Secrets and High Spirits: Secrets, Book 4 (5 page)

“Stop it.”

C
hapter Four

S
eeing Teag regularly but never alone had been like Chinese torture to Bruce. He’d resigned himself to keeping their relationship strictly professional, but he hadn’t been able to erase the memory of Teag marching into the Glitter Lounge like the righteous angel of craft cocktails. The electricity had been so thick in the air then, it was a small miracle fuses didn’t blow. Nightly recalls had etched every second of that meeting into his memory. Could he have been the only one feeling it? He desperately wanted to get to know Teag better, but Teag kept himself at a distance.

Teag’s sister, Helen, was a friendly sort—a fetching woman with an easy smile and the same dark eyes as her brother. She was closer to Bruce in age, and for a moment, he’d considered approaching her to learn more about her brother, but in the end, he’d decided against it.

Dylan seemed a safer bet. All it took was a lunch in Purlieux, during which Dylan agreed to see Bruce after work.

They met at a coffee shop that miraculously wasn’t Starbucks. It was one of those places where every piece of furniture was different and well-worn. Splendidly bad paintings hung from the brick walls. Bruce arrived a good half an hour early and secured two seats in a corner.

Dylan arrived on time and threw himself into the free chair and gave an impish grin. “Couldn’t get enough of me? I can’t blame you. Unfortunately for you, I’m off the market.”

Bruce smiled at the young man’s vampish antics. “Can I at least buy you a coffee?” Once they sorted out drinks, he cut to the chase. “I’m hoping you could tell me a little about Teag.”

Dylan opened his eyes wide and pressed a melodramatic hand to his chest. “You want me to betray my best friend’s deepest and darkest secrets?”

“Nah, some general information will do. Likes, dislikes, hobbies and such.”

Dylan dropped the act. Mostly. “Ah. Good, because I don’t know any deep, dark secrets. If Dylan has any, he kept them from me. You like him, don’t you?”

“Uhm, sure. He’s…nice.”
Nice
was a woefully insufficient adjective to describe someone so frustratingly alluring yet unapproachable, but it had to do. “Since we’re going to be partners, I thought I should know a little more about him than his name and social security number, but he’s not the most communicative person.”

“Professional curiosity, sure.” Dylan pursed his lips. “What do you want to know?”

“Hobbies?”

“Booze. Not drinking it, but mixing them together, like an alchemist. You shoulda seen his room, back when we lived together. He had a bookcase full of bottles, and not the ordinary stuff either.”

“I know he’s into craft cocktails,” Bruce prompted.

“Totally. He made me watch a long-ass documentary about Prohibition once. Teag loves documentaries. He’s on the opinion that Prohibition ruined cocktails because the alcohol was crappy and the bartenders mixed in too much stuff to hide the harsh flavor. Kinda like Starbucks does with coffee.”

Bruce nodded. This followed what little Teag had told him. “He wants to return to the classic principles.”

“Yes, but apparently it’s not so simple. He once gave me a lecture on gin, but I kinda zoned out. At any rate, he made four different versions of martini and asked me to sample them. I told him they all tasted like paint thinner to me, but he wanted to know which one I thought was the worst. I did, and he made a note and seemed very smug about it.”

“Huh.” Considering Dylan’s love for the sweet and fruity mai tais, Bruce wouldn’t have used him as a test subject.

Dylan pattered on, heedless of Bruce’s ruminative silence. “He has a bunch of old books too, not originals but cheap copies of super-old bartending books. He mentioned one old guy a few times, I forget the name, something like Cherry Garcia.”

“Jerry Thomas?” asked Bruce, who wasn’t completely ignorant of the classics.

“Yeah, that’s him!”

“What did Teag say about Jerry Thomas?”

“He’s redoing the guy’s recipes, you know, so you can make them easily, because some stuff is not the same now as it was back then when dinosaurs roamed the earth, or something. He has this big-ass binder full of notes and recipes.”

Bruce was getting more and more impressed with Teag’s commitment. “He’s been at it a long time.”

Dylan nodded. “Years. Long before we met.”

“How did you meet?”

“Ah, now that’s
my
deep, dark secret. You’d have to buy me something much stronger than a cappuccino to get it out of me. Next question?”

“Family?”

“Parents divorced. Mom moved to San Diego. Dad remarried. He and Teag don’t get along well. Probably has something to do with the fact that Mr. Connell married Teag’s high school teacher. Apparently, they were having an affair.” Dylan scowled. “And there’s Teag’s sister, Helen of Troy.”

