Turning the Page Read online

  Malcolm stifled a groan, but he turned and left to change. He found some casual clothes and a nice off-white and blue sweater David had bought for him years ago. It was an old friend, and it made him feel like David was holding him in a way. Yeah, he knew it was a little stupid, but he wasn’t willing to let David go. They had spent too many years together—and they’d been through him working too much, misunderstandings, buying a home together… and so much else—for him to just let him go.

  Once he was ready, Malcolm joined Peter downstairs and got their coats. It was going to get very cold, and Peter didn’t have this kind of cold in Virginia, so Malcolm loaned him a heavier coat, not telling him that it had been David’s, and they left the house.

  The streetlights were already on, and a few stars shone in the sky. That meant it was going to get bitterly cold. They took Peter’s rental since it was already warmed up, and Peter drove, with the aid of GPS, to the restaurant he’d chosen.

  It was a trendy and loud Mexican restaurant. The bar was nearly full, and the tables were packed with small groups and couples eating and talking. The place smelled amazing, though, with peppers, spices, and even chocolate layering over each other. Malcolm’s stomach rumbled, and he realized it had been quite a while since his hurried lunch.

  “Grab that table there, and I’ll check in with the hostess,” Peter told him, and Malcolm threaded through the crowd and sat down. He turned to see where Peter was, and his view was blocked by a large man. He lifted his gaze and was greeted with a smile.

  “I thought that was you.”

  “Hans,” Malcolm said, tamping down the flutter in his belly and extending his hand to Hans. “How are you?”

  “Much better thanks to you,” Hans said with a grin as he held Malcolm’s hand a little longer than was necessary. “I sent off the check with the revised paperwork, and I hope all that is behind me.”

  “It should be.”

  Peter approached and stood next to Hans.

  “Hans, this is my brother, Peter. He’s here in town for a few days. Hans Erickson.”

  “Your brother helped me with a tax issue.”

  “That’s what Malcolm does.” They shook hands. “What brings you here?” Peter asked.

  “I was supposed to meet someone for a blind date, but that was half an hour ago, and it seems I’ve been stood up.” Hans looked around the bar once again, and then his shoulders slumped. “Nothing like being dumped by someone you’ve never met before.”

  “There’s an extra seat here. Come join us,” Peter said as he pulled out the chair across the table.

  Malcolm wasn’t sure this was a good idea, but he wasn’t going to counter Peter’s invitation. Instead he nodded, and Hans sat down in the third chair.

  “What do you do?”

  “Hans is a writer of adventure stories. I’ve read some of his books.” Malcolm smiled. In fact, he was feeling a little starstruck. He’d met a lot of people, but he’d never had drinks with a best-selling author before. It was kind of exciting.

  Peter glanced at him and then back to Hans. “That’s pretty cool. My reading is pretty much confined to food and wine.”

  “Peter works for a national wine and beer distributor. His interest has always been wine. I could tell you stories, but Peter would get huffy if I did.” Malcolm grinned at Peter’s growl. “See?”

  Hans laughed warmly, and it disarmed Peter within seconds. That was amazing. Peter could be a force unto himself.

  “Where are you from?”

  “Virginia, outside Richmond.”

  “He and his wife, Susan, have the best daughter ever, Anabelle. She’s incredible. She has her daddy wrapped around her little finger.”

  “She really does.”

  “What about you?” Hans asked, looking at Malcolm, whose throat chose that moment to close up.

  “I was married for twenty years.”

  “Divorced?” Hans asked.

  Malcolm shook his head. He could do this. “David passed away thirteen months ago after a battle with cancer.” He breathed a sigh of relief. He’d actually been able to get the words out without falling to pieces.

  Hans nodded, and Malcolm saw that same shadow in Hans’s eyes that greeted him every time he looked in the mirror.

  “My little brother.” He put a hand over the floor to show his size. “He had leukemia. He fought for two years. He lasted until he was sixteen, so I know the ordeal that you went through. Cancer is evil, and it takes them away a little at a time. Up and down.”

