Finally, after watching Hunter down his third plate of “cater-taters” and mourning his own performance and the cat-burglar dieting necessities of eating fruit and lox when he wasn’t eating sugar, he elbowed Hunter sharply in the chest.
“What?” Hunter snapped.
“Tell them,” Grace ordered.
“Tell them what?” Hunter’s eyes narrowed.
“Tell them whatever is eating at you. It’s driving me batshit.”
Hunter let out a sigh and pinched the bridge of his nose. “Afterward,” he said. “Grace, you may get to go play tourist a lot, but you know what? This is a luxury for me. Yesterday was like Disneyland, and today’s even better. Can we just… not espionage for eight hours?”
Julia, who was sitting on the other side of the table, heard him and laughed.
“Shall we make that a rule?” she asked everybody. “No espionage today?”
Grace narrowed his eyes, thinking about how often he looked at things only in relation to whether or not he could break in, break out, or break the rules.
“I’m not really sure that’s poss—” he started to say, just when Josh said, “Challenge accepted!”
Grace stared at him in horror. “I’ll kill you,” he said, wrinkling his nose. “Then I’ll go to work on you.”
Josh met his eyes squarely across the table. “You can do this, Grace,” he said. “You have more depth than you know.”
For the second time that day, Grace fought the urge to run to the bathroom and hide in the ventilation ducts. By the time the spasm had passed, Molly was talking excitedly about the walking paths that lined the side of the great granite walls of Capilano Park, and how the tour bus to Grouse Mountain was going to stop there so they could wander around.
Grace perked up then. “Do they have zip lines?” he asked.
“Zip lines?” asked a newly familiar voice, sounding wistful. “That sounds awesome.”
They all looked up to see Lucius Broadstone standing at the head of the table, waving with what seemed to be uncharacteristic diffidence.
“Mr. Broadstone!” Julia said, standing up and gesturing him to squeeze a seat up to the table. “Come join us.”
“Thank you,” he said. “I, uhm, was wandering through the lobby—the next flight for Chicago doesn’t leave until tomorrow, but I guess you all know that.”
Julia cast him a coquettish look from under her lashes. “We do. We were planning to forget all our espionage and go be tourists. Would you like to join us?”
And almost-billionaire Lucius Broadstone lit up a little. Apparently drifting around Vancouver alone hadn’t appealed to him either.
“Really?” he asked, and she patted his arm.
“Of course. We’re going to go play as soon as we settle up the bill. If you’d like to change into something a little more….” She waved her hands at his tailored slacks, dress shoes, and polo shirt, and he grinned.
“A little more appropriate,” he filled in, and she nodded.
“Of course. We’d love to have you with us.”
“Thank you,” he said, the sincerity in his voice unassailable. “My lady, you are a queen among women.”
She laughed throatily, and Grace suddenly wished she could find the sort of man who could take all that beauty and charm and love her as she deserved to be loved. It wouldn’t be Lucius, apparently, but that didn’t mean he didn’t appreciate a pretty woman being kind.
And Julia turned the conversation to the brochure in her hand, talking about their schedule and the things they wanted to do, and Grace found himself becoming as enthralled as Lucius.
Maybe he could survive the day after all.
Old Business
HUNTER HAD to valiantly hide his smirk at Grace’s disappointment. The paths at Capilano Park were enjoyable, but compared to what Grace did for fun, they were like someone expecting to race NASCAR ending up on one of those motorized tracks for kids.
“I still say they’d be more fun without the guard rail,” Grace complained, about fifteen feet ahead of Hunter as he ran across the suspension bridge for the umpteenth time.
“And I’d say you are showing off,” Artur said, grasping the side rail toward the entrance of it. “You’re not twelve anymore.”
Grace’s steps immediately slowed, and he ducked his head humbly. “I’m sorry, Dance Master.”
Hunter’s heart pinged a little. The bridge was bigger—and more stable—than it looked in the pictures. Still, for anybody with balance issues or height phobias or who wasn’t a rock climber or daredevil on principle, it could be frightening.
“Come here,” Hunter said, catching up to him and pulling him to the side of the bridge. “Look over the edge. It’s cool.”
The suspension bridge at Capilano Park was one of its main attractions. Originally built out of hemp rope and logs in the late 1800s, it had been replaced by cable and wire, and finally by this engineered creation of nylon-coated cable and sturdy synthetic planks. It spanned the gorge of the Capilano River, and the view—deep and verdant green—was both a little vertiginous and highly tranquil.
Grace peered over the edge moodily, and as Hunter put his hand in the small of Grace’s back, he could feel some of the “go” gentle into “breathe.” Perhaps this was part of Grace’s problem with relationships. He needed people who understood that the “go” was not about them. It was all about the hamsters in Grace’s own body, and how sometimes Grace needed to put them on their wheels and let them raise hell.
And sometimes, a little bit of breathing would chill them right out.
“It is,” Grace said, wonder suffusing his voice. “Why didn’t I notice that before?”
“You mean the other twenty times you crossed this, going from the Forest Walk to the Cliffwalk?”
Grace took another deep breath, and Hunter let his hand rise and fall with his torso.
“Well, I’m not allowed to take anything from the gift shop,” Grace muttered glumly.
“You’re not a kleptomaniac,” Hunter told him, hoping this was true. “You have too much professional pride to risk your reputation on tchotchkes you can easily afford.”
“Do they mean as much if they’re not stolen?” Grace asked, giving Hunter the side-eye.
“Why wouldn’t they?”
Grace blew out a breath. “I have lots of money,” he said nonchalantly. “I give most of it to the Conservatory—” His eyes grew wide and he looked over his shoulder to where Artur had accepted Lucius Broadstone’s arm for assistance crossing the bridge. “Don’t tell. Only Josh knows—he helped me make a budget. But I steal more, because….” He shrugged. “The giving is easy. The dancing for Artur is easy. Artur gave me so much. It needs to mean something.”
Hunter’s heart did more than ping this time. It cracked. “I think all Artur wants from you, Grace, is for you to be happy. Have you ever considered that?”
Grace wrinkled his nose. “You people and your ‘Grace needs to be happy’ bullshit. Grace doesn’t deserve to be happy. Grace is lucky if he doesn’t break people’s hearts by breathing.”