Chapter 12

TWELVE

"Something bothering you, love," Toby's mum asked him with her best cheery-yet-concerned smile when Toby came down for breakfast the day after he'd arrived home from Staffordshire.

"No, nothing at all," Toby lied through his teeth as he accepted the cup of tea his mum had made for him.

His mum eyed him sideways as Toby bypassed the kitchen table, where Gerry was feeding Gracie and Tommy, and grabbed a piece of toast from the plate his mum was carrying to the table.

"Now, Toby," his mum said, setting the plate on the table, then walking back to him, "you know you can't lie to me. I've been seeing through you for twenty-five years now."

"Honestly, Mum," Toby said with a laugh that came out sounding desperate and fake.

He took an extra large bite of his toast then immediately followed it with half his mug of tea so he wouldn't have to say anything else.

"He's been cagey since he got home from his business trip with that thirst trap pottery guy," Gerry pointed out with a sly grin from the table.

Toby regretted stuffing his mouth so he couldn't speak, since it prevented him from defending himself.

"He was rather nice, wasn't he," his mum said.

Between her supposedly knowing look and Gerry's teasing grin, Toby didn't stand a chance.

"Nothing happened," he told the two of them once he'd swallowed his toast. "It was a business trip, that's all."

"So you say," Gerry said, giving her attention to Tommy along with the bottle she was feeding him. "It's a shame none of us were here when he dropped you home yesterday."

"A shame indeed," his mum echoed.

Again, Toby used the excuse of eating to not say anything. He'd been relieved when he'd returned home to find both his mum and Gerry out with the kids. It meant he could sneak in, go straight to his room, and toss and turn all evening as he debated whether he'd done a good thing or a very, very bad one by ditching Robbie in Staffordshire.

He'd agonized over his decision to leave even before he'd made it. As soon as he'd slept off enough of the alcohol to function, he'd come to the conclusion that Robbie felt bad enough about, well, everything, already, and that an awkward awakening, followed by another painful cross-country car trip would have been cruel.

It had been easy enough to pack up and head out without Robbie waking, and simple to find his way to the nearest bus station. Buses were cheaper than trains, and he could just about manage the fare without dipping into the money he'd mentally set aside for his family. He could afford the train. He could have afforded to fly. At least on paper. But growing up poor had left him with a constant sense that he couldn't afford shit.

Those thoughts were a distraction from what really bothered him as he helped himself to another two pieces of toast and piled a load of bacon between them. Had it been more merciful to leave Robbie in the hotel room, believing he was sparing the man's dignity, or was that just an excuse for running away from what really bothered him?

He liked Robbie Hawthorne. He liked him in the disgusting, kids in the school hallway giggling about who had a crush on who way of liking someone. If Robbie hadn't had so much to drink and hadn't puked it up again, Toby had no doubt that the two of them would have fucked like bunnies until dawn.

Whether that would have solved problems or created so many more remained to be seen. He might have dodged a massive bullet.

Then again, he still had to deal with the almost fucking. Oh, and the fact that he would do it again with both of them sober in a heartbeat.

"I'm off," he said with pretend enthusiasm once he finished his bacon sandwich and tea.

He squeezed Gerry's shoulder, gave Tommy and Gracie kisses, and kissed his mum before grabbing his bag and heading out of the kitchen.

"It'll work itself out, love," his mum called after him. "If it's meant to be, then nothing can get in your way."

Toby smiled at his mum's rosy outlook on things, but he lost his smile once he was out the door and in his car. Whatever was meant to be would be, and what wasn't could cause a huge mess for him to clean up.

The drive to Hawthorne House was nicer than he'd thought it would be. It was a rare day of sun, and the other drivers seemed less incompetent than usual. He arrived early at Hawthorne House, swinging around to go up the back drive and parking in the family lot, as he'd been given permission to park there the week before.

The house was still relatively quiet as he made his way in. Classes wouldn't start for another hour, and as he passed the office, Toby saw that neither Rebecca nor Early had opened it yet.