  “Exactly,” Malcolm said. “I took care of David at home as much as I could.” He didn’t want to think back to the day that David passed.

  “Part of it is relief that they’re not in pain anymore,” Hans said. “Lars was hurting very badly by the end. You miss them, but seeing them that way….”

  “Is that where the character of Markie came from in Gathering Storm?”

  “Exactly, except in the story I gave him a happy ending because I couldn’t bear to go through that all again. I wrote the story with the ending that I really wish had happened. It’s one of the nice things about writing fiction—you get to have the ending you want.”

  Malcolm had rewritten the ending to David’s story in his head more times than he could count. But of course it did him little good.

  “Can I get you something from the bar?” the cocktail waitress asked as she placed napkins in front of each of them.

  “I’ll have a gin and tonic,” Malcolm said, and Peter ordered a glass of some red wine he’d never heard of. Malcolm turned to Hans.

  “Just a Coke, please,” he answered, and the server hurried away. “I have to drive home.”

  “Malcolm is driving us home while I enjoy sampling the wine,” Peter declared triumphantly. There was no use arguing. Malcolm rarely cared to drink that much, so Peter could enjoy his wine.

  “Have you been in this country long?” Peter asked. “I only ask because of your accent.”

  “We returned after Lars died. My parents were Danish Americans, and my father was stationed in Denmark for a number of years. So I ended up learning Danish before I spoke English. I had dual citizenship until I turned eighteen, and then I had to choose. I wanted to be an American, and I was living here, so that’s what I chose. The language issue sometimes trips me up, but I have excellent editors. I learned English when I was young, but it took some time to learn how Americans speak it.”

  The server returned and placed their drinks in front of them. Malcolm handed her his credit card, and she left with a smile.

  “Did you always want to be a writer?” Peter asked.

  “I don’t really know. In school I hated writing themes and papers. But what I do isn’t the same thing. My mother and father wanted me to be an engineer. I liked math, so I went to engineering school. I was good at it and learned fast. After I graduated, I got a job that I hated. It was designing roads, and that was boring. I got another job building bridges.” Hans rolled his eyes. “I ended up working on the same bridge twelve times. One bridge design built in twelve places with minor changes. That was dull as dirt. My break from drudgery came when I got the chance to work on an offshore oil rig. My mother thought I was crazy, and my father said it would make a man out of me. They were both right.”

  Malcolm smiled. “I can imagine.”

  “Lots of work and then nothing but time and nowhere to go. I started writing stories to pass the time, and the ideas I started on the rig became the basis for my first book a few years later. I continued working and writing, fell in love, got married of a sort, split up, and kept writing through it all. Now I’m a forty-two-year-old author with an ex-husband, no children, and I’m trying to learn things all over again.”

  “How long were you together?” Malcolm asked, trying not to look surprised that Hans was gay. Granted, his gaydar was way beyond rusty.

  “Fifteen years. I caught Troy sleeping with a friend of ours. Turned out that was his hobby—sleeping with our friends. He’d been
doing it for years, and no one said a thing. I was the laughingstock of everyone I knew. So I dumped him and thanked God we never got legally married.”

  “Damn,” Peter said. “What about your friends?”

  “I dropped them too and started over. We sold the house, and I bought my own place and began rebuilding.” Hans paused and drank most of his soda. “Sorry for laying that on you.”

  “Sometimes it’s easier to talk to strangers,” Peter said, then sipped from his graceful wine glass.

  “Or my lawyer,” Hans clarified, and Malcolm took a drink from his glass.

  “Gentlemen, your table is ready,” the hostess said.

  “Would you like to join us?” Peter asked Hans and turned to the hostess. “Is that a problem?”

  “No,” she answered, and it seemed that Hans was going to join them for dinner.

  That was Peter—he made friends everywhere and was incredibly sociable. It was something Malcolm had always been a little jealous of. Growing up, Peter had always been surrounded by huge groups of friends while Malcolm struggled. He’d always told himself it was because he was smart, but Malcolm now thought himself rather shy by nature. Or maybe he really was a dweeb like the kids had said.

