“I thought you said you weren’t leaving.”
At the unexpected voice, Gabriel Mason lifted his head, looking up from the packing he’d been doing. Stephen Dominick stood at the entrance to his bedroom, studying him. Last night he’d wept on Gabe’s shoulder, but this morning his expressionless mask was firmly back in place. And yet there was a hint of insecurity, of vulnerability, in his voice that made Gabe’s heart twist in his chest.
“Did you see the internet this morning?” he asked.
“The picture of the two of us having sex in the gay club?” Dom crossed his arms over his chest and leaned a shoulder on the doorjamb. He’d obviously stopped by Gabe’s apartment on the way to his downtown office in the Dominick Technologies building, and he wore an impeccably tailored navy blue suit that made him look like a million bucks—which would actually be undervaluing him by quite a lot. “I warned you that might happen, Gabriel.”
“It wasn’t us having sex.” Gabe stuffed a folded pair of jeans into his worn old suitcase with more force than was strictly necessary. “It was us making love.”
“I doubt the media jackals see it that way. In any event, you said it didn’t matter to you. You said you’d already been exposed to the world enough already. Been there, done that, got the freakin’ t-shirt, remember?”
“I guess I was wrong. Some things ought to be private, Dom.”
“Generally speaking,” Dom drawled in his most sardonic tone, “if you want to keep something private, it’s best not to do it in a public place.”
“It doesn’t matter.” Gabe folded up a t-shirt and shoved it into the suitcase. “Even when we’re alone, we’re not alone. There’s probably some guy out there with a camera right now, trying to get a shot of me through the window.”
“There was. My security guards convinced him it would be best to leave.” Dom straightened up, and took a tentative step forward. “Look, you need to realize something … this is what my life is like. I tried to warn you when we first became lovers, but I don't think you really understood. Maybe it's something you can't understand till you've been through it. But now you've seen what it's like. It will die down, Gabriel. Sooner or later, the media will find something else to divert their tiny little attention spans, and eventually, it will die down. But in the meantime…”
“In the meantime,” Gabe said bitterly, “I can’t take a dump without someone snapping a photo.”
“This has been my life for years.” There was an undercurrent of bitterness in Dom’s voice, too. “It’s one reason I never…”
He trailed off, and Gabe looked at him with more interest. “One reason you’ve never really had a serious relationship?”
Dom shrugged, as if aware he’d been on the verge of actually disclosing something about himself. Can’t have that, Gabe thought with mingled annoyance and amusement. Last night, weeping in Gabe’s arms like a small child, Dom had seemed vulnerable, almost shattered, for a brief span of time. But he was clearly determined not to let it happen again. His iron control was back, held in place with big unbreakable padlocks.
“It’s not easy,” Dom said instead. He looked down at the suitcase, and Gabe was startled to see a crack in his mask. A bleak sorrow flashed through his dark blue eyes, just for an instant. “I understand why you’d want to run away.”
“I’m not leaving you, Dom. I promised I wouldn’t. I just… I need a break.”
“From me.”
Dom’s voice was flat, emotionless, but Gabe could sense the hurt beneath the cool tone. Or maybe that was just wishful thinking. “Of course not from you, idiot. From all the crazy people with cameras. In fact, I was going to toss this bag in my car and drive over to the DT building and ask if maybe you wanted to take a little vacation with me.”
“A vacation,” Dom repeated blankly, as if he’d never heard the term before in his life.
“Yeah, a vacation. You know, a few days away from the office. Do you good.”
Dom still looked blank, and Gabe could understand why. Dom was legendary for never taking a day off. He was usually in the office at least half of the weekend, too. He hadn’t become one of the world’s richest men by being a slacker.
“I can’t take a break right now,” Dom said. “I’m working on the next iteration of Dominance. Looking over the proposed merger with Kestrel Tech. And there’s a stack of papers three feet high on my desk…”
“Which will still be there three or four days from now.”
“Yeah, only it’ll be six feet high. I don’t take vacations, Gabriel.”
Gabe closed his suitcase, zipped it shut, and turned to face the other man.
“Time you learned,” he said.
*****
“My limo is over there.”
“Forget your limo.” Gabe popped the trunk on his old blue VW, which was parked at the curb in front of his Ghent apartment, and tossed his bag in the back. “You might as well put a flashing neon sign on it that says PHOTO OP: BILLIONAIRE AND HIS LOVER HERE. The idea is for the paparazzi not to follow us, Dom.”