He hesitated in the front hallway for a few seconds, glancing at the stairs, which would take him up to Mr. Hawthorne's office and the space he'd taken over to do his work, then down the corridor that led to Robbie's pottery studio. He had a feeling, a pretty strong one, that Robbie would be up early and at his wheel. Two weeks of working with the family had taught him not only that Robbie was a morning person, but that he liked to work when he was upset about things.

It was probably a bad idea, but Toby couldn't help himself. With a huff of frustration for himself and his inability to leave well enough alone, he marched down the hall to the pottery studio.

Sure enough, Robbie already sat at his favorite wheel. The hum of the wheel's motor was the only sound in the room. Robbie was deep in concentration, his body braced carefully around the wheel, his elbows bent, and his hands seemingly working magic as the lump of clay spinning on the wheel morphed into the recognizable shape of a bowl.

Judging by the row of freshly thrown bowls on the shelf beside Robbie's wheel, it must have been bowl day or something. Each of the three finished bowls looked completely perfect to Toby's eyes, at least, from across the room. But Robbie grunted as though he wasn't satisfied with something as he leaned back and took his foot off the pedal that ran the wheel.

Toby couldn't drag his eyes away from Robbie's muscled arms as he reached for a wire tool, then slipped it under the bowl on his wheel to get it off. There was so much strength and grace in the way he moved. It reminded Toby of the way Robbie's body had felt shifting and flexing under his as their kissing had started to take them somewhere deeper the other night.

Robbie tensed as he set the newly finished bowl on the shelf and jerked to face Toby, as though Toby's presence had startled him.

"How long have you been staring at me?" Robbie demanded with a frown, his face going red.

Toby was deeply tempted to say "Since the moment I first met you," but that seemed like a little much.

"Just a few seconds," he said instead, thrusting his hands in his pockets and walking slowly over to the wheel. He nodded to the finished bowls. "They look great."

Robbie growled. "They're off. Everything feels off today."

Toby blinked in surprise and took another look at the bowls. "They look perfect to me."

Robbie sighed and rubbed the back of his wrist over his face, since his hands were messy with clay. "The thickness isn't right, in the base or in the walls. They're not uniform either."

"Who says they have to be uniform?" Toby squatted a little to get a closer look at the bowls.

"They need to look like the ones on the website," Robbie explained. "These are for sale. I can't go selling ceramics that don't match the pictures on my website. People would complain."

"Why?" Toby asked, shrugging as he stood. "You could just put a disclaimer on the page saying that individual items are handcrafted and may contain slight variations."

Robbie narrowed his eyes at Toby, like he'd said something wrong.

"What?" Toby demanded, half laughing.

"Is that why you're here? Am I the subject of your assessments today?" he asked. "Are you here to improve the way I do my business or live my life?"

Robbie Hawthorne. Sometimes Toby wanted to fuck his brains out and make him moan and drip with sweat, and sometimes he wanted to slap the bastard upside the head and tell him to get a fucking grip.

"Were you okay yesterday?" he asked instead, leaning against the wall. "Did you wake up and make it home alright?"

Another hurricane of emotions twisted its way through Robbie's expression. "I'm here, aren't I?"

Instead of turning it into an argument, Robbie jerked away from him and started clearing away the extra clay from the bat he'd been working with, then grabbed a ball of clay from the pile on the other side of the shelf. He slammed the ball onto the wheel, then pressed the pedal to start it turning.

Toby felt a bit like the ball, slapped around, shoved every which way, and maybe formed into something useful.

"I would have kept going the other night if you hadn't been sick," he said, raising his voice over the sound of the wheel.

Robbie pulled his foot up, and the whirring sound stopped enough for Toby to hear his sigh. "And?" he asked without looking at Toby.

"And I thought you might like to know that," Toby told the back of Robbie's head. "I wanted you." He drew in a breath, feeling like he stood on the edge of a cliff and was about to take a huge step out over the edge. "I still do," he added in a quieter voice.

Robbie's back tensed. Toby could practically feel the heat rolling off of him.

After what felt like forever, Robbie said, "Even after I made a complete arse of myself?"

Before Toby could answer that, Robbie pushed the pedal, sending the wheel whirring again. The hum felt like a wall Robbie had put up to keep whatever answer Toby might give from hurting him.

