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“Yes, it is,” Robbie insisted. “It will garner nationwide recognition for my art and for Hawthorne House.”

“I’m certain it will,” Tillman said, cheeky as the devil.

Robbie felt like he might explode out of his skin with impatience over the utter lack of respect Tillman was showing him and had shown him since the moment they’d met. He stopped at the edge of the yard where a smaller, game version of the joust had been set up.

“What is your problem?” he demanded. “Are you so frustrated with your own life that you make it your business to go around messing up everyone else’s? Are things that out of control at home?”

“My home has nothing to do with this,” Tillman said, losing his smile.

“No, I’m sure it doesn’t,” Robbie said, dripping with sarcasm. “Just like I’m certain the way I ruffled your fur by suggesting someone in your family was a criminal didn’t ring of the truth at all.”

“You don’t know anything about me.” Tillman shifted into battle mode, like he’d been in that first day. With the addition of his black velvet Renaissance costume, it somehow made him seem more unhinged than when he’d been angry in a suit.

“You don’t know anything about me either,” Robbie fired back at him.

“I know you’re a whiney prick with an ex-boyfriend who probably crushed his self-esteem and a family that you always feel you have to live up to. I know that you have no idea what to do with yourself,” Tillman all but spat at him.

Robbie physically reeled back. He told himself it was because he was offended, not because Tillman was right.

“I know exactly what to do with myself,” Robbie said. “And unlike you, I actually stand a fighting chance of getting what I want in life. You can fight all you want, but it’s as clear as day who and what you are.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Tillman demanded.

Robbie huffed a laugh and reached out to flick Tillman’s lip ring.

Only, instead of the gesture being the insult he wanted it to be, that simple touch of Tillman’s lip ignited something in him. The contrast of hard and soft, and the balls that it must have taken to get it done, not to mention keeping it in as he fought to join London’s financial world, was more exciting than Robbie wanted to admit.

“If you put your hands on me, you’d better mean it,” Tillman hissed at him in return, fire in his expression.

It was supposed to be a moment of strength, but instead, Robbie felt like a rug had been yanked out from under him. He told himself it was because the encounter with Keith and seeing Keith with John was too fresh in his mind. His emotions were mixed up and directed at the wrong people.

He was saved in the strangest way possible when Lionel, the kid who had been hired to run the jousting game, called out to him with, “Oy! Robbie! No one’s buying tickets for the joust. Why don’t you and your friend show them how it’s done?”

Robbie glanced to Lionel, then dragged his eyes back to Tillman.

“I’m game if you are,” Tillman said, darting a sideways look at the mock jousting arena.

“I hope you don’t mind bruises,” Robbie growled. “Because the joust can get physical, even though it’s all pretend.”

“That’s just the way I like it,” Tillman shot back, clearly talking about other physical things that could cause bruises.

Robbie had a sudden flash of what it would be like to be naked and sweaty and fighting for dominance in bed with Tillman. The split-second fantasy was so powerful and so alluring that he gasped aloud.

He rejected the whole thing immediately. It would be a disaster.

The joust, however, would be the perfect way to show the little prick just how powerful he really was.

“You’re on,” he said, then jerked away from Tillman and headed to the jousting arena.

SIX

It was unbelievably stupid,but it wasn’t the first time Toby had refused to back down from a stupid challenge. Like that time in year six when he’d accepted a dare to ride a skateboard all the way down the handrail of the concrete stairs in front of the school and had ended up in hospital with a broken armandsuspended for a week.

“How does this whole thing work?” he asked the kid running the game, who was far too amused with Toby and Robbie coming forward for Toby’s liking.

Toby didn’t especially like that a crowd was already forming to watch the contest either.

“It’s simple,” the kid said, walking Toby to the back corner of the fenced-off grassy space. “First, you put on the padded armor,” he said, pointing to an assortment of thick, padded vests that looked like they’d been constructed out of old cricket keeper’s pads. “Then you each sit on one of the horses.”

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