Empty Nests (25 page)

His cock twitched at the memory, and if he hadn’t already forked out cash for a half-dozen other companies, he’d be tempted to just chuck the idea, buy his neodymium from the Chinese like everyone else, and drag James back into bed.

He picked up his cell phone.

Russian property law is really boring. Can I come up there so we can make out?
;-)

Gabe sent the text and hoped James’s phone was feeling social. He’d gotten through another two paragraphs when his phone bleeped.

Only if your homework is finished. Tamyra would never forgive me otherwise.

Gabe wasn’t sure if he should be amused or annoyed. He’d never had a response quite like that. He decided to go with amused and went back to his homework.

J
AMES
WAS
pulled into a rough hug when he stepped through his office door. That was startling enough, but the fact that it was Dave hugging him put it well into the weird category.

“Congratulations, boss!”

“Thank you. For what?” James looked over Dave’s shoulder. The rest of his team was gathered around one workstation, grinning at him. He wasn’t sure what could have happened in the half hour he’d stepped out to eat his lunch to get that kind of response out of Dave, but he hoped it was some internal memo stating that everyone at his pay grade was getting a raise.

Dave slapped him on the arm. “For getting engaged. You should have told us.”

“What?” James was sure he could not have heard right. “I’m what?”

“Getting married, or I don’t know, commitment ceremony or something?”

“What the hell are you talking about?”

Dave pointed at the computer. James sat down with caution. There was a gossip blog from a local newspaper up on the screen and a line of bold text that read “TechPrim Family Day.” Below that was a picture that looked like it had been taken with a long lens from the other side of the hockey rink. He could clearly make out himself, Gabe, and Margaret in the front row, and Frank, Nate, and the kids behind them. James read the full-paragraph write-up.

The Three Wise Men of Silicon Valley spent an evening out with their families at Saturday’s Sharks v. Kings game. Included was UCB Academic James Mazon, longtime partner of CFO Gabriel Juarez. Sources inside TechPrim say to expect wedding bells before the summer is up.

James put his face into his hands. “Who else has seen this?”

“It’s going around campus, and we might have sent it up to the Lawrence guys.”

James took a deep breath and counted to five, then kept going until he hit thirty.

“First, they spelled my name wrong. Second, as I’m sure you are all aware, I am not what you would call an academic around here. I fucking work for a living. Gabe and I have only been dating a couple of months. We are not at the partner level—we’ve barely hit the boyfriend level. And whoever their inside source is, is smoking crack.”

“So you’re not getting married?” Dave asked. “’Cause if you were, we’d all be totally cool with it.”

“I’m not.” James looked around at his team. They didn’t look like they believed him. “How about if I ask someone who would know?”

James dialed Gabe’s number, then hit a couple of buttons that were supposed to turn it into a speaker phone. It was a feature he’d never used and to his surprise, it worked.

“Hello.”

James put his phone on the workstation desk so everyone could hear. “Hey, it’s me. Got a second?”

“For you, about five of them.”

“Great. Are we getting married?”

“No!” Gabe snapped. James tried not to feel hurt. “I mean… no, wait. That didn’t come out quite right. Am I on speaker phone?”

“Yes.”

“Who else is there?”

“My team, who doesn’t believe I’m not engaged.”

“Oh. Hi, James’s team.” There was a chorus of greetings from his people. James heard Gabe take a deep breath. “I know which website you’re looking at, and the guys and Tamyra have been giving me shit nonstop all morning. That crew just makes shit up. They’ve reported Tam and I getting engaged a half-dozen times, and she’s a golden lesbian.” James chuckled, feeling a little better. “And I promise that any sort of commitment ceremony that may possibly occur in the future will not be announced via a gossip column, nor will I ever propose at a hockey game. Is that all right?”

“That’s fine.”

“Hey, rich guy dating our boss,” Clare piped up. “You totally should marry him because he puts up with us and this place, so that makes him like a fucking saint. You could do a lot worse.” There were some general murmurs of agreement. James bit back a sudden urge to cry, since it was easily the nicest thing anyone in the department had ever said about him.