  “I don’t want to intrude,” Hans said, standing back.

  “You’re not. I was trying to get my hermit brother here to go out and talk to people rather than sit home and eat takeout and frozen dinners in front of the television. So having you join us is great.” Peter swept them forward in a wave of energy.

  “Please,” Malcolm said to let Hans go first, and even though he knew he shouldn’t, he couldn’t help taking a peek at his backside. If it were possible, Malcolm would have done one of those bulging-eye things from Bugs Bunny. Either Hans’s jeans were sculpted or the ass inside them was. Either way, the sight was a thing of beauty: high, firm, and bubbly. In other words, perfection. Malcolm didn’t have time to think much about what he was seeing other than to wonder if Hans had been doing squats since the age of fourteen.

  They reached their table, and Hans took a seat, hiding the object of Malcolm’s fascination, and when Malcolm pulled out his own chair, he saw Peter flash him a look. Malcolm pretended he hadn’t seen it and put on his best innocent face. He was good at that. It had come in handy the few times he’d been in court or when he was explaining things during an IRS audit. Nonetheless, Peter had seen and kept looking between him and Hans like some yenta from Fiddler. Malcolm had been busted.

  “Are you working on a book now?” Malcolm asked to renew the conversation.

  “Always,” Hans answered. “I have one that’s being readied for publication and another that I’m finishing up. I have ideas for the follow-up, but I have to see if they pan out once this one is done. In a week or so, I get to write the climactic scene. I know what it’s going to be and how the bad guys are going to get beaten, but there’s always some surprise for me that makes that part of the book really exciting. It’s also the part where I discover if I forgot some scene or made a mistake that will take me weeks to go back and fix. After that it’s the wrap-up and another story is done.”

  The server interrupted them as she talked about the menu and then gave them a few minutes to look things over. Malcolm was starving and chose quickly, with an appetizer he hoped would arrive soon. He was starting to feel a little light-headed and shaky, which he knew was the result of a lack of food in his system. The others seemed to have decided as well, and when the server returned, they all placed their orders.

  “Do you like being a lawyer?” Hans asked as he turned his gaze to Malcolm, who found himself at a loss for words for a second.

  Dang, Hans’s eyes were incredible, and they reminded him so much of David. Not the rest of his face, just the eyes.

  “Yes,” Malcolm finally answered. “It’s what I wanted to be since I was a kid watching Perry Mason and L.A. Law on television. I knew that reality wasn’t depicted on those shows, but I didn’t care. Of course, I found out that practicing law is very different from how it’s made to look on television.” He finished his drink and switched to water.

  “Why tax law?”

  “I fell into that,” Malcolm said. “The firm I started out with isn’t the one I work for now. It was in a small town where Peter and I grew up, in lower Michigan. Everyone pretty much did everything, but we got a raft of tax issues after a set of IRS rule changes, and the partners funneled those to me. I had to study the various rulings and cases as well as work through the bureaucracy involved. I met people, built up contacts, and soon I was handling the cases with ease. Over time I learned more and more, went back to school for an accounting degree and a master’s in taxation law, and here I am.”

  “Malcolm is pretty brilliant,” Peter said. “He took on the IRS a few years ago. Actually took them to court and won.”

  “They had set up a rule that my client at the time thought was against the statutes, and we were able to prove it. The IRS had to change their rules.”

  “Does that happen often?” Hans asked.

  “No.” That was one of his main claims to fame. Winning a case against the IRS was pretty big, and it meant that a lot of people wanted his help. “I was already a partner in the firm at that time, but it raised the firm’s stature, and that’s always a good thing.”

  The server brought the appetizers, and the conversation quieted as they all began to eat. After a few bites, Malcolm felt better, and he found himself looking at Hans more than he should—and dang it if Peter didn’t catch him at it. Malcolm didn’t want him to get the wrong idea, and knowing Peter, he’d have him and Hans married off and happily living together in minutes. Either that or he’d be just plain insufferable the entire rest of the weekend, saying that he’d been right.

