Behind Iron Lace (20 page)

His Brit lit class started out as usual. The grumblings about having to read aloud. The “why do we have to do this Mr B? This sucks.”

But after they finished Macbeth, and the laughter at his falsetto Lady Macbeth died away he asked for questions. A girl from the back row raised her hand, Darcy couldn’t remember her name. She was one of the quiet ones, one of his Goths, with her purple lips and heavily lined eyes. “Mr B, we were all wondering who the guy from yesterday is? He looked like a rock star.”

Darcy felt the blood drain from his face. He hadn’t expected the bold question, he forced a smile. “He’s not a rock star, he’s an artist.”

“Ooh, look at Mr B blush,” another girl said, one of the preps this time.

Darcy didn’t like where this was going. His heart felt like it was going to beat out of his chest.

“Did you hear his accent? Oh my God, where’s he from, Mr B? Sounds like something you hear on TV.”

“He’s from New Orleans.” Oh shit, why didn’t he just shut the fuck up?

“Is he your boyfriend, I bet he is, I saw the way you looked at him yesterday and thought Mr B is in love.” It was the Goth girl again. She rested her chin on her hand and stared directly at him with a pair of lavender no-nonsense eyes.

“Oh come on, Mr B, you may as well fess up. He’s your boyfriend isn’t he?”

Darcy didn’t know who said it. His fingers trembled. He clutched the book too tight, bending it. “What if he is?”

“We knew it! Mr B is in love.”

“Oh, come on, Mr B, this is the twenty-first century no one cares if you’re gay.”

Darcy couldn’t process everything he was hearing, his heart had yet to go back to normal. Did they really not care?

“His name is Caleb, we met last summer. He’s Cajun. I fell in love with his accent.” Shit why was he telling his students this?

“I have just one question.” Goth girl sighed very loudly, Darcy had hardly ever heard her speak before now and gave her his full attention. “Why is it all the really pretty men like really pretty men? Seriously, Mr B, I just don’t get it.”

Darcy felt the blush spread down his neck. “I can’t answer that, Jewel.” He finally remembered her name. “I’m sure there are several pretty men out there who are into girls as pretty as you. All you have to do is take a look around.”

It was her turn to blush, Darcy sighed with relief when the attention turned to her instead of him.

“Okay, back to Macbeth, what do you think Shakespeare meant to accomplish by his use of magic and murder in this story?”

After class, Darcy managed to slip out without any further questioning. The walk home seemed longer than it should. Doubts began to form in his brain. What if Caleb wasn’t there? What if it had all been a lie?

He shouldn’t have worried; Caleb was stretched out on his stomach asleep with the blankets wrapped around his waist, one long tanned leg hanging off the mattress. His sun-streaked hair lay around his shoulders in a tousled mess, the pale growth of beard making him look almost piratical.

Darcy studied the tattoo across his lower back, black ink scrolling like the iron railings in New Orleans, yet beneath it he could just barely make out the raised edges of Caleb’s past. He shivered. He didn’t think it was from the cold permeating the room.

“Come to bed,
cher
, keep me warm.” One green eye peered at him, his lips stretched into a wide smile. Darcy could hear exhaustion in his voice. His whole body ached from wanting him, and needing sleep.

“I—” he closed his mouth on what he was going to say, he didn’t want him knowing how insecure he was right now. He stripped to the skin and in seconds he was under the blanket and pressed against Caleb’s warm body.

“I meant it when I said I’d stay. You don’t have to worry about me leaving,
beb
.” His lips were warm, on Darcy’s cheek. “How was class?”

“Same as usual.” He didn’t want to discuss what happened in his last class just yet. There were other more important things on his mind. “Will you move in with me?”

Caleb raised up on his elbow and peered down into his eyes. “I thought I already had,
cher
.” He tugged at the cross around Darcy’s neck. “I’m not going anywhere without you, Darcy. Never again.”

“Not even back to New Orleans?”

“There’s nothing left there, my heart is here with you. ‘Course it could be warmer, but I know a really great way to stay warm.” He trailed kisses across Darcy’s shoulder, ultimately finding his mouth. “A little game called down the bayou, want to play?”

