My Stardust Melody, Chapter 18
"Hey, could one of you get my bag from the backseat of my truck? I've got some stuff in there we could use. Soap, toothpaste, some clothes," Luke expounded as he gingerly lowered himself to the ground. His left ankle was throbbing, and he wasn't looking forward to the walk to the cabin.
Without a word, Nathan reached into the back and grabbed Luke's duffel. He then tossed it to Reid, hitting him squarely in the stomach. Luke snickered at Reid's grunt and looked appreciatively at Nathan who winked at him. Luke knew Nathan was straight, but he felt some heat flood his cheeks regardless. Reid's tall friend was gorgeous, and Luke couldn't imagine that any man or woman was immune to his charms. From the cocky way he carried himself, the guy was completely aware of his effect, too. And while that type of arrogance might have been off-putting, there was a twinkle in Nathan's eye that suggested he had a sense of humor and a strong degree of pragmatism.
Right now, all Luke cared about was that Mr. Tall and Gorgeous seemed to be less-than-thrilled with Reid and open to being friendly to Luke. If Luke were going to be trapped in a cabin with these two, it would be nice if only one of them seemed to harbor thoughts of murdering him. Nathan might not be an ally exactly, but he might make the day a lot more pleasant.
Nathan then slung his arm around Luke's waist to relieve Luke of putting all his weight on his injured ankle. Luke could feel Reid stare after them as they slowly made their way into the forest. He heard Reid mutter, "When did I become Mr. Snyder's bellboy?" Nathan must have heard it, too, because he started to laugh. Luke looked up at him and felt his smile open into a laugh as well. He had to admit that there was some satisfaction in making Reid carry his luggage through the snow.
"Reid, are you just going to stand there?" Nathan called over his shoulder.
"Yeah, Reid, we don't have all day!" Luke said merrily, and Luke heard Nathan snort in amusement. Better and better. Maybe this could be fun.
Luke tripped on a branch and stumbled, causing Nathan to circle both of his arms around Luke's waist and laugh. Luke had to put both his hands on Nathan's shoulders to steady himself.
"Just bear with me, Luke. I swear I'm not making a pass at you," Nathan whispered. "I have a theory," he added mysteriously.
"What?" Luke asked in confusion. His mouth fell open as Nathan leaned in ever-so-slowly to Luke. He's not going to kiss me, is he?
Then from the corner of his eye he saw Reid stride up and knock Nathan's hands off of his waist. As Luke desperately tried to stay upright on his right foot, Reid tossed the bag at Nathan and said, "This will take forever this way." He turned to Luke and asked, "Which way is this cabin of yours?"
After Luke pointed to their destination, Reid quickly leaned over and grabbed Luke just above his hips.
"Reid, what the hell are you doing?" Luke shouted. What the hell is wrong with him?
"Yes, Reid, whatever are you doing?" Nathan parroted, amusement and satisfaction ringing in his voice. Luke didn't understand that reaction exactly. Why was Nathan leaning into him moments ago, and now why did he seem so smug towards Reid at the moment?
Maybe Nathan is a lunatic, too. It would explain their friendship.
The blond's legs dangled down Reid's torso while Luke's eyes got a good view of Reid's fantastic backside. "Just enjoy the view," the doctor ordered as he walked toward the vicinity Luke had indicated.
It only took a few minutes to reach the cabin. Luke's jacket and shirt had ridden up on his back, and now he was freezing where the snow had pelted him. Luke argued the entire way that he could manage on his own--a theory he wasn't completely sure was true, but crawling to the cabin seemed preferable to being carried over Reid's shoulder.
Reid, consistent with everything Luke knew about him, just ignored the younger man's protests.
Every so often, Luke got an upside-down glimpse of Nathan following behind. He seemed to be overly entertained by Reid and Luke's antics. Luke vowed to rethink his favorable opinion of Nathan once he had his feet on the ground.