“They’ve been stalking you for the past month. They know your car, too.”
“I can lose them. Trust me. And out on the road it looks pretty much like a thousand other cars, which isn’t the case for your limo, or any of your muscle cars, for that matter.” He closed the trunk with a hard slam—the latch had gotten a bit cranky in its old age—and looked at the other man. “You coming?”
“Um…” Dom looked hesitant, uncertain, in a way the great Stephen Dominick never looked. “You haven’t forgiven me, have you?”
“Not entirely, no. I’m still pretty pissed about what you did. But I promised to stay, so I figure we should try to work through things. We can’t do that if crazy people are constantly following us around and snapping pictures all the time. Come on.”
Dom fidgeted, shifting his weight from one handcrafted leather shoe to the other, and looked at his gold watch. “I have a meeting this morning…”
“Whatever.” Gabe was damned if he’d beg. He strode around to the driver’s side and used his key fob to unlock the doors. “Don’t worry, Dom. I’ll be back in a few days. I promise.”
Dom looked at him over the fading blue roof of the car. He was obviously trying hard for an impassive expression, but his eyes gave him away. They said clearly, I don’t want you to go. Gabe pushed a little harder.
“I mean, assuming the car makes it. It’s a long ways down to Charlotte, and if it breaks down I don’t know if I’ll be able to afford to get it fixed—”
“Charlotte!” Dom’s eyes filled with pain and hurt again. “You were moving to Charlotte!”
“I already told you, I’m not moving.” Gabe tried for a soothing tone, and opened the driver’s side door. “But I have to get away for a little while. I have to. They’re driving me nuts. And I really wanted to go somewhere different. My mom was from Charlotte, and I’ve always wanted to see it…”
At the thought of his mother, dead for eighteen months now, he reached up, almost unconsciously, to touch the diamond in his right ear. Dom’s eyes softened slightly, and he seemed to surrender. He yanked on the other door handle, pulled the door open, and dropped into the seat. Gabe sat down too, and the expensive, sensual scent of Dom’s cologne drifted to his nostrils. A prickle of sexual awareness ran through him, but he tried to ignore it.
“This thing is tiny,” Dom said with patrician distaste.
“No kidding. I think it would fit in the trunk of that limo. One of these days I’m going to get something a little bigger, something where my head doesn’t brush against the ceiling.” He started the engine, and it coughed and sputtered, then caught.
“My security guards…”
“I don’t think they’re going to fit in the back.” Gabe indicated the tiny back seat with a jerk of his head. “I guess we could always tie them to the roof, though.”
Gabe knew perfectly well Dom didn’t usually travel with security guards in tow. He’d probably been worried about paparazzi swarming around Gabe’s apartment after seeing the picture on the internet, and maybe had just dropped by to make sure Gabe was okay. The thought sent warmth through him. But ordinarily, he knew, Dom drove to and from work in one of his many classic muscle cars, all alone. And that made sense, because Dom was a big, strong guy. He could take care of himself. So could Gabe, for that matter.
He didn’t want to share Dom with security guards. Today, he didn’t want to share Dom with anyone.
Dom leaned his head back and sighed. “Let’s just go,” he said.
Gabe pulled out into traffic.
*****
By the time they hit US 58, the four-lane state road that led across Virginia, Dom was already grumbling. He’d called his security guards and told them to go home, then dialed his assistant Sandy and let her know where he was, and that he’d been out for a few days. He hadn’t put it on speakerphone, but Gabe could tell from Dom’s side of the conversation that Sandy had been shocked by her boss’ unprecedented and abrupt vacation.
After that, he’d wrapped up a few of his most pressing business affairs by phone… and now he was bitching.
“There are plenty of better ways we could get away together,” he complained, glaring out the window as endless woods whipped by. US 58 ran five hundred miles across the southern part of Virginia, and passed through a lot of back country, punctuated by small towns. “I have a yacht, Gabriel. An eighty-foot yacht. We could sail down the Intracoastal Waterway toward Florida…”
“Sounds nice,” Gabe admitted. He glanced in the rearview mirror, making sure no one was following them, but the road was empty. “A yacht beats the hell out of my VW.”
“Or we could climb in my private jet and fly anywhere you want. Anywhere in the world. If you’re really determined to go to Charlotte, we could fly from Norfolk to Charlotte-Douglas International in a fraction of the time.”
