Best Laid Plans Read online

  It surprised Rush that Tadder wanted to be friends with him, but when he thought about it, he realized it shouldn’t have. Not only was Tadder so good-looking he made Rush’s mouth water, but he was a genuinely nice guy.

  No one at the ranch knew he was gay. For a while he’d thought he might be bi—he’d had sex with his girlfriend in high school a few times, and hadn’t that been a disappointment?—but living in a mostly homosexual household had made him accept the fact that he was more turned on by a male body, especially one certain male body, than by a female one.

  Not that anyone at the ranch had come on to him. JT was devoted to Mr. Jack, and Mr. Jack gave anyone who looked cross-eyed at his lover the hairy eyeball. As for Tadder….

  Rush sighed. Tadder was taller than his father. His blond hair had been bleached even lighter by the summer Georgia sun, and his eyes were as blue as the sky, which was a trite cliché, but that didn’t make it any less true. He also had a cute ass.

  Sometimes Rush felt as if he would burst if he didn’t tell anyone about what he was feeling, and he thought about coming out. He could just walk up to JT and say, “I’m gay, and I have the hots—” No, that was too crude, too graphic. No father wanted to hear that. “I’m attracted….” Mmm hmm. That was much better. “I’m attracted to your stepson.”

  Rush felt his shoulders slump. Yeah, that would go over well.

  Jan had caught him once, had seen the way his gaze had lingered on Tadder’s body when the tall blond one swam laps in the pool. “You want to sleep with the boss man’s son?”

  “No,” he’d covered by saying, “Just admiring his technique. I wish I could swim as well as he does.”

  “Like you’re a bad swimmer,” Jan had scoffed, probably thinking he was fishing for complements, and pushed him into the pool. By the time he’d surfaced, she seemed to have forgotten all about it.

  So Rush kept his feelings under wraps, and called Tadder ‘Thaddeus.’

  ***

  RUSH WAS JUST logging out of his work computer when JT strolled in. “Mail, Rush.”

  “For me?” Occasionally there was something from P&J, but other than that, there seldom was.

  “Yep.” JT handed it to him. “Is Jan okay? It isn’t like her to ask for time off without some notice.”

  “I guess.” Rush looked up from the envelope and gave him a slightly distracted smile. “Becca would know more than me, though.”

  “Well, she hasn’t said anything, so I guess…. Are you done? I’m gonna work out and could use a partner.”

  “Thanks, JT.” He liked working out with Mr. Tom, who had told him that his muscles had good definition but that by working out, they’d be even better, and after a few months, they were. Rush was proud of the fact that he’d had to buy a larger-size T-shirt to accommodate his chest and biceps.

  Long before Rush and Jan had come on the scene, Mr. Jack had added a number of rooms to the house, and one of those had been a gym for JT. It had a couple of treadmills, stationary bicycles, a Stairmaster, weight benches, and weights and barbells. One wall was all mirrors. He’d included a changing room, a shower room that had a trio of individual shower heads, and a sauna that was a sybarite’s dream come true.

  Sometimes Rush daydreamed of having a rendezvous with Tadder in the sauna, straddling his thighs, their dicks hard against each other, licking the sweat that beaded down Tadder’s chest—hairless now that the intercollegiate competition had started and he had to shave his body hair, although in the summer it had been so fair and fine that sometimes it simply looked that way. And his chest was so muscled….

  Rush brought his mind back to the present, grateful that he was behind his desk and JT couldn’t see his arousal.

  “I’ll… uh… I’ll just read this and be along in a few minutes.”

  “Okay. I’ll start warming up.”

  “Mmm.” Rush barely noticed that JT had left the room. He turned the envelope over in his hands. The return address was from home.

  No, that wasn’t really right. The big house in Atlanta had never been home, not in the sense the ranch was. These people not only liked him, they respected him as well, which was something he’d never been accorded while living with his parents.