The cabin was exactly where Luke said it would be. It wasn't very big, but it looked nicer than even Luke remembered. It was a one-story log home with a porch running across the front. The black front door was situated in the center with a window on either side. He could see a chimney running up the right side of the house.
Luke heard Reid let out a sigh of relief and say, "Thank God. Modern conveniences."
Had he expected a shack? Maybe something like the dirt-floor birthplace of Abe Lincoln? If Luke weren't still looking at Reid's butt, he would have given him a stinging set-down.
Reid put a red-faced Luke down on the front porch. Luke glared at him but didn't say a word. Reid just smirked, and Luke desperately wished for a large stick to appear magically in his hand. Just a few thwacks on Reid's skull would be very satisfactory. Luke imagined Reid lying in the snow, staring up at the sky vacantly with little cartoon birds flitting around his head. Actually, that idea had lots of merit. A mute Reid at Luke's mercy sounded pretty enticing. Reid was, after all, a heck of a specimen. For all Nathan's masculinity and obvious good looks, Luke still preferred the more slender and blue-eyed doctor in terms of aesthetics.
On that ridiculous and dangerous thought, Luke decided he needed to lie down and get a grip. He hopped over to the edge of the steps and pointed at a group of rocks beside them. "There should be a key underneath the largest one." He honestly didn't care which guy got the key and spoke to no one in particular. He just wanted to get inside. The combination of the cold and the pain in his foot was obviously making him think about crazy things. For the last time, Luke, you do not want Reid Oliver. He may be hot, but he's a hot ass. Jesus, don't say "hot ass!" That's not what I meant. Reid's a jerk. There.
Thankfully, everyone seemed oblivious to the blush that Luke was sure was gracing his face. Maybe the cold air had already infused his skin with color and no one could tell. That would be a small blessing.
Nathan threw the bag on the porch before grabbing the key. "Thanks, Luke," he said with a smile as he headed to the front door.
Luke flipped on the light as they walked into a timbered room with a high vaulted ceiling. A large stone fireplace dominated the right-hand wall and an elegant brown leather sofa and two chairs were positioned in front of it with a dark square table on top of a large wool rug. The wide wooden-planked floors ran all the way to the back of the room where a modish dining area and open kitchen sat beside a large bay window. To the left was a long wall with two doors and an upright piano. Those doors led to the bedroom and bathroom.
"I thought you said this thing was unoccupied," Reid said from beside Luke. He was obviously impressed by the stylish surroundings.
Luke nodded while shrugging out of his coat. "It is. The owner is away."
"How do you know?" Reid asked.
"Because Oakdale is pretty small, and I know the owner pretty well. He bought the cabin for him and his wife several years ago." Luke figured this was not the time to mention who the owner was.
"You know him well enough to know where the key is?"
"My grandmother used to own this cabin and I stayed here from time to time. We sold it after she died," Luke replied. And boy, does that skirt around the full explanation. This cabin was among the many things sold to pay off Lily's debts. Luke, thankfully, hadn't been too saddened by the loss of the cabin as Lucinda had bought it relatively shortly before she died. It wasn't a place full of warm memories or anything like that. Still, selling anything of Lucinda's was hard. In moments of self-pity, Luke would summon up the sound of Lucinda's voice and throaty laughter. He could always feel her encouragement in any situation even though she was no longer here.
"Well, I, for one, am glad that Luke knew about this place and that we didn't have to break any windows to get in," Nathan interjected. Taking Luke's elbow, he assisted Luke across the room to the sofa, grabbed a pillow from a chair and then tucked it under Luke's injured foot. Then he took Luke's jacket along with his own and tossed them on the back of the sofa opposite from where Luke was sitting. He turned to Reid and said, "And let's not pretend that it wouldn't have been me who had to break the window. We all know how you are about your hands."
"Would you have asked Mozart to jimmy a lock?" Reid replied.
Nathan rolled his eyes, and Luke held back his snort of laughter. "So now it's Mozart you're comparing yourself to?" Nathan asked skeptically. He looked at Luke and said, "Last month, he refused to carry groceries and likened himself to Da Vinci." The exasperation in Nathan's voice was evident.