“Then we wouldn’t have as much time to talk.”
“Yeah, but I could induct you into the mile-high club.”
That did sound fun. But Gabe steeled himself against temptation, and spoke firmly.
“Or we could just be like, you know, normal people, and take a car.”
Dom’s lips tightened. “Normal. Is that how you see me? Abnormal?”
“Let’s just say that the average person doesn’t get to travel in an eighty-foot yacht too often.”
“I’m not average,” Dom said in his most persuasive tones, “and neither are you. Think of everything we could do together…”
“On your dime, yeah. Can’t you get it through your thick head that I don’t want to be a mooch, Dom? If we’re going to be a real couple, and not just fuck buddies, then you’re going to have to let me pick up the tab sometimes. And if that means eating in diners and traveling in a Volkswagen occasionally, then you’ll have to deal with it.”
“I have never in my life eaten in a… diner.” Dom endowed the last word with aristocratic disdain.
Gabe grinned, and repeated his earlier words. “Time you learned.”
“Fine.” Dom sounded outright sullen. “If this is how you want to do it, this is how we’ll do it.”
“Great.” Gabe turned up the radio, which he’d turned down out of deference to Dom’s phone conversations. Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young blared from the speakers in a tinny rendition of “Carry On,” and he raised his voice to be heard over the electric guitar and four-part harmonies. “And the first thing we’re going to do is get you some regular clothes.”
Dom turned his head and blinked in surprise. “What’s wrong with the clothes I’m wearing?”
“Well, first of all, I didn’t give you a chance to pack. You’ll want to change at some point, and you can’t wear my clothes because you’re skinnier than I am. But what you’re wearing isn’t great for a road trip anyway.”
Dom tugged at his lapels. “This is a very nice suit.”
“Yeah, but you’ll get grease on it when we stop for lunch. We better get you some jeans and t-shirts. There’s a town about ten miles up this way. I bet we can find a Wal-Mart.”
“You are not seriously suggesting that I shop in—I have never in my life—” Dom broke off before Gabe could say Time you learned, and heaved a sigh, sounding terribly oppressed.
“Fine,” he said glumly. “Wal-Mart it is.”
At the unexpected voice, Gabriel Mason lifted his head, looking up from the packing he’d been doing. Stephen Dominick stood at the entrance to his bedroom, studying him. Last night he’d wept on Gabe’s shoulder, but this morning his expressionless mask was firmly back in place. And yet there was a hint of insecurity, of vulnerability, in his voice that made Gabe’s heart twist in his chest.
“Did you see the internet this morning?” he asked.
“The picture of the two of us having sex in the gay club?” Dom crossed his arms over his chest and leaned a shoulder on the doorjamb. He’d obviously stopped by Gabe’s apartment on the way to his downtown office in the Dominick Technologies building, and he wore an impeccably tailored navy blue suit that made him look like a million bucks—which would actually be undervaluing him by quite a lot. “I warned you that might happen, Gabriel.”
“It wasn’t us having sex.” Gabe stuffed a folded pair of jeans into his worn old suitcase with more force than was strictly necessary. “It was us making love.”
“I doubt the media jackals see it that way. In any event, you said it didn’t matter to you. You said you’d already been exposed to the world enough already. Been there, done that, got the freakin’ t-shirt, remember?”
“I guess I was wrong. Some things ought to be private, Dom.”
“Generally speaking,” Dom drawled in his most sardonic tone, “if you want to keep something private, it’s best not to do it in a public place.”
“It doesn’t matter.” Gabe folded up a t-shirt and shoved it into the suitcase. “Even when we’re alone, we’re not alone. There’s probably some guy out there with a camera right now, trying to get a shot of me through the window.”
“There was. My security guards convinced him it would be best to leave.” Dom straightened up, and took a tentative step forward. “Look, you need to realize something … this is what my life is like. I tried to warn you when we first became lovers, but I don't think you really understood. Maybe it's something you can't understand till you've been through it. But now you've seen what it's like. It will die down, Gabriel. Sooner or later, the media will find something else to divert their tiny little attention spans, and eventually, it will die down. But in the meantime…”
“In the meantime,” Gabe said bitterly, “I can’t take a dump without someone snapping a photo.”
