Chapter 17

Chapter Seventeen

The drive to dinner was kind of quiet. That was okay, because for some reason this place was up in the mountains. At times the road snaked back on itself perilously, and Jay really didn't want Nate losing concentration. Instead he focused on Nate's capable hands on the wheel, the way there were calluses on each thumb and how strong the hands looked against the worn leather.

When the Jeep stopped, night had already darkened the sky. The place they were in front of sat wide and solid, backed into the mountain.

"I bet they don't get many visitors with a journey like that," Jay said. He needed to hear the sound of his own voice to settle his nerves.

"I used a shortcut. There's an easier way up from town, but it adds thirty minutes.

"Which is a lot shorter than the year I lost off my life."

Nate smiled at him. "There are worse roads around here, y'know. Some better suited to horses."

Just the thought of going up that incline and those bends on a horse made Jay grimace. "I'll pass on that."

They got out of the car and crossed to the front door. The building was made to look like a rustic log cabin—a big one—but inside it was an eyeful of white linen and candles. Each table was private and screened from others' views, and the guy who came to seat them was dressed in smart jeans and a crisp blue shirt.

"Is this expensive?" Jay asked cautiously. He didn't have an enormous budget for spending on luxuries, especially considering the whole pile of books and DVDs he'd just ordered from Amazon for Josh.

"Not at all," Nate answered. "The place is owned by Saul from Carter's. Y'know the bar we went to? Good food here… you know what I mean."

Nate dipped his head and Jay lost another brain cell to lust. How could a guy with such a presence in the room look so damn cute all of a sudden?

The waiter took drink orders—Nate stuck to Pepsi and Jay chose beer—then handed over two menus. This was the best part of being out at a meal, looking at all the possibilities and deciding which one was best for the way he felt tonight. Jay was absorbed in the descriptions and when he glanced up, Nate already had his menu shut in front of him. Evidently Nate knew the choices.

"You already know what you want?" Jay asked. "What can you recommend?" He looked back down at the menu.

"Before we go any further with anything—and why I am telling you this I don't know, because it's not like you need to know if all we're going to have is a couple months of sex—but…."

Jay glanced up at Nate, who looked concerned. He sounded very serious too. What was he saying? Something about a few months of sex, just a few months? Jay was determined for it to last longer if they were good together. Jay was convinced he'd only heard half of it. Something about telling Jay and whether or not he should do so. "Sorry?" he asked carefully.

Nate had the look of someone who was about to spill his guts, and Jay wasn't very good at knowing what to say in situations of high emotion.

"You remember you asked Marcus and me to fill out information and I refused to?"

Jay nodded, then waited for the rest of what Nate wanted to say.

"Well, I could have done it, but it would have taken a hell of a long time. I have dyslexia, which means my reading and writing isn't to a very high level."

"Really?" Jay looked down at the menu. "Can you not read this?"

"I could if I wanted to. I have a sheet I put over the words if I really need to see words. But I don't need to because you're right, I do know exactly what I want to order."

"Wow." Jay closed his own menu. "We think Josh has the same problem. He was fine at school when they began teaching phonetics—you know, the sound of words."

"You don't have to explain things. I can't read, but I'm not stupid."

"I didn't mean to—" Jay began, saw the teasing expression on Nate's face and shook his head. " Ass . Anyway, Josh had these headaches, almost migraines, and complained the letters on the page move. It's quite severe, but the school here has assured us he'll have the proper support. Do you think they will? Help Josh, I mean?"

Nate would know; he would have an idea of how the schools up here worked. According to both Josh's old and new schools, Josh was very young to be diagnosed and there was a ton of interventions and support that could be given. Jay had only yesterday ordered a whole pile of books and teaching DVDs so that he and Ashley could help him.

The kid had come back from school today with a grin on his face—ecstatically happy with the classroom, and the teacher, and the lunch place, and in fact everything. Kirsten had a faint smile, but she hadn't wanted to talk and had mostly hidden in her room. Apparently she would "talk later," which Jay knew was shorthand for "not at all." He guessed the only way he'd find out how his niece had done would be to ask Luke, which he planned to do the first chance he got to track him down.

"I don't know if they can help him."

The waiter came back at that moment, and they both ordered steaks with all the sides and trimmings. The only difference was that Nate wanted medium and Jay rare.

"I thought cowboys liked their meat on the hoof?" Jay joked as the waiter walked away.

Nate wrinkled his nose and shuddered. "Not all cowboys."

"So what do you mean you don't know? About the dyslexia thing."

