Chapter 7

Chapter Seven

RYAN

Ryan felt unsettled for the rest of the day.

There had been something in Jordan’s expression and the way those amazing, stormy eyes kept focusing on Ryan’s lips that made him want to lean in and kiss the man senseless.

Whatever Ryan thought about himself—that he was too tall, too big, too soft in the middle, too much a sheriff, too… everything that other men didn’t want—it seemed like Jordan wanted to get something going while he was here.

Jordan was in the closet, so it wasn’t like it would be permanent. Ryan had had enough shit in his life after coming out to even consider hiding the man he eventually fell in love with.

But Ryan could maybe go for a couple weeks of sex. He kind of wanted sex.

Sex with Jordan. Yep.

Then he recalled Jordan’s comments about how Ryan should google his family. He didn’t say it like he was worried what Ryan would find, just that maybe it was a complicated story played out in public life, as if he was tired of telling the same thing over and over.

Google was Ryan’s friend. In the space of an hour, he’d seen more than enough photos of Jordan shirtless, several of which appeared to be made up of Jordan’s head pasted onto someone else’s body. He’d also found links to stories about Jordan, which he’d followed, and just as many on Micah.

Turned out Jordan and Micah had been child stars, first as “baby one” and “spare baby” on a soap opera their dad, Mitchell Darby, had starred in, and then in a Disney series where they played twins. That had been quite successful, garnering attention and a whole slew of fans, some of whom had websites they’d set up, none of which were being updated now. From the dates of the last posts, the popularity of Jordan and Micah as teenage heartthrobs had ended a while back.

When the show ended with the stars leaving for college in the storyline, Micah had stopped acting altogether, preferring to work behind the scenes. Jordan, on the other hand, went on to star in a couple of Hollywood movies, neither of them big, and then settled into made-for-TV versions, mostly romances set at Christmas.

“The King of Christmas is back in his seventh film,” one of the links announced, and Ryan clicked through to the article. This was last year’s Christmas movie, in which Jordan wore a soldier’s scarlet uniform as heir to the throne in a made-up European country. At least, Ryan hadn’t heard of the country, so he guessed they’d invented it. There was a link to something called the Internet Movie Database , so he clicked on that, and it brought up a list of the things Jordan had acted in. Yep, seven Christmas films, all romances; the two movies, then the series before with Micah. It didn’t look to Ryan like Jordan had much time off since he was born. He must really love his job to never stop working.

Ryan moved on to Wikipedia, which was a lot more revealing. The twins were born in December 1985, which made them thirty—three years younger than Ryan. The twins had lost their father when they were young—cancer, it looked like—and both their mom and dad had their own Wiki pages. At that point he didn’t want to click anywhere else; somehow it felt like an invasion of privacy, and that was an odd feeling given investigation was what he did for a living.

A knock on his door interrupted his thought process, and before he could say anything, his brother Saul barged into his room. Ryan shut his laptop so quickly that he knew damn well what it looked like.

Saul held up his hand and began backing out of the room with a muttered “Oops, sorry to interrupt your alone time.”

“Asshole, I was looking at Wiki.”

Saul frowned. “Wiki does porn now?” he deadpanned.

“No, Wiki doesn’t do—Jeez, what do you want?”

“Eddie and the kids are downstairs.”

Ryan immediately stood, placing his laptop on the table and striding to the door. “What happened?”

Saul stopped him with a hand to his arm. “Nothing. They were shopping for school clothes and decided to drop in. Calm down.”

“The kids are okay?”

“Yes.”

“And Eddie?”

“Yes, jeez, Ry, he’s just visiting.”

Eddie, the second-oldest brother, never just visited. He was the only one of the five who’d been married, the only one who had kids, and the only one who couldn’t handle either. Of course, his first wife, Sarah—or, as Ryan liked to call her, Hell-Wife—had done a number on Eddie, but still, he was an idiot in general, the bane of Saul’s life. Eddie had always been in trouble, ever since he was small, and he relied way too much now on Saul and Ryan to provide a free babysitting service.

Not that he or Saul minded, but they weren’t going to tell Eddie that.

Eddie visiting at five in the evening probably meant the kids hadn’t eaten dinner, and for a second, Ryan thought about where to take them, but Saul was one step ahead of him. When Ryan reached the bottom of the stairs, Milly and Jake were sitting at the kitchen table with orange juice and the smell of cooking pizza filling the space around them.

“Uncle Ryan!”

Jake saw him first, and Ryan had the little boy climbing him like he was a tree, finally winding his arms around Ryan’s neck and holding tight. He was only four, and Ryan could easily hold his weight while Milly swung off his hand, chattering on about a dance at school and how she was learning all her spellings.

No sign of Eddie. Ryan glanced at Saul, who inclined his head to the door to the bar. Seemed Eddie wasn’t coming in here.

Not again.

Ryan waited until both kids were back at the table pulling apart the hot pizza and talking to Saul, and then he casually pushed open the door to the bar.

Eddie sat slumped at the bar, nursing a glass filled with amber liquid. If Eddie had turned to alcohol, this was more serious than Ryan had imagined.

“Hey,” Ryan said and slid onto the stool next to Eddie.

“’M not gonna drink it,” Eddie said, his voice scratchy and low. “It’s a test.”

Eddie was four years sober—did he test himself a lot? Ryan reached over and took the whiskey away, going behind the bar and taking out two Cokes. He slid one to Eddie and kept the other for himself.

“What’s up, E?”