“I will certainly take that into consideration.” James heard the smile in Gabe’s voice. “Okay, I’ve got to go. I’ll talk to you later?”

“Sure. Bye.” James ended the call and turned to his team. “Okay, everyone, you’ve had your amusement for the afternoon. Go do something that at least looks like work.” He made little shooing motions and most everyone wandered off, except for Dave.

“Um… speaking of weddings. Here.” Dave shoved a postcard showing Golden Gate Park into his hand. James flipped it over. On the back, where a vacation greeting would usually go, was an announcement for the wedding of Dave Melinick and Karabi Parthasarathy. “Kara and I decided we should get married. You know, for the kid and all, and Kara wants to do it kind of quick so she doesn’t look totally pregnant in all the photos. Plus, I mean, when the hell am I ever going to find a girl like Kara again? We can’t really afford a big wedding, even though her folks are helping out a bit—well, basically taking it over—but that’s why we’re just having it at the park and using postcards for invitations and stuff, because it’s kinda cool and different. And since you’re giving me all the baby advice, you’re totally invited.”

James looked at the postcard. It was kind of a cute idea as far as cheap wedding invites go, and he had to admit he was curious as to what kind of woman would not only sleep with Dave, but marry him and bear his children.

“And you can totally bring your boyfriend,” Dave added.

James gave Dave a pat on the arm that he hoped was reassuring and supportive. “I’ll take a look at my schedule and definitely try to make it.”

T
HE
ENGINE
of the Lemon Drop Wonder ground and refused to turn over. James pressed his forehead to the steering wheel and tried to take long, cleansing breaths. His phone rang midbreath.

“Yes,” he grumbled into it.

“Hi. It’s me.” Gabe’s voice sounded cautious, and James pictured the little flashes of half smiles Gabe gave when he was treading carefully.

“Hey.”

“Before you say anything, let me start with apologizing about being snappy earlier. It’s been a really long Monday, and the guys were teasing me about it, and please don’t take it as a sign of lack of affection or commitment-phobia or something.” Gabe’s words had all come out in a rush, but they were comforting to hear.

“It’s okay. I’m having a bit of a Monday myself.”

“Anything I can do to help?”

James turned the key again and winced at the noise. “Not really.”

“Is that your car?”

“Yeah. She gets fussy once in a while. I just need to sit for a few minutes, and she’ll turn over.”

“Do you need a lift anywhere?”

James laughed. “Thank you, but last I checked, you’re at least an hour away.”

“Yes, but I’m an hour away in a car that works.”

“I’ll be fine.” James leaned back. He wasn’t going anywhere for at least five minutes. “How was your Monday?”

“It was a Monday. I’ve been putting out all the fires that flared up over the weekend.” Gabe sounded as tired as James had to admit to feeling. “Spent a fair amount of time wanting to be back in bed with you instead of sitting in asset allocation meetings.”

“I’m sure they were important meetings.”

“Technically, all my meetings are important. At least that’s what I keep getting told. Doesn’t mean I don’t want to be somewhere else with far more interesting company.”

That made James laugh. “Well, then, you must have been thinking about someone else, because I am possibly the least interesting person on the planet.”

“The least interesting person on the planet is a man named Traian Zgonea, who works for the Romania Ministry of Economy, Commerce, and Business Environment. This man can suck the color out of a room just by standing quietly in the corner. He makes you want to open a vein just to see if you still bleed red. You, on the other hand, James Maron, are a very interesting person.”

“I’ll take your word for it.” James gave the engine another try, but she just complained.

“Are you sure you don’t want me to come up there?”

“It’s fine. She’ll get there. She always does. Oh!” James wanted to turn the conversation away from the car. “Dave has invited me to his wedding.”

“Dave? Knocked-up-girlfriend Dave?”

“Yep. It’s in a couple of weeks, and I’ve been told I can
totally
bring my boyfriend if I want.”

“Are you going?”

“Well, I have to admit I’m curious about what kind of woman would marry Dave.”

“I’ll see if I can clear a bit of space in my schedule. Might be nice to go somewhere where there are good odds we won’t end up in the gossip blogs.”

