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David smiled and shrugged. “Are you going to give it to me if I ask?” Noel shook his head. “Then it doesn’t really matter, does it?” He loved winning an argument. It was kind of his thing, and David was very good at it. “We’re here, and we’re having a nice dinner. There’s no need to ascribe something nefarious behind it.”
Noel took a sip from his glass and set it down. “So you make a habit of picking people up off the street at two in the morning to give them a ride home and showing up later to take them to dinner.”
“Actually it’s something I have never done before. I’m usually in a hurry to get where I need to go. But that weather yesterday was dreadful, and you looked half frozen with how you pulled yourself into that coat of yours. Besides, there’s nothing wrong with helping someone else out.”
“But what if I had been crazy—or worse?” Noel asked.
“Antoine is more than capable of handling just about any situation. It’s what he does,” David said, telling Noel the truth. In the years he had known him, Antoine had never seemed to encounter any kind of situation where he didn’t know exactly what to do. David had met some of the most famous people in the world, and Antoine was always ready with information and exacting advice on behavior. There had also been the time when a group of young men had decided that David was an easy mark with the way he was dressed. The three men ended up on the ground, moaning in pain, before they got within three feet of him.
“So he’s a bodyguard and a chauffeur,” Noel said. “What kind of man needs someone like that? Are you a mobster? The son of a mobster?” He set down his glass and made a show of looking closer. “I know, you’re an international spy like James Bond, and Antoine is your version of Pussy Galore.” Noel had to snicker a little.
“You really have an active imagination. Why would an international spy be in Milwaukee? This city is many things, but it isn’t a hive of international espionage.” He smiled brightly at Noel, and damn, if only for a second, Noel smiled back. It was like the sun finally coming out after three days of rain. “Just enjoy your dinner.” The server brought their salads, and David ate slowly. “Can I asked what you do besides…?”
“Taking my clothes off?” Noel supplied. David knew he was trying to get a reaction from him, but kept his features neutral and didn’t rise to the bait. After all, it was, in a way, how he’d met the spitfire that was Noel. “I’m a junior at UW Milwaukee. I’m studying business and marketing.”
“So you’re doing this to put yourself through school.” David had heard of people working as entertainers and escorts to pay for college. He’d just never met anyone like that before. Granted, David met a lot of people every day, but guys like Noel didn’t usually intersect with his social circle.
Noel swallowed another sip of wine. “I do what I do to make a living. It’s something most people have to do.”
“What about your family?” David asked.
Noel set down his fork. “Like, do they know, or are they ashamed of me?”
David shook his head. “I’m not accusing you of anything. I just asked about them.” He was not in a position to cast aspersions on anyone else’s family, especially when he thought about his own.
“I have relatives out there somewhere, I suppose. My father was never really in the picture, though I have met him a few times. He showed up every few years and would fight with Mom over child support or something… and then he’d disappear again, and she would turn him in to child services for nonpayment, and they’d go after him again.”
“What’s your mom like?” David asked.
Noel set down his glass. “She worked, and eventually died of cancer when I was a senior in high school. Mom had dreams for herself and for me, but none of them came true.” David wished he hadn’t asked, because it was clearly something Noel was still dealing with. “She worked two jobs to make ends meet and so I could dance. All that ended when I got injured and my professional hopes went up in smoke.” Noel’s vulnerable expression lasted only a few seconds and then it was gone. “After that, I had to make my own way.” He returned to his dinner, eating deliberately. “What about you? What’s your family like?”
“Let’s see. My mother passed away, and my father, Jackson, tried to replace her… badly. My stepmother….” God, how did he describe her. “My stepmother is one of those people who decorates part of the house in August to take a fake picture for her Christmas card so she can send it to all her friends who send out their own fake and posed cards. When she gets them, she looks them all over for any sign in the background of when they were taken. It’s hilariously stupid and incredibly fake, but that’s my stepmother. Everything is about appearances.” David downed the rest of the wine in his glass. “Not that I’m much better.”
Noel snorted. “How so? I mean, this dinner certainly can’t be for appearances. I’m not going to win anyone any popularity points.”
“No. This dinner is actually fun. Something I haven’t had in quite a while.”
“Why not?” Noel asked. “Everyone needs to have a little fun sometimes. Even James-Bond-acting potential international spies. And since I don’t know what you do, when the guys ask me about tonight, that’s what I’m going to tell them.”
“I see,” David said, smiling. “I trained in school as a lawyer.”
Noel rolled his eyes and mock shivered. “Then I’m definitely going with international spy.”
They finished their salads, and the server brought their main courses and refilled their glasses.
“What I actually do is even more boring than that. I work for my father.”
“Now that sounds dysfunctional,” Noel said. “Let me guess. He wants to do things the old-fashioned way, and you want to modernize and streamline.”
David couldn’t help grinning. “You’ve been watching too many television movies. And it’s nothing like that. I work for my father, but it’s….” He leaned over the table. “You know how your mother had dreams for you? Well, my father has ones for me, and he’s the pushiest bastard you’d ever meet in your life.”
“So tell him to sod off and go do what you want to do,” Noel said.
David had thought of doing that so many times. “I wish it were that simple. There are moments when I want to do just that, but it isn’t that easy.” Walking away from Jackson Hunter was something no one just did on a whim. “My father….” He searched for the words and came up empty. “He’s groomed me to take over from him since I was eight years old. Sometimes he would pick me up, not to take me to basketball or an after-school club, but so I could go to the office and start meeting the people in his world.”
Noel sat back. “Jesus. It’s like a cult. Got to indoctrinate the young as soon as possible.”
He had never thought of it that way, but Noel was probably right. “Anyway, let’s talk about something more pleasant.”