Robbie was already hurting. That much was obvious to Toby. And as much as Toby knew it wasn't his job to heal him, he did feel like it was his job to try. Wasn't that the entire purpose of him being at Hawthorne House for the month? To help the family do better?

"You're a gorgeous, sexy, accomplished man, Robbie," he said, keeping his voice relatively low, like he didn't dare to declare anything louder for fear Robbie might spin out, like he'd seen some of the pots people had tried to make do. "I was thinking we could?—"

Toby's attempt at asking Robbie out on a date like a normal person was interrupted by the sound of voices approaching from the hall. Not just any voices either.

"…is extraordinary," Mr. Hawthorne was in the middle of saying. "And you're certain that Willoughby Entertainment is willing to pay that much?"

"On my honor," Duckie's voice sounded in reply.

Both Toby and Robbie turned to the studio door just as Mr. Hawthorne and Duckie strode into the room.

"Robbie, I knew you'd be in here," Mr. Hawthorne said. He looked a little dazed as he walked over to Robbie's wheel. "Morning, Toby. It's good you're here, too."

Toby uncrossed his arms from how he'd been standing while watching Robbie and stood straighter. Almost subconsciously, he tugged at the hem of his suit jacket as he glanced to Duckie. The old sensation of wanting to please his mentor and prove that he was more than the waste of time that everyone had once thought he was pulled at him, even though he knew he was better than that now.

"Toby." Duckie nodded to him, but there was a frostiness in his expression that took Toby by surprise.

"What's this all about?" Robbie asked, leaving his half-finished bowl and standing. He stepped to the side and reached for a towel to clean his hands, glancing questioningly at his dad as he did.

"I've come on behalf of Willoughby Enterprises to say that we've taken a look around, crunched a few numbers, and we're prepared to up our offer for Hawthorne House from two hundred million to two hundred fifty million," Duckie said with a broad smile.

Toby frowned, his heart racing. It was more money, but something about the new offer hit him wrong.

"Just like that?" he asked. "Willoughby Enterprises ‘took a look around', and they've upped their offer by twenty percent?"

Duckie glanced to him like he was Gracie interrupting the climactic moment of a championship football match. "That's what I said," he said, steel in his eyes. He turned back to Robbie. "As I've explained to your father, you aren't going to get an offer quite like this."

"I don't know what to do," Mr. Hawthorne said. "On the one hand, it's our ancestral home. On the other, with money like that, all of us could do whatever we wanted, travel anywhere, open any sort of gallery, enjoy any sort of project, for the rest of our lives."

"I…I don't know what to say." Robbie looked just as stunned as his father.

"Estates like this are a relic of the past," Duckie said, making an off-hand gesture. "No one in the modern era wants to be responsible for all this."

"It's their family's legacy," Toby said.

He hadn't thought he'd spoken particularly harshly or critically, but again, Duckie looked at him like he wanted to snap, "Be quiet!"

Instead, Duckie turned back to Robbie and his dad and said, "The family would maintain a stake in the project, of course. And the house itself would not be destroyed."

"It can't be," Toby pointed out. "It's a grade two building."

"Regardless of all that," Duckie went on dismissively, not even looking at Toby, "you're only going to get this chance once."

Prickles broke out down Toby's spine. He was reasonably certain he knew what Duckie and Willoughby Enterprises were doing. He'd seen Duckie use the tactic before, but on a smaller scale. He was coming in with a shock-and-awe deal of a lifetime, more money than the property was worth. It was designed to startle and impress the sellers, and to lure them into a deal that would start to change as soon as things began to be signed. It stopped just short of being a bait and switch, but the Hawthornes wouldn't end up with the two hundred and fifty million Duckie was promising them.

"I have another idea," he said, heart racing and hands shaking imperceptibly.

All eyes turned to him. Mr. Hawthorne was genuinely curious. Robbie looked like his emotions wouldn't settle on just one thing. And Duckie looked like he might slap a hand over Toby's mouth to keep him from spoiling things.

"What's your idea?" Mr. Hawthorne asked.

Toby sent Robbie a brief look, avoided looking at Duckie entirely, and focused on Mr. Hawthorne.

