew the answer to the question:
No freakin’ way!

Embarrassment stained his cheeks and replaced unsettled as the major emotion running through him. Trent rubbed his face hard with his hands and then rubbed his eyes harder trying to push the memory of meeting Gage today out of his mind.

Trent couldn’t get a good feel for whether anyone had noticed his behavior this morning. No one appeared to, or at least if they did, they didn’t treat him any differently, but he just couldn’t be sure. The site foreman stayed too taken with the curator to notice. Of that, at least, he was reasonably confident. But, the curator totally picked up on it if all the little smiles and winks she tossed his way all morning were any indication.

Dropping his body back on the bed, he watched the ceiling fan above for several spins before he repositioned, sliding up against the headboard, and placed the laptop in his lap. The alarm clock on the nightstand shined brightly; half past midnight. In about three hours, he
’d have been awake close to twenty-four hours, and being sleep deprived wouldn’t help this crazy emotional state he seemed to be taking on. He tucked an extra pillow behind his back and booted up the laptop, thinking over Rhonny’s offer from earlier.

Maybe he should try a blind date. He
could
use the sex, but not with a professor. Trent wasn’t smart enough or trendy enough to date a college professor. What would they ever have in common? But maybe he should have Rhonny be on the lookout for someone… Or maybe he should hear Auntie Crazy out on who she’d pre-qualified on her list of eligible guys. She would certainly have someone up her sleeve waiting to be pulled out for him. She always did, but even thinking it caused a pit to settle in his stomach. No way could he trust Auntie Crazy to come up with anyone suitable to date, no matter how much she claimed to have the perfect guy. Her tastes leaned toward flamboyant, colorful, and gaudy as hell gay men. He couldn’t even consider going there with her. It must have been sexual desperation causing him to wonder about her choices right now.

Shaking his head at his own insane thoughts, he opened the proposal template
—a simple fill in the blank form in Word—and he began typing the numbers into the fields. But Gage Synclair kept running through his mind. What Trent wouldn’t have given to take Gage up on his offer. To have pounded all that tension out in the bathroom this morning may have put an end to his day-long misery and all the uncertainty coursing through him. His dick still stood half erect from Gage’s hand brushing down over it, but seriously, it may have been the best moment his cock ever experienced…
Gage Synclair touched my dick!

Which brought on a much bigger reveal, Gage Synclair was gay or at least bisexual. Who would have known?
He’d watched all Gage’s specials, read every book and article written. Gage’s reports were intriguing, interesting, uncovering more to the world than any other media outlet he followed. Gage regularly corresponded on PBS, CNN, and CBS. He’d even watched the last interview Gage gave on YouTube no less than ten times over the last three or four months. Gage had announced clearly his plan to retire from field work, but the speculation said Gage might get his own show, move into broadcast journalism. In all the time he’d followed the stories and career, Trent had never picked up anywhere Gage was gay. He would have remembered something like that, but he’d also never inquired about it either. How did it not ever occur to him to think along those lines?

“
Daddy, I need a drink of water.” Hunter’s quiet voice startled him out of his musings as the boy poked his head through Trent’s bedroom door.

“
Okay, buddy, can you get one from the bathroom?” Trent asked as Hunter rubbed his sleepy little eyes with his fist.

“
Yes, I’ll be quiet,” Hunter said, still standing there.

“
Okay, good boy, then straight back to bed,” Trent said, and Hunter finally turned, leaving the room. He listened for a minute as the sink turned on, then little footstep sounded until he heard the small squeak of Hunter’s mattress. It turned out to be just the perfect distraction he needed to push all thoughts from his mind and set him back on task.

Trent forced himself to finish the proposal and send it off in an email. By the time he got it all done it was close to one in the morning. He closed the lid and placed the laptop back on the nightstand before turning off the lamp, plunging the room into darkness. He reached his hand around the bedspread for the remote and turned on the television. Since every Gage special was saved on his DVR, he went through a couple of screens to find the latest interview. It started with Gage
’s face filling his screen and it wasn’t but a minute more before sleep took him under with images of Gage the last thing he saw.

Chapter 6

Gage sat kicked back in his chair, watching the goings on in the gallery out the side window of his office. His eyes stayed focused on the electrician who stayed on his knees, pulling wire through a new plug on one of the random showcasing walls. The tool belt made Trent’s worn Levi’s ride low on his hips. The T-shirt he wore shifted under the flex and strain of the muscles in his back and arms. All that bulked up, muscled goodness had to be built by pulling wire and lifting the heavy boxes of equipment he’d watched Trent lift all day long for the last three days.

From this position, Gage could almost see the very top of Trent
’s pretty, perfect ass. He could definitely see the waistband of his tighty whities. Dear Lord, he desperately wanted those jeans to drop a little lower so he could see a small peek at the sexy ass taunting him. Gage determined, after hours of watching Trent this morning, the guy rocked a solid bubble butt, and boy did he love a nice, tight ass.

At this point, seven hours into the day, he could think of nothing but Trent and as Gage propped an elbow on the desk, dropping his chin in his hand, he wondered what the hell was wrong with him?
It had to be the rejection. People obsessed over rejection, and he clearly obsessed over this man in front of him.

People referred to him as being super good-looking and gay men were generally an easy pickup
…and besides, his gaydar was strong. He knew attraction when he saw it. When choosing his next sex partner, Gage would go into stealth mode, easily picking off the most interested and setting his sights on him. He never failed, but now he was clearly off his game, so he sat in this office and worried, because he definitely wanted Trent, the electrician. Actually the want overrode the worry by about four to one.