  “What was it like growing up in Denmark?” Peter asked.

  “I guess it was different from most people there in that I was of American parents, but it was a happy experience,” Hans said. “Being taught in a different language is a unique experience. By the time I entered school, I spoke Danish and English, and I had classes conducted in both. It was a very broadening experience for me, and I like to think it helped give me my love of words and language. We all think that the way we speak is the way everyone speaks and that everyone thinks the way we do, but it isn’t like that. In Hawaiian there is no word for weather because it wasn’t necessary. All languages are like that. What’s easy to say in one takes a lot more effort in another.”

  Hans’s eyes danced, and he bounced a little in his chair. It was amazing seeing such a large man move like that. For a few seconds, Hans was childlike and full of wonder. Malcolm tried to remember the last time he’d felt that way, and when he did, a cloud settled over him and he had to work to push it away.

  They finished their appetizers, and the server took the plates and brought the main courses, which smelled divine and tasted even better. Malcolm ate with relish, savoring the heat of the peppers and snap from the spices and lime. The beef was sublime, and he finished it off without paying much attention to what was around him.

  “Is he always like that?” Hans asked, pulling Malcolm out of his food haze. “You know you were making sex noises.”

  Malcolm colored, and Peter set down his fork, laughing. “That was something I don’t think I want to hear about. I love my brother, but I do not under any circumstances want to hear about his sex noises… or sex in any way.”

  “Peter has a problem with anything squicky,” Malcolm told Hans.

  “That’s a new one. Squicky?” Hans asked.

  “See, to him gay sex is squicky, and he knows I’m gay but never wants to hear about the squicky parts. Just like I don’t want to hear about him and Susan. Squicky. Though Peter’s definition of squicky is pretty broad.”

  Hans leaned closer. “Even normal stuff?”

  “Yeah. His squicky factor is pretty low.”

  “Good to know,” Hans said with a wink. “I bet yours isn’t.”

  Malcolm swal
lowed as Hans went back to eating. He was suddenly warm, and when he looked over at Peter, he found him with his head down, examining everything on his plate as though it contained the secrets of the universe.

  Hans had been flirting with him. Malcolm was sure of it, and maybe he’d been flirting back. He wasn’t really sure, but there was a tinge of excitement and energy he hadn’t felt for years. Malcolm refused to examine it, because if he did, he knew it would lead right back to David, and that wouldn’t help him at this moment. Malcolm returned to his dinner, cheeks heating. He shouldn’t be flirting with anyone. David was gone, but Malcolm still loved him, and flirting with anyone after…. It was just wrong. He put his foot down on his own thoughts and concentrated on what he was doing at that moment.

  “Aren’t they cute?” Peter asked, and Malcolm followed his gaze to where two men sat. “As long as I don’t have to hear the details I’m fine.”

  They were about twenty and looked very young as they gazed a little nervously at each other. It was obvious to Malcolm that they were together and out on a date.

  “I barely remember being that young,” Malcolm said softly. It didn’t take long for him to recall those first heady dates with David, the excitement and zing of each touch, how his uncertainty added to the energy of nerves firing all at once, how each gesture seemed meaningful.

  Malcolm blinked a few times and then stood and excused himself. He turned and went back out front to the restrooms, then ducked inside. He was alone, and he grabbed a tissue and pressed it to his eyes. All he kept thinking about was David. He knew he shouldn’t. It had been long enough, and everyone was right. Maybe it was too soon to date, but it certainly wasn’t too soon to start living a little again. Everything seemed so hard, and yet here he was out with Peter and having dinner with Hans. In a strange way, he knew he could make it through. He’d been having a good time until he let his memories get the better of him.

  Malcolm wiped his eyes and splashed some water on his face, dried it, and then checked in the mirror to make sure he didn’t look like a jilted bride before leaving the bathroom and returning to the table. He sat back down and finished his meal, letting Hans and Peter talk.