Darcy didn’t have to say a word, Caleb just smiled and slowly worked his way southward along Darcy’s body, until he had him so hot and bothered he forgot there was such a thing as a past, nor did he care if there was a future. All that mattered was the here and now, and the incredible things a French speaking Cajun man could do with his mouth.

“Merde.”
He reached out, sinking his hands in Caleb’s hair, the word the only thing he could think to say for a very long time.

The sun was still up when Darcy managed to drag Caleb out of the small apartment. It was Friday, and Caleb would have just as soon stayed in bed for another day or two. “Come on, it’s a gorgeous day outside. Sunny, warm, in the mid-fifties, let’s go out and do something?”

“You do know that where I come from mid-fifties is considered winter, don’t you?” Caleb said just to see him blush, he loved watching him turn all rosy God, the man was gorgeous. His dark hair wanted to curl now that it had grown some and Caleb couldn’t resist running his fingers through it. “I need more clothes than I brought with me if I’m going to survive up here in the frozen northwest.”

“Then we’ll go shopping. Get dinner. Come on, I’ll show you the city.” Darcy tugged him out of bed and into the shower.

That had been an hour ago. The new leather coat smelled nice, Caleb liked leather. He loved walking beside Darcy on the street, catching his hand in his, holding on to him for long seconds; the warmth of his fingers was soothing. No one looked twice at them.

The walking tour of the downtown area combined with the scents wafting from some of the open restaurant doors as they passed by had Caleb’s stomach growling. “Christ, I’m starving. We should get some food in your refrigerator. And dishes, dishes would be good. Furniture too. A nice big sofa to make love on.” There was that blush again. The duck of his head, the timid smile, the bright gleam in his eyes. Caleb felt the stab of that look clear through to his toes. His heart fluttered, his stomach followed. Butterflies and love. He wanted this feeling to last forever.

With his brain still spinning with possibilities he’d never considered before, Caleb stopped walking as they neared the end of the street, his attention captured by the huge For Sale sign on the side of a massive brick building. Three floors at least, possibly four. The upper floor was almost completely made of glass, the wrought iron balcony wrapped around it just the cherry on top.

“What time is it,
cher
?” He pulled his phone from his pocket but it was dead.

“Just after four, why?” Darcy checked the watch on his wrist.

“Give me your phone.” He did, his gaze following Caleb’s as he dialed. “You think this town can stand a Cajun place?” he asked Darcy when the other line picked up. “I’d like to view one of your properties. What’s the chance you can get an agent out to show me the building in the next half-hour or so?”

The agent on the line stammered and tried to stall, but Caleb wasn’t interested, he wanted what he wanted and he wanted it now. In the end, the agent on the phone said she would be at the address in ten minutes. “Bring everything you have on the place. We’ll be here waiting.”

“What are you doing Caleb?” Darcy had paled a little listening to him talk.

“This place, Darcy, look at it. It looks like home. Look at the balcony up there, the iron lace, we could live up there, I could have a studio; someplace to paint.” His neck started to ache from looking up. “I could open a blues bar downstairs, just like the one at home, just nicer for the yuppies up here. I know a couple of shifty cooks who would kill to work for me again, and Teela. Teela would be great, pretty, exotic, just what this place would need. The art and music scene here has got to be one of the best.”

Darcy looked at him strangely, as if he’d never seen him before. “And that excites you, doesn’t it? Enough to lay down roots here, with me?”

“I’m staying, Darce, I need to have something to keep me out of trouble, unless you’re going to stay in bed with me twenty-four-seven. And besides how long do you think we are going to be able to stay in your little one bedroom apartment before we start getting on each other’s nerves? This would be ours. It’s not far from your school. It looks like home to me.” Oh God, he wanted this. Darcy just had to see how much it meant to him.

“You’ll call it Lasseigne’s and you’ll have beignets and gumbo?” Darcy smiled at him, his pretty blue eyes sparkling with more than excitement. He quickly flicked the tears away but Caleb had seen enough.

“Beignets and gumbo and happily ever after, Darcy, I want happily ever after with you,” he said just as a blonde bombshell drove up in a silver luxury car, her heels clicking on the concrete as she hurried to them. Her eyes took them in with practiced ease. Sizing them up. She knew enough to flirt but only to seduce him out of his money.