As he sat there, lost in Trent Cooper
’s hot as hell ass, he realized true fear. It scared the hell out of him to think he might not ever get to bury himself deep inside this man, who sat on his knees, taunting the hell out of him right now. To make everything a hundred times worse, Trent never looked his way, not one single time. Gage knew this with absolute certainty because anytime Trent came within fifty feet of Gage, he sensed him. Picking up Trent with this weird mental connection apparently only he shared.

Trent Cooper pushed his senses into overdrive. Gage knew the moment Trent pulled up in the morning and when he drove away in the evening. Whenever Trent left the gallery, a sense of loss overtook Gage, only to be relieved when the man returned. Now they were at the end of day three and that Synclair intuition
—he’d named it while mocking himself this morning in the bathroom mirror—told him clearly Trent Cooper was connected to him in some higher power kind of way.

Gage always focused on the task at hand. The only tasks of any significance now were this opening and the report of his life. He should have been working like a madman, reviewing everything on the case he
’d built against Abdulla, because the story now was falling together at an incredibly fast pace. The gallery remodel ticked away on schedule, maybe even a little ahead of schedule. It truly appeared the opening and the assignment would hit completion right on target. But instead of going over everything one last time, all he could think was how fitting would it be to close one door in his life and have another immediately open.

Gage could see himself finally settling down into a relationship. It wasn
’t something he’d thought about before meeting Trent, but it made sense to have a regular sex partner in a town you lived in. People did it all the time. Gage could also see the benefits of finding someone to have on his arm when needed. The problem with his line of thinking… Why in the world were his thoughts on a long term relationship with a straight man?
How fucked up am I?

Gage cut his gaze down to the list his curator had slid on top of his desk minutes earlier. It only held his attention for a second before his eyes lifted back to Trent
’s ass. To add icing to Gage Synclair’s cake, his fantastic curator looked to have already filled the gallery calendar for special showings, by someone famous, at least once a month for the next year. The Art Gallery already got big press around the world and the VIP list for the grand opening next week grew every day. His mother’s friend Oprah, only minutes ago, sent her attendance response, as well as Michelle Obama, Katie Couric, and Anderson Cooper. The media would certainly turn out, and the night would be covered if for nothing more than to gain such easy access to the numerous A-listers moving about. The grand opening was going to be spectacular.

Gage adjusted himself in his leather-bound desk chair, kicked his feet onto the desk, crossing his ankles, and laid his head back on the head rest. Trent still worked in front of him, and Gage
’s eyes were still trained on his hot ass. Trent lifted his arm to wipe the sweat from his brow, using the small arm sleeve of his T-shirt. It was a move Trent did quite a bit. Did Trent even realize he did it or was it an unconscious movement? And, the better question:
why do I care?

Gage knew why he thought of boyfriends and commitments. Being back home, having his mother on him every day. It was all the things his family always wanted for him.

A grin tore across his face. The plan for the afternoon required patience and dedication, but he knew if he waited long enough he would get a glimpse. Trent sat back on his heels, rubbing his upper arm over his face again, wiping the sweat from his brow. The motion moved his jeans lower, pushing the underwear down, showing an enticing curve of his ass and the sexist butt crack Gage thought he might ever have seen in his life. It was quick, but as Trent rose, the denim slipped lower giving him a visual of a good inch to inch and a half of the crack before Trent yanked his Levi’s back up by the belt loops and tucked his shirt back in, covering himself completely.

Gage felt rewarded and denied all at the same time. A man with a body like that should be required to never wear clothing anywhere he went. If he had his way, Trent would be sporting his tool belt and perhaps those work boots and nothing else, while on his knees, working hard at sucking Gage
’s now always hard dick. He would make sure Trent worked up a good sweat because at this point, after three days of an insatiable hard-on, Trent would be on his knees, facing one way or another for quite some time.

Hell, Gage had gone out last night trying to find someone to relieve this hard-on, but when it got down to it, he actually turned a couple of guys down. His dick turned into a fickle beast. Once it came time to relieve this tension, his dick had no problem lying down. It seemed only one person could take care of his hard-on. The one person who didn
’t want anything to do with him.

Trent
’s phone went off and Gage watched him answer it. A smile spread across his handsome face. Trent turned his head toward the front windows. Like normal, Trent kept his eyes averted from this office. The guy never looked toward the office. It was like the office didn’t exist. His gaze swept to the window at the front of the gallery, and the smile grew bigger as he walked toward the front door. Something just lit up the man’s world, and with sudden interest, Gage needed to know what that something might be.

If something made Trent this happy, he found he wanted to try and repeat the action, to keep that smile on Trent
’s face every day. Gage narrowed his eyes and lowered his brows.
Where did that thought come from?
Confusion at his own reaction stopped Gage for a moment before he swiveled around in his chair to see a perfectly put together female with a long slender body and long dark hair, walking up the sidewalk with two beautiful children.

The sun shone brightly and the temperature climbed to somewhere in the low seventies, making it a beautiful day outside. Gage
’s windows were still open, a nice breeze blew, birds chirped and the sounds of the neighborhood filtered inside his office. As long as they didn’t get too far up the sidewalk away from his office, Gage would be able to hear the conversation. The woman lowered her phone, so did Trent as they approached. Gage stood, going to the window to watch a little more closely. It sure appeared this might be Trent’s family. Dread set into Gage’s heart like nothing he ever experienced before.