But she launched herself into his arms, sobbing, and it was all he could do to calm her before the smoke alarm started beeping downstairs and all hell broke loose.
Dawn at the Horizon
FELIX SAT glumly at the counter of the giant open-air kitchen, feeling affronted, while Phyllis scolded him within an inch of his life. The remains of her best waffle iron, covered in fire-retardant foam, had been hauled outside and disposed of by the local fire department, the kitchen smelled like smoke, and Danny…
Danny was probably out the window, over the roof, and far, far away by now.
“I don’t even know why I’m bothering to yell at you,” Phyllis muttered. “You look like I kicked your puppy. You set my kitchen on fire!”
Squat, sixtyish, Phyllis had been hired when Julia and Felix had returned from Italy after their “whirlwind courtship and secret wedding.” Julia had been the one to do the hiring, and she’d made sure that Phyllis—plain, efficient, and very happy to live rent-free while she finished her degree in mythology and folklore—lived unmolested by Julia’s father. Mythology and folklore didn’t pay much. Phyllis published the occasional paper and a book every other year and had enjoyed auntie status in the household she kept tidy as a profession. She hadn’t had any family when she was hired and really didn’t seem to want one outside of Felix, Julia, and Josh. And she had doted on Danny.
“I was trying to impress him,” Felix admitted, not having felt this awkward or useless since he’d been trying to learn how to pick his first pocket. Without getting caught.
“Impress who?” Phyllis looked at him in surprise. “You haven’t had a guy here in a year and a half.”
Felix squinted. “There was a guy here a year and a half ago?”
“You didn’t sleep with him. You passed out on the couch. I made him eggs before you even woke up.”
Felix groaned. “Don’t… don’t spread that story around, okay?” He had vague memories of a kid barely older than Josh with curly brown hair and a gap between his front two teeth and… oh hell. Didn’t take a rocket scientist to figure it out.
He’d started to bang his head against the marble countertop repeatedly when he heard voices from upstairs.
“Dammit, Julia!”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about!” Julia yelled back. He knew that was her lying voice, but Felix didn’t really care.
That first voice had been Danny’s.
“Of course you know what I’m talking about. I put my suit right here!”
“Oh really? I have no idea.” Oh. That was Julia’s smug tone, and Felix tried valiantly not to grin. She had learned some tricks over those years of sneaking around her father as well.
“Julia—”
“Wear the clothes, sweetheart, and go tell Felix all about it.”
“Oh my God,” Phyllis said, her severe features almost transported as she stopped scrubbing at the counter. “Was that Danny?”
Felix raised his head just enough to meet her eyes, and she actually clapped her hands.
“Oh! Waffles! I get it now. You stay right there. I’ve got another waffle iron and some bacon and some syrup. Don’t let him leave until he’s had breakfast, you understand?”
Relief hit Felix’s stomach in a whump. “That was the plan,” he said weakly.
“Well, it failed when you didn’t trust your crew.” Phyllis gave a huff and a flounce—if a sixty-year-old woman wearing yoga pants and a Philosophy is Rock’n T-shirt could flounce. Felix watched her busy herself in the kitchen before Julia’s raised voice made him start with alarm.
“You are not going out the window like that.”
“I don’t have a choice!”
Felix was pounding up the stairs by that time, his footsteps loud even on the carpeted floor. He burst through the bedroom door in time to see Danny disable the contact point on the window that would have let him remove the pane.
“Are you fucking kidding me?” he gasped as he barreled into the room. “You can’t even stay for breakfast?”
Danny whirled to scowl at him. “Are the firemen gone yet?”
“Yes!” Felix snapped. “And Phyllis is all excited about cooking for you, so don’t even think about leaving.”
“I was supposed to be gone last night, remember? You, me, Josh… we were all going to have a civilized conversation this morning. Then you were going to let me do my thing, and—”
“Danny, it’s freezing outside. You’re barefoot in sweats. You were, what? Going to run across the lawn like that? There’s still frost on it, for Christ’s sake!”
Danny leaned his head against the window pane, face contorted in a miserable scowl. He scanned the lawn like he could see real freedom from this prison he found himself in. He was wearing an old pair of Felix’s sweats and a tattered sweatshirt from a thousand years ago.
Over ten years ago, actually, and a sweatshirt that Danny had given Felix on a long-ago birthday. Well played, Julia! But now it was Felix’s turn to seal the deal.
“I….” Danny swallowed. “This was supposed to go so differently,” he said. “Last night I was supposed to explain the con, let you think about it, and this morning Josh and I were going to meet, work out the finer points. We had a schedule.”
Felix looked at Julia, and she bit her lip. There was something here nobody had told him. Danny didn’t look vulnerable like this very often, not even when it had been just the two of them.
Felix advanced carefully, not putting it past Danny to leap out the window and onto the well-manicured lawn. He placed a gentle hand on the nape of Danny’s neck and began to massage it. Danny’s tense body gave a shudder, and he sagged, more of his weight on the window, some of it still in his tensely held shoulders.
“C’mon, Danny,” he said softly. “Is it so bad, seeing me again?”
Danny shook his head, closing his eyes against the freedom beyond. “It’s fine,” he said, voice cracking. “It’s… I….”
Felix lowered his mouth to Danny’s ear. “I missed you like I’d miss a lung, a kidney, and my right hand. Can’t you come down to breakfast? We’ll call Josh. It’ll be like old times.”
“Sure,” Danny said tonelessly. “Whatever.”
That wasn’t promising. Felix looked at Julia, and she turned away. What was going on here?
Felix took advantage—it was what he did. Twenty years of running Hiram’s businesses had brought out the confidence that Danny had depended upon back in Rome, and the stakes were much higher now. He slid behind Danny’s back and wrapped his arms around his waist, burying his nose against Danny’s neck. It was intimate, and it was a liberty. But Felix was damned if Danny was going to come back here to Chicago on some sort of rescue mission without Felix making some sort of move.
Danny stiffened in his arms but didn’t pull away.
“What’re you doing, Fox?”
“I’m declaring my intentions.” Felix ran his lips along the neck of the old sweatshirt. “You showed up and said, ‘I’m going to fix your life!’ I’m letting you know that you won’t get away that easy.”