“Daddy, I need a drink of water.” Hunter’s quiet voice startled him out of his musings as the boy poked his head through Trent’s bedroom door.
“Okay, buddy, can you get one from the bathroom?” Trent asked as Hunter rubbed his sleepy little eyes with his fist.
“Yes, I’ll be quiet,” Hunter said, still standing there.
“Okay, good boy, then straight back to bed,” Trent said, and Hunter finally turned, leaving the room. He listened for a minute as the sink turned on, then little footstep sounded until he heard the small squeak of Hunter’s mattress. It turned out to be just the perfect distraction he needed to push all thoughts from his mind and set him back on task.
Trent forced himself to finish the proposal and send it off in an email. By the time he got it all done it was close to one in the morning. He closed the lid and placed the laptop back on the nightstand before turning off the lamp, plunging the room into darkness. He reached his hand around the bedspread for the remote and turned on the television. Since every Gage special was saved on his DVR, he went through a couple of screens to find the latest interview. It started with Gage’s face filling his screen and it wasn’t but a minute more before sleep took him under with images of Gage the last thing he saw.
Chapter 6
Gage sat kicked back in his chair, watching the goings on in the gallery out the side window of his office. His eyes stayed focused on the electrician who stayed on his knees, pulling wire through a new plug on one of the random showcasing walls. The tool belt made Trent’s worn Levi’s ride low on his hips. The T-shirt he wore shifted under the flex and strain of the muscles in his back and arms. All that bulked up, muscled goodness had to be built by pulling wire and lifting the heavy boxes of equipment he’d watched Trent lift all day long for the last three days.
From this position, Gage could almost see the very top of Trent’s pretty, perfect ass. He could definitely see the waistband of his tighty whities. Dear Lord, he desperately wanted those jeans to drop a little lower so he could see a small peek at the sexy ass taunting him. Gage determined, after hours of watching Trent this morning, the guy rocked a solid bubble butt, and boy did he love a nice, tight ass.
At this point, seven hours into the day, he could think of nothing but Trent and as Gage propped an elbow on the desk, dropping his chin in his hand, he wondered what the hell was wrong with him? It had to be the rejection. People obsessed over rejection, and he clearly obsessed over this man in front of him.
People referred to him as being super good-looking and gay men were generally an easy pickup…and besides, his gaydar was strong. He knew attraction when he saw it. When choosing his next sex partner, Gage would go into stealth mode, easily picking off the most interested and setting his sights on him. He never failed, but now he was clearly off his game, so he sat in this office and worried, because he definitely wanted Trent, the electrician. Actually the want overrode the worry by about four to one.
As he sat there, lost in Trent Cooper’s hot as hell ass, he realized true fear. It scared the hell out of him to think he might not ever get to bury himself deep inside this man, who sat on his knees, taunting the hell out of him right now. To make everything a hundred times worse, Trent never looked his way, not one single time. Gage knew this with absolute certainty because anytime Trent came within fifty feet of Gage, he sensed him. Picking up Trent with this weird mental connection apparently only he shared.
Trent Cooper pushed his senses into overdrive. Gage knew the moment Trent pulled up in the morning and when he drove away in the evening. Whenever Trent left the gallery, a sense of loss overtook Gage, only to be relieved when the man returned. Now they were at the end of day three and that Synclair intuition—he’d named it while mocking himself this morning in the bathroom mirror—told him clearly Trent Cooper was connected to him in some higher power kind of way.
Gage always focused on the task at hand. The only tasks of any significance now were this opening and the report of his life. He should have been working like a madman, reviewing everything on the case he’d built against Abdulla, because the story now was falling together at an incredibly fast pace. The gallery remodel ticked away on schedule, maybe even a little ahead of schedule. It truly appeared the opening and the assignment would hit completion right on target. But instead of going over everything one last time, all he could think was how fitting would it be to close one door in his life and have another immediately open.
Gage could see himself finally settling down into a relationship. It wasn’t something he’d thought about before meeting Trent, but it made sense to have a regular sex partner in a town you lived in. People did it all the time. Gage could also see the benefits of finding someone to have on his arm when needed. The problem with his line of thinking… Why in the world were his thoughts on a long term relationship with a straight man? How fucked up am I?
Gage cut his gaze down to the list his curator had slid on top of his desk minutes earlier. It only held his attention for a second before his eyes lifted back to Trent’s ass. To add icing to Gage Synclair’s cake, his fantastic curator looked to have already filled the gallery calendar for special showings, by someone famous, at least once a month for the next year. The Art Gallery already got big press around the world and the VIP list for the grand opening next week grew every day. His mother’s friend Oprah, only minutes ago, sent her attendance response, as well as Michelle Obama, Katie Couric, and Anderson Cooper. The media would certainly turn out, and the night would be covered if for nothing more than to gain such easy access to the numerous A-listers moving about. The grand opening was going to be spectacular.