Nate smiled wryly. "I spent my entire academic career avoiding school. If someone was trying to help, I'm not sure it stuck. Doesn't really matter. I do what I love, and anyway, my brothers got the brains and talent."

"That isn't true. You sound like you got nothing, but I've seen you with the horses."

"You saw me once," Nate scoffed.

"More than once," Jay argued, then watched as realization crept over Nate's face. Jay regretted there was no undo button in real life. Admitting he had been watching Nate was just this side of creepy.

Nate raised his eyebrows and smirked. "You been spying on me, Sullivan?"

Jay could make excuses at this point, about it being an accident that he'd visited on more than one occasion and seen Nate working. He decided honesty was the best policy. They were beyond games, and the line drawn in the sand that kept them looking and not touching was one Jay wanted to step over. "Cowboy, jeans, horses… what's not to like?" Jay leaned in to add the extra bit. "By the way, your ass looks damn gorgeous in those jeans."

There was the line, and Jay had well and truly crossed it. He'd made a personal statement about the man he was with and laid his intentions on the table. Nate blinked at him for a few seconds with his mouth open. After glancing left and right, he moved in the rest of the way and laid a soft kiss on Jay, who chased for more as Nate sat back. Then it was Nate's turn to say something. Jay's lips tingled with the sense memory of the kiss. What he wouldn't give for more—much more.

"Not as fine as yours," Nate muttered.

How Jay managed to concentrate on the food when it arrived, he didn't know. Thoughts of the kiss kept him on the edge. Swiftly focusing on kissing, and talking, was secondary to tasting the best steak Jay had ever eaten. The meat was soft and juicy, the fries crisp, everything perfectly seasoned.

"This chef could make a killing back home," he said through a mouthful of steak.

"I think she's fine and happy here," Nate answered immediately. His tone held a note of warning, and Jay looked up at him from his plate.

"I was joking. You think I want to steal her and take her to New York? I'm not going back there—not if you paid me."

"That's good to hear. Marcus will be pleased you're not leaving soon," Nate said quickly. In obvious embarrassment, he looked anywhere other than at Jay.

Jay reached over the table and covered Nate's hand with his own briefly. "What about you?"

Nate stared right back at him. There was open lust in his eyes. "Me too."

"Talking of Marcus, I had a question for you. You don't have to tell me, but why did Marcus's son not stay to work at Crooked Tree?"

Nate sighed. "It's kind of a long story," he hedged.

"We have time," Jay encouraged. He got the sense something had happened, some falling-out that hung like a dark cloud over the whole of Crooked Tree. Marcus never spoke in depth about his son, and there were only a few pictures on the wall of the hallway that led to the bathroom. They were of a much younger Marcus with two boys.

"Ethan is the older of two boys. He's my best friend, but I haven't seen him since Christmas—he doesn't really visit his dad. He's six months older than me and we grew up here. The younger boy was Justin."

That explained the two boys. Jay attempted to recall if he had heard the name of the younger son before. " Was Justin? I haven't heard about a Justin. Does he not live around here either?"

"He's gone." Nate shuffled in his seat and ran a hand through his hair—something he did whenever he got agitated.

Not that I'm staring at him all the time .

Nate continued. "He left Crooked Tree in two thousand four when he was fifteen. He disappeared with another boy, Adam Strachan."

"The third family at Crooked Tree," Jay said with sudden realization. "The empty house is the Strachan house—Marcus briefed me on the absent partner."

"Oliver Strachan left a couple of years after Adam and Justin disappeared. His son Cole and Cole's wife, Mary, went with him. I don't think he could face the loss of his son, any more than Marcus could. They've never found Justin or Adam."

"Why did they leave?"

"We have no idea. One day they were here, the next gone. Henry was the last person to see them alive, up by the Silver Lake. It's a self-contained pool way up in the mountains, that's incredibly deep and long and fed by a natural stream."

"Alive?" Jay felt apprehension build inside him. He sensed this wasn't a good story. No wonder no one talked about it. "You say that like you think they're dead."

"Search parties went for days without seeing a thing. They dredged the pool as best they could, given the small access to the land and the water itself, but found nothing—no sign of the boys. Henry said he saw them swimming, and when he left they were alive and playing around. His words, not mine. I think that's why Marcus is so easy on him, like Henry is the last connection to his son."

"Shit."

"Yeah. There's never been anything to track. They didn't use their phones, or cards, or anything like that. It's like they vanished completely. It's the reason Ethan switched his plans for a ranching life to become a cop. He's never stopped looking for his brother and Adam."

"I'm sorry."