“According to the legends, she was the most beautiful woman of her time.”

“And caused a war. I saw the movie. Brad Pitt with long hair and in a skirt looks weird, don’t you think? I didn’t mind the view, but I was thinking of him as Brad Pitt in a skirt, and not as Achilles. You know what I mean?”

“Ehrm…sure. You don’t like Helen? She seemed nice to me.”

Dylan shrugged. “She’s all right, I guess, more like she doesn’t like me. She probably thinks I’m corrupting her little brother. She and Teag are both headstrong and bossy as hell. I’m surprised they haven’t killed each other yet.”

“I noticed it about Teag,” Bruce said with calculatedly offhandedness.

“With you too? Don’t take it badly, he can’t help it. He means well.”

“Teag seems a bit tightly wound to me. Is he always like this?”

For the first time in the conversation, Dylan hesitated before giving a reply. “Nnno… I mean, maybe a little, but he’s been much worse since Charlie.”

“Charlie?”

“Yeah, Teag and Charlie had a big, ugly thing. Charlie was a charmer, fooled me too, at first, but turned out to be a total phony. First of all, he pretended to be a big-shot lawyer, but he was only a legal assistant—a perfectly fine job, if you ask me, and it wouldn’t have made any difference for Teag. But Charlie was all about head games.”

“What kind of head games?”

“Well, like he was always late. Every time they had a date, Charlie arrived late. He always had an excuse, naturally, but they were all lies.”

“You lost me.”

“Don’t you see? It’s about control. Proving he was in charge. He was like that with everything—they always went where he wanted to go, did what he wanted to do. If Teag wanted something, you could bet Charlie would want something else, and get it. But it was always in some roundabout way. He’d first go along with Teag, but in the end, they’d do what he wanted all along. It sucked, because Teag fell for the asshole hard.” Dylan leaned forward. “If you want to get on Teag’s good side, be straight with him.” He sat back, grinning. “Well, not too straight, if you know what I mean.”

“How did they break up?”

“I dunno. One day, Teag came home, announced that Charlie was history and I’d stop asking questions if I knew what was good for me. But the breakup must’ve been epic, because for a week at least, if Olly or I just sneezed the wrong way, Teag jumped down our throats. It was like living with a rabid badger.”

They sat in silence for a while, sipping their coffees, Bruce digesting the fresh information.

Dylan, however, wasn’t the kind of person who did silence well—he had an innate urge to fill it with chatter. “I feel bad for Teag—it’s kinda my fault he’s living with his sister now,” he said.

“Oh, really?”

“Yeah…our place got broken into, and it had to do with me, though I was totally innocent. All I did was go home with a guy and watch some porn. I didn’t even get to blow him. Anyhoo, I can’t talk about that stuff—I signed papers—but the landlord wanted us to be gone very bad. I was moving in with Simon anyway, and Olly decided to shack up with Rich, and there was poor Teag with nobody but his sister.”

The young man’s prattle had Bruce’s head swimming, and he deemed it better not to ask for details. So he made agreeable noises and let it go.

Undaunted, Dylan went on. “Can I ask you something?”

“Sure.”

“I know why Teag’s doing this bar thing, but what about you?”

It was a good question, and Bruce had a simple but honest answer. “I like people. And they tend to like me. Most of them. I’m told I’m easy to talk to. And I’ve been in this business for some time now—I mixed my first drink professionally about twelve years ago.”

“What was it?”

“Screwdriver. Yeah, not the hardest of cocktails, but trust me, I can float a B-52 or make a Bailey’s comet without burning down the bar. But working at my own bar would mean something much more.”

“Being your own boss.”

“Yes, and also it couldn’t be sold out from under me.” And it would mean proving Walter wrong.

T
he seemingly never-ending procession of paperwork and inspectors had pushed Teag to the edge of despair. Fortunately, Bruce had more patience—and time—to navigate them, and Teag had reluctantly agreed to share the reins.

But far too many weeks’ negotiations later, they were finally here, half-naked, sweaty and panting. And covered in dust. Bruce’s burly friends had come through first, emptying the place of junk and ripping the place apart in a single weekend. They’d removed the sheetrock from all the walls and ceilings on both floors, and stripped the upstairs to its subflooring.

