Turning the Page (17 page)

“Sure,” Malcolm answered before he could second-guess himself. He took a deep breath and firmed his resolve to do what he’d told himself all week had to be done. His rush of desire quickly gave way to the cold reality of what he knew he had to do. “Do you want me to make a reservation?”

“Sure,” Hans said. They agreed to meet at Hans’s house, and Malcolm asked Jane for a recommendation.

“I’ll see what I can come up with for you,” Jane said with a smile that faded quickly as she closed his office door. “All right, what act of stupidity are you about to commit?”

“I don’t know what you mean,” Malcolm said and returned his attention to the papers on his desk.

“Yeah, you’re as innocent as the driven snow, and I’m the dominatrix from hell.”

Malcolm chuckled at her imagery as she stalked closer to his desk. Jane might work for him, but when she got like this, it was best if he let her have her head. She would have made a great lawyer, and one Malcolm would not want to meet on the other side in the courtroom.

“So what’s going on?”

“Why do you care so much?” Malcolm asked.

She rested her hands on his desk and leaned over it. “Because you’re the best damned boss I have ever had. You don’t try to look down my top or up my dress, and you treat me as an equal and a human being. You’re thoughtful, and you’re a good man. I care because for the last fifteen months I have watched the wonderful boss I used to laugh with go through hell and back, and just when you’re starting to come out of all that quagmire, I can feel you pulling yourself back, and I don’t know why. Up until this past week, you looked forward to things.” She leaned closer. “Don’t think I don’t notice the way you hummed to yourself when you thought you were alone. You used to do that before David got sick. You were happy, and now that stopped all of a sudden. This week you’ve been just like you were months ago, so I figured you’d either done something really manly—read, ‘stupid’—or were about to.”

“I can’t believe you just said all that.” He swallowed. “Or that I’m so transparent.”

“Only to those of us who care about you.” She sat down, and her posture softened. “Now what’s the deal? And be careful how you answer, because stupidity is going to cost you even more flowers.” She raised her eyebrows. “Lots of them.”

“I have an appointment in five minutes.”

“I moved it back until eleven thirty and told Ellen that we were having a private conversation and to hold your calls. Now talk to me. I’m not just your assistant, I’m your friend.”

“I like Hans,” Malcolm said, giving in and opening up.

“And you’re afraid of what David would think?” Jane asked, but Malcolm shook his head. “Good. Because he’d want you to move on. You know that.”

“He would. But I still can’t get my head around having someone who isn’t David in my life like that. But I will. It’s slow, but I can feel that I want to open up. That sounds stupid even to me, but I think you get it.”

“Is Hans pushing you?” Jane asked.

“No.”

“Then what’s the problem? Is it his age?” She’d hit the bull’s-eye. “That’s just a number, and it doesn’t affect who we love.”

“But he’ll get bored with me.” Malcolm let his fear slip out. “I can’t keep up with him.” He sighed like some lovesick teenager. “You didn’t see him on those slopes. He looked like he owned them, and he was so graceful and….” Malcolm clamped his eyes shut, and he could see Hans on that slope. “He goes diving and he jumps out of planes, for God’s sake. I went down a ski slope and got laid up sore for a week. I can’t keep up with him, and I never will be able to.” He shook his head because he was not going to let his eyes water.

“Malcolm, I….”

“There’s nothing you or anyone can do. If I could, I’d love to be ten years younger, but then I’d have David and almost everything I could want in the world.” He missed him so very much every single day. Everyone had said that time would heal his loss, but Malcolm wasn’t so sure about that. “I still miss him each and every day.”

Jane scoffed. “Of course you do, and you will for the rest of your life. But that doesn’t mean you can’t love again. I think that’s what’s happening, and it scares you.”

“No, it doesn’t,” Malcolm said weakly and way too fast.

Jane cocked her eyebrow and stared at him.

“I’m not in love with Hans.”

“I didn’t say you were, but maybe you could be, and that’s what has you wetting yourself. You may not think you’re ready and all that—maybe you aren’t—but you shouldn’t do something stupid to ensure that you never find out.”

“What is this stupid thing you keep referring to?” Malcolm challenged.

“I don’t know. Like not calling him all week and then making some boneheaded decision that it would be better for him if you walked away… or some such crap.”