“Yeah.” A thought suddenly popped into James’s head. “Shit.”

“What?”

“Dylan reads the gossip blogs.”

“Is he likely to believe it?”

“No.”

“Oh, good. I’d hate for him to think I proposed without asking him about it first. He’d kill me.”

“I’m sure he’d forgive you.” James gave the key a twist, and after a quick grinding sound, the engine came to life. “There we go.”

“I guess I should let you get home. I might be up there later in the week. Can we do lunch?”

“Sure. Have your people call my people.”

Gabe chuckled, and James pictured the little crinkles around his eyes. “No problem. I’ll talk to you later.”

“Bye.”

He hung up, then carefully shifted the Lemon Drop into reverse. There was a squeaking noise, but he knew that was normal. He sent up a prayer to the automotive gods that both he and the car would get home in one piece.

J
AMES
WAS
just stepping through his front door when a printout of a particular web page was shoved in his face. “I’m not getting married,” he sighed.

“Good. ’Cause if Gabe proposed without asking me first, I’d kill him.”

He dropped his keys on the plate by the door. “Since when do you get that much of a say in my love life?”

“Since I was six, and Tommy Blair’s creepy uncle asked me if you were single, and I told him it was none of his business.”

James tried to remember Tommy Blair. The best he could come up with was a particularly skinny redheaded kid. He did have a somewhat clearer memory of little Tommy’s uncle, who would come to T-ball games and whom none of the parents particularly liked.

“Thank you for that.” He took a deep breath. “How was school?”

“It was school. How was work?”

“It was work.”

Dylan smiled at him. James understood. There was comfort in those stupid words they’d said to each other thousands of times. It was changing the subject and allowing the subject to be changed. It was shelving things to be handled or examined at a later date. James knew that was one of the things he would miss when Dylan went off to school. Their shorthand, developed over years, which allowed them to handle big things or scary things that their relative youth had yet to fully prepare them for, but in their own time.

Dylan gave him a pat on the arm. “How about if I make dinner tonight to celebrate the happy announcement?”

Dylan’s cooking was no worse than James’s, and he didn’t offer often. “Knock yourself out.”

A
S
SOON
as Gabe climbed into the car, he pulled James into a kiss and felt his whole body relax. All the stress of the week simply melted away as he tasted James’s lips for the first time in a million years, or four days, depending on how you counted.

Gabe knew he was falling hard and fast. Every day he tried to find a minute to call or text James, to reach out in some little way. Mostly he got James’s voice mail and would make yet another note to himself to get James a new phone.

He moaned as James pulled back from the kiss. He was tempted to grab James again and skip lunch, but he was pretty sure James wasn’t an exhibitionist, and there were things Jared didn’t need to be subjected to.

“Hi,” James breathed at him.

“Hi. I was thinking something different for lunch.”

“Different?”

Gabe lifted a basket from between his feet. He was very proud of himself that he’d managed to make some little arrangements. “It’s a nice day. Picnic?”

“Okay.” James looked surprised but was smiling. “Sure. A picnic.”

G
ABE
HAD
found a small, secluded park up in the hills that wouldn’t have many people around in the middle of the day. He laid a blanket under a tree and motioned James to sit. He hadn’t done anything as silly as a picnic for a long time. Possibly since college, but it was high on his list of “fun things to do with James that James has probably never done before.” That was a long list.

He flipped open the folding picnic basket. He pulled out containers of sliced fruits, cheeses, and little sandwiches, as well as some quality sparkling cider, since they both had to go back to work.

“This all looks really good.”

Gabe popped the cork on the cider and poured them both a glass. “Here’s to a few minutes of peace.”

“I’ll take that.”

Gabe sipped the cider, enjoying the feel of the bubbles across his tongue. He watched James drink and swallow. He was starting to have a possibly unhealthy fascination with James’s neck. When he closed his eyes at night, one thing he thought about was the way James smelled at the spot between his neck and shoulder, the place that seemed custom-made for him to rest his head for a moment. He took another swallow of the cider and tried to focus on something else, since he could feel himself getting wood already.