He’d need somewhere to work. Perhaps he and Vaughn could set up a spare room or something in a house. Anything would work. It wasn’t like he’d need a lot of space, just a filing cabinet, internet, and a damn good computer. Maybe Jack and Riley would rent him a small room off a barn, or hell, he could work at the trailer’s tiny table.

When he reached the D, he stopped under the large wrought iron sign and got out of the car, stretching tall in the warmth of the sun. A car pulled up next to him leaving the D and the driver lowered the window.

“Can I help you?” a man asked. He was short with white-blond hair and dark brown eyes. “Are you lost?”

Darren felt like laughing. No, he wasn’t lost, for the very first time in his life, he actually felt like he had direction. Crossing to the guy, he held out a hand. Clearly this man was something to do with the D. The light of recognition in the other man’s eyes must have reflected in his. This was Marcus, Liam’s lover.

“Darren Castille. I don’t know if you remember me, from the court, um…” He paused. “Vaughn’s partner.”

The other man took his hand firmly, a strong grip for a little guy. “Marcus Walker,” he said. “I remember you.”

Darren waited for condemnation or something like it; after all, he was Hank’s brother. But there was nothing.

Instead Marcus was smiling. “Last I saw, Vaughn was over at the barn with the horses.”

Darren thanked him and climbed back in his own car before making his way down the long road to the ranch. His confidence in what he was doing steadily grew, but everything dropped as soon as the ranch came into view.

Doubts assailed him and had to count back from one hundred before he got out of the car.

“You okay?” a voice said from behind him. Turning on his heel, he was faced with Jack, who evidently was worried that Darren had taken so long to get out of his car.

“Yeah.” That was an easy answer.

“You looking for Vaughn?”

“Yeah.”

“Can I just talk to you quickly, be honest with you?” Jack began. Darren nodded, he wanted honesty. “I don’t know what y’all are planning, but Vaughn is happy here. And I offered him the position permanently.” There was no warning in his voice or any element of advice; he was merely making a statement.

“I think I could be happy here too,” Darren answered with a grin. “Sorry, Jack, gotta go.” With a bemused Jack staring at him, Darren turned and left for the barn. His steps quickened until he was nearly jogging to the place he knew Vaughn was working. He reached the barn and tripped his way over the entry seeing Vaughn, then just let everything in his head out.

“I had the interview, didn’t get the job, but it doesn’t matter ’cause I didn’t want it anyways, and I could set up myself and we won’t have much money, but we could rent a place with a spare room and I could work from home on accounts for ranches, and I could cook dinner, and you could work here and come home to me and we could get a place with a porch and maybe a view of something, I don’t know what, anything, I love you and I want to be with you and maybe get a dog or something, and…” Suddenly he ran out of breath, and he knew he was grinning from ear to ear.

A cough from next to Vaughn made Darren realize that Robbie was standing right next to his lover. He wasn’t embarrassed that his speech had been overheard, but Robbie made his excuses and left the barn. Finally it was just him and Vaughn.

“Our own place,” Vaughn said slowly. He didn’t sound as excited as Darren. That small thought pushed its way insistently into his enthusiasm, forcing a chink in the absolute perfect plan. Did Vaughn maybe not want this? Was this his way of saying they were done? Or that Darren was freaking him out?

“A small one, or maybe we could rent, or I could rent and you could visit…” Darren could hear the pathetic in his words.

Vaughn tilted his head, and his face held a thoughtful expression. “We can get a dog?”

Darren felt his mouth fall open. Just like that Vaughn had listened and accepted everything Darren had said. “Really?”

“Not a yappy dog, a big one.”

Darren closed his mouth. In an instant he was on Vaughn, climbing the bigger man like a monkey and pushing him back against the wall. They kissed until neither of them could breathe and they had to part for air.

“Fuck, Vaughn, this is serious,” Darren whispered.

Vaughn rested his forehead on Darren’s. “Deadly. I need to talk to Jack about his offer of making it permanent. Someone needs to earn the money,” he joked. More seriously he added the words that Darren needed to hear again. “Love you.”

Darren clung harder, until his muscles ached. Somehow, someway, they had made it to this point and hell, it rocked.

“I love you too.”

“Now, can you get down off me?” Vaughn deadpanned. “I think we’re scaring the horses.”

Chapter 18

Riley wasn’t sure what was more exciting, the fact that he was having his cast removed or that he and Jack had a night in Dallas to celebrate. Well, not the whole night, there was the pesky issue of a business meeting first, but after that he had Jack for the rest of the night. He needed it more than he’d thought he did.

The removal of his cast at Mercy left him on a downturn; the cast left pale skin behind and his leg ached like a bitch, and then the business meeting he’d felt pressured to attend was a complete loss.

“I fail to see why you won’t back the project.”

Riley inhaled sharply. He thought the past ten minutes had explained exactly why he didn’t feel it was right for him to carry on backing a project that Jeff had started ten years before.

The scholarship was nothing more than an excuse to hand money out to those that certainly didn’t need it. Every single student on the list was from Hockaday or St. Mark’s, and endowing more money on these kids was a waste of money.

“I’d rather the money went to kids who couldn’t fund college at all.”

The two men he was talking to, Bill and Adam Jenkins, cronies of his brother and cruel teasing bastards when Riley had been a kid, were blocking out his reasoning.

Bill, glassy eyed and just a little too loud for this restaurant, leaned forward in his chair. He even smacked a hand to the table in emphasis as he laughed.

“You’re not going to get the best for the college places by trawling every Hicksville in Texas. What do you want? Some kid who speaks with an accent and fucks horses?” Bill’s intentional crudeness was clearly aimed with a very personal target, and it wasn’t Riley with his privilege and his education.

Next to him Jack stiffened at the words, but to his credit he sipped at his beer and concentrated on his steak.

“Where you come from means jack shit if you don’t have the hunger to learn,” Riley pointed out.

This time Adam joined in with the laughing, and Riley could feel temper replacing the iciness of his control. Jack stopped eating and placed a hand on Riley’s knee, a warning and a comfort.

“Jesus Christ, Hayes, you’re as soft as your sister. Who’d’a thought being gay would fry your brains.”

Riley bit his tongue.

Bill interjected his own take. “Jeff would be rolling in his grave to see what you were doing.”

“Doing?” Riley asked, deceptively calm. These two idiots might well be friends of the Hayes family, but they weren’t Riley’s. Or Eden’s. Or, come to think of it, Sandra’s. Any connection they had to Hayes had gone when Jeff, then Gerald had died.

Bill continued. “Ethical this and fair that. You’ve clearly had the kill fucked out of you.”

“Ass fucked,” Adam added with a snort of laughter. Adam and Bill seemed to think they were sharing a huge joke with Riley. How the hell Riley didn’t take a knife and stab it in the nearest hand he didn’t know. Instead he took strength from Jack.

Riley interrupted the laughing. “Hayes will not be renewing the funding of the private members’ scholarships with you,” he said in his most definite tone. His leg ached, and he really didn’t want to be there.