"I had a long chat with one of the production team while we were on the set of The Ceramics Challenge," he said, spilling the idea he had hoped to form more completely before talking about it. "Aaron Powter. He was the representative from Silver Productions, who was there because he's a fan of Robbie's work."

When Toby glanced to Robbie, he was startled to find Robbie watching him intently, his eyes wide. Now was not the time to ask what that was all about, though.

"I told him about Hawthorne House," Toby went on, focusing on Mr. Hawthorne again. "I pitched it to him as a potential location for period drama shoots. He seemed interested."

Duckie snorted derisively. "I thought it was made clear to you by other production companies that the house had been altered too much in the renovations that made it into a school for use in period dramas," he said, shifting closer to Mr. Hawthorne, like he could block Toby from the man's sight and eliminate him from the discussion.

"True, the house wouldn't be suitable for wide-angle shots without some additional work," Toby said, bristling with nervous energy at going against his mentor. "But the grounds have all sorts of stunning features. The jousting ring, not the game one, the actual one, wouldn't take much dressing to make it look authentically medieval. After the success of that show, After the War , Silver Productions is looking into greenlighting more queer historical entertainment. They've got a pilot script for a medieval show their team is mulling over right now."

"Interesting," Mr. Hawthorne said, stroking a hand through his long beard. "I'd only ever thought about the house for filming, but there could be a lot of things on the grounds."

"If the production company wanted to take the time and expense of updating things to suit whatever purpose they have," Duckie said, laughing like the idea was silly. "Hollywood moves at a notoriously slow pace, whereas Willoughby Enterprises is willing to write a check by the end of the week."

There it was. Duckie was under a time crunch. He was trying to push things through so fast the Hawthornes wouldn't have time to scrutinize the deal.

"I could call my contact at Silver Productions and ask them to come for a visit ASAP," Toby said.

"That would be fantastic," Mr. Hawthorne replied.

"Toby, could I speak to you for a moment?" Duckie said, turning his attention directly to Toby.

He started out of the studio, gesturing for Toby to follow him.

Toby sent a glance to Robbie, who didn't seem to know what to think, then followed Duckie out to the hall.

"Silver Productions could really—" he started once he and Duckie were alone.

"What the fuck do you think you're doing?" Duckie hissed at him, standing so close that Toby wanted to take a large step back.

"Looking out for the best interests of the Hawthorne family," Toby said, standing his ground.

There weren't words for how intimidating it was to have the man who had picked him out of an entire class of aspiring businessmen to mentor glaring at him. The words "I brought you into this world and I can take you out of it again" rang in Toby's head, in a different context than he'd ever heard them. And without a shadow of a doubt, Duckie could destroy any chance of a career in finance that he had.

"These hippie, weirdo nobs don't know what's best for them," Duckie hissed in a close whisper, flicking spit on Toby's suit jacket. "Do you know what kind of commission I could make from this deal? Millions. Enough to retire in style. I won't have some cheap faggot ruin the best deal to come my way in years. So back off, or I'll send you right back to the gutter where you came from."

Duckie stepped back and looked at Toby like he was something that had gotten stuck to his shoe, then he turned, put his fake smile on, and headed back into the studio.

"Sorry about that," he said to Robbie and Mr. Hawthorne, while Toby stood there stunned and bleeding. "How about we sit down and sign a few papers, hmm?"

It was like being slashed with a knife to have the man he'd admired so much speak to him that way and using those words. The wound was still raw and numb, and he barely heard Mr. Hawthorne say, "I need to speak to the entire family about this first. This isn't the sort of decision that can be made in a day."

"I understand perfectly," Duckie said, which was a blatant lie. "Take all the time you need."

Toby was glad that, despite his eccentricities and terrible head for business, Mr. Hawthorne was smart enough not to jump at anything. He just hoped there was time to convince the family there was another way to go.

He glanced into the pottery studio as Duckie continued to make his case and sell his idea. Robbie was watching him with a troubled look. As much as Toby wanted to think he could read Robbie like a book, he didn't actually have the first idea what that look meant. But he had a horrible feeling that Robbie had witnessed his dressing down and was realizing that the two of them were too different to ever make anything romantic or hot between them work.