"The world would be different if the Mona Lisa hadn't been painted because Leonardo smashed his hands underneath a sack of potatoes," Reid said bluntly.
Nathan folded his arms over his massive chest. Hit brown crewneck sweater pulled tight against his arms. "The next time you're at my house, I'm not going to feed you," he threatened.
"Oh no, what will I ever do without your famous coconut Tater Tots?" Reid asked sarcastically, clapping both his hands to his face.
"My 'cocotots' are awesome, and you know it," Nathan declared seriously. Luke wondered if bloodshed might be on the horizon when Nathan's scowl turned into a snort of amusement. "Don't let Reid fool you," Nathan said to Luke. "Reid lived on my cocotots for a full week in college. It was his turn to do the shopping, I refused to go, and so we ate what was in the freezer all that week. He can't get enough of them."
"I see," Luke said, not sure how to reply to that. Picturing Reid as a typical college student eating freezer food was a bit difficult. He spent so much time yelling and being rude that Luke had almost forgotten what Reid's relaxed side was like. He did have a vague recollection of Reid stuffing a lot of appetizers into his mouth two years ago, so maybe it wasn't an impossible picture to form after all. Over the past two years, he had kind of forgotten the bad manners Reid had. The deliberate rudeness he recalled with clarity as it was exhibited for him time and again recently. But, he remembered a certain awkwardness to Reid every now and again that had been endearing.
Luke continued to observe Nathan and Reid with amusement as they bickered back and forth. Reid was clearly trying to ignore Luke, which was okay considering Reid's attention to him had been pretty rife with hostility thus far. He couldn't believe he was in this situation. Henry would flip out when he learned that Reid was staying in his cabin. Well, technically, it was Barbara's cabin since she was the one who bought it from Lucinda's estate, but it was all the same. Luke looked quickly around the room to see if there was any evidence of who owned the place. He really didn't want to hear whatever garbage Reid would have to say if he learned that Henry owned the place. Reid would probably toss Luke out into the snow if he knew.
Amazingly, there were no pictures of the married couple anywhere in sight. Luke thought about Henry and Barbara's home in Oakdale--it was filled with tons of pictures of the couple, some a little bit risqué. The only personal item Luke spotted was a dancing trophy on a bookcase, but it didn't have any names on it. Luke just prayed there weren't any nude portraits of Henry in the bedroom. Well actually, Reid's reaction to that might be worth getting stuck in the snow.
Luke shifted on the sofa and winced. His ankle really hurt. Glancing out the window, he saw that the snow was still coming down. He wondered when his family would start to worry about him. He had been planning to surprise them by coming home a day early, so he probably had one more day before anyone was alerted. Maybe by then one of them could hike down the road and get help. He wasn’t too worried about his family's safety, thankfully. Even if the power went out, Jack and Carly had installed a generator that would keep them all nice and warm.
He looked up at Nathan and Reid who were standing at the foot of the sofa. Having been ignoring the conversation for the past minute, he gathered that Reid was complaining about the lack of modern conveniences. Did these two bicker at everything? They were like an old married couple.
"I don't even see a radio! There better be a bathroom behind that door over there and not some hole dug out back."
Luke spoke up. "Don't worry, there's a very nice bathroom. It even has a huge marble shower. Unfortunately, my grandmother had this cabin built with romance in mind, and didn't want the world to intrude on her. So, there's no TV, radio, or phones."
"Great. I'm trapped in some old biddy's love nest," Reid grumbled.
Luke laughed at Reid's description. At least Reid doesn't hold anything back. "I don't think anyone ever called Lucinda Walsh an old biddy. She was called a lot of names, but I think she'd have your head for that one," Luke said with a fond smirk.
"Your grandmother was Lucinda Walsh?" Nathan inquired. "The Lucinda Walsh?"
