Call Down the Hawk (Dreamer, #1)(109)

It wasn’t that he hadn’t gone on dates or hooked up, that unlovely euphemism for what was sometimes a perfectly nice time. It was that he didn’t get too close. Intimacy was allowed as long as it revealed nothing truthful.

Which wasn’t very intimate at all.

He’d had a few long-running relationships, three Ashleys in a row, much to his brothers’ mirth, but they were like hobbies that never paid off. He didn’t know why he was still going to film criticism club and he didn’t know why he was still dating Ashleys. It was such a lot of his schedule for something that eventually cried bitterly that she could tell she didn’t mean anything to him, or he’d have remembered fill in the blank. He got exhausted from carrying all their secrets and giving none of his away.

So he just didn’t normally bring people home. He didn’t really like people knowing where he lived anyway. Where his toothbrush was kept.

But he brought Jordan back home.

It wasn’t exactly like going home with someone else after a date anyway. It was just that it seemed strange to part ways after they’d been told to forget everything they’d ever heard about a mysterious syndicate by a man who was a copy of Declan’s young father.

So they went back to Declan’s place.

He unlocked the door. “After you.”

Jordan did as he asked, noting the town house as she stepped in. He saw it through her eyes: dull, predictable. Tastefully done, yes, expensively done, yes, but forgettably done. Gray sofa, white rugs, sleek contemporary paintings in dark frames. It wasn’t a home, it was a lookbook. Handsome, neutral Declan was simply another accessory in his own house.

He checked his watch as he closed the door behind them. Matthew, to his great relief, had felt better enough to go to his weekend soccer practice. “My brother Matthew’ll be here in about an hour.”

“How many brothers do you have?” But she had already found a photo of them on the entry table. She compared it to him, the gesture similar to when she’d been studying him to paint him.

“Both younger,” he said. “Matthew lives with me.”

“Cute kid,” she said. “Man. Boy. Whatever he is.”

Yes. That was the crux of Matthew, he thought.

“This one looks like the new Fenian,” Jordan said. “Crumbs, a lot like him.”

“Ronan,” Declan said. “Yes. He takes after my father.” He did not want to think about his father. He didn’t want to think about the new Fenian hugging him and telling him he was proud of him. It wasn’t real. How typical of his father that he’d give Declan a puzzle that just led to another dream. “Coffee? Espresso? Latte?”

Jordan let him get away with the subject change. “I could worship a latte right now. Not in a truly devoted way but at the very least in the weekend, casual, sometimes-put-money-in-the-donation-tin way.”

In the kitchen, he concocted a comely latte as she lifted herself up to sit on the counter. He hadn’t turned on the lights, so the only illumination was from the living area and the last of the gray, late-afternoon light outside. It made everything in the little kitchen black and white and gray, a chic sensory deprivation.

When he brought her the coffee, she spread her knees so that he could stand close to her where she sat on the counter, effortlessly sensual, grinning lazily at him. She gestured with the mug around his dining room, toward the visible living area. “Why’d you do this? What a walking tragedy.”

Declan said, “It’s stylish and contemporary.”

“It’s invisible,” she said. She put a hand under his sweater. “You can’t love this stuff.”

“It’s ideal for entertaining.”

“Entertaining robots.” She teased his shirttail out in order to touch skin instead. “Where’s the real you?”

Safely hidden. “How do you know it’s not the real me?”

“Your shoes.”

He studied her for a long moment, hard enough that she stopped teasing round his skin and instead pretended to pose, her chin adjusted artfully, coffee cup drawn close to her face as if for an advertising shot or a portrait. Girl on Kitchen Counter. Still Life with a Past.

He relented. “Upstairs.”

She slid off the counter at once.

He led her upstairs. He saw it again as she must see it: more carpet. More forgettable framed prints and photographs. At the end of the carpeted hall was a modest master. This was slightly less anonymous; the prints on the wall were all black-and-white photographs of Ireland done in vaguely artistic and nostalgic ways. The bed was made as neatly as a hotel bed. Declan pulled a chair away from the corner of the room and stood on it. There was a door in the ceiling to an attic.

“Up there?” she said.

“You asked.”

As he pulled down the ladder, she looked at the photographs. She put a hand against her temple as if it troubled her.

“Still up for this?” Declan asked.

She dropped her hand. “Beam me up.”

“Hand up your coffee.”

Once they were both up, he pulled a string to illuminate the space with a single lightbulb.

It was an attic crawl space, only tall enough to stand at its very tallest point. He’d put a shabby antique rug down on the floor and covered the unfinished plywood on the slanted ceiling with prints.