in the bathroom.”
“Can do. Oh, Hunter called me Jay, so that’s my cover.”
“That’s original,” she said. “Hurry.”
Josh looked at Hunter and sighed. “Go as slow as he’ll let you,” he said. “Make it special. Even if you crash and burn, he needs to know what it’s like when it’s real.”
Hunter nodded, grateful that everybody was pretending they couldn’t hear that, before he turned around and walked away.
Not pretending too hard, though. He was almost to his hotel when Julia said, “Perhaps you and Grace can do my shopping, Hunter. Stirling has my list. And maybe we can meet up for lunch if this is resolved. Artur’s going to be doing business online most of the morning. I’m sure Grace won’t mind.”
Clever, Julia. Clever.
And very much appreciated.
“We’d love to,” he said, meaning it. It was an excuse to be with Grace during the day, even if it was on the job. Hunter felt the spring in his step as he hurried down the marina. There were some bennies, perhaps, to working with a crew who knew you.
Taking Flight
“DID YOU have a good day?” Artur asked as they were taking a Lyft from the hotel to the restaurant.
Grace tugged at the cuffs of his silk mandarin-collared black shirt. “Yes, Dance Master,” he said, hating that his eyes darted left and a foolish little smile tugged at his lips. Silly and transparent—two things Grace had never thought he’d be.
“How was your young man?” Artur asked, keeping his voice proper and polite.
Grace bit his lip and tried for dignity. “Amusing,” he said, although his brain was screaming things like “kind” and “attentive” and “funny.”
“Amusing?” Artur gave him a severe look. “He did not appear so amused yesterday when you had injured yourself. How are your feet, by the way?”
Grace felt the flush creeping up his neck. “Fine, Dance Master,” he muttered.
Hunter hadn’t let him walk too much. Sprints across the crowded city—which normally Grace would have enjoyed—had been replaced with car rides. They’d gone to the shopping district, replete with high-end stores, to buy Julia and Molly their desired dresses, shoes, and accessories.
Artur let out a sigh. “What would it harm,” he asked, “if you were to care for this boy?”
Grace was so surprised he actually looked at Artur’s face, and found the gray eyes fastened on Grace’s reaction.
“I’m not easy to love,” he said, thinking wistfully about saying outrageous things and hearing Hunter’s dry chuckle. Amusing. Just like he’d tried to dismiss Hunter as being. Grace was… amusing.
“Bullshit,” Artur replied succinctly, and Grace’s brain did a panicked end run for the stern task master he’d grown up with.
“I’m… uhm…. Dance Ma—”
“Dylan Li,” Artur said, his voice a cross between exasperation and affection, “you are so easy to love. I have loved you like my own since you first walked into my conservatory, dancing like an angel prince. But I’m not… demonstrative, and your parents are worse than useless.”
Grace gasped. Nobody—not even Josh—had ever criticized his parents.
“This surprises you?” Artur demanded. “They left you on your own to raise yourself! If it hadn’t been for Joshua and his family, you might have died or thrown away your beautiful talent or—or been lost from us forever. Nobody with your brightness does that if their parents didn’t inflict a wound almost too great to bear.”
Dylan swallowed hard against the knot in his throat. “I… I am stronger than I look,” he said, but it was too late. In one Lyft ride after an extraordinary day, one of the few people he trusted had taken his emotional Kevlar overcoat and shredded it like thin silk.
“That is a lie,” Artur said kindly. “You look completely self-sufficient. Only those of us who love you best know that your heart is very, very fragile. So tell me, will this young man of yours treat your heart well?”
Dylan wiped one eye self-consciously with his palm and hated that the other one spilled over.
“We went shopping for Julia and Molly,” he said. “We finished early and brought their things back to the hotel.” Dylan had expected sex then. He hadn’t done anything overt, simply followed Hunter into the command central room to hang the dresses up and deposit the bags, but when they’d left the room—including Stirling, who was simultaneously monitoring coms and engaging in bloody cyberwarfare and who seemed quite happy to be by himself—Dylan had started to go left, toward his room, and Hunter had snagged his hand and taken him right, back toward the elevators and down.
Dylan hadn’t said