Flirting With Disaster (Camelot 3)

He’d always put her on edge, from the moment Caleb hired him. She simply hadn’t realized that the reason he got her hackles up wasn’t discomfort, it was attraction. She’d wanted Sean to like her because she’d liked him.

Classic Katie syndrome. She was such a puppy. Like me! Want me! I’ll love you!

She tipped her knees to one side to dislodge Sean’s hand. Tonight, she lacked the energy to generate the shield of bulletproof awesomeness she needed to be Agent Katie, or Parisian Katie, or any Katie other than the real one. Maybe in the morning she’d relocate her means of self-protection, but in the meantime she couldn’t handle Sean’s hand on her knee. She’d end up on the floor, begging him to fall in love with her and weeping herself into a soft pile of pathetic neediness.

Ugh. What she needed to do was keep her mouth shut and let exhaustion carry her off to sleep.

No more outbursts, and no more sharing.

She looked out the windshield at the wedge of brightness created by the onrushing SUV, the snow swirling in the headlights.

“What is it?” Sean asked.

“I feel useless.”

“You’re n-not useless.” After a beat, he put his hand back on her knee and squeezed it. She let him, because there was no point in trying to keep herself from being the way she was. Lonely and wanting and cruelly attracted. “Judah’s got round-the-clock ssecurity. N-nobody’s going to k-kill him. Now t-tell me what you ffound out t-today.”

“Nothing,” she admitted, brushing her fingers over the hair on the back of his hand. “I talked to Paul, to Judah three different times, to Ginny for, like, two hours, and to a few random fans and the bartender. Nobody told me where the bodies are buried or anything. My notes are full of pointless facts, like that Ginny is a Pisces.”

“I bet yuh-you know more than you th-think. Why is Judah in the c-closet?”

Katie traced the outline of Sean’s hand with her index finger, plunging into the valley between each digit and back out again. “I think it’s kind of habit at this point. He grew up in this perfectly ordinary, perfectly lovely Christian family in a conservative town in Iowa. He told me he didn’t even know he was gay for sure until this camp counselor kissed him when he was sixteen.

“So suddenly he understands, but he doesn’t know what to do about it when he goes home. He’s having all these feelings about his best friend, Ben, and now he finally gets what the feelings are all about. So he makes a move, completely terrified that Ben’s going to punch him in the face, but instead he kisses him back, and they spend the whole last year of high school secretly fooling around and worrying somebody’s going to find out.

“They moved to Louisville together the summer after graduation. Judah wanted them both to come out then, but Ben wouldn’t, and if he didn’t, Judah couldn’t, either. Ben was supposed to go to West Point in the fall. Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, right?”

She tested the blunt edge of Sean’s short thumbnail against her pinky finger. The heavy weight of his hand on her knee soothed a hundred different pieces of her.

“That was the summer he p-played the High Hat,” Sean said.

“Yeah. He used to play a couple nights a week.”

&nb

sp; “What was this g-guy’s name? Ben who?”

“Ben Abrams.”

“Did you check him out?”

“No. You think I should have?”

“I think we sh-should check everybody out. Run background checks on all the staff this week, and on anybody Judah m-mentioned when he was talking to you. Google them, too, and sssee what you can find out. Email me whatever you get that looks interesting.”

“Okay.”

“What else can you t-tell me about Judah?”

“They lived with Ben’s sister, Melissa, and the three of them were at the High Hat almost every night. But then Paul showed up at one of the shows and convinced Judah to move out to L.A. with him, and Paul was adamant that Judah couldn’t be gay. This was when Jonathan Knight and Ricky Martin were still in the closet. Paul wanted every woman in America to fall for Judah Pratt. Judah didn’t care, because he and Ben had broken up, and he didn’t think he’d ever want to be with another guy. He just wanted to record his album.”

“So why doesn’t he out himself now? He could ssell his story to The Advocate, and that would be the end of it.”

Sean’s stutter had eased up when they started talking about the job. If she pointed it out to him, he would start again, though. She was beginning to understand how it worked.

Katie flipped his hand over and interlaced their fingers. “I’m not sure. I think he would if someone pushed him a little. He’s just kind of at a drifting place in his life, you know? He’s not happy with where he is, but he has no momentum to do anything about it, and nobody is looking out for him and telling him what to do except Paul, who’s responsible for him being in the closet to begin with.”

She rubbed her thumb along the edge of Sean’s, wondering if she should tell him the rest of it. It wasn’t legitimate detective information. It was just an ordinary Katie hunch based on half a dozen years spent in service professions, paying attention to people.