Luke nodded his head. He got that open-mouthed reaction a lot for people who weren't from Oakdale. He understood their awe as Lucinda had been so famous, but to him, Lucinda had just been "Grandmother."
Reid worked his jaw before saying, "Mr. Snyder is a wealthy man, Nathan. His father is Damian Grimaldi." He paused and stared into Luke's eyes as he derided, "Luke sometimes has trouble remembering to tell people this, so I thought I'd do it for him."
Luke felt heat rise into his face at the challenge. Two years! It's been two years! Give it a rest. "Yes, I do nothing but roll around in gold all day," Luke said sarcastically. "And then I shoot innocent puppies for fun." He was so sick of Reid's attitude. He didn't care at this point what Reid knew about his life. In fact, shoving the fact that he was poor in the doctor's face might be fun.
Reid looked pissed off, but Nathan had a perplexed look on his face. Well, if Reid's friend was confused by this situation, he wasn't the only one. Luke had yet to figure out why Reid had decided that he should be a complete and utter jackass to him. It just seemed so unnecessarily brutal, a complete overreaction.
The tricky part was that Luke felt like he deserved a bit of Reid's ire. Luke and Damian hadn't exactly been aboveboard in their scheme to keep Grimaldi. Luke hadn't thought there would be any victim to the deception, but clearly, Reid had been hurt. Luke surprised himself with that thought and looked closely again at the doctor. Was that what this was? Hurt? Was there more than the fact that Reid hadn't been able to get his hands on Luke's money?
It just seemed so unlikely that Luke's omission two years ago could have engendered the sort of venom Reid had been spitting for weeks now. But, then again, Luke wouldn't have thought Reid would have gone out into that ballroom and told everyone that Grimaldi Shipping was bankrupt.
Luke didn't want to believe that Reid was entirely evil or alternatively a lunatic. Reid was, by all accounts, a dedicated surgeon. He obviously had a close relationship with Nathan, even if they did bicker from sunup until sundown. From the looks of it, it was a teasing but loving relationship. Their banter reminded him slightly of his own friendship with Maddie or his relationship with Faith.
How did Reid bounce from a person who was warm (well, that was a stretch) and caring (that seemed true around Nathan) to the person who sold out Luke's entire future because he was mad that Luke's supposed trust fund wasn't accessible? It was so very Jekyll and Hyde that Luke couldn't make sense of it.
Luke thought back to the man he'd seen tripping over his words in a ballroom two years ago. He thought about dancing in Reid's arms under the stars. Then there was Reid tenderly caressing Luke's forehead with his thumb as they lay in bed together. All those images never completely fit with what Reid told Damian in the atrium, what Reid did on his way out of the ball. But Damian had been right: Luke had been naïve then. Money was a powerful motivator, and Reid loved his job. Maybe Reid had loved it so much that he was willing to do anything for it, even pretend to care for Luke.
But that brought Luke back to the question in his mind now, one which he hadn't given enough thought to in the past few days. He knew why Reid was so hostile two years ago, but why now? Why now when Reid seemingly had everything he wanted. Could there be some other layer of hurt? Something Luke didn't understand? Because Luke really couldn't understand how he could have hurt Reid emotionally when Reid's emotions had been counterfeit two years ago.
And good god, he couldn't even begin to understand how with all the hostility, he still found Reid sexually tempting. Luke knew for a fact that the attraction was mutual, which made things worse. Dangerous, even. It was Reid, after all, who had been touching Luke's hair. And Luke had caught the older man eyeing Luke's chest more than once in that barn last week. When Reid had shoved him, for a moment, Luke thought it might lead to something else. Now they were trapped in a cabin for who knew how long. What if their attraction boiled over?
Luke was startled from his thoughts when Reid snapped his fingers in front of his face a few times. God, he's rude.
"Hey, blond mogul! Any thoughts on this?" Reid demanded.
Luke blinked a few times. "I'm sorry, what?" He looked at Reid and tried not to notice how nicely Reid's jeans hugged his hips or how Reid's black shirt made his blue eyes stand out.
