School of Fish (Fish Out of Water #6) - Amy Lane Page 0,5
his eyes shut and then opened them, command falling like a mantle on his shoulders again. “Then we need to do right by them.”
“Yessir.” Ace turned to go talk to Jai about the children, expecting Constance to go do his ordering thing with the helicopter pilot, but Constance surprised him with a hand on his shoulder.
“Ace?” he said, the first time Ace had heard the man say his name.
“Sir?”
“Burton’s friends reflect well on him.”
Ace laughed outright. “Burton’s a better man than I’ll ever be.”
Constance shook his head. “No, sir. But I’ll let you keep yourself a secret. You seem more comfortable that way.”
Ace nodded his head. “Man, I just wish all the assholes in the world didn’t have to use this fuckin’ road.”
Constance chuckled, and Ace had no idea why. He just turned back toward the kids and figured the sooner he and Jai could get into that RV and get it back to the garage, the sooner Sonny might be able to forgive him.
Reflect well on Burton—ha! Burton was off saving the world or some such shit. Ace really only had one goal in life, and it was to keep his skinny blond dirty bomb of a boyfriend from detonating and killing them all.
It’s a good thing Sonny was his favorite thing in all the world; the rest of it wasn’t a hardship.
“Jai,” he said, striding up to the big man as he sat on his haunches. “How about you and me go to Vegas and kill some mobsters.”
Jai brightened. “You,” he said soberly, “are the best boss in the world.”
“Tell me that after Sonny yells at us for an hour.”
“Da.”
Meanwhile, back in Sacramento….
“PLEASE?” JACKSON begged, not sure if Ellery really understood how important this was.
“No.” Ellery Cramer, Jackson’s boyfriend, could be an amazingly sexy man. He had deep brown eyes, a decisive nose, a square—if bony—jaw, a brilliant legal mind, and a sense of humor that was both sly and devastating.
He could also be an unbearably prissy stickler for the rules.
“But I’ve only got a week to go!” Jackson wailed and then hated himself for it.
Ellery sat on the edge of the bed, all decked out in his summer-weight olive work suit and tie, even though it was their own damned legal office and he didn’t have to go to court. He could have been wearing basketball shorts and a tank top if he wanted, but of course he wouldn’t. Jackson had tried—tried—to set his phone alarm to get up before Ellery so he’d be all dressed and ready when Ellery was, but Ellery had caught on to that the week before and had started disabling Jackson’s phone in the middle of the night when he got up to pee.
Ellery Cramer only did things right, and infuriatingly enough, that included Jackson’s return date from his recent heart surgery.
“They didn’t even have to crack open my chest,” Jackson told him. Needlessly, of course, because Ellery had been in the waiting room during the entire procedure. “I was out in two days. It was practically outpatient surgery.”
Ellery regarded him flatly. Jackson had been out in two days because hospitals freaked him out so badly they couldn’t be sure his heart rate would slow down enough to let him heal, and because he got no sleep.
“It’s just,” Jackson continued, soldiering on in spite of the hard brown-eyed glare, “I really have been obeying all of the rules, haven’t I? And I wouldn’t ask if I didn’t feel up to it. I promised, right?” He smiled prettily. Once upon a time, he’d been mostly sure he could get away with anything from a lover on a wink and a prayer. It wasn’t that he thought he was handsome, but people tended to respond to confidence, and he had a certain swagger.
Ellery was not that lover. Never had been. But then, Ellery hadn’t let himself get brushed off and had stuck around long enough to see all the demons that swagger covered.
Ellery was made of tougher stuff than the parade of one-night wonders that had marched through Jackson’s bed before they’d met. And he knew it too.
“You did,” Ellery said. “You did promise.”
Augh, guilt! This was not supposed to be a situation calling for guilt.
“So, since I’ve been a model recovering patient,” Jackson said, pushing up so the covers fell away from his bare chest, “and I feel fine, and you’ve come running with me for the last week and taken my heart rate after swimming too, I thought that maybe—just maybe—I could,