“This has been my life for years.” There was an undercurrent of bitterness in Dom’s voice, too. “It’s one reason I never…”
He trailed off, and Gabe looked at him with more interest. “One reason you’ve never really had a serious relationship?”
Dom shrugged, as if aware he’d been on the verge of actually disclosing something about himself. Can’t have that, Gabe thought with mingled annoyance and amusement. Last night, weeping in Gabe’s arms like a small child, Dom had seemed vulnerable, almost shattered, for a brief span of time. But he was clearly determined not to let it happen again. His iron control was back, held in place with big unbreakable padlocks.
“It’s not easy,” Dom said instead. He looked down at the suitcase, and Gabe was startled to see a crack in his mask. A bleak sorrow flashed through his dark blue eyes, just for an instant. “I understand why you’d want to run away.”
“I’m not leaving you, Dom. I promised I wouldn’t. I just… I need a break.”
“From me.”
Dom’s voice was flat, emotionless, but Gabe could sense the hurt beneath the cool tone. Or maybe that was just wishful thinking. “Of course not from you, idiot. From all the crazy people with cameras. In fact, I was going to toss this bag in my car and drive over to the DT building and ask if maybe you wanted to take a little vacation with me.”
“A vacation,” Dom repeated blankly, as if he’d never heard the term before in his life.
“Yeah, a vacation. You know, a few days away from the office. Do you good.”
Dom still looked blank, and Gabe could understand why. Dom was legendary for never taking a day off. He was usually in the office at least half of the weekend, too. He hadn’t become one of the world’s richest men by being a slacker.
“I can’t take a break right now,” Dom said. “I’m working on the next iteration of Dominance. Looking over the proposed merger with Kestrel Tech. And there’s a stack of papers three feet high on my desk…”
“Which will still be there three or four days from now.”
“Yeah, only it’ll be six feet high. I don’t take vacations, Gabriel.”
Gabe closed his suitcase, zipped it shut, and turned to face the other man.
“Time you learned,” he said.
*****
“My limo is over there.”
“Forget your limo.” Gabe popped the trunk on his old blue VW, which was parked at the curb in front of his Ghent apartment, and tossed his bag in the back. “You might as well put a flashing neon sign on it that says PHOTO OP: BILLIONAIRE AND HIS LOVER HERE. The idea is for the paparazzi not to follow us, Dom.”
“They’ve been stalking you for the past month. They know your car, too.”
“I can lose them. Trust me. And out on the road it looks pretty much like a thousand other cars, which isn’t the case for your limo, or any of your muscle cars, for that matter.” He closed the trunk with a hard slam—the latch had gotten a bit cranky in its old age—and looked at the other man. “You coming?”
“Um…” Dom looked hesitant, uncertain, in a way the great Stephen Dominick never looked. “You haven’t forgiven me, have you?”
“Not entirely, no. I’m still pretty pissed about what you did. But I promised to stay, so I figure we should try to work through things. We can’t do that if crazy people are constantly following us around and snapping pictures all the time. Come on.”
Dom fidgeted, shifting his weight from one handcrafted leather shoe to the other, and looked at his gold watch. “I have a meeting this morning…”
“Whatever.” Gabe was damned if he’d beg. He strode around to the driver’s side and used his key fob to unlock the doors. “Don’t worry, Dom. I’ll be back in a few days. I promise.”
Dom looked at him over the fading blue roof of the car. He was obviously trying hard for an impassive expression, but his eyes gave him away. They said clearly, I don’t want you to go. Gabe pushed a little harder.
“I mean, assuming the car makes it. It’s a long ways down to Charlotte, and if it breaks down I don’t know if I’ll be able to afford to get it fixed—”
“Charlotte!” Dom’s eyes filled with pain and hurt again. “You were moving to Charlotte!”
“I already told you, I’m not moving.” Gabe tried for a soothing tone, and opened the driver’s side door. “But I have to get away for a little while. I have to. They’re driving me nuts. And I really wanted to go somewhere different. My mom was from Charlotte, and I’ve always wanted to see it…”
At the thought of his mother, dead for eighteen months now, he reached up, almost unconsciously, to touch the diamond in his right ear. Dom’s eyes softened slightly, and he seemed to surrender. He yanked on the other door handle, pulled the door open, and dropped into the seat. Gabe sat down too, and the expensive, sensual scent of Dom’s cologne drifted to his nostrils. A prickle of sexual awareness ran through him, but he tried to ignore it.