“She left me, said it was all too much, wanted to go out partying, wasn’t ready to settle down.”

Shit. “I’m sorry.” For all his brotherly need to get a background check on Eddie’s girlfriend, Jenny, she had seemed quite nice. He guessed she wasn’t if she wanted to party when it was clear Eddie was a recovering alcoholic with two small children.

Eddie nodded, and took a big swallow of the Coke. “The kids loved her, and they said goodbye this morning, and she hugged them, and then when they were on the school bus, she began to pack.” He looked up right at Ryan.

Eddie looked like shit. Closer inspection in the dim bar light exposed his red-rimmed eyes and defeated expression.

“What did the kids say?”

“They don’t know. I haven’t told them yet.”

“You want me to?—”

“No, jeez, I didn’t come here for Saint Ryan to sort out my freaking kids.” Eddie pushed back his stool and made to leave.

Ryan grabbed his hand. “I’m sorry, sit down. I just meant if you needed help.”

Eddie struggled for a second, but he was the shortest of the brothers. Ryan was bigger and stronger, and even with the bar in the way, he had the upper hand. Finally, Eddie just sat back down.

“Talk to me.” Ryan moved to sit next to Eddie again.

“Jake called her Mom and she freaked out, I could see it. She hugged them goodbye, like she does every day, and he said ‘Bye, Mom.’ She went really pale, and she wouldn’t talk to me.” He reached into his pocket and pulled out a velvet box. “I was going to ask her to marry me.”

“Eddie, I’m sorry.”

Eddie looked at Ryan then, his expression bleak. “I loved her. No, I love her.”

“Then why are you still sitting here? Go talk to her.”

Eddie blinked. “I know you all think I’m useless, but Milly and Jake come first in everything.”

Ryan gave him a sideways hug. Whatever his faults, Eddie was a good dad when it mattered. “She may have just panicked. Talk to her, at least do that.”

“Can I?—”

“Yes, the kids can stay here. We’ll have a sleepover, and you can explain you’re a package deal and that you love her. Don’t come back empty-handed.”

Eddie left his stool, and this time Ryan didn’t stop him, waiting until he disappeared out the front door before returning to the kitchen. The children were covered in red sauce and laughing loudly at Saul doing something with the lettuce from the crisper. Ryan saw the lettuce had eyes made of tomatoes.

“Guess what, kids,” Ryan said, injecting huge uncle-enthusiasm into his voice, “who wants to build a blanket fort and sleep over!”

Saul shot him a quick look, but Ryan shrugged. The kids had stuff here permanently because Eddie’s job in security sometimes had him working overnight. Ryan wanted Eddie to be happy, wanted Jenny to be the one. And tonight, he had uncle duties to perform.

“Can we have hot chocolate?” Jake asked.

“And popcorn!” Milly demanded.

Only when Ryan was in the blanket fort with Jake fast asleep on his chest did he question the wisdom of sleeping on the floor.

“I love your tummy. It’s all soft.” Milly pressed her pointed chin into his middle. “And I love you, Uncle Ryan.”

“I love you too, pumpkin.”

She looked sideways up at him. “Do you think Jenny will come back?”

So much for secrets about what had happened to Jenny. One thing Ryan had learned from being an uncle was that kids saw straight through most of the handy lies that adults told them. “I hope so,” he finally said.

“Me too. I liked her. She made Daddy smile.”

Ryan’s heart cracked just a little.

The door to the fort was swept aside and Saul appeared bearing coffee in travel mugs. “Can anyone come in?” he asked.

He crawled into the tiny space left and lay on his back staring up at the bottom of the dining room table, which formed the solid main structure. Milly hugged close to her uncles, and her breathing soon settled to sleep rhythm.

“Think Eddie will be okay?”

Ryan sighed. “I hope so.”

“He loves that girl. The kids do as well. I really thought, after everything Sarah did to him and the kids, that he could be the one of us to be happy and settled.”

Ryan huffed. “That’s a depressing thought.”

“Well, you got yourself a boyfriend yet?”

There were many ways Ryan could answer that. Instead he looked sideways at his brother and decided to be honest. “Not at the moment, no.”

They lay in silence awhile. Then “This shit isn’t good for my back,” Saul groused.

“Suck it up, old man.”

“The things I do for my brothers.”

Ryan smiled. “And we love you for it.”

Saul elbowed him. “Yeah, you’d all better love me forever, then.”

All the things Saul had given up, the family he could have had if he wasn’t being a dad to his brothers, the life he could have lived… Ryan, Eddie, Jason, and Aaron, they all knew what he’d done. What he still did.

“Love you,” Ryan murmured.

But Saul was already asleep, curled up on his side like a pretzel.

Ryan willed himself to sleep, but it wasn’t happening straightaway. All he could think was that at some point this week he was meeting up with Jordan, and wouldn’t it be good if maybe they acted on the spark of attraction between them.

What a slim, sexy, and very pretty actor would want with a man like him, he didn’t know, and he laid a hand on his belly. He wasn’t carrying excess weight; at six four he could carry off all the cakes he could eat. Still, he would be willing to bet that under Jordan’s clothes were a whole bunch of muscles.

Maybe that was what in-the-closet actors did? They found the nearest gay guy on location and had a couple of weeks of fun.

Ryan prided himself on being a catch; he had a steady job, a heart that needed someone badly, and so much love inside him just waiting for the right man.

Unlikely it would be Jordan, but attraction and a few weeks of flirting on the down-low? He was okay to go for that.

No need to get his fragile, needy heart involved at all.