Trowchester Blues 01 - Trowchester Blues (24 page)

He reached out imploringly, as though he expected Michael to apologise and give him his gun back. Michael’s smile grew a shade warmer, even as he cracked the gun open and pocketed the cartridges.

“Huh. Yeah. Well, maybe you’re not. And maybe you’d better go home right now and consider the choices you almost made.”

Finn had to give Lady Harcombe points for style. She had recovered her mocking smile and was tapping a foot on the floor with an air of being so done with this idiocy. “I can assure you that your boyfriend is far from innocent.”

“And what are you? Batman? You don’t get to take the law into your own hands just because you live in the big house.”

“No,” she smiled. “I get to take the law into my own hands because I am the local magistrate, and in this manor I decide what is a crime and what is not.”

Driver and Whiskey shifted nervously on the marble floor, exchanging a sidelong look, like a team of draft horses deciding they’ve had enough for the day and stopping dead in the road. He wondered if Michael had noticed it, but of course the guy had, trained as he was to read body language as a matter of survival.

“Finn. Get in the car and get it running.” Michael backed off, letting the situation defuse itself. There was still a troll-like brutality about the set of his face that said he would rather be barrelling in there, taking them both down, breaking some bones. But he wasn’t going to give in to it unless he had to, and it seemed like Finn’s captors didn’t want to make him have to.

“We’re leaving. I’ll drop the shotgun in the road as we drive away, but this conversation is over.”

“For now.” Lady Harcombe nodded and watched them go.

“Seems like you’ve got a lot to talk to me about,” said Michael as they turned onto the main road and were safely lost among the other moving lights. Something inside him was purring with the satisfaction of a job well done, and it was a sensation he hadn’t had for years. He almost didn’t recognise it. All the turmoil over the last few weeks, the digging and the turning up of stuff, must have freed a few good things along with the bad.

He sighed deeply and let the wariness leave him. Glancing over to the passenger’s seat brought a view of Finn leaning against the window with his eyes closed. The man looked shattered, innocent and delicate, with the light of oncoming vehicles turning his pale eyelashes platinum, washing out his colourless lips and faded cheeks, highlighting the deep shadows under his eyes. He’d obviously been out in the rain earlier this evening. His hair was darkened with it, and his shoulders soaked.

“Are you okay?” Michael decided to leave the interrogation until they got home. He fished a Tracker bar out of his coat pocket—they were Jenny’s favourite, and he hadn’t got out of the habit of carrying them yet. He handed it over and turned the heat up to maximum.

Finn opened his eyes to frown at the chocolate-covered thing in his hand as though he wasn’t sure how it related to him. Michael took his hand off the gear lever for long enough to push the food towards Finn’s mouth. “Eat it. Sugar—it’s good for the shock.”

That raised a very weary smile. Finn’s mossy eyes in their bruised sockets slid sideways to regard him with fond amusement. “Muesli coated in chocolate. Someone can’t make up their mind.”

But he opened it and took a bite, then a larger one, and wolfed the rest down on the third.

“I didn’t think you were coming for me.” He kept on smiling, but his gaze returned to the window. “When you drove away. I thought everything was over between us. That you’d decided I was too much trouble.”

Michael turned over all the things he could say, should say.
We might well be over
being the chief and hardest one of all. No, not until Finn was in his own home, washed, fed, and warm.

“Well, you’re certainly that. Doesn’t mean I’m going to swan off in the middle of a kidnapping and leave you. I just wanted to make sure that guy with the shotgun didn’t take out one of the wheels so I couldn’t follow you. And it was difficult coming down that drive on your tail without being spotted. I had to wait for them to get a long way ahead and then roll down quietly with my lights out.”

He came off the ring road, swinging onto Jasper Avenue, where the superstores and garden centres clustered around the outside of the Roman wall. Through the gate, and as always it felt like the air had changed, like they’d come in from the cold, as the style of the buildings switched abruptly from modern bunkers to Georgian chic.

“I guess you don’t have any reason to think I’d come through for you, after the fire,” he said, the satisfaction of heroism dimming as he remembered how he’d failed. “You going to tell me about that too?”

“Honesty is the best policy?” Finn pulled his feet up onto the seat, laid his cheek on his knees, and closed his eyes, and it occurred to Michael that Finn really wasn’t faking his exhaustion, wasn’t quite as tough as he seemed. Or he might just have reached the limit of his tolerance for bearing with arson and armed abduction. Who could blame him if he had?

“Don’t go to sleep,” he warned. “We’ll be there in a minute, and you’ll feel like shit if I have to wake you up after you’ve been asleep.”

“Mmm.”

He shook the man by his slender shoulder. “I mean it.”

“Gobshite.”

Laughing, Michael pulled up outside the bookshop and parked. He pushed the hair off Finn’s forehead and stroked his face with the back of his hand, continuing the caress across his cheekbone and down to the gilt bristles on his chin. “Wakey, wakey.”

“Bastard.”

He got out, opened Finn’s door, and shoved his hands in the man’s damp pockets, looking for his keys. Finn grinned at him, not entirely with it. Michael unlocked the shop, pocketed the keys, and lifted Finn out of his seat, carrying him indoors bridal style. Finn lolled his head against Michael’s shoulder, shut his eye, and smiled.

It was the sweetest thing. Michael hadn’t had time or inclination to try to figure out Finn’s odd combination of sex and viciousness, but this cuddly version, quiet and trusting and utterly relaxed in his arms was something he was going to miss. He smiled down as Finn looked up at him with sleepy affection, settled the guy on the couch, and went to run a bath.

Finn held up his arms imploringly when the bath was ready. “Carry me?”

“You’re not injured anywhere? You looked like you were walking well enough before I stepped in.”

