Stronghold (Stronghold 1) (44 page)

"Hey.  Good to see you
again," Adam said, grinning as their hands met.  Which surprised
Angel even more.  She eyed both of them suspiciously.

Seeing the look, Adam's smile
deepened as he slung his arm over her shoulder.  "Sam gave me a new
appreciation for country music last week."

Sam just laughed and went to sit
down in his favorite armchair, Angel gestured for Adam to sit on the couch as
she put the pie he'd brought in the kitchen.  She couldn't help smiling a
little bit; Q had told her how Sam and Mark had serenaded Adam.  Last
weekend she'd been too pissy to notice exactly how many times she'd played
Cowboy
Casanova
 on repeat, but the song had fitted her mood exactly so she
wasn't surprised that it was more than she'd realized.  Poor guys. 

Returning to the living room,
where Adam was telling Sam about how she'd trounced his friends at Halo, they
were joined a few minutes later by Q and then Mark.  Q was still eyeing
Adam a little suspiciously, but she wasn't surprised by that.  He'd always
been the least forgiving of her housemates, as well as the most protective.
 What did surprise her was that Mark and Sam weren't following his lead
for once; they both seemed to really like Adam and were ignoring Q's more
pointed looks and questions.

When the timer went off for the
cauliflower she jumped up.  "I've just gotta get a dish out of the
oven and throw on the vegetables for a few minutes and then dinner will be
ready."

******

As soon as Angel was out of the
room, Q pounced.  Something that Adam was willing to tolerate to soothe
her housemates' obvious protectiveness, but it did grate on his temper a bit.
 Especially because he was still having some trouble with his feelings of
possessiveness.  Something about Q's attitude made him feel like there was
more going on than brotherly feelings and that had his back up.

"So where did you and Angel
meet?  She's never really said."

"At a club."

"Really?  Normally she
never gives out her number to guys at clubs," Sam interjected, looking
surprised.  

"She didn't," Adam
said, grinning a little bit as he remembered how intrigued he'd been by her and
how skittish she'd been.  Which made a lot more sense now than it had at
the time.  "But she told me about the show that she was in and I
ended up going to see it and then we ran into each other again after that...
and it just seemed like fate."

He deliberately didn't give them
any details about exactly what club he'd met her at or where they ran into each
other again because he didn't know how much information Angel had given to
them.  

"What do you do for a
living?"  Q asked, obviously not deterred from his questioning.
 Sam rolled his eyes sympathetically at Adam, while Mark just chuckled but
also waited for the answer.

"I own a head-hunting and
temporary employment placement company."

All three of them look a little
startled.

"You
own
 it?"
 Mark asked.  

"Yeah.  What do you
guys do?"  Turnabout was fair play he figured, and if he was going to
be spending time with Angel he was apparently going to be spending time with
her housemates.  

"Apple store, doing the
repairs and stuff," said Sam.

"I've got the dream job,
video game testing for Maxland Games," Mark said grinning. 

"I write proposals for a
contracting company," Q said.  Adam raised his eyebrows, he'd been
expecting another tech job quite honestly.  To his surprise, he earned his
first real smile from Q.  "We can't all live the dream."

Just then the doorbell rang and
the three men frowned at each other. 

"Were we expecting someone
else?"

"I didn't think so."

"Angel?  Did you invite
someone else over?"

She popped her head out of the
kitchen.  "No.  Find out who it is, dinner will be ready in one
minute."  Flashing a brilliant smile at Adam, she disappeared again.
 Very faintly he could hear the sound of something sizzling.  

With a slightly exasperated
groan, Mark got up from his seat and went to the door.  When it opened,
Adam was a little less than pleased to see Michael standing there.  The
amount of testosterone in this house was becoming overwhelming. 

Unfortunately, all three
housemates greeted him as if he had a standing invitation to be there and they
were glad to see him.  Q gave Adam a sidelong look, as if gauging his
reaction to the other man, but Adam just stood and smiled, giving Michael his
hand.  He'd lined up a job for the other man and had already received good
feedback from the employer. 

And he told himself that he was
not
 jealous
about the welcome that Michael could obviously always expect at Angel's house.

His girl came bounding out of the
kitchen, pleased as punch to see her friend.  Adam told himself that
didn't bother him either.

"Pretty boy!"

"Pest."

They hugged.  Adam shifted
on his feet and tried not to think about how satisfying it would feel to pound
Michael into the ground.  He had no reason to feel jealous or possessive.
 Michael had even encouraged Adam when it came to Angel.  He wondered
if Michael did martial arts... maybe he should invite him to Liam's for
sparring one of these days...

"Come on in, you're just in
time for dinner."

"Thanks, I was hoping you
might take pity on me.  I've been eating my own cooking all week."
 Everyone chuckled.  Adam wasn't sure if he felt reassured that Angel
obviously hadn't invited Michael; the fact that the man felt he could just show
up and beg a meal made him feel even more possessive.  But at the same
time, he knew very well that any of his friends might show up in the same way.
 It was just that all of his friends were also his own gender, except for
Olivia.

Maybe if he could make himself
believe that this was the same as Olivia, except that he knew very well that
Angel and Michael had once been attracted to each other even if they never
acted on it.  Although, just as Leigh had said, he couldn't see any hint
of that attraction now.  Which soothed him somewhat.

******

Dinner started off a little
awkward, but it got better as everyone relaxed.  Angel noticed that Adam
was a lot tenser and a lot more touchy-feely in a possessive way than he had
been around her friends.  She tried not to let it bother her.  On one
level, she kind of liked the possessiveness that she felt from him, it made her
feel all warm and wanted inside, but on another level she knew from experience
that possessiveness could eventually lead to fights and break-ups.  A lot
of guys couldn't handle that most of her best friends were other guys.