And in the end Caleb signed the contract offering an unholy amount of money for the place. The penthouse apartment was more room than he and Darcy would ever need, the lower floors big enough to accommodate a restaurant or three.

He watched Darcy lean against the railing overlooking a pretty courtyard behind the building. When the realtor excused herself to phone the owner’s agent, he went over and wrapped his arm around him. “You all right,
cher
?”

“Yeah, I just wonder if this is too much, too fast sometimes. There’s so much about you I don’t know.”

“Not really, I’ve told you just about everything. I’m filthy rich,
cher
, between my art and my inheritance and the properties I sold in New Orleans, I have no one but myself to spend it on. You know all my secrets and my family. My crazy uncle and Martha, hell, I’m not really sure what Martha is to me, my
maman’s
girlfriend, not that I know exactly what their relationship was, mind you. Martha has always been there, whatever she and my
maman
were to each other. She is living in the plantation house, keeping it and Buster safe for me. I kept the plantation house and the blues bar.”

“For when you need to go home?”

“To have something of my family left to me. Nothing else mattered. When you’re ready, we can go visit. I won’t go without you.”

“That’s good to know. I’m sorry. This is all too much. I’m going back to school in January to get my doctorate. I have a family, parents, a brother and a sister, a couple of nephews. Grandparents. The whole kit and caboodle.”

“And you just realized they might find out about us?” Caleb understood now. He was second guessing their relationship. “I can’t tell you what to do there,
cher
, but I’ll do what you want. If you want to keep what we are a secret—”

“I don’t. Shit, Caleb. I just need to work up to it. And this, this place it’s wonderful, it’s just hitting me a little too hard right now. Yesterday you were someone I used to love. Today, we are buying property. Just give me a minute to process, will you?”

“Good news, Mr Mitchell, the owners are willing to accept your offer.” The realtor walked onto the balcony, dollar signs in her eyes, she stopped when she saw the two of them. “Is there a problem?”

Stunned that a decision had come so quickly, Caleb just stood there staring at Darcy, waiting for him to give him a sign. Something so he would know he was home. His heart beat rapidly in his chest as he watched Darcy’s face shift from one emotion to another. Darcy was right. This was too fast. It had been too fast from the beginning.

Darcy sighed, he relaxed his shoulders and smiled a sweet, shy smile. “No problem at all. Caleb, give the nice lady some money so we can go celebrate.”

“It don’t exactly work that way,
cher
,” Caleb laughed and grabbing him by his collar he kissed him. “Come on let’s go sign the rest of the papers and you can take me out to eat. I am starved.”

During the next week, Caleb made Darcy’s little apartment more livable, just by adding the basics. A sofa and tables. A television since he didn’t have one. The bed was moved into the lone bedroom, he liked the size, and he loved sleeping entwined in Darcy’s arms. It was all just small things. Things they would move in to the new place as soon as they closed next week.

While Darcy taught, he got to know the city, changed over his residency, bought a new car and two motorcycles. He was saving them for Darcy’s birthday next month. He started the process for opening a business, bought food, dishes, and cookware. He even bought a cookbook to try and pretend he knew what he was doing in the kitchen.

Darcy went to work every day, came home, made love to him, and talked his ear off about his students. He loved them. All of them. This Goth chick named Jewel had outed him but it was all right, the kids had accepted him and the faculty either didn’t care or chose not to mention it. The subject of Bailey and Chester came up once or twice. Chester had finally shown up back at the magazine. Amber and Bailey sent him on his way, showing solidarity for the first time ever. Bailey finally contacted Darcy, she wished him well in his relationship and life but Caleb could hear the loss in her voice as they spoke. “She’ll find someone one day,” he told Darcy when the call ended.

“I know she will, it’s just, we were friends for so long, I hate losing her like this.” Darcy tossed his phone on the oversized ottoman that looked remarkably like the one Caleb had first made love to him on and scrubbed his face. “Oh, and Amber called this afternoon, she said to check your email, she sent you something.”

Curious, Caleb pulled up his email page and downloaded the attachment in the mail titled
I thought you might like to have these back,
the attachment revealed the series of photos he’d taken of Darcy that day out at his studio. The same photos he’d found and deleted from the camera he’d loaned Amber the day Darcy had left.