But not, Hunter thought staunchly, with Grace’s puckishness and style.
Grace, it turned out, had broken his toe saving Hunter’s life, and while he’d insisted he could perform—and Hunter was pretty sure he could have—a tearfully grateful Artur had begged for him to, just this once, let someone else have the spotlight.
“You are a beautiful dancer, little lion, and you leave poor Michael in the dust. But I want you to dance for my company for many years. You don’t do that by dancing on your injury now.” The old man’s eyes had watered. “Besides, you and your friends have worked so hard. You deserve some rest, you think?” He’d looked winsomely at Hunter then. “I think your young man would agree.”
Hunter had rubbed the back of his neck, mildly embarrassed. But he did agree. Knowing Grace, he’d be throwing himself into the rest of the ballet’s two-month run with his whole heart. It was good to let his body heal now.
Especially since their hearts were all a bit raw after that terrible moment by the van.
Hunter had never had a boyfriend he would die for before. But now he had a family. Even Chuck. Not once the night before had anybody thought of leaving. Part of it, he was sure, was that Good Luck Chuck was Good Luck Chuck, and he seemed to inspire that sort of confidence. Those moments fighting—and running and hiding—in the garage had been some of the most exhilarating of his career. And some of the most fun as well. That adrenaline rush, that sense of play that he got with the Salinger crew—it was something irreplaceable. Some people might question how long such a thing might last, but nobody knew how long the School of Turin had been in existence, and those had been thieves out for themselves.
These people weren’t really criminals; they were more “people with a specific skill set”—and an agenda driven by Robin Hood himself.
And hey—that guy had hidden in the forest for years, right?
So Hunter was willing to play with them for as long as they wanted to play. He had money socked away for a lifetime, but people like this, who liked his company, who would stand together through thick and thin?
He wanted that. Who didn’t want that for themselves? He was going to seize it while it was there.
And of course there was Grace.
Grace, who was nine years his junior but so much a part of his life and his heart that Hunter wasn’t sure letting go was an option. He remembered a cat he’d had once as a kid. They’d fed it, and it had stayed in the barn and caught mice, but one night, in the rain, it had followed Hunter into the kitchen.
Every night after that, it had followed Hunter or one of his brothers or his father into the kitchen and would invariably end up on the foot of Hunter’s bed.
Hunter had loved that cat, had nursed her through her old age, had mourned her when she passed, but never, in all that time, had his parents admitted they had a cat. Hunter had given her a name—Maribel—but other than that, they’d simply called the poor old thing “Cat.”
Grace was simply Grace. Perhaps in the future they would get married. Perhaps Grace would finish school and become something else entirely than the dancer/thief he was so good at being now. All Hunter knew was that he’d petted Grace and shown him kindness, and Grace had chosen Hunter, and it was very possible he would continue to choose Hunter as long as they both lived.
Anybody not looking would assume Grace was too fickle for that sort of loyalty, but Hunter had seen Grace be a loyal friend and—whether he knew it or not—a loyal adopted son and a loyal little brother.
Hunter had peace in his heart that as long as he remembered what a fantastic creature Grace was, Grace would continue to be the man in Hunter’s bed.
They’d use the word “boyfriends” for now. Hunter was prepared to be boyfriends for the rest of his life.
“Ooh!”
The prince on stage executed a tricky move that ended in him hoisting Tabitha up over his head as she posed, both of them moving with synchrony and joy.
“You like?” Hunter murmured as the music continued to swell.
“Isn’t it beautiful?” Grace said, as awed as a little kid.
Hunter looked at him, his throat swelling and his eyes stinging a little. He’d seen Grace do things three times that spectacular—including giving that asshole Creighton a concussion when he broke his own toe. But all that mattered to Grace was that the dance was sublime, and even in the audience, he got to be a part of it.
“It’s stunning,” he said.
Grace smiled at him then, shyly, and leaned his head on Hunter’s shoulder as they continued to watch the rest.
Their hands were twined the whole time.
“TOO BAD nobody else could make it,” Grace said as they walked back from the theater. In spite of his limp—and the plexiglass walking cast that he’d slid on over his sock and under his soft-soled dress shoe—he’d found a planter on the edge of the river and was balancing on it. Hunter was just as glad it wasn’t the guard rail over the river itself.
“They want to see you,” Hunter told him mildly. Danny had given everybody’s tickets to a charity foundation that catered to college students. The seats had been full, but with the exception of him and Grace, everybody else had stayed home.
“Josh is sick,” Grace said, pausing his walk and hopping down to regard Hunter with sober eyes.
“He is.” Josh had slept most of the day and eaten almost nothing. They all knew that the next six weeks were going to suck—Josh said it himself a million times. But that didn’t stop the lot of them from worrying about the young man who had brought them all together and taught them how much fun they could have as a group. “Are you going to be able to deal with that?”
Grace’s breath caught, and he chewed his lip. “Last year at this time,” he said slowly, “I would have said no. I would have assumed you’d find me dead in a shooting gallery about a week after he went.”
Hunter’s heart turned to ice, and all his blood congealed.
“And now?” he rasped.
“Now, I’m more than the boy who’d do that,” Grace said simply. He turned and bumped Hunter’s shoulder, his hands in the pockets of his slacks as a defense against the wind off the lake. Even early summer in Chicago could be chilly, and Grace’s shoulders hunched as they resumed their stroll down the river toward the El train, which would take them back to Hunter’s flat.
“Yeah?” Hunter knew it came out as a question, but he needed an answer so very badly after that bad moment.
“I didn’t know his parents loved me,” Grace said, thinking about it, his steps almost even. “But Danny got here, and I realized I was as much a part of them as anybody. And I didn’t think a good man—someone normal, even if you’re an assassin—”
“Bodyguard,” Hunter corrected mildly.
“Trained killer,” Grace said, his mouth doing that pursing thing that Hunter found charming and infuriating at once. “Even if you’re a trained killer, you’re normal. You’re almost obsessively normal. It’s terrifying. But you seem to think I’m worth fighting for.”
Hunter couldn’t contain his laugh. “You broke your toe on the bad guy’s head,” he said.