And, granted, she could
understand why her friendship with Michael was occasionally hard for other guys
to take.  They were particularly close and at one point in her life she'd
lusted after him.  Hell, when she was single she still fantasized about
him a bit, even though she knew it would never happen.  The few times
they'd gotten close to doing something post-Monica, her ex-best friend would
always pop into her head and she had pulled away.

Besides, having been to
Stronghold and playing with Adam now, she knew that she was so not on Michael's
level.  She did like a little bit of pain with her pleasure, but Adam was
much more to her speed.  

So she did what she could to show
Adam that she wanted to be with him.  While she wasn't going to change how
she acted around her friends, she was perfectly happy to lean into Adam's
shoulder, to keep their knees touching while they were eating, and to hold his
hand whenever she wasn't eating.  Since he was on her right that meant
that she kind of couldn't eat when they were holding hands, but that was okay.
 Being a pretty tactile person, she rather liked the constant touching...
there was just something different about the way he'd been doing it when he was
with his friends.

After dinner Q offered to do the
dishes while Adam's pie heated up in the oven.  

"How bout a Halo match?"
 Sam asked, looking around the table.  He grinned at Angel.
 "Adam told us about how you impressed his friends."

"Annihilated you mean,"
she retorted, grinning back at him.  Adam's hand squeezed hers and she
turned to see his eyes laughing.  "Did he tell you about the game he
played with me?"

"Ah no, I was trying to save
myself the embarrassment," he said dryly.

"Nothing to be embarrassed
about," Michael said, giving both Mark and Sam a look.  They returned
it smugly.  "She's been trained by the best.  You could lose
hours of your life trying to get to either of these guys' level.  Or
Q's."

"Says the voice of
experience."  Adam chuckled.

"You didn't do too badly
last time," Mark said reassuringly to Michael.  "We could have a
rematch... see if you've improved."

Michael groaned.
 "Adam?  Angel?  One of you want to be on the losing team
with me?"

"I'm actually going to step
into the kitchen and see if I can help Q out with the dishes," Adam said,
surprising Angel.  "He might need someone to help dry."

"You don't have to do
that," she said quickly, feeling a little awkward about having him do
household chores.  Even though she wouldn't mind playing Sam and Mark in
Halo.  It had been awhile since she and Michael teamed up and they always
had fun even if they lost miserably. 

"But I want to.  Go
play, I'll be there to watch in a bit," Adam said, dropping a kiss on her
lips before standing.

"I'd almost rather that you
didn't," she grumbled, getting to her feet along with the rest of the
group.  "You don't need to learn their secrets."

******

When Adam came into the kitchen,
Q gave him a wary look.  The arms of his shirt were rolled back to show
off pretty muscular forearms and he'd just finished loading the dishwasher and
had started in on the pots and pants that Angel had used.  From the looks
of it, she didn't follow the "clean as you go" adage.  

Then again, he'd gotten the
impression that she did most of the cooking in the house and so the guys did
the dishes in recompense.  And the yard work.  She had them well trained. 

"Thought I'd help you
dry," Adam said, picking up a towel.  "They're going to play
some Halo."

Q snorted.  "You might
want to watch that, it's pretty amusing."

Although his tone was bland, Adam
still felt like maybe there was a little bit of a bite underneath.  Q
wouldn't be rude, but more and more over dinner, watching the interactions,
he'd decided that Q had a thing for Angel.  Well hidden, granted, under
the guise of brotherly vigilance, but there nonetheless. 

"So they said, but I think
I'll have plenty of opportunity to see that kind of thing," he said
mildly, hinting to Q that he was planning on being around quite a bit in the
future. 

"Maybe, but Michael won't
always be here and he and Angel are always entertaining as a team."

Even though Q didn't look at him,
Adam was aware of the other man's regard.  He was deliberately prodding
Adam about Michael and Angel's relationship.  Adam wondered how often Q
had done that to some of Angel's exes.  He bet it was a pretty effective tactic.

"I'm sure they are, they've
been good friends for a while."

This time when Q glanced at him,
it was with a glimmer of respect in his dark eyes.  Adam began drying the
pot that Q handed him.

"So you don't mind that most
of Angel's friends are men?"  This was said with a hint of challenge,
as if daring Adam to try and make her choose between himself and her friends.
 Not a mistake Adam would make even if he hadn’t like her friends – and
fortunately for him he did.  Feeling possessive was one thing, letting it
ruin what he'd started with Angel was another.

"I wouldn't say that I'm
thrilled about it, but I can live with it.  I like her," he stated
baldly.  "A lot."  Q handed him another pan.  It was
good to keep their hands busy while they had this conversation, allowing them
to talk without having to look at each other.  The running water and the
chatter of the others in the next room meant that their words would go unheard
except by each other.  A safe place.  

He'd noticed that Sam and Mark
tended to defer to Q, and even though they liked Adam they still looked to Q
for a lead.  Angel obviously cared a great deal for all of her housemates.
 While Adam wasn't used to being as open as he was with Q when it came to
his relationship, he did want to get off on the right foot with all of her
housemates.  And being honest about how he felt for her was definitely
part of that.  

"She's special," Q said
finally.  "A lot of guys like her.  A lot.  She's the kind
of girl that guys feel comfortable with, comfortable talking to and comfortable
just hanging out.  And she's beautiful.  It's not the easiest
combination to find, especially for guys who are a little bit more nerd than
jock."  A quick look confirmed to Adam that Q considered him to be in
the latter category.  Maybe he should tell Q about his sci-fi/fantasy book
collection.  "She deserves someone who can appreciate her."