Page 2 of The Barn: Frost and Q
“He’s not answering the door.”
“Is he answering the phone?” Dammit.
Boone nodded. “Yep, he says he’s fine; leave him alone. So that’s what I’m doing. I’m down here leaving him alone.”
“He doesn’t want to see me.”
Boone gave him a hairy eyeball. “Is this the part where I tell you I don’t care? I’m pretty sure this is the part where I tell you I don’t care. Q is yours. Your responsibility, your husband, your problem. If you don’t want him to be your problem, sign the divorce papers.”
“So what? You can take him on?” he snarled, the idea making him see red. Which was bad when a guy was holding an axe.
“Are you kidding? No. I love him to death. Love to play chess with him. Backgammon. Cards. I like to watch movies with him, but I am absolutely, one hundred percent not flying my freak flag with him.”
“I know.” Frost shook his head. “I’ll go as soon as I’m done with this wood.” And a shower. He didn’t want to smell too Alaska bush pilot smoke jumper when he tried to force feed his wanna-be ex.
Jesus, what a mess.
How they’d gotten to this point was a total fucking tangle, and Frost wasn’t sure he had the wherewithal to deal with it.
They’d gone from a couple of kids who fell in love in college, to a happily married couple just starting off their lives, to one hell of a bluff in a high-stakes poker game which had made him a fortune. It didn’t make any sense. He’d been lucky, and somehow, when he’d gotten everything he’d thought he wanted, he’d lost everything that mattered.
He attacked the wood once more, slamming the axe down again and again until his muscles screamed, and his hands that he thought were never going to be able to be blistered again started raising up in welts.
His phone buzzed, George Michael’s “Freedom 90” starting, and he grabbed it.
You’re going to hurt yourself. Stop it.
He glanced up at the main house, squinting at the fourth-floor cupola, which he knew went deep back into the mountain the main house was built on.
Q was watching him.
Was he back there behind the one-way windows? Maybe on the camera?
Q knew everything that happened everywhere, even if he was never a part of even the slightest bit of it. Q dealt with the security. He handled bank background checks. Privacy. All those things that were desperately important.
All those things that didn’t require him to work in contact with another person.
Not even Frost.
He sank the axe into a log with a one-handed chop, then texted back.
And you need to eat. Boone says you haven’t
Boone is a tattletale. I’m fine.
Q was full of shit.
I want to see you.
There were three dots for a minute and then a picture showed up. A photo of icy blue eyes and silvery hair and about a thousand braids. Those had to take Q an hour to fix every time he redid them, at least. But the eyes were the thing though. They stared right into him, so sharp and sure.
Boone was right. Q needed food.
I’m going to bring you a plate.
Do I get a fork too?
Frost swore to God he was going to put that little son of a bitch over his knee and blister his ass. That was really the only answer to this whole situation. He knew better. He knew that wasn’t the only answer, but it was a really good answer, and it was a pretty satisfying answer, and it was the answer he wanted. He just had to convince Q that?—
