Making Promises (10 page)

“Angel Marie?” Kimmy asked, laughing, and Shane shrugged.

“I’ve got, like, six dogs—he’s the biggest.”

“You named a boy dog ‘Angel Marie’?” Mikhail sounded bemused, and Shane looked away, embarrassed.

“You have to see him—he’s like a cross between a Great Dane, a Bull Mastiff, and a Newfoundland. It’s like someone went to a dog show and made a ‘big dog DNA milkshake’, and Angel Marie is what popped out. I figured it was either Big Fat Bug-Faced Baby-Eating O’Brian or Angel Marie. I picked Angel Marie.”

Mikhail blinked for a moment and then smiled. It was a whole smile, not tainted by irony or coquettishness or his perpetual sneer, and if Shane hadn’t been mostly in love as it was, the smile would have done him in.

“I have seen that movie—right after we arrived here in this country.

It was very funny.” With that he took Shane’s hand again and led them to the bleachers, where they spent the next hour watching men control horses while wearing armor.

Shane couldn’t stop talking about it as they walked back to watch Kimmy do her last dance—where he would finally meet the elusive Kurt and take them both to dinner.

“Deacon would have loved that,” he was saying as they approached the stage, and Kimmy ran around the hay bales set in rows for the audience so she could get ready for the performance. “He’s really good at breaking horses, and he always loves a challenge!”

“If you know nothing about breaking horses, how do you know he’s good at it?” Mikhail demanded, and Shane found himself a hay bale and sat down before he answered.

“You have to see him in the ring. The horses practically read his mind. You barely hear any commands or see him do anything—I’ve never even seen him use the whip or anything. And Shooting Star is supposed to be the meanest, orneriest bitch to ever bear a saddle—I’ve heard people who haven’t been on the ranch in years talk about that horse. And Deacon rides her. She thinks he invented hay. He’s just good at his job, that’s all—

and so’s Crick, but Crick likes to talk to people. Deacon puts all that into horses.”

“Enough!” Mikhail grunted sourly. “I’m sorry I asked. I don’t want to hear about Deacon, god of horses, any longer. Keep talking about Shane, stupid cop with the insane number of dogs.”

“And cats.”

“Cats?”

“I’ve got six of them too.”

“Whatever. Tell me about the man who would do that.” Mikhail’s impatience was getting hard to tell from his gentleness, and Shane smiled a little. It was fun getting him riled. But it was hard answering that question.

Shane sighed and leaned forward and rested his elbows on his knees, looking around to see which of the people at the Faire that he’d seen during the day would be watching this performance. The family he’d first seen—the one with the teenagers and the small children and the over-plump mother and long-suffering father—was huddled in the corner. The children were munching moodily on some pretzels, and they looked exhausted. So did mom and dad, in a good-natured way. The older children were still talking excitedly, and mom smiled up at her ginormous son and handed him a wrinkled set of bills with a wave of her hand.

Another parental resolve not to spoil offspring gone with the resolve not to eat another cookie.

It was a good family, Shane thought, loving these complete strangers with all of his heart.

“Shane, stupid cop with an insane number of stray animals, is not that interesting a person,” he said after a moment. “Uncle Shane, indulgent spoiler of children—he’s got potential to be someone.” Mikhail leaned forward, matching his pose. He didn’t say anything, but he leaned slightly so that their upper arms were touching, as were their 50

thighs. He had taken his shirt off for the performance, and it was hot, so he was simply wearing the little turquoise vest. Shane was acutely aware of this smooth-skinned, tanned, muscular body, hot and smelling like sweat and work and cedar and chamomile, seeping heat into Shane’s skin through his new clothes.

He had to sit up straight after a moment of doing that, because his lower body woke up with a happy heart and an eager look to a new adventure that Shane was pretty sure wasn’t going to happen that day, and he looked fondly at his “date for the Faire.”

To his surprise, Mikhail spoke first.

“You will go out to eat with your sister after this, da?”

“Yeah.”

“You will take her and her asshole boyfriend, and then drop them back off?”

“Yeah.”

“I will be here—I’ll be staying in the tents behind the Faire. Some of us sleep here, if we don’t have a hotel room. You will come say hello?”

“Yeah.” Shane blushed and looked at his hands. “I’d like that. But I’m not sleeping with you tonight.”

He heard the disgusted sniff and slanted his eyes sideways to catch the pout on that sulky little mouth. “No one asked you to,” Mikhail said loftily. “But I will be here if you want to say hello.”

“I’ll look for you to say hello,” Shane told him. Carefully, as natural as the rising sun, he moved his hand to Mikhail’s knee and turned it palm up.

Mikhail put his hand in it, palm down, and then the music started and they both turned their attention to the stage.

Now they call you Prince Charming…

“That Smell”—Lynyrd Skynyrd

SHANE was grateful Kimmy only made him see her second show the one time. He could never really get into clogging. About halfway through the show, he heard Mikhail’s soft laughter next to him, and he turned stern eyes to his companion for the day.

“I’m sorry,” Mikhail whispered, “but if you could only see your face! I would never doubt where I was with you, Shane-the-stupid-cop, because if you ever wore that expression, I would know I had crossed the line.”

“Like now?” Shane muttered dryly, and Mikhail burst into another paroxysm of laughter—this one muffled against Shane’s bicep.

Shane ignored him and dutifully watched as his sister finished up her number—but not before she cast Mikhail a glare that could have seared meat, right from the stage. Of course that set him off again.

Finally, finally, the program ended, and Mikhail stood, his fingers still linked with Shane’s, and with surprising strength he hauled Shane to his feet.