Reid rolled those same eyes a moment later, which brought Luke back to the present. The doctor replied, "We're trying to figure out a way out of here."
Luke gestured to his foot. "I'm kind of useless."
"How far is it to the nearest residence or business?" Nathan asked, having sat down in one of the chairs by the sofa.
Luke thought for a moment. "There's a general store about five miles or so west of here. But the road is pretty hilly; I wouldn't try it until the snow has stopped and visibility is better."
Nathan nodded. "Okay, I'll go in the morning if the snow ever stops."
Luke's mind raced. What? He's leaving me here alone with Reid?
"You're leaving me here? I'll go and you stay," Reid said, echoing Luke's thoughts. Luke nodded his head eagerly.
Nathan snorted at him. "Mr. 'Can't Risk the Hands'? What if you fell and scratched those precious commodities?" he asked in fake horror. Then, bluntly, he said, "Afraid it's a no go. He's injured, you're a doctor, and I'm the one who was an Eagle Scout. Surely, for a few hours, you can play nice with Luke."
"I thought you said you knew him well," Luke joked. Play nice? Who's he kidding?
Reid merely said to Nathan, "If he's dead by the end of tomorrow, you're the one who's going to jail."
"Look, Reid, I've been thinking--" Luke began. Actually, he was coming up with this on the spur of the moment, but it sounded better this way.
Reid interrupted. "You've been thinking? Well, that's a nice change."
Luke rolled his eyes at Reid's snide comment. "Do you spend all your free time being rude to people? Because you need to get some new hobbies," he informed the doctor. "Do some macramé or start bird watching. Learn to erect a tiny ship in a bottle. Just find something new because your personality is getting rather stale."
"That's what you've been thinking about? Me doing macramé?" Reid eyed Luke like he'd lost his mind.
Luke huffed in annoyance. "No! You sidetracked me, you idiot. I was thinking that maybe it would be nice to call a truce. Then you opened your mouth, and I remembered why that might be an impossibility."
"A truce sounds like a good idea to me. I'm getting tired of you two already," Nathan claimed.
"A truce," Reid said, nonplussed.
"Yeah, you know. I say something civil and you pretend to be human," Luke explained condescendingly.
Nathan nodded. "That doesn't sound so bad, Reid. You did hit him with your car."
Reid swung his gaze toward his friend in the chair. "I did not hit him! He jumped out of the way." It sounded rather lame to Luke's ears.
Nathan seemed to agree with Luke's assessment. "And then he twisted his ankle because you can't drive in the snow."
"Um, maybe the truce should be between you two as well," Luke observed. How had discussing a truce led to Nathan and Reid bickering some more? He was starting to get a headache.
Nathan smiled at Luke. "Hah, you should see us when we fight. This is us being nice to each other."
"I think I'll pass, thanks," Luke said cordially. Then he asked Nathan, "Can I talk to Reid privately for a moment?"
Reid's friend looked surprised, but shrugged his agreement. "I'll just go check out the bathroom," he said as he got up from the chair and walked toward the door on the far side of the room.
Luke looked up at Reid, but couldn't read the doctor's impassive expression. Well, at least he isn't yelling at me. "Okay then," Luke started. "What about it Reid? Surely nothing happened two years ago that was so bad that we can't be civil now? It was only a weekend, and neither of us was invested in the other, right? Not from just one night?"
Luke paused, waiting for his answer, hoping to get more information than just an agreement. Maybe he could learn something about whatever it was about himself that infuriated Reid so much.
"I guess," Reid agreed, frowning. "Just a one-night-stand."
For a moment, Luke was a little disappointed that Reid didn't argue. Something rose up in Luke's throat that made it hard to swallow. But Luke refused to cry. It was as Luke had always thought: Reid hadn't felt anything for Luke two years ago. Wherever this hostility came from, it wasn't from profound disappointment or disillusionment. Reid hadn't dwelled on that night for two years or been forever scarred by the other man's betrayal of trust.
He's not like me, then.