  He recognized his mother’s handwriting. Why had she written him? Was something wrong? Neither she nor Father had answered any of his letters beyond a stilted note when he’d let them know he’d gotten an A in every class he had taken the previous semester and so had been guaranteed not only a place on the Dean’s List, but a continuation of his scholarships for the following semester as well.

  We will be away for the summer on an extended cruise, the note had informed him. Therefore, as the house will be shut up, we see no need for you to return to Atlanta. There had been no mention of his scholastic accomplishments.

  Fortunately, JT had made an offer to Jan and him that had been too good to refuse: move into the ranch, rent-free. The only conditions were that they continue working for Jackson Construction on a part-time basis, keep up their grades, and set aside the cost of what they would have paid in rent elsewhere into a savings account. His heart had pounded at that opportunity, and he’d leapt to accept it.

  It had worked well for all of them, but especially for him, and he was able to save more than housing would have cost him. He didn’t need much, always having been careful with his clothes, and Tadder was generous in offering the use of his computer and his computer games.

  Sometimes Rush even accepted the offer.

  And JT was waiting for him in the gym, and he was putting off the inevitable.

  Well, no point in that. Rush took the letter opener from the top drawer, slit the flap, and removed a sheet of pale cream paper. He unfolded it, and a small newspaper clipping fell out, which he retrieved and scanned quickly.

  Major General Burgwyn and Mrs. Imogen Adams of Savannah, Atlanta, and Richmond, take pleasure in announcing the engagement of their daughter, Miss Suellen Adams, to Dr. Gratton W. Dalton III.

  His oldest brother was engaged? Why hadn’t Gratton let him know, even if only by email? Gratton had always treated him well, and to find out like this….

  Rush could hear Emmett saying, ‘Suck it up, Shorty.’ He blinked rapidly, sucking it up.

  Dr. Dalton, who graduated summa cum laude from Athens University and completed his residency in Cedars Sinai, is one of the youngest surgeons to be recruited to Johns Hopkins. He is the son of prominent Atlanta thoracic surgeon D.E. Dalton and socialite Annabeth Dalton.

  Miss Adams is a graduate of Dartmouth University, where she took honors in Government.

  A June 2001 wedding is planned.

  Rush studied the grainy image above the announcement. Suellen Adams? Her name sounded familiar, but unless her nickname was Candy, she wasn’t the girl Gratton had been dating before Rush had left home to attend Pulaski and Jasper. Gratton had been crazy about Candy, or so it had seemed to his youngest brother.

  But then what did Rush know?

  Adams? He frowned. An Edward Adams had sat a couple of rows away from him in homeroom his junior year at Lyman Hall, and there did seem to be a resemblance. The family was old Southern blood, if he recalled correctly, and money as well, although not quite as old. The black sheep on the distaff side had gone west, and from there to Alaska during the gold rush. He dug a fortune out of the Bonnie Blue Mine, died childless, and left everything to his only surviving sibling, Bethany Mayhew. Shelby Adams had wooed and wed her, thereby securing the fortune for his own family.

  No, the tall, thin, anemic-looking brunette in the photo definitely wasn’t Candy.

  It would take every day of the nineteen months between now and the wedding day to plan and produce the kind of wedding Mother would envisage for her son, even if Gratton wasn’t Emmett.

  Gratton was not only marrying money, he was marrying into a socially prominent fami
ly as well. The question was, was he doing that to please himself or to please their parents?

  Rush was afraid he knew which, and he grieved for his brother’s choice.

  There was something written on the cream paper, and he picked it up and read the brief message.

  Rushton,

  As you can see from the newspaper clipping, your brother has become engaged. Suellen is a very lovely girl, perfect for Gratton, and I’m sure they will be very happy together.

  Gratton and Suellen will be marrying in June of 2001. You will not be required to be in the wedding party. Gratton has enough friends to usher for him, and of course Emmett will be his best man. However, you will be expected to attend.

  Of course. What would his parents’ circle of friends think if the youngest Dalton son wasn’t present at such an occasion?

  You will need a tuxedo, and in spite of your obstinacy in choosing to go to that other college, your father has agreed to cover the cost of the rental. I trust you won’t disappoint us.