“This thing is tiny,” Dom said with patrician distaste.
“No kidding. I think it would fit in the trunk of that limo. One of these days I’m going to get something a little bigger, something where my head doesn’t brush against the ceiling.” He started the engine, and it coughed and sputtered, then caught.
“My security guards…”
“I don’t think they’re going to fit in the back.” Gabe indicated the tiny back seat with a jerk of his head. “I guess we could always tie them to the roof, though.”
Gabe knew perfectly well Dom didn’t usually travel with security guards in tow. He’d probably been worried about paparazzi swarming around Gabe’s apartment after seeing the picture on the internet, and maybe had just dropped by to make sure Gabe was okay. The thought sent warmth through him. But ordinarily, he knew, Dom drove to and from work in one of his many classic muscle cars, all alone. And that made sense, because Dom was a big, strong guy. He could take care of himself. So could Gabe, for that matter.
He didn’t want to share Dom with security guards. Today, he didn’t want to share Dom with anyone.
Dom leaned his head back and sighed. “Let’s just go,” he said.
Gabe pulled out into traffic.
*****
By the time they hit US 58, the four-lane state road that led across Virginia, Dom was already grumbling. He’d called his security guards and told them to go home, then dialed his assistant Sandy and let her know where he was, and that he’d been out for a few days. He hadn’t put it on speakerphone, but Gabe could tell from Dom’s side of the conversation that Sandy had been shocked by her boss’ unprecedented and abrupt vacation.
After that, he’d wrapped up a few of his most pressing business affairs by phone… and now he was bitching.
“There are plenty of better ways we could get away together,” he complained, glaring out the window as endless woods whipped by. US 58 ran five hundred miles across the southern part of Virginia, and passed through a lot of back country, punctuated by small towns. “I have a yacht, Gabriel. An eighty-foot yacht. We could sail down the Intracoastal Waterway toward Florida…”
“Sounds nice,” Gabe admitted. He glanced in the rearview mirror, making sure no one was following them, but the road was empty. “A yacht beats the hell out of my VW.”
“Or we could climb in my private jet and fly anywhere you want. Anywhere in the world. If you’re really determined to go to Charlotte, we could fly from Norfolk to Charlotte-Douglas International in a fraction of the time.”
“Then we wouldn’t have as much time to talk.”
“Yeah, but I could induct you into the mile-high club.”
That did sound fun. But Gabe steeled himself against temptation, and spoke firmly.
“Or we could just be like, you know, normal people, and take a car.”
Dom’s lips tightened. “Normal. Is that how you see me? Abnormal?”
“Let’s just say that the average person doesn’t get to travel in an eighty-foot yacht too often.”
“I’m not average,” Dom said in his most persuasive tones, “and neither are you. Think of everything we could do together…”
“On your dime, yeah. Can’t you get it through your thick head that I don’t want to be a mooch, Dom? If we’re going to be a real couple, and not just fuck buddies, then you’re going to have to let me pick up the tab sometimes. And if that means eating in diners and traveling in a Volkswagen occasionally, then you’ll have to deal with it.”
“I have never in my life eaten in a… diner.” Dom endowed the last word with aristocratic disdain.
Gabe grinned, and repeated his earlier words. “Time you learned.”
“Fine.” Dom sounded outright sullen. “If this is how you want to do it, this is how we’ll do it.”
“Great.” Gabe turned up the radio, which he’d turned down out of deference to Dom’s phone conversations. Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young blared from the speakers in a tinny rendition of “Carry On,” and he raised his voice to be heard over the electric guitar and four-part harmonies. “And the first thing we’re going to do is get you some regular clothes.”
Dom turned his head and blinked in surprise. “What’s wrong with the clothes I’m wearing?”
“Well, first of all, I didn’t give you a chance to pack. You’ll want to change at some point, and you can’t wear my clothes because you’re skinnier than I am. But what you’re wearing isn’t great for a road trip anyway.”
Dom tugged at his lapels. “This is a very nice suit.”
“Yeah, but you’ll get grease on it when we stop for lunch. We better get you some jeans and t-shirts. There’s a town about ten miles up this way. I bet we can find a Wal-Mart.”
“You are not seriously suggesting that I shop in—I have never in my life—” Dom broke off before Gabe could say Time you learned, and heaved a sigh, sounding terribly oppressed.
“Fine,” he said glumly. “Wal-Mart it is.”