The downstairs floor had presented a bigger challenge, but they had answered it. Well, Bruce did. He had his naked back to Teag as Teag came downstairs and watched him work. The buzz of the power scraper drowned out the sound of Teag’s steps.

Empty and well-lit, the space seemed so much bigger. The front entrance was still boarded up, so they’d been using the back, and it made sense—the rented Dumpster took up half the alley-facing parking lot. It blocked one of the doors, but fortunately, there were two.

Teag stood by the open door surveying his…their new property. To his immediate left stood a wall, an actual load-bearing wall. It had two doorways, one right there, opening to the stairs connecting the two floors. The other one was farther up, giving access to the kitchen.

Bright halogen lights illuminated the main area, adding their heat to the unexpected March heat wave. The power had to be turned off inside, so they brought it in straight from the box outside. It had been one of the things Bruce had negotiated with the electric company. The orange extension cords hung from nails on the wall studs to keep them out of the way.

Stepping closer, Teag had an excellent view of sweat trickling down Bruce’s back. The moisture covering his skin in a glossy sheen collected into a rivulet in the channel of his spine and slipped downward. Teag’s gaze tracked it disappearing into a gap between Bruce’s hip and jeans. Bruce was on his knees, and while he didn’t display a plumber’s crack, there was definitely a hint of things.

Nice ass
popped into Teag’s head. Annoyed, he cursed himself, and the thought beat a hasty retreat. “Good job,” he said, voice raised, and took another step.

Bruce turned off the scraper and looked up. “Thanks, I’m almost done.” On his knees, sweat matting his chest hair, he made a far more lurid picture. Teag forced his eyes to the floor. “I can understand the top two layers of vinyl, but what idiot puts orange tile on top of hardwood floor?”

Bruce shrugged. “Must’ve been a Southwest theme.” He stood, and it was hard for Teag not to stare, especially at that silver stud.

Teag cleared his throat and turned, redirecting his scrutiny to the original hardwood floor barely visible under the blackened layer of ancient glue. “Can we refinish it?”

“I think so, but it won’t be like new. I’m betting on darker and lighter patches.”

“Not a problem. It adds character.”

Teag turned slowly, taking in the walls and ceiling stripped to the studs. “I can’t wait to be done with this part and move from deconstruction to actual construction.”

“What about this?” Bruce tapped the wood panel covering the wall around the shuttered main entrance. It was the only piece of wall his friends hadn’t torn down.

At the time, Teag had contemplated restoring it, but now, inspecting the thick paint filling the grooves, he had to admit the futility of the idea. “Rip it,” he said, resigned.

While Bruce stomped off to the pile of tools in the back, a thunder of feet on wooden stairs announced the arrival of the Boys from upstairs.

Dylan, Olly and even Olly’s friend Jem showed up en masse on Monday morning, staunchly determined to pitch in. Teag had no idea what to do with them, but Bruce had them scraping paint from windowsills and frames and clearing out the minor detritus left from the weekend’s destruction.

Of the three, Olly had been the only one remotely dressed right for construction work—he’d had on worn jeans and a shirt and hiking boots. The other two, in their tennis shoes and fashion-forward outfits—especially Dylan—couldn’t have been more unsuited for the occasion. Regardless, Bruce gave them tools, face masks and plastic safety goggles.

“You look like a cross between a boy band and the Village People,” Teag had sniggered. “You need a band name.”

“In-sink, with a K,” Bruce had suggested. Dylan, Olly and Jem had given them a group frown.

“No Direction,” Teag had retorted. The collective frown had deepened.

To which Bruce slapped down the trump card. “Back-Alley Boys.”

The name had stuck, though mostly shortened to
Boys
. It was simpler to say than all three names when Bruce and Teag had to allude to their helpers.

“We finished!” Dylan, the self-appointed band leader, announced as they spilled into the room.

“Watch your steps,” Teag warned them in the reflexive tone of an older brother in charge. The last thing he needed was one of the Boys stepping on a nail or twisting his ankle climbing rubble.

Bruce came back too, wielding a crowbar. Thankfully, he’d also found his shirt. Though the white cotton wasn’t thick enough to conceal the bump of his nipple—the one with the stud.

Teag snapped his gaze back to Bruce’s face, only to see the man’s lips curve.
Smug bastard
. What he would give to wipe that smile from Bruce’s face. Teag slammed on a mental brake before his train of thought could derail.