  He sighed. But you’re not certain, are you, Mother? Do you intend to have someone watch me the entire time, the way you did at Gratton’s graduation, ready to whisk me away at the first sign of…. His parents both expected the worst of him, even though he was the best behaved of the brothers, never having the gumption to act out, he couldn’t help thinking bitterly.

  We’ll be in touch with further details as you need to know them.

  Mother

  It surprised him that she actually signed it “Mother”. For a moment he toyed with the idea of sending his regrets, but then he slumped in defeat. Why give his parents an excuse to dislike him even more?

  Rush pressed the heel of his hand into his side. He hadn’t had problems with his ulcer since he’d moved to Savannah to attend Pulaski and Jasper College, but the twinge reminded him of the original reason for it. Yes, the doctor had said it was caused by the H. Pylori bacteria, but Rush’s ulcer had been exacerbated by the constant stress of applying himself toward a degree in a career that didn’t interest him in the least, the unending pressure to live up to his brothers’ achievements, and the inevitable knowledge he was destined to fail no matter what he achieved.

  He crushed the letter in his hand and threw it into the waste basket beneath his desk. There were nineteen months until his brother’s wedding. He’d pull a Scarlett O’Hara and think about it another day.

  ***

  “YOU’VE BEEN a little distracted this afternoon, Rush.” Mr. Tom was taking the weights off the bar and stacking them, while Rush wiped down the weight bench.

  “What? I mean, excuse me?”

  “Something’s bothering you.”

  “No!”

  Tom raised an eyebrow, and Rush offered a weak smile.

  “No.” The last thing he wanted to do was talk to anyone about this latest situation with his family. He cleared his throat. “I’m all sweaty. If it’s okay with you, I’ll go take a shower.”

  “Okay, Rush. You know you can talk to me, though, don’t you?”

  “Sure, I do. And… and if there was any… anything to talk about, I’d be right there.” To his horror, his eyes started to burn. Tom Weber was more a father than his own father had ever been, and he knew if he didn’t get out of here soon, he’d be bawling like a baby. He rushed into the shower and stripped off his workout shorts.

  Turning the water on full force, he stood under the shower head and let the water pelt down on him. You’ve got an assignment due on Monday. Think about that.

  Somehow the fact that no one in his family had contacted him about his brother’s engagement kept slipping past the barriers he tried to erect around it. He leaned his head against the tiled wall, no longer able to prevent the tears from falling.

  This was stupid, and weak, and….

  The hand on his shoulder caused him to jump and almost slip.

  “Rushboy. What’s wrong?”

  “N-nothing, JT.” He dashed a hand over his eyes, pretending he was wiping away the spray.

  “Nothing? You’ve been crying.”

  “No, I wasn’t.” How could JT tell? Rush’s tears had to be disguised by the water running down his face.

  “Do your shoulders always shake when you shower?” Mr. Tom raised a hand. “Don’t bother trying to pull the wool over my eyes. We’ve shared the showers since even before you moved in here, and this is the first time I’ve seen you this upset.” He rubbed Rush’s shoulders. “Talk to me.”

  The compassion in JT’s voice did it. Unable to help himself, Rush wrapped his arms around him. They were about the same height, and Tom’s shoulder was perfect for laying his head upon.

  “It’s all right, Rushboy,” Tom said softly, soothingly, stroking the tight muscles of Rush’s back. “Let it all out.”

  “Why… why don’t they love me? What did I do that made them turn away and not love me?”

  “Your parents?”

  Rush nodded against Mr. Tom’s shoulder. “All I wanted my whole life was to have my family love me, but I must have done something wrong, something awful. From the day I was born, they… but I don’t know what, and I can’t figure it out, unless it’s because I’m….”

  “Gay?”

  “No!” Oh, God, what am I doing? Rush stepped back abruptly, breaking the older man’s hold on him.

  “Rush.” Mr. Tom’s expression was so understanding. “If that’s what it is, I’ve known all along you were gay.”