Nate shrugged. "It's nearly ten years since they disappeared. I want to think of them alive and enjoying their lives, and for some reason they can't contact us. But when I'm realistic, half of me is convinced they must be dead."

"Maybe you're right? There could be a reason they can't come home," Jay offered softly.

Nate nodded in agreement. "Marcus never really recovered. His wife had died a long time before, and he was alone. When Sophie arrived, she became his crutch. I wasn't around much to help him or to be a friend to Ethan." Nate went quiet and looked expectantly at Jay.

"Do you want me to ask you why you were a bad friend? Is that where this is leading?" Jay asked. "Because I can't for one minute believe you were."

"Our mom and dad were involved in a head-on with a semi just outside of Missoula, killed outright. I wasn't even out of my teens, and all of a sudden it was me and Gabe and Luke against the world."

Jay's heart twisted. Nate gave the details so matter-of-factly, but Jay sensed there was more to this story. "Then it's understandable," he said.

Nate gave a soft smile. "I know it was. I know not being here and working the circuit for extra money was what I needed to do. I had to abandon Ethan, but much worse than that, I had to leave Gabe and Luke for long periods at a time."

"They seem pretty well adjusted to me," Jay said. "I like Gabe. I like that Gabe likes Ashley."

"That's a lot of likes."

"What can I say? You Todd brothers seem to have a good effect on us Sullivans. I've noticed that Kirsten is wearing less makeup around Luke. You three have the Sullivans all twisted up." He laughed as he said it, then realization hit. "Wait a minute. You said ‘the circuit.' Are we talking rodeo?"

"Bulls, cutting, some other stuff."

"A real-life rodeo cowboy. Why did no one tell me that?" He pressed a hand to his chest. "I feel like I've won the lottery." He fluttered his eyelashes teasingly.

"Ass," Nate deadpanned. "By the way, we'd like to increase your contract to the full year."

Jay's head spun at the sudden change in the conversation. Nate's green eyes were full of expectation. Seemed as if Jay had to make a decision there and then.

"Oh," he said instead, more to buy time than actually making an observation on what Nate had said. He was still focusing on the fact that his cowboy had been in rodeo. He so needed to check the Internet for pictures of Nate at a rodeo.

"You said just now that you weren't going back to the city," Nate pointed out. "So I thought now might be a good time to tell you. Ashley certainly doesn't want to leave, and the kids will be fine. Josh already loves us, and Kirsten will come around to the idea."

"You don't need to sell it to me." Jay held a hand up to stop Nate interrupting. "I always told Marcus you needed longer than two months. I'll stay the year. But that leaves us with one problem. If we do this thing—this friends-with-benefits, random-sex thing—a whole year? That could get messy."

"What?" Nate feigned innocence. "You mean we could grow to like it? What's the worst that can happen?"

"We fall in love? Get married. Have kids. Get a divorce?"

Nate's eyes widened. "Married? Kids?"

Jay huffed a laugh. "I was joking."

That set the tone for the rest of the evening. People arrived, people left, until on a trip to the bathroom, Jay realized they were the only ones left in the restaurant. A quick look at the time showed it was only ten. Things sure emptied earlier here than they did in New York. No one was hovering waiting for them to go, but when he got back to the table, Jay suggested they look at wrapping up the meal so that the staff could go home. Nate, damn him, insisted on ordering a dessert. Something about the place having fudge sauce that was out of this world.

"It can't be better than sex," Jay protested. He knew exactly what he wanted.

Nate leaned over to whisper. "It's close."

Jay stuck to his normal eating-out choice of fruit. Living with Ashley, he could get as many home-baked desserts as he wanted, and no restaurant ever made them as well as she did. Nate went for ice cream with so much chocolate fudge sauce on it that Jay was surprised he managed to eat it. But manage it, he did. Call it cliché, but Jay wanted to lean over and lick the chocolate right off Nate's gorgeous lips. They might be sitting in a secluded spot, but Jay wasn't sure what level of PDA Nate would go for. After all, the small kiss had been very brief.

"What's wrong?" Nate asked.

"Nothing."

"Then why are you staring at my face?" Nate scooped a finger across his lips and captured the tiny amount of chocolate before sucking his finger clean.

Jay's cock, which had been half-interested all evening, went to full and hard in an instant. He squirmed in his seat. "Fucking hell," he muttered. Nate looked at him innocently, but there was a gleam in his eyes. "Get the freaking check."

Somehow they paid the check without cracking stupidly insane grins—or rather, Nate managed. Jay couldn't stop smiling.

