If It Flies (Market Garden, #3)(17)

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“What about your Jamaican boy?”

“What about him? I do like some variety.” Percy grinned.

“If you’re only renting, you can use the whole range, right?”

Unless you found one that was damn near perfect on the first attempt.

“Well, it worked for me,” Spencer said lamely. “But I’d better get back to work. My private equity guys are chomping on the bit about this reverse merger salto mortale while swinging from the chandelier and paying-no-tax bullshit.”

He glanced at the pile of files on his desk, the print-outs and the agreements and the whole history of his current case.

Guess who’d be working seventy or eighty hours to get that particular mess straightened out? “I’d, um, better get to it.”

Percy stood. “Sure. Ping me if you need to unwind. Things are kinda slow this month for me.”

Hence dropping in on him. “Will do.”

Sometimes it felt like Percy was trying to push his buttons, goad him into a reaction. When they’d first met, Spencer had been convinced that Percy was flirting with him, way before he knew that Percy swung every which way.

Too bad they had absolutely no chemistry at all; never mind how unprofessional it would have been, or how weird it was knowing that Percy’s main kink seemed to be dark skin.

He leaned forwards and pulled the chair closer to the desk, opened the folder at the first Post-it. He was more focused than last week, as if his brain had relaxed over the weekend, unsnarled. To stay engaged with his work, he only had to remember Nick’s disapproving stare and his relentless demand to focus on the here and now. Being not so bloody exhausted helped, too, because after Friday, he’d spent the rest of the weekend sleeping or doing very little. Granted, he 55

might have jerked off more than usual. But that had helped, too.After a productive few hours, he checked his phone. He’d texted Nick earlier, and lo and behold, a response.

Meet Friday after midnight. No question mark, so it somehow felt more clandestine, like two spies agreeing on something dangerous.

Friday, Spencer texted back, hesitated, then added, All night?

Twelve hundred, came the answer.

I’ll throw in breakfast?

A few minutes later, Nick responded, See you Friday.

No comment on the breakfast invite, but Spencer figured they’d work that out when the time came. Nick had probably already made a decision one way or another, and discussion wasn’t necessary. Typical.

Maybe they’d discussed all they’d needed to discuss, but that didn’t mean Spencer’s mind was devoid of questions. Not that he punched any of them into his mobile phone for Nick to resolve. They just swirled around inside his brain while he worked. Tried to work. Made it look like he was working.

He gave up and took an early lunch he didn’t have time to take.

Hands in his pockets, eyes down, Spencer left the building and headed for a cafe down the street where they knew his name and his usual order. Just a smile and a wave at the waitress, and his food would be on the way to his table in the back corner.

Anna smiled as she poured him a cup of coffee. “By yourself today?”

“Yeah, just me.” Spencer returned the smile. She left him to his coffee and the certainty that the shadowy ghost of Nick, 56

the one that slipped in and out of the bedroom like smoke under the door, was sitting across from him.

Without all the paperwork, responsibility, and that ringing phone, he let the barrage of questions crash into his skul . What am I getting myself into? Should I cancel? Where in the hell do I find a man like Nick without a price tag?

That, in turn, made him wonder if Nick just got his kicks at the Market Garden with his harem of clients. Did he ever have relationships? A boyfriend? Hell, a girlfriend? For all Spencer knew, Nick had a wife and three kids in Tower Hamlets. Though at five hundred a f*ck, he could afford somewhere nicer. Maybe even a dog and a picket fence, all paid for by his dick and his mouth.

He doubted Nick had a wife or a girlfriend, though. A husband or a boyfriend maybe. He just didn’t strike Spencer as being even a little bit bisexual, never mind hetero.

Thought the man who had the entire firm except for Percy convinced he wasn’t even a little bit homosexual. Then again, he didn’t imagine ticking the wrong sexual box would hurt Nick’s career like it would his. After al , it had been all over the news just last week: the City still didn’t deal very well with sexual minorities. Hell, it was still very much a white boy’s sandbox as well as a straight one’s. Because if there was one thing that made heterosexual white guys in their fifties clench up, it was people who were different from them.

So. Not out. Knowing this firm and its partners, he doubted that he’d join their ranks if they knew he liked cock.

Especially shoved up his arse.

With a side of pain and some sharply-barked orders, apparently.

Percy could probably get away with getting outed; he had the divorce settlement to prove that he wasn’t actually 57

completely gay. Spencer had nothing. Just a work schedule that made keeping a personal and emotional life too complicated.

There were whole weeks—months—he simply didn’t

remember, like they’d been cut out his life by some satanic pact: money against life-force.

Did Nick feel like that, too? Was the world of prostitution quite as soul-sucking as the field of corporate law?