Damn it, how did Jane know what he was thinking?
He really needed to learn to school his expression better. “I don’t know what I’m going to do.”

“Then try letting things work out on their own and see what happens. You deserve the chance to be happy, despite your own best efforts.” Jane rolled her eyes. “Now I believe you have that meeting you were so worried about.”

Malcolm stood and gathered his materials. “You’d think you were the senior partner.”

“Please, like I’d ever want your job.” She flashed him a grin. “Although I could use a raise.”

She pulled open the door and left his office. Malcolm wondered what the heck he’d done to deserve her and then left for his meeting. Thankfully it seemed that Jane had taken pity on him, and when she rescheduled the meeting, she’d arranged for food, so he wouldn’t have to go without lunch. The more he thought about it, maybe Jane was right. With all she did for him, maybe she did deserve a raise. Jane poked her head back in the doorway.

“Oh, and flowers would be nice.”

She flashed him another smile. Malcolm groaned and reconsidered the raise.

BY THE
time he was to meet Hans at his home, Malcolm was completely at a loss for what he should do. In the end he decided that Jane was probably right and he should see where things went between them. As soon as he made that decision, the blue mood and the fog lifted, and he realized the whole week he’d made himself miserable for nothing.

“I hope you’re in the mood for Italian,” Malcolm said when Hans answered the door. He expected Hans’s usual smile and energy, but instead Hans appeared worried and bit his lower lip. Malcolm immediately began to wonder if he hadn’t been invited over because Hans had come to his senses and realized Malcolm wasn’t for him.

“Please come in,” Hans said, but he didn’t make any move to kiss or even approach his personal space.

“What’s going on?” Malcolm asked and checked his watch. “I made a reservation because I thought you wanted to go to dinner, but maybe I should call to cancel it.” He felt gravity squeezing in on all sides.

Hans nodded and offered to take Malcolm’s coat. He hung it up and led Malcolm into the bright living room. “Would you like a drink?”

Malcolm noticed the bottles that sat on one of the side tables and wondered just how much Hans had been drinking.

“I’m fine.” Malcolm wanted to know what was going on. He pulled out his phone, canceled the dinner reservations, and then shoved the phone back into his pocket. “Do you want to tell me what’s going on, or am I supposed to guess?”

Hans motioned to the chair, and Malcolm sat down, while Hans did the same on the sofa. Malcolm was beginning to get the idea that he needn’t have worried all week about what he was going to do about Hans because this was the end of whatever they’d had between them. Malcolm knew he was jumping to a conclusion, but it seemed like a good one.

“I’m not sure how to say this.”

“Okay, I can make it easy on you. I understand that you don’t want to date someone as old as I am, and that you don’t think I’ll be able to keep up with you, and that someday you’ll probably get bored with me, so you figure you’ll walk away now before we both get hurt.” He began to get up.

“No,” Hans said rather frantically. “I wasn’t breaking up with you, though it seems you have a pretty long list of fears.” Hans stood and came closer. “I think we need to talk about what you just said, but I….” Hans paused and sighed. “This is going to freak you out, and I don’t want you to, but I know I have to tell you. I went to the doctor on Tuesday. It was a routine appointment for a physical, and they found something. We’re not sure what it is, but they did a CAT scan and there’s a spot on my lung.” Hans looked scared half to death.

Deep winter cold shot up Malcolm’s spine, fanning out in tendrils that froze through his veins and threatened to choke off his ability to breathe. Malcolm didn’t remember standing up, but he was halfway across the room to the door before he realized where he was, and he wasn’t sure what he was doing. “Have they done a biopsy?” Malcolm asked, his mouth and tongue bone dry. He’d asked that question before. He’d had this kind of conversation before. It hadn’t ended well at all: months of chemotherapy and watching David get thinner and thinner, more and more frail until he could barely hold his head up or say a word. He couldn’t go through that again.

“They’re doing it on Monday. The plan is for them to do surgery, see what’s actually there, remove the spot, and biopsy it.”

His hand shook, and Malcolm slowly walked back toward him and sat down in what felt like slow motion.

“After that they’ll know what course of treatment I’m going to need.”

Malcolm was silent. Words escaped him. This hadn’t been anywhere on his radar. Hans was young, too young, for all this. Hell, David had been too young as well. “Did they give you any idea what they think it is?”

