Everyone but poor Carl, but then, it wasn’t like the group was going to give him any choice.
“I like Carl,” Chuck said amiably, and everyone but Danny sent him a dirty look. When they’d first encountered Soderburgh on their previous job, Hunter and Molly had almost maimed the guy to keep him from outing Danny as more than a mild-mannered museum docent.
Everyone had been on board for the maiming except Chuck, who apparently had fond memories of the guy in bed.
“No hanky-panky,” Felix said acidly, and Julia’s tinkle of laughter let him know what she thought of that.
“Really, Felix? You and Danny practically sit in each other’s laps!”
“We don’t do panky,” Chuck said. “Only hanky.”
“What’s the difference?” Hunter asked, amused in spite of himself.
“Well, when you got both, it means there might be dinner and breakfast. When you only got one, it means a hand job is a handshake and everybody can get on with their lives.”
“What if it’s more than hanky-panky?” Grace asked, his eyes moving sideways to Hunter.
Chuck gave him the tender look one might reserve for a little brother. “Then it’s a relationship, and you take it with appropriate seriousness.”
Grace’s quick, affectionate grin made Hunter clutch his heart.
“So, Carl is in,” Danny said. “Felix and I will call him and Torrance this afternoon—they’ll start showing up at briefings when they can make it.”
“What makes you think they’ll want to show up?” Felix asked suspiciously, and to Hunter’s surprise, it was Julia who answered.
“They will,” Julia said. “Didn’t you see how much they loved being involved in our last little adventure? After we tapped him for info, Torrance Grayson actually called me up, asking if we were—in his words—thinking of doing anything else exciting. I told him I’d let him know.”
“Mom—” Josh was visibly melting into his seat. But then, Josh had been pale to the point of green for the past week, so the color in his cheeks was an improvement.
“Don’t worry, darling,” Julia said. “It wasn’t only about his little crush on you. Trust me. He really does seem to have developed a taste for the game. Of course, he’s known for his investigative journalism—and, oddly enough, for not irritating people he works with. The perfect con man.”
“It’s settled then,” Danny said, obviously trying to move things along. “Stirling, are all the cameras working? Do we have audio?”
“We need one more com check,” Stirling said. “I’ve spent the last two weeks outfitting the van you bought me. We can run it from there.”
Danny nodded. “Excellent. Molly, did you make contact with Papers for your credential forgeries?”
Even though they were working in catering, apparently even catering needed to be bonded.
Fortunately, he and Felix had a contact for that. The elusive “Papers” was a surprisingly good-looking young man with an awkward fall of blond hair in his blue eyes and a faint stammer who painted beautiful forgeries—and even more beautiful projects of his own. He was their go-to guy for everything from forged passports to provenance, and although he moved in and out of the mansion like a ghost, he seemed to genuinely enjoy working with them.
“Yessir.” Molly gave Stirling a sideways glance. “He seems to have a thing for my brother.”
Stirling’s doe-soft eyes got large and luminous. “I, uhm, he’s….”
Nobody laughed. Nobody coughed. Everybody stared at Stirling in bemusement and—if they were anything like Hunter—hope. Stirling was awkward and shy or terse and short, with no in-between. To see him perhaps opening up, talking to somebody who seemed to have a kindred spirit, well that would be good.
“He’s a very nice young man,” Felix said softly. “He was too singular for art school, but he’s worked hard to educate himself.”
Stirling shot Felix a grateful look, which was unusual, because Felix usually seemed to cow the poor kid. “He’s nice,” he said briefly. “He does good work.”
“That’s good to hear,” Felix told him warmly. “Danny, what else?”
“Well, Torrance was coming anyway, but now he’s part of the job. We need more papers for Soderburgh. I want to install him as a visiting head of security, and I need to find Stirling a place he can park the brand-new tech van. How’s that coming along, Stirling?”
“Great!” Stirling said, clearly excited about the vehicle that looked like a delivery van but housed enough surveillance and computer equipment to take over a small country. “I was hoping Josh could look it over and see if there was anything I missed. Are you up for it, Josh?”
The lack of answer surprised them—Josh had been excited too.
But now he snored softly as he sat, hands clasped across his chest.
There was a moment of quiet, and then Danny spoke again.
“Felix, you need to make sure the tech van has a comfortable cot, yes?”
“Indeed,” Felix said, his voice strained. “That’s my number-one priority.”
“Then let’s make sure we have papers and parking permits, etcetera, for Chuck as well,” Danny said. “I know he’s supposed to drive the van and get Josh and Stirling out if anything goes amok, but you know what? He was quite useful last time. I don’t think we should limit his options.”
“That’s mighty kind, sir,” Chuck said with a grin. “I’ll try to do you proud.”
Danny winked at him. “I have no doubts.”
There were a few details to cover after that, but as the meeting drew to a close, Hunter turned to Grace so they could go up to bed and found him sitting next to Josh on the couch, his head on Josh’s shoulder.
He waited a moment, expecting a surge of jealousy to hit him, but instead he remembered how hard Josh had fought to run after Grace that night he’d disappeared into the rain.
“You’re not jealous, are you?” Felix asked, proving once again how he could run a news network and a multinational conglomeration with the force of his will. His knowledge of people was gut-deep and undeniable.
“No, sir,” Hunter said softly. “They’re…. It’s almost like you can see them both as grade school kids every time they get near each other. It doesn’t matter if they’re bitching or sleeping or daring each other to do something stupid. I’ve never seen anything like it.”
Felix nodded. “Dylan has been—always—something of an enigma to us. But the one thing we’ve never doubted is how much he loves Josh.”
Hunter thought of his parents, who would never know of their son’s life, and of his brothers, who had assumed that drinking beer on Friday nights was as good as life got.
“They’re lucky,” he said. “Both of them.”
“I hope so,” Felix told him gruffly. “Josh has a lot of weeks of treatment to go.”
Hunter glanced at them, making sure Grace wasn’t listening. “Why are you letting him go ahead with this?” he asked.
Felix sighed. “When he was little, he wanted brothers and sisters, you know. Lots of them.” A corner of his mouth lifted wistfully. “We told him he’d have to settle for an Uncle Danny, because not many people had one of those. But Uncle Danny was secret—I think he may have told Dylan, but I’m not sure if anyone else knew. And then, when he was ten, Danny….”