You Are the Reason (14 page)

I couldn’t see Jake’s expression, since his back was to me, but I saw the smile playing around Patrick’s lips. “You know, Davo? One day you’re going to meet a great guy and fall head-over-heels in love, and you should watch out. Because Jake’s going to tease the heck out of you and embarrass you in front of this guy. And it’s going to rub double on you, because your man’s watching you have the mickey taken.”

I scoffed. “Who would put up with me?”

Jake interrupted our conversation by almost throwing a plate on the table in front of me. “Arsewipe. Here. And thank you for looking after my daughter.” The words were growled at me, but I didn’t hold a grudge.

“You are more than welcome, Jake. You can ask me to do it again, anytime.” I picked up my knife and fork and added my proviso. “As long as she’s out of nappies and completely toilet trained. Because—shit. Literally. Shit.”

I received a sympathetic look from Patrick, but Jake’s expression was pure delight. “She did? Well done, sweet pea.”

“Dick,” I groused at him.

He stuck out his tongue at me. “Yes, please.”

That caused Patrick to chuckle, but he jiggled the baby he was holding and smiled at her. “Did you give Davo a nice big pooey nappy?”

I chewed a mouthful of pancakes and corrected him. “Uncle Dave.”

Both men looked at me in surprise. “
Uncle
Dave?”

I nodded. “Lee suggested it last night, and I quite like it. Besides, now I have changed that one’s nappy, I think I deserve the deference the title of uncle affords me.”

Despite one of them being blind, a look passed between them I nearly missed. “What?” I asked in confusion.

“Lee?” Jake asked me mildly. There was a suggestive tone in his voice that I chose to ignore.

I shrugged. “I was in a panic last night, dealing with the shit bomb of the century, and Lee came to my rescue. You should be grateful for that too. Lee helped me, which meant I didn’t have to wake you up.”

There was a question in Jake’s eyes. “So have you asked her out on a date?”

Her.

Damn.

That was something I hadn’t confessed yet. This was going to be bad.

“Well,” I started. I decided to simply be matter-of-fact about it. “The truth is that we have a date tonight. Oh. And by the way? Lee’s a guy. He just likes wearing dresses.”

I expected surprise. Disbelief. Incredulity. Questions. Reservation. Laughter. Mirth.

Instead, Patrick smiled and held his hand out, palm up, to Jake. Jake sighed and reached into his pocket, withdrew his wallet, and handed over fifty dollars.

I eyed off the two of them. “You
bet
on it?” I asked flatly.

Patrick was fingering his winnings. “The blind man wins again.”

With a look of disgust at me, Jake rose to his feet and dished up more pancakes. “Dammit, Davo. You couldn’t tell the difference between a girl and a guy, even after having sex with them? I told Patrick you couldn’t be that dumb. Shows how much I know.”

I couldn’t believe these two. “You mean you knew?”

“Not for sure,” Patrick admitted. “But biology never lies. I suspected. After you had such a strong reaction to the person you thought was a girl.”

The man was too freaky to be human.

“When do we get to meet him?” Jake asked. “Will he wear the dress for us?”

If that was a smirk on my friend’s face, then he would have to watch out. I was a Scorpio, and they’re vengeful people.

I tried to keep a straight face. “I’m sure he will. If you ask him nicely. And then I’ll tell Patrick that you couldn’t keep your eyes off Lee’s legs. I’m sure Patrick will be happy about that.”

“He won’t believe you.”

“He will when I tell him you sprung wood at the sight.”

“He still won’t believe you. Patrick can smell my arousal, and he’ll know it’s not true.”

I blinked. “He can
smell
your arousal?” It was official. Patrick had superpowers.

In the end, I was yawning too much to bother with plotting revenge. Jake pushed me out the front door and ordered me home to sleep. Once inside my front door, I nearly fell over from exhaustion. I stumbled to bed and passed out for nearly eight hours, until a text message woke me. It was Lee.

This is my address: 24 Central Ave, Mount Pleasant. I’ve made a booking at the Dux Café. Still picking me up at 6pm?

I groaned. I had just a little over two hours until the agreed time. That wasn’t enough time to find an excuse. I squinted at the screen as I replied a quick yes. The phone reported “sending” the message, then flashed at me that the message had gone. That’s when the self-doubt hit me.