“No. They don’t know, and I’ve been burying myself in my work so I don’t think about it too much.”

Hans turned toward him, and Malcolm wondered what he could say. He was at a complete loss, and the cold wasn’t going away. It had him firmly in the clutches of an emotional ice age that didn’t appear to be willing to thaw anytime soon.

“I wasn’t going to tell you until I knew something for sure, but I don’t know how much more not knowing I can handle.” Hans sighed, and Malcolm scooted closer, put his arms around him, and pulled him close.

Malcolm made some foreign sound deep in his throat. Words were impossible as the lump built to grapefruit size. The déjà vu was nearly overwhelming, and yet he knew he had to be strong and couldn’t let his fear overtake him.

“I know,” he managed to say.

“I didn’t want you to have to go through this again. You don’t deserve that, and I was hoping this whole thing would turn out to be nothing, and then we could… I don’t know.” Hans lifted his gaze. “I know you’re scared, and from what you said earlier, you have quite a laundry list of issues, and this is only adding to them.”

“I don’t know why I let my fear get the better of me.” The things he’d been afraid of before now seemed so stupid. He’d let his imagination run away with him because he thought Hans might get tired of him. Now the same monster that had taken David might take Hans as well. That was worth being afraid of.

“Did I do something to make you feel that way?” Hans asked, and it took Malcolm a second to realize he was referring to his earlier outburst.

“I am older than you, and it seems there’s no way I can keep up with you. I don’t dive or jump out of airplanes….”

“I don’t jump out of airplanes. I’m afraid of heights.”

“But you go up hills to ski.”

“That doesn’t seem like heights to me, and I’ve gotten used to it, I guess. The thing is, there’s no way I’m going to jump out of a plane, and I’m not going to get tired of you because you don’t want to ski or dive.”

“But….”

“Just get over yourself,” Hans teased. “There are a lot more important things, like the fact that we have fun together and that we’re both willing to try new things. Stagnation is death, and I refuse to be still, but that doesn’t mean I’m going to leave you behind.”

Malcolm couldn’t believe they were talking about this now. Hans had just told him he might have cancer, and now he was talking about Malcolm’s insecurities.

“And just for the record, how could I get bored with you?” Hans pulled away and glared at him. “You’re funny and you’re caring. Maybe you’re a little buttoned-up sometimes, but that’s not boring, just stuffy. I can deal with stuffy as long as you let me pull you out of your shell sometimes.”

Malcolm was really having a tough time understanding how Hans could just let all this go. “What about sex?” Malcolm asked. “I’m older, and you’re going to want more than I can give you. What if I’m too tired, and you…?” He couldn’t say it.

“I don’t cheat, and you know it. I’ve been on the receiving end of that, and I’d never do that to anyone. And in case you haven’t guessed, I’m not some teenager who’s just one huge set of raging hormones. So you’re a little older than me. Big deal.” Hans twirled his finger in the air. “Sometimes you make the biggest deal of the littlest things, and for the record, all you have to do is tell me if something is bothering you. Holding everything inside isn’t good. We aren’t stupid kids. We can talk to one another.”

“Fine.” Hans said that the difference in their ages didn’t matter, but words were one thing, actions another. While Malcolm felt a little better about where things stood between them, there was still the fact that Hans might have cancer. How in the hell could he tell Hans that he couldn’t go through all that again?

“I know what’s going through your head,” Hans said after a while. They’d been sitting quietly, and Malcolm had been wondering what he was going to do.

“You do?”

“Sure. And I don’t blame you. After David and everything you did to take care of him, you can’t go through all that again. Why do you think I didn’t tell you right away?”

“You expected me to walk away,” Malcolm said.

Hans nodded once. “I still do. This is a lot for me to take on, but I know after what you went through with David, I can’t expect you to willingly go through that again.” Hans reached across the small space that separated them on the sofa and stroked his cheek. “You’re….”

“I’m just a man, the same as you.” Malcolm wasn’t sure what he was going to do, but Hans thinking he’d leave made him angry, and he could feel his heels digging in. Maybe that was what Hans had wanted and hoped for. Malcolm wasn’t sure, but in a few seconds, without giving it much thought, because he knew if he did, he’d run for the hills, Malcolm shifted closer and held Hans tighter. “And I’m here and I’ll stay here.”