Page 45 of College Town

“Uh…” No sense lying. “Yeah. That’s me.”

The man jerks a sharp nod. “Right. Come with me.” He turns to go, strides halfway back to the door, and shoots an expectant look over his shoulder.

“Um,” Lawson says, intelligently. “What?”

The man sighs, and looks put-out. “Are you Lawson Granger? You said you were.”

Again, lying feels futile. “Yeah. I am.”

The man nods. “Good. Come with me.” He turns and walks out of the shop, bell tinkling.

Lawson stays rooted behind the counter. “What the fuck?” Clearly, the man’s related to Tommy and Noah – is no doubt the fabled and hated uncle. But Lawson is sick and damn tired of being yanked around by the Cattaneo family, fiancée included.

He stands there, gripping the counter, proud of the fact that he doesn’t follow.

And then the bell tinkles again, and two men in black suits and black shirts, wearing black sunglasses, step into the shop and flank the door. They look like Secret Service, down to the haircuts and awkward hand positions at their waists, like they’re wearing guns.

“Mr. Granger,” the one on the right says. “You need to come with us.”

He smiles, not because any of this is funny, but because it’s that or scream. He says, “What if I say no?”

The one on the left gives him a very unimpressed look.

The one on the right says, “That’s not advisable.”

“Well. Fuck me. Guess I’m coming, then.”

He starts for the door, then doubles back, and scratches out a quick note for the girls. “This is really not cool,” he says over his shoulder. “I mean. I’m the only one here. I could get fired for leaving.”

“You won’t,” one of the Secret Service guys says.

Lawson coughs a laugh. “Sure. Thanks. That makes me feel better.” His heart is throbbing and his palms are sweating and he drops his pen twice while he writes his little SOS note and then wedges it under the cash register.

Holy shit. What is happening here?

He thinks of the business card in his wallet, Tommy’s, the one he should have tossed, but slipped in next to his ID instead. Considers calling him.Hey, so, I think your uncle’s here, and he brought bodyguards. Am I about to die?But, scared as he is, he’s more scared of the thought that Tommy –Tom, with his fiancée, and his wingtips – won’t help him at all. So he shuffles along with his escort, not sure if he’ll have a job, or even a life, beyond whatever happens next.

~*~

To complete the cliché picture, there’s a gleaming black Town Car waiting in the parking lot. One of the guards opens the rear door for the uncle to slide in, and then gestures to Lawson. Seeing as he’s come this far, and resolved himself to his fate, Lawson ducks inside the car, and nearly gets his fingers slammed in the door.

The two guards climb into the front, the engine starts with a quiet purr, and they pull away from the curb.

Lawson thinks hard about panicking. The act itself has never gotten him anywhere before, but its physiological repercussions can’t be controlled: the racing heart, the throbbing head, the hitching breath. Sweat gathers at his temples, and itches between his shoulder blades. He wipes his hands on the legs of his work khakis and realizes he currently lacks the energy – or perhaps conviction – to panic properly.

He slants a look over at the man who looks the way he imagines Tommy will in thirty years. He’s notunattractive, is a silver fox, actually, if you’re into slight, elegant guys, which Lawson very much is. But his nose isn’t as straight as Tommy’s, nor his cheekbones as prominent. It’s not age, Lawson decides; just as age has nothing to do with the cold slant of this man’s brows, when he’s always found Tommy’s brows so adorably expressive.

The man fishes a cigar from the door pocket and lights it with a wood match, which he then drops through the cracked window. Sends Lawson a low-lidded look through the first, gray curl of smoke. If he’s trying to create an aura, he’s succeeding beautifully, but Lawson doesn’t care. There’s a good chance he’s about to be fitted for a brand new pair of concrete shoes, and his Give-a-Shit meter’s on the fritz.

Lawson speaks first. “You’re Frank Cattaneo.”

A single arched brow provides his answer. The man – Frank Cattaneo – doesn’t exhale smoke so much as open his mouth and allow it to pool slowly from his lips. “He told you about me.”

Lawson folds his arms and presses sideways into the door, putting as much space between them as possible. He lets his legs fall open, though, knee dominating the midpoint of the seat. He doesn’t want to look weak and shrinking, but he has no desire to get within stabbing range of the guy, either. Men who ride around in Town Cars with guards, who smoke cigars in backseats like this, are most definitely armed. “He mentioned you in passing. Not favorably.”

Frank grins, the expression as unkind and snide as Tommy’s grins are warm and mischievous. “He might have mentioned you in passing, too. He plays things close to the vest, that Tom.”

The thing that hurts is that he’s not wrong. Before, when they were kids, Lawson thought there were no secrets between the two of them. As close as he was with Dana, there was another level of closeness found only between lovers. Those stolen, hushed nights in the backseat, the fog on the windows shielding them, pushing back against the outside world, had felt naked, tender, precious as gemstones. Quiet, intimate words pressed into skin, the whole of one another laid bare, skin-to-skin, with no room for even the most innocent of secrets.

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