I pushed myself out of bed while I tried to remember where I hid Mr. Magic 8 Ball. Was he behind the potatoes in the bottom of my pantry? Or did I move him to under the towels in the second bathroom?

Feeling like I had a hangover, I worked my way through the things I needed to do. Coffee. Shower. Lunch (or whatever it could be called that late in the afternoon). More coffee.
Oh, shit. It’s time to get ready.

I dithered about what I should wear. I hadn’t been to the Dux before, but I’d heard it was expensive. Expensive meant you had to wear nice clothes, right? I pulled out my black dress slacks and the matching dinner jacket.

With twenty minutes to go, I was freshly shaved, hopefully smelling good in my Tommy Hilfiger, and on my way—all without finding an excuse or Mr. Magic 8 Ball. Without the oracle’s advice, I had to make my own decisions. I decided to be a man and honor the deal we’d made. Three dates, an all-day outing, and a movie. I could make it through that, couldn’t I?

Mount Pleasant was a swanky little suburb where you couldn’t find a house to buy for under a million dollars. And if the house you were looking at was anywhere near the river, it would be probably nudging the four-million-dollar mark. I wondered how Lee could afford to live there, but then I remembered his famous sister. Perhaps it was her house?

The place I pulled up in front of was not only elegant, it was also built with no expense spared. The driveway was wide enough for three cars. The garden in the front was immaculate, which pointed to either a passion on someone’s behalf or enough money to hire a gardener. I swallowed and stared up at the three stories of the house I would call a mansion. There were balconies on the northern and eastern sides of the building, and I would bet that they all had views of the river and city. There was some serious money at this place.

I approached the front door, clattering up the outdoor marble steps—and who had marble as their front steps? The doorbell was discreetly placed on the wall next to the extrawide double doors, and I waited with trepidation as the chimes echoed through the house. What the hell was I doing? A date? I was Davo, wasn’t I?

There was the sound of unlocking on the other side of the door, and it opened, revealing an older woman dressed in pants and a beautifully knitted jumper.
Oh, shit. He lives with his parents.

Nothing can make a man’s balls curl up tighter than the thought of meeting the mother of the man he hopes to fuck hard later that night.

And this woman could be none other than Lee’s mother. She was delicate and older but definitely a feminine version of him. If I had met his mother before meeting him, I wouldn’t have mistaken Lee for a woman. This woman wore her femininity well—bright red hair (most probably dyed), a lush mouth, small jawline, and piercing eyes. She also had curves. Whereas I had assumed Lee was simply a thin, athletic woman, his mother showed me that the same set of genes, infused with the XX chromosome, created a curvy body that would’ve driven the straight men crazy in her younger years.

No wonder Honey Brennan lit up the screen, with a mother like that to emulate.

She smiled. “Hello. You must be David?”

I swallowed hard and put on my best greet-the-parents smile. “Hi. Just ‘Dave’ is fine, thank you. If you call me David, it makes me think I’m in trouble.”
How lame, you idiot.
I gave myself ten points for not swearing in front of the woman but immediately deducted fifteen points for being a lame-arse.

She smiled. “Very well. Dave it is. Now come on in.” She stepped back and waved me inside. “I’m Lee’s mother, Charlotte, in case you hadn’t guessed.”

I was checking out the acres of marble in the entrance hall, mentally trying to measure it to see if it was bigger than my entire house. I half heard her words and answered with only one of the two brain cells I had in my head. “Yes. I could see the resemblance to Lee immediately. You’re both beautiful.”

There was a pause while I deducted another twenty points from my scorecard. Pathetic comments never made a good impression.

I turned back to her with an embarrassed blush, only to see an answering stain across her cheeks. But she was smiling slightly, as if I had said something she agreed with.

“Come through to the kitchen,” she invited. “My husband is cooking dinner. I’ll introduce you, then find out where Lee has disappeared to. He’s been in a mad flap all afternoon.”

I followed her through the house, taking in the rich woods, the original artwork, and the spotlessly clean floors. “Oh. Is he okay? If there was a problem, he could’ve called to cancel.”

Mrs. Brennan stopped just before a doorway and threw an amused look over her shoulder at me. “It was nerves.”

