Page 6 of In Frame
“I askedyou. And youarepretty damn famous.”
“I’m not as famous as Colby is,” Leo said. True, and he didn’t mind it. He’d had a solid career so far, spanning period dramas and wartime epics and three seasons of a recurring role as a mischievous occasional adversary on a classic Britishscience-fiction television show; he was doing fine. “It’s all right; you don’t have to flatter me.”
“But—” Sam stopped, took a drink. Leo watched his throat move, watched the shift and swallow. Sam met his eyes after, steady across the table and the space between them. “You’re good. On camera, in a group, an ensemble cast—you do the job. That came out wrong. I mean you don’t steal spotlights or jump up and down getting the camera to look at you, because you’re notsupposedto. You play the role, not the star persona. I do know who you are, you know.”
“Oh,” Leo said weakly; and then, flippant because anything else would leave his heart in tatters on the table right next to Sam’s hand and a glass of marvelous whiskey, “I don’t know,doyou know me? You called me straight, just now.”
“You said you hadn’t ever even thought about—”
“I’m not opposed! It’s just I’ve never actually had sex—with a man! I mean sex with a man! I’ve definitely had sex! All the sex! It’s only—do I actually qualify as gay or—or bisexual, or something, if I’ve never done anything about it?”
Sam’s eyebrows went up. “Never? Notanything?”
“I know,” Leo explained pathetically. Hopefully adorably pathetically. Possibly so. “I know, yes, it’s the film industry, and then tonight I was there with Jillian Poe and Colby Kent and basically literally zero straight people, and I flirt with everything, and believe me I’ve heard all the rumors about me and my sexuality, and I’m notnotinterested. I’m probably interested. It’s only, er, in practice it’s always been women. So far.”
“But you said yes to having a drink with me.”
Leo squirmed a bit. Those aureate flecks, in those smoky brown eyes. So beautiful, so intense, examining his face as if Leo’s reply, at this moment, might be the most important sentence in the world. “I. Ah. You’re so—I wanted to—” Good God. He was Leo Whyte, quick-tongued and glib: he could dobetter than this. “I’m distracting you.”
Sam leaned back in his chair. “You definitely are that.”
“How ‘m I doing?”
“Nine out of ten, and don’t change the subject. You wanted to be here.”
“Nine?”
“You didn’t finish that thought about me.” Sam tilted that head, ran a tongue along his lower lip; Leo stared helplessly at the motion, the gesture, the thoughtful deliberation. “So I’d be your first.”
“I’m not a virgin!”
Sam cocked an eyebrow.
Leo glared. “I know what I enjoy. Which isnotdegenerate American stalkers with cameras, thank you.”
“Degenerate?”
“Yes, it means—”
“I know what it means.” Sam grinned at him. “I like talking to you. And you like talking to me, if you’d admit it.”
Leo picked up his whiskey. Faced down the gorgeous tempting challenge across the table. Tossed back half the glass. “Not happening.”
“What’re you afraid of?”
“Did you forget what you do for a living?”
Sam’s eyes did something complicated, then: between a wince and a regret, as if he had indeed forgotten. “Right. Sorry.”
“No offense, but I don’t trust you.”
“I wouldn’t either, if I were you.”
“Why am Ihere?” Leo eyed amber alcohol, swirled it around, searched for answers by closing one eye and peeking at the other side of the table through liquid and glass. “Why.”
“Because I asked,” Sam said, “and you said yes. I wouldn’t trust me, no, but I’d trust you.”
“I have not had nearly enough of the whiskey that you’repaying for, the whiskey paid for by you, the whiskey I am not at all paying for, for that to make sense.”
