Chapter 12
Breakfast was done and Mitch had arrived to work on the shutters without Rico. "I found this outside your door," Mitch said and handed off a package. While Julian was at his desk, Rob helped Danny unpack it and found his new spaceship and dinosaur sheets inside – just one small part of transforming his grandfather's house. Lenny sniffed the box then allowed Rob to take the sheets. "Lenny approves."
"Can we take them upstairs?" Danny asked.
"You can go with him," Julian told Rob. "It's not too busy here."
"Oh. OK. We'll take these up and put up the animal posters," Rob said.
"Me and Lenny are gonna help," Danny said and they all left together leaving Julian to his graphs and numbers.
Julian could hear them puttering around upstairs and then hammering the nails into the wall. Even that seemed like a happy noise. With Danny here, it was a different house than the one Julian grew up in.
Having Rob here so blond and handsome brightened up the place too. But Julian shouldn't have been thinking about him in that way. He had work to do.
Just as he was getting back to it, he heard Rico announcing himself from the front door. He hadn't arrived with Mitch, but he was here now. A few seconds of peace and quiet while he was probably kissing Mitch hello, and then Rico was poking his head into Julian's office.
"Jules," he said.
"Hi, Rico," Julian told him.
"Where's your boyfriend?" he asked after he looked into the other office and the library and didn't find him.
"You know Rob is not my boyfriend," Julian said, but Rico waved off his denial. "Isn't Mitch keeping you busy enough?"
"All night long," Rico bragged then gestured toward his grandfather's old office. "How come you work in here when you have that big office?"
"I might do something with it," Julian said evasively then he decided to tell Rico a little more. "It was my grandfather's office, and I don't have good memories of him or this place. I only came here for Danny."
"Because he's so skittish? What's that about?" Rico asked becoming uncharacteristically serious. He was also more perceptive than Julian realized.
"Danny was in an accident before he came to live with me. Now he gets scared easily especially by loud noises and cars," Julian told him.
"You picked a quiet spot. The banging we're doing when we're working won't scare him, will it?" Rico asked, impressing Julian with how thoughtful he was.
"He knows it's you guys. And he and Rob are upstairs making some noise of their own," Julian said.
"Rob is good with him, isn't he?" Rico said back to insinuating something again.
"Yes, he is. Coming back here and bringing Danny to a place that I only remembered with dread... I had a lot of doubts. That made me decide at the last minute to bring Rob with us. I was clutching at straws," Julian confessed.
"No. You were bringing your own fun. You were being smart and wily and not depending on luck," Rico told him.
"I don't know if you're praising me or accusing me," Julian said.
"I'm telling you that you did good. For all three of you," Rico said to make himself clear. "Rob is steady, strong, dependable, hot. What more could an uptight guy like you ask for?" Rico smirked and wiggled his eyebrows.
Knowing what Rico was implying with those wiggling eyebrows, Julian listed one more quality he liked in a prospective lover, "How about not employed by me?"
"What are you talking about? Rob is the perfect man," Rico told him.
Julian was surprised he would praise him like that. "Not for me."
"Yes, for you. I got a man," Rico said with a self-satisfied smirk.
"So when are you and Mitch going to get married?" Julian asked to change the subject.
"Soon. Now," Rico said impatiently then he sighed. "We were thinking we might have a winter wedding, maybe Valentine's. We need to save up for it. My grandmother offered to foot the bill, but we wanted to do it ourselves."