Then she swept into the kitchen and hailed her husband.

Nerves?
As in he was nervous about tonight? I set my face to a no-I’m-not-going-to-fuck-your-son expression and followed her into the meals area. An older, white-haired gentleman, wrapped in a bright green apron, was chopping up onions at the bench. He looked up as we came in.

“Howard,” Mrs. Brennan called. “Come and meet Dave. Keep him entertained for two minutes while I track down Lee.”

Lee’s father looked up with a huge grin and waved the knife to say hello, then motioned me to take a seat. “G’day, Dave. You can call me Howard. Now tell me, what do you do for a job?”

By the time Lee entered the room twenty-five minutes later, Howard and I were deep in conversation.

“…but I want my business to be profitable. Paying ten times as much for the same product doesn’t seem like good practice to me,” Howard was saying.

I was immersed in the discussion and missed Lee’s entrance. “But it’s not the same product, is my point. You’re taking a risk that the overseas factory is using the same standard as Australia. All I’m saying is that I have been called in to fix so many problems in the past. Inferior materials, shonky welding jobs, you name it. I found one brace that had been superglued instead of welded. If you’re willing to put your workers’ lives at risk like that, then by all means, import cheap designs. Me? I’d rather a local company do it, do it right, be there to install it on the spot, and come out to deal with any problems.”

Lee interrupted our discussion, which was the first I realized he was in the same room. And from the look on his face, he’d been there for a while. “Dad. You’re not discussing work are you?” He looked dismayed.

I turned around with a guilty face. “Sorry. My fault.” Then I got a look at him, and my breath caught in my throat. I thought he looked good in red, but he looked stunning in green.

“Wow.”

The fifty points I’d added to my total for having an intelligent conversation with Lee’s father had ten points deducted for coming out with a single-syllable sentence. Immediately Lee blushed and looked at the floor with both pleasure and embarrassment. I gave my total another fifty points for the pleasure bit and decided to ignore the embarrassment. He looked great, and he should have no embarrassment at others commenting on it.

“You look great too, Davo. Very classic.”

I shrugged. “White shirt, black jacket. Can’t go wrong, right?”

We were eying each other off, silently complimenting and telling the other how sexy we found them, when Howard cleared his throat. “Right. And I have to agree with you there, Dave. My boy certainly knows how to dress.”

The word “dress” made me cough, but Lee burst out laughing. “Oh, Dad. Be careful what you say. Didn’t you know that the first two times I spoke with Davo I was actually
wearing
a dress?”

Howard look mortified. “Oh, no.” He stared at me with eyes wide. “Please tell me you’re gay and that you knew Lee was a guy before you walked into my house tonight.”

I choked on air and went into a full coughing fit.

Lee was gasping in horror. “Oh my God. Dad. You don’t just blurt things out like that. And that doesn’t show a lot of faith in my integrity, does it. That you think that I would do something like that to my date, and not warn them beforehand.”

Howard waved the knife around again. “Oh, fiddlesticks. You know I don’t think like that. But I finally have someone to talk to, and I just didn’t want you scaring him off.”

Lee groaned and turned to me. “Oh, no. You had to talk to him about work, didn’t you? Now you’re the greatest person on his earth, and he’ll be offering you a bedroom soon.”

“Huh? What?” I was confused.

Howard grabbed a clean wooden spoon from a utensil holder in the bench and leaned over to whack Lee on his arm. “Oi. Just because you have no idea that a stirrup has nothing to do with horse riding, and that butt joint has nothing to do with your arse, doesn’t mean I don’t love you.”

Lee jumped and rolled his eyes. “Yeah, yeah. I still don’t believe that slag, spatter, and cracks are all welding terms. You simply made that up.”

I laughed. Obviously Lee wasn’t into the same sort of stuff that his father was. My father and I were like two peas in a pod when it came to anything you could buy in a hardware store. Of course I knew what slag, spatter, and cracks were. I was a salesperson for a steel-fabrication company after all. But I’d first learned the terms from my father at about age twelve, when he showed me how to use the oxy.

Lee’s lack of knowledge was cute, so I told him they were real welding terms. Then I made him chuckle by saying, “Although I still have trouble not grinning when I have to market rigid struts, riser clamps, and pipe saddles.”