Jason frowned and looked around the room slowly. His heart had started a wild little throb in his chest, and all his limbs tingled. He wouldn’t quite let himself get carried away on a stray thought, though. He swallowed hard. “Sister? Brother? Cop buddy? Former teacher?”
“No. No. No and no.”
A waitress dropped off two glasses and a carafe of water.
Jason’s gaze was suctioned onto Owen pouring them each a glass. Amusement played around the corners of his lips, his eyes. He looked so comfortable in his chair, his leather jacket slung over the back, his phone face down on the table. Like he was settling in to stay a while.
Owen flashed a hand for the waiter and asked politely if they’d light the candle.
A flame came to life between them. The waiter deposited their menus and left, and Jason stared at the gloss of light playing on that warm smile.
Owen leaned forward. “Get there quicker, sweetheart.”
Chapter Eight
Oh God. No way. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
The table felt smaller now, with all these jumbling emotions expanding inside Jason. Over the other side, Owen leaned back in his chair, an elbow tucked over its back. Effortless and at ease. “I wanted you to be as surprised as I have continuously been since meeting you. Disappointed?”
“But you . . . You’re a cop, you shouldn’t . . .”
“Be on Grindr? Have a sex life?”
“Have a fake identity?”
Owen just stared at him over the candelabra. And, yes, Jason saw the hypocrisy in that.
“I like to keep my private life discrete. Daniel’s my middle name, I go by that online. Not that I’m on Grindr much. Barely at all, to be honest. A couple of times when I was trying to purge Hayden from my system.”
Jason tried and failed to not picture Owen purging his system. His mind was on overdrive trying to fit him in a bed, glistening with sweat as he fucked a willing partner relentlessly into a mattress. All that raw strength and control and Owen . . . losing it at the end?
He shook his head. The table shrank further. The outline of Owen’s legs blazed like a furnace under the table.
He fumbled for his water, catching the glass before it tipped over. “Not on there much? Except you were last night.”
“I had some venting to do last night. With you.”
“You . . . vented with me?”
Puzzlement and understanding, and the jerking of that heat near his legs. “No. This showing up here, this revealing of my identity to you, that’s me venting.”
Jason laughed, grabbing at the sides of the menu. He was shaking. Partly a pleasant kind of ticklishness at the surprise, partly his brain working through the facts. There were just so many. Daniel was Owen. Which meant Jason had been messaging Owen last night from the next room. And Owen was the one willing to play the role of fake boyfriend. And Owen had known this wee fact all day. And Owen was definitely enjoying the look of shock on Jason’s face.
And also: Owen was on Grindr. Interested in LTR (long term relationship). Safe: PrEP, regular testing. Top.
“So you don’t usually use Grindr to hook up?”
Owen picked up his water and sipped, studying him thoughtfully. He set it down again. “I prefer the old-fashioned method of meeting in real life, and all the wonderful ways life can make that happen.”
Jason tapped his fingers on the table, foot moving too. Bach, “Cello Suite No.1, Prelude”.
After a moment, Owen asked, “You okay?”
Jason looked up into generous dark eyes. “Okay?”
“Good enough you won’t get up and leave?”
“Why on earth would I do that? You’re the most perfect man I could ever wish to be my fake boyfriend.”
Teasingly, “Yet you never asked me to begin with.”
Jason stopped tapping. “That’s the question you were expecting?”
“It didn’t once cross your mind?”
“Of course it crossed my mind, and Cora’s mind. I dismissed it immediately.”
Wait staff came then to take their order, and Jason blindly chose the first thing his gaze latched onto.
Owen ordered more deliberately and turned his attention back to Jason. “Dismissed it?”
Jason wagged a finger at him. “Which I’ll have to do again. It’s all fine if my fake guy will never be seen or heard of in town again, but you . . . you’re the pinnacle of everything wonderful around here. Everyone says as much.”
Owen perked up at this. “Everyone?”
“When I ask, at work. And it’s all over Twitter.”
“You ask everyone about me?”
“Subtly.”
An eyebrow lifted. “What would that look like?”
Jason leaned forward on his chair. “Okay . . . for example, a plumber came in today and said Carl was probably due to have his gutters cleaned, a lot of leaks happened from blocked gutters in storms. So I said he should come around tomorrow, and he should do both our houses while he was at it, and he looked right at me and said Sergeant Stirling’s? like he knew it was your house but might be wrong? Anyway, he murmured something about that being a neighbourly thing to do—which, side note, totally nailing the small-town attitude—and I replied that you’d helped me out a few times recently and it was the least I could do, and weren’t we all lucky to have such a wonderful person keeping our town safe. See? Subtle. And he absolutely agreed. Best grin I saw all day. Well, until that one.” Jason gestured to Owen’s twinkly eyes and twitching mouth.