  “No, you can’t! I’m not! How did you….” Mortified, Rush grabbed up a towel and ran to the changing room, drying himself as quickly as he could and willing himself not to shed another tear. All he needed was a couple of minutes to pull himself together. He’d done it plenty of times before….

  He didn’t have a couple of minutes. Mr. Tom, a towel knotted around his waist, followed him out. “Rush, you are loved. Your parents are fools.”

  “Please…. Please, Mr. Weber. I… I don’t want to talk about it.” Not now, not ever.

  “All right, Rush.” He looked sad. “But I hope I’ll always be JT to you. I’m here for you if you ever need to talk.” Tom made a move as if to pull Rush into a final hug, but Rush backed away, and instead, he sighed and smoothed the hair back off Rush’s forehead. “Remember. I’m here for you.” He squeezed Rush’s shoulder and left.

  Rush pulled on his shorts and thought about what had just happened. He knew from conversations around his parents’ dinner table that they had no use for gays, liberals, or Democrats. Could they tell just by looking at me that I’m gay? JT seemed to know.

  And oh God, he’d cried all over him. How pathetic was that? JT would probably lose all respect for him.

  Mr. Weber—he’d better get used to thinking of him that way again. Rush knew what little regard he had for men who couldn’t take what life dished out to them. Candy asses, he called them. Right now he was being kind, but once he really thought about it, he’d realize what Rush’s parents had made more than plain, that he didn’t deserve to be loved at all.

  If they couldn’t love him, why should he think someone as… as nice as Tom Weber, as nice as his family, and especially Tadder, could?

  Rush would have to quit his job. How could he bear staying?

  But how could he leave?

  The acid in his stomach began to churn.

  He finished dressing and skulked through the house, hoping he wouldn’t run into JT. There was Pepto Bismol in the bathroom just off the office. For the first time in almost nine months, he reached for the pink liquid.

  There was nothing as disgusting as swigging directly from a bottle someone else would need to use; the housekeeper had pounded that into him. For a second he thought of defying her decree but members of this household might need it, and he couldn’t do that to them. He took the bottle to the kitchen to get a spoon, and he’d just started pouring the
Pepto Bismol when a sound behind him startled him into splashing the pink liquid onto the counter, his shirt, and the front of his trousers.

  He sighed. It looked like he’d climaxed pink come.

  “Tadder.”

  “Hi Rush. What’s shaking?”

  “Oh, you know. Same old, same old.” He tried to project an insouciant front, but he’d gotten out of the habit, and he wasn’t sure how convincing he was.

  Not very, he realized when Tadder eyed him thoughtfully and drawled, “Tell me another one.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “I may have been born in the night, but it wasn’t last night. Something’s bothering you.”

  “Why would you think—”

  Tadder shook his head. “I’m not going anywhere, so you may as well tell me. I can be really stubborn, you know.”

  Before Rush could once again deny anything was wrong, Tadder stepped into his personal space and held him.

  Another man was finally holding Rush Dalton when he wasn’t blubbering all over himself, and not just any man, but the man he’d fantasized about when he was alone in bed, almost from the day he’d met him.

  Somehow, the sorry story came spilling out. Oh, not all of it. He’d never be able to look Tadder in the eye again—well it was kind of hard to do that anyway, considering how much taller Tadder was….

  Am I losing my mind? Rush shook his head. He must be. He’d even thought he’d heard Tadder call him “babe,” and if that didn’t prove he was going off the deep end, he didn’t know what would.

  But Tadder had kissed his nose.

  Not very romantic.

  Yeah, but….

  Face it. That’s reaching, Dalton. He told you it was to get your attention. Not that it took much when Tadder was around. Standing there breathing usually did the trick.

  But Tadder was still holding him, and it seemed as if he was on the verge of kissing him. His lips were so close, and Rush wanted desperately to know if they were as soft as they looked. If he slid his eyes shut, if he tilted his head back…

  Before he could work up the courage to ask Tadder if he’d heard him right, before he could go after the kiss he’d often dreamed of, the back door slammed, indicating Becca was home, and the moment was gone.