Page 18 of Paradise

“It’s never enough,” Garrett scoffed. “You know me, I want a dozen impossible things done for me before breakfast just to feel secure enough to go about the day.”

“You’ve gotten a lot better, Gare,” Robbie said soothingly.

“Yes, well. ‘Better’ is always a relative measure.” He sat quiet under Robbie’s gaze, then gave him a half smile as his former lover walked over to him and clasped his shoulder in one broad, warm hand.

“You’ll be fine,” Robbie stated. No prevarication, just belief. “Both of you. You’ll tell him in the morning?”

“Yes.” Garrett sighed. “Can I make it seem like I just learned it, or does that not queue up with your code of honor?”

“Whatever makes you more comfortable.” Robbie squeezed his shoulder again, then let go. “Now I’m going back to bed. Wyl won’t get any sleep if I don’t.”

“Aww, you’re his teddy-Robin,” Garrett cooed, happy to have a change of subject.

“Don’t call me that.”

“But it’s your legal name: Robin of Locksley.”

“Go tobed, Gare.” Robbie left, and Garrett swung the chair back and forth in a ninety-degree arc, rhythmic and blank.

Go to bed. He could do that; in fact, most of him yearned to slide back into his warm bed and cuddle up to his own teddy-Jonah. But he was awake now, wide awake and pensive and jittery, and he’d be a miserable bedmate at this point. Better to let Jonah sleep. Coffee was what he needed and some time alone. By the time his fiancé woke up, Garrett would have worked out what he needed to do—he’d have found that fine line between Robbie’s abject honestly and his own penchant for obfuscation.

Coffee, then deep thoughts. Garrett got up and headed toward Claudia’s kitchen.

Chapter ten

Cody

Breakfast was a big meal here on Paradise. Back home, Cody might eat with his dad or with Garrett but not usually with both, ’cause they had to get to work at different times. Here, though, everyone showed up. Maybe they only did because it was a “special occasion,” like Claudia said, buteveryonewas there, even Miles and Robbie. They probably made sure to come because the food was soamazing. Cody got to have pancakes with chocolate, caramel,andwhipped cream on them, all coated with bright-purple syrup. Dad’s pancakes were plain, and Garrett just had coffee, which was weird because he usually ate some cereal or something, but today he looked really tired and kept staring down into his mug. Cody patted him on the knee.

“I think you need a nap.”

Garrett raised one eyebrow. Watching it drove Cody crazy—he had been trying to learn how to do that formonths, but he still hadn’t figured it out. “Really?”

“Yes. You look sleepy.”

“Huh.”

“You sound sleepy too.”

“Out of the mouths of babes,” Wyl intoned as he made another espresso. Cody frowned.

“I’m not a baby,” he told Wyl. “I’m seven.”

“It’s meant to be taken as kind of a metaphor …” Wyl began, then sighed. “Never mind. Why are you so tired anyway, Gare?”

“I had an early morning meeting.”

Dad looked over at him. “So that’s where you got off to last night. Who were you meeting?”

“He was with me.” Robbie didn’t speak loudly, but everyone always stopped what they were doing and looked at him when he spoke up. “I wanted to pass on some information I thought you might find interesting. The timing of the rendezvous, by the way, was completely Garrett’s idea. I was all for sleeping through the night.”

“Oh, you traitor.” Garrett threw his unused napkin, which he’d folded in the shape of a spaceship, at Robbie’s chest. “See if I ever lie for you again, Benedict Arnold.”

Cody was completely confused by now. “Who’s Benedict Arnold?”

The table was quiet for a moment. “He was a general on Old Earth,” Miles said at last. “He tried to betray the army he was working for to the enemy. His plot was foiled, but after that, people started using his name to refer to traitors.”

“Note the personal contiguity that I’ve tailored to you with the military nature of the reference,” Garrett added, his fingertips tapping out a rhythm on the tabletop. He didn’t seem to notice he was doing it. “I could have gone with Judas, or Brutus, but one was too religious and the other too political.”

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