Liam’s mouth twitched “You knew I was gay?”
Carter snorted.“Iama member of Interpol, after all.I do have certain skills.”
Liam swallowed.“I love working here,” he said honestly.“I-I don’t want to leave forever.I….”
“Consultant status,” Carter said crisply, as though he’d been planning this all along.“Visit the UK office once or twice a year, give workshops.That way—” He shrugged.“—you can keep giving me juicy tips from time to time, but you and your young man can go your own way.And best of all….”He waggled his eyebrows and gestured to the trailer, the sole purpose of which was to allow for bureaucracy to chug along at speed.
“No paperwork,” Liam said softly.
“Right,” Carter said.“You’re never goddamned good at it anyway.Give me a week.Can you wait that long?Then I’ll book you a flight.”
He didn’t need to.A week later, Hunter, Chuck, and Carl landed in a private Prague airport, all of them rested, happy, and ready for trouble.
“Get in, loser,” Hunter said.“We’re gonna go fight.”
Stepping aboard the jet was his first step on the path home.
FINALLY,FINALLY,Josh had the all clear from the hospital for limited activity.He was tired, weak, bored and….
Content.
Healing sucked.It was gonna suck, and he needed to get used to the fact that he’d set himself back a good long year with the entire Kadjic enterprise.But whatever he’d needed to prove about carrying on the family business, about being good enough of a son for them to have sacrificed so much, he’d proven it.
Best of all, he’d learned he’d never needed to prove it at all.
The anger he’d borne so long no longer plagued his heart, and he found that his stress over what to do next was no longer a driving, constant presence.
He was going to be bored—he could finally read all those books his professors had recommended for extra reading.His friends weren’t going anywhere.Molly had spent a week in England with Liam’s brother—he promised to do the same in Chicago—but she wasn’t leaving.(Although she had chopped off her straight blond locks, and what was left was short ringlets that her brother still loved to touch when she was sitting at his feet.She looked adorable and claimed she’d lost twenty pounds of hair alone.)
Grace continued to share his time between the mansion in Glencoe and the dance studio and Hunter’s flat in Chicago.
And Stirling and Tienne might live in the basement of the Glencoe mansion forever.
Carl and Michael still ate dinner with them once a week, as did Chuck and Lucius.And Tor and Marco weren’t leaving the mother-in-law cottage anytime soon.
And the dads were… well, there had been arguing at first, during their first week back, but Josh was beginning to see the difference between an argument and a fight.Felix had beenterrified.Danny had been ready to die to protect them all but very glad that hadn’t been necessary.They’d needed to hammer their shit out first, and then they could be the family patriarchs that everybody else needed.
It had come.Like everything else with two such brilliant, headstrong, different people, it had been difficult—and difficult to watch—but it had been worth it in the end.
And Josh’s mother continued to be smart, stylish, andverybusy, and now?Radiant and madly in love with her child’s father, who while spending the last month in Europe, making sure his businesses were in good order after their summer adventures, would be back in the beginning of November.
She seemed especially glowy today, as she and Josh sat on the newly installed marble bench in her mediation garden, both of them wrapped up against the pending snow of a Chicago October, but wanting to see the leaves on a glorious sunny day just the same.
Josh had one thing on his mind.
“Mom, you know you can’t keep them.”
His mother raised her fingertips to the lovely green necklet at her throat, a circle of emeralds, princess cut, each one surrounded by an oval of tiny perfect diamonds.It was stunning, it lookedgloriouson her even though blonds weren’t supposed to wear green, and it wasso damned stolen.
“I don’t see why not,” she said, sounding petulant and seventeen.“It’s not like anybody knows we have them.Nobody even knewKadjichad them.And honey, since he’s given them to me, he hasn’t stolen a single pair of my earrings—not once.”
She’d said that when Grace had given her the giant pink diamond from the Louvre, as well.Every time Julia seemed sad or tired or overwhelmed with pregnancy at forty-one, Grace went to his luggage and produced another hot piece of jewelry.Hunter told Josh that he had no idea where the Princess Anne tiara was, but he thought Grace might be saving it for Christmas.
Right now, Josh dragged his fingers through his hair, which was getting shaggy.“ButMom, we’re trying to instill certain habits here.And not taking valuables from foreign countries is one of them.”
“But honey, we don’t even know for certain they’re from the Louvre heist.”
“Mom, he didn’t steal the provenance.It’s going to occur to them eventually that those jewels went somewhere.”