“Remind me not to piss you off,” Shane told him, impressed, and together they waited patiently until the tipping queue had cleared out (Ren Faire Mom gave the smallest child a dollar to put in the basket) and then joined Kimmy and the extremely pretty man next to her.

“Shaney!” Kim cried, and Shane wondered how long it would take for that name to start grating on his ears like it had when they were kids.

“Here…. Come here. I want you to meet Kurt. He’s the leader of our troupe, right? But he strained his shoulder, which is why Mikhail got to come sub—anyway, we’re living together in a little apartment in Monterey. That’s where your Christmas cards have been going, right? So, uhm….” She paused in the awkward silence. “Shane, this is Kurt. Kurt, this is Shane.”

“The one with all the money, right, Kimmy?” He was dressed in a troubadour’s outfit, complete with cape. He had a narrow face with high cheekbones, dark blond hair in a stringy ponytail, and a light blond growth of stubble on his cheeks and chin, and Shane disliked him on sight.

To her credit, Kimmy blushed. “I don’t know how much,” she mumbled, “and I don’t care.”

“Oh, c’mon, Kim—I was only kidding!”

Kimmy’s look, sideways and quick, could only be described as

“hunted.” Shane met Mikhail’s eyes, and the dancer arched his eyebrows.

No. I was not exaggerating.

Mikhail chuffed out a breath, and Kurt held out the hand that wasn’t wrapped tight around Kimmy’s shoulders. “Hey, little man, I hear you did a top-notch job filling in my shoes. Well done!” Mikhail gave the hand a perfunctory shake and said, “I counted the tips Kimmy had you put in the safe. I will expect my full cut tomorrow.

Please don’t ‘miscount’ it like you did last week. I need that money.” Kurt waved him off. “No worries, little dude—that was a mistake last time. Won’t happen again.”

Mikhail smiled thinly. “See that it doesn’t.” Then he turned to Shane and took their twined hands and pulled them to his lips, kissing the back of Shane’s wrist with a flirty little smile. “And you—by all means say ‘hello’

should you have a moment. And I suggest you all leave now, or you’ll get caught in the traffic either in the park or outside.” He let go of Shane’s hand just slowly enough to be reluctant, and then stepped back, took a little bow, and turned and trotted through the crowd.

“He’s right,” Kimmy murmured. “We should go. If we’re here at close, our job is to run through the Faire and herd people out. Let’s try and get out ahead of the chaos, shall we?”

They took Shane’s car. Kimmy sat in back because Kurt held the seat of the two-door forward for her and said, “Here ya go, babe.” Then he refused to wear a seat belt because it might crush his cape.

If it hadn’t meant hurting his baby, Shane might have hit a tree as they were driving (providing he could find one in Gilroy) just to watch the guy go flying through the window.

The questions about money were incessant—how much he’d gotten from the settlement, where he kept it. His response of “in a bundle in my sock drawer” made Kimmy giggle, and Kurt ended up telling her to cut it out, the men were talking. Shane started wondering about how much bodywork would really cost. He was, as Kurt kept pointing out, financially loaded.

When he found Shane unresponsive about the money, Kurt started talking shit about Mikhail, and Shane actually had to watch his breathing as red spots danced in front of his eyes.

“I didn’t know you were queer, bro—if I had, I would have warned you off the little dude. He’s sort of a man-slut, you know? Never met a Faire hook-up he didn’t like?”

I don’t do seasons, only days.
Yeah, Shane knew. He also knew—

with a cop’s bone-deep instinct—that there was a reason for that, but he wasn’t going to discuss Mikhail’s sex life with this guy.

“You know, I think you only get to use the word ‘queer’ if you actually swing that way,” was what he did say. “Or if a queer person likes you as a friend.”

Kurt had laughed. “Well, it’s a good thing you and me are tight, my man, am I right?”

“No.”

Kurt laughed some more, and Shane patted his steering wheel sadly.

He really did like this car. And Kimmy might get hurt in the accident as well. But it was oh-so-tempting.

“Shane’s bi,” Kimmy said unexpectedly from the back, and Shane caught her eyes in the mirror and smiled.

“This is true,” he said, as though encouraging a child. The Kimmy who had squealed that morning when she saw him seemed to be in hiding.

So was the brutally honest Kimmy who had talked about being an addict and wanting a family. This Kimmy was a frightened Kimmy, and she was huddling in the back of the car as though saying “boo” was going to get her kicked onto the pavement and into the middle of nowhere. (Was this really the main road to Gilroy proper? Shane had seen more metropolitan thoroughfares in the middle of the Canadian wilderness.)

“I thought you were really brave, Shaney,” she said now, casting a furtive glance at Kurt. “You took a chance on someone. Even if it didn’t pay off, you… you know. You can find someone who won’t be a cowardly weasel….”

“Oh come off it, Kim!” Kurt said dismissively. “The guy was only being smart. You’ve got to look out for yourself, right—shit! Why’d you do that?”

“Squirrel,” Shane said with a straight face. Kurt had slid across the seat and smacked his head on the window when Shane swerved, and now he was putting his seat belt on with something approaching zeal.

“I saw it too,” Kimmy said seriously, but she met Shane’s dry glance in the rearview with twinkling eyes.

Shane had directions—and dinner reservations—for a local steakhouse in Gilroy, and he pulled into the parking lot with a certain feeling of relief. At least dinner would give Kurt something to do with his insipid mouth besides annoy the hell out of Shane.

It was a typical steakhouse, dark tables, dark wood paneling, big rough wood timber four-by-fours in strategic places. They didn’t get as many odd looks for their Faire attire as Shane expected when they were led to their table—of course, they weren’t the only ones there in costume.

Shane figured it must be a regular occurrence at this place. He was actually staying at the motel across the street; both steakhouse and hotel had come recommended when he’d bought his ticket online.