They left the restaurant as quickly as they could. All Jay wanted was some kissing and preferably right then. Nate pushed him up against the passenger door of the Jeep, so he evidently wanted the same thing. The kissing was wild and heady and everything Jay wanted. He could forget the world when he was in an embrace like this.

Nate used his knee to widen Jay's stance, and stooped to steal more kisses as he aligned their hard cocks. He cupped Jay's face in his strong, capable hands and held him still so that he could tilt his head and deepen the kiss. Jay lifted his hands and locked them around Nate's neck to anchor himself in the here and now. Kissing was his kink, and he never got enough of it with his partners. Hell, he recalled kissing his ex the sum total of three times, and that was only when Mark was drunk. How long they stood there, Jay didn't know, but he was happy to stay until the heat of Nate's kisses and his embrace was no longer enough of a barrier against the sharp cold.

Finally they had to move. The frigid air had seeped through Jay's jacket and his ass was numb against the cold metal of the car. He shivered, and that signaled the end of the session. Nate moved back and away a little, but not far enough to move his hands from cradling Jay's face.

"The parking lot is empty," Nate said with a smile. "I think even the staff have left."

Jay looked over his shoulder. Nate's Jeep was the single vehicle left and the only real light was the moon. He laughed at the thought that the staff had left and gone past them without Jay hearing. Nate's kisses were potent. Smiling like idiots, they climbed into the Jeep. Nate started the engine and turned on the heater. Nate cracked the window a little so that the inside was warm but fresh. He leaned over for more kisses in the dark.

Jay moved his hand from knee to thigh and finally cupped Nate's erection firmly. What he wanted then was a taste of what was inside there, and without words he scrambled until he had the buttons popped and the hardness of Nate's erection in his mouth. He wriggled until he could push his own pants down and get his hand on his dick, and he pulled himself to orgasm to the sounds Nate was making above him. Moaning, begging, cursing—Nate was everything Jay wanted as a lover. Vocal, pushy, and hot.

"You're so… hot… Jay ."

Jay was coming too and gasping Nate's name as Nate grabbed his cock and finished himself off into his hand.

"Fuck, Cowboy, that was—" Jay didn't have the words, but he punctuated what he said with a kiss. Wiping his fingers on his pants, he watched as Nate did the same. They buttoned up and sat grinning at each other like loons. In seconds they were close in the middle of the Jeep. The center console was in the way, but they clung to each other. Neither man's breathing was all that steady.

"I'm gonna be honest here," Nate drawled softly. "This is some scary shit."

Jay nodded, then kissed Nate one final time before moving back and belting himself in. His world had been well and truly rocked. "I know. But nothing is as scary as getting down the damn mountain now."

Nate chuckled as he belted himself in. "You want me to take the long way home?"

"Hell no. I'll just keep my eyes shut and not enjoy the ride."

True to his word, Jay didn't open his eyes once all the way back down to the road that led to Crooked Tree and only opened them once he could sense they were on level ground and the Jeep had stopped.

Nate had pulled up under the Crooked Tree sign and put the Jeep in park. He turned in his seat. "In a week we'll have guests, and my time gets to be stretched pretty damn thin. If we do this, it won't be a secret to the family. I don't play games, but I've never had a lover living on my doorstep before. What we have needs to stay between us in front of the guests. I'll get crabby and tired and smell like horses a lot of the time, but when I'm with you, I will give you 100 percent. I haven't been tested in a while, but I don't sleep around without protection. I guess I'm more of a top, but I'm okay with switching. It's just been a while—" He paused. "—a long while. And I want us to use condoms."

Jay nodded. "We're setting the ground rules?"

"Think we should, Jay."

"Okay, so, sometimes when I'm really focused on my work, I space out when I'm concentrating and I can get all arty and hands-on and talk to you for hours about market share." He wondered what else to add. "My family knows everything about me, even Josh. I have been tested since my asshole boyfriend was fucking around on me, and I'm lucky everything's fine. I won't push you over a table in front of guests, and I am definitely a switch. Oh yeah, and yes to the condoms." He added the last bit with his hand cupping Nate's obvious erection. "Until you get tested, big guy, then all bets are off."

Nate pushed upward to the pressure of Jay's hand. "So, we're doing this thing?"

Jay huffed. "If we don't do this thing soon, I may just come in my shorts." He palmed his cock and pasted the most hopeful smile on his face that he could. He wasn't lying—he'd been hard the whole way home, and every bump and slide had his erection pressing against his jeans. He was on the edge, constantly.

"Where do you want to…?" Nate looked up the dark road. "Mine," he said with finality.