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“They’re very English,” I reasoned, hiding a grin as Nick passed me a latte. “Why, I could just swoon eating one of these,” I teased.
“Thank you,” Nick exclaimed, as exasperated with James as James was with him. “They are
very English, not that I’m sure why that suddenly matters.”
“Would you get out so I can dress?” James demanded, slapping the top of his bureau for good measure, “or would you like me to show your wife what she’s been missing all this time?”
Abby cocked her head curiously. “But I thought you said we’re dead to you? I know you as many things, James Cross, but I never took you for being into necrophilia.”
“You wouldn’t be dead under me, dear,” James wickedly said with a wink.
At that point, a frown wrinkled Nick’s forehead, and bickering banter came to a sudden stop as he stared at his friend in alarm. “What the fuck happened to your leg, man?”
I glanced over nervously as James looked down in surprise. Since his showdown with Robert, the damage done to his leg had yet to fully heal. While the swelling and abrasions had long since vanished, a nasty collage of bruises still marked his entire knee, as if he’d been kneeling in the ashes of a particularly gruesome fire.
Before he could say a word, Nick turned on me and snatched the latte away, obviously my punishment. “Did you do that?! Now, I don’t know how they teach you to fuck in Kentucky, but you’re supposed to be the kinder, gentler sex!”
“Della didn’t do anything,” James interjected.
“Hey, how do you know I grew up in Kentucky?”
Nick looked at me as if it was the stupidest question anyone had ever asked him, then turned an excited stare back on James, the type of stare that demanded answers. “So? You admit someone did this to you?”
“I admit nothing.” James sighed and ran his hands through his hair. “Now give me a scone.”
“Not till you tell me what happened!”
“Nick,” Abby said, quickly moving to her feet to lay a calming hand on her husband’s arm, “why don’t we tell them the real reason we’re here, and you can beat it out of him later?”
Ever the diplomat. I could learn a thing or two from her.
Nick glared at James for a second more before settling petulantly into an armchair “Fine,” he snapped. “We want to take you to the opera. They’re playing La Bohème. I know it’s your favorite. You love it almost as you love...scones”
James’s lips parted in surprise, as taken aback by the coincidence as I was, but he managed to play it coy and brush it off with a dismissive shrug. “It’s okay.”
I looked at one of them, then the other in astonishment, but Abby merely rolled her eyes. Yes, they were two of the most powerful men in the world, but they often acted like eight-year-old boys.
“Oh good,” Nick replied sarcastically, tipping the chair against the wall and folding his hands behind his head with an icy glare, “as long as it’s okay.”
“What did you expect me to say?” James answered coldly, still clutching his towel in defiance. “You just barged in here.”
“You do it to me all the time! Think of this as payback.”
“I think we need boundaries!”
“You’re telling me,” Nick said. “Quit barging into my house and I’ll quit barging into yours.”
There was a brief standoff before Nick silently handed out the rest of the coffee. It was a tentative truce, one tempered a great deal by the presence of scones and the threat of allowing our caffeinated beverages to cool.
As James reached for the final paper cup, though, Nick tossed it carelessly out the open window. “Oops. Sorry,” he said dismissively. “I guess we didn’t get enough latte.”
Okay, make that two-year-olds.
All four of us pretended not to hear the furious profanities wafting into the window from the street below, and I could only hope the man now drenched with hot coffee was at least a bit wealthier from the cufflinks he’d found earlier in the day.
James and I got dressed and we resumed everything downstairs. Tempers cooled significantly when returned with a bottle of bourbon to spike the coffee he pilfered from the rest of us. They cooled even further when I accidentally-on-purpose let it slipped that we had already made plans to go to that opera. It didn’t take long for the coffee to disappear, but we continued passing the bourbon around. The tempers vanished completely when James confessed to his meeting with the vice president and our subsequent solidification as a legitimate couple.
“Della, this is great news!” Abby literally jumped in place, clapping her hands together as an intoxicated flush drained her face. “You must let me do it for you!”