Finn sighed. “My feet hurt, but that’s not the point. I want you to carry me. You do it so well. So easily. It’s very affecting—makes me want to forgive you for everything.”

Well, that made for an easy enough absolution. Michael went to his knees beside the sofa so that he could undo the knot of Finn’s tie, unbutton his rain-soaked shirt, and pull all the layers of damp clothing off at once.

“I dream of you ripping me out of those,” Finn said, still worryingly undefensive, softer and more straightforward than Michael was used to from him. “But this will do for a start.”

“You want me to ruin your clothes?” Michael removed Finn’s shoes and socks, peeled the clinging trousers down his legs, taking a moment to admire his body—not quite boyish, but lithe and slender, just muscular enough for beauty. He should never really have thought that anything this lovely could belong to him.

Tenderly he pushed his arm beneath Finn’s knees, wound the other around his back, and lifted him. Finn snuggled into the embrace like a child, and it made him wish the walk to the bathroom wasn’t so short. He lowered him into the hot water reluctantly, helping Finn hook his bandaged feet over the side to keep them dry, smiling as Finn closed his eyes and sighed with bliss.

“I want you to tear my clothes off me,” Finn murmured, his voice somnolent with pleasure. “As you hold me down. While I’m squirming and laughing and trying to get away, and bursting out of my skin with excitement. You’re so . . .” He opened an eye and focused it on Michael, his mouth still smiling but his gaze serious. “Strong. Angry. Overwhelming. I don’t think you’ve made your peace with that part of yourself, but I love it. I want to help you let it out in a way that’ll make us both happy.”

Abruptly, Michael had to look away, press his fist against his mouth to stop himself making a noise of anguish. He hated the anger. He hated it. He’d worked so hard all his life to keep a lid on it, loathed himself every time it came out. It had lost him his job and his self-respect, and he despised himself for it. He didn’t know what to do about finding someone who accepted it. Who loved him for it.

“You’re a ridiculous man, Fintan Hulme,” he said in a thick voice, crouching by the side of the bath in a cloud of steam that smelled of samphire and cinnamon. “But I think I love you.”

“Oh, we’re in trouble now.” Finn smiled back. “For I think I might return the sentiment. What will we do, the pair of us?”

What Michael wanted to do was peel off his own clothes and get in the bath with him, wrap himself entirely around those narrow limbs and hide his face in Finn’s shoulder. That was somewhat counterproductive if this was still going to have to be good-bye. He rubbed his hands over his face, shoved his cuffs further up his arms to keep them dry, and as he did, Finn reached out and brushed his fingertips lightly over the purple welts that stood up along his forearms where Sarah had smacked him with the tiller bar.

“Acushla,” whispered Finn, the warmth in his voice deepening into concern. “You’re hurt.”

The bruises throbbed a little, but he’d put some ibuprofen gel on, and they were no problem really. “It’s nothing.” Guilty and embarrassed, he tugged his sleeves back down again to cover them. “A misunderstanding. I’m fine. I’m not the issue here. I want to find out what’s been going on with you.” He traced the path of a water droplet down the slope of Finn’s arm. “My partner in the Met tells me you’re a fence. What made you decide it was a good idea to go out with an ex-cop?”

“This—” Finn’s tone sharpened, leaving him sounding more alert, more like himself “—is not a conversation I can have naked. There are pyjamas in the chest of drawers in my bedroom. Top drawer. Get me some?”

Michael had risen to his feet before it occurred to him that he should not still be taking orders from Finn. He had a bizarre flash of mythology, the thought that if he was a fucking animal at times, maybe together, with Finn’s controlling hand on the reins, they could be a centaur.

If they could only get past this whole crime thing. If only. How he wished . . .

He ducked his head and went to find the pj’s, and to make them both a cup of tea. A few minutes later found them curled up together on the couch, Finn still boneless and warm against Michael’s chest, a handwoven woollen throw wrapped around them both, mugs of tea in hand. The curtains were drawn and the room seemed a million miles from anywhere, a whole world of its own.

“So,” Michael tried again, “are you a fence?”

“What’s it to you?”

He should probably be happy that Finn’s evasiveness was returning. It meant he was feeling better, more like himself. It was also as irritating as hell. He put his tea down on the floor, dug his fingers into Finn’s shoulders, and shook him to make him pay attention. He didn’t want to have to say this, but he saw no alternative, no way to overstep this fundamental line.

“I’m not getting involved with a criminal. I’m not going to end up your bodyguard or your hit man. Apparently I’ve already made an enemy of the laird, and if she’s doing something illegal, then she needs to watch herself, but I don’t—”

“Oh, give over.” Finn’s voice was sharp, but he rested his cheek against Michael’s biceps and closed his eyes. “I’m not a fence anymore. I’m an ex-villain, just like you’re an ex-cop. You can shag me as much as you like without it troubling your conscience in the slightest.”

Michael’s arms tightened around Finn almost by themselves. Inside, potent forces of hope and yearning and ground-in despair tried to fight it out, bare-knuckled. He squeezed his eyes shut and buried his face in Finn’s neck, breathing in the scent of him, acutely aware of how his lips grazed smooth skin.

“I wish to hell I could believe you. But if that’s the case, then why would the local magistrate abduct you in the middle of the night? Why would someone set fire to your shop?”

He wished he hadn’t spoken, hadn’t felt forced to think these things. Wished he could just let it go and for once do the thing that would make him happy. But that had never been who he was. Maybe he wasn’t the world’s brightest or quickest mind, but he observed stuff and thought and made connections, and he couldn’t make that process stop just because the connections ripped his heart out and stamped on it.

“Something dodgy is going on, and you’re right in the middle of it. So yeah, I wish I could believe you. But I don’t.”