Page 95 of Mr. Frosty Pants
Joel shuddered. “Start whatever you want, but I’m not keeping up with it.”
“I’ll do it. Like I said, this is perfect for my project. I’ve even started a few spreadsheets for keeping track of any changes in sales.” Casey cocked his head. “Though some of the marketing has to be about the actual writer. People want to know things about you, Joel.”
“Start with the general marketing, and if that goes well, I’ll consider doing more, okay?”
Casey smiled, breaking out his laptop and pulling a sheaf of papers from his bags. “These are my plans. The main things I need your approval on are the covers, the branding designs, and the changes I’ve made to the blurbs. Getting those changed out, if you approve them, will take most of the morning.”
Joel looked through everything and was vaguely surprised that he didn’t hate any of it. He shouldn’t have been, though. Casey’s work in his sketchbooks of yore had always been impressive and well-considered. There was nothing he could really balk at, so he gave Casey a shaky smile and a mostly enthusiastic thumbs-up.
“Go for it.” He stood up, kissed Casey’s cheek, and grabbed his coat. “I’m going to be late if I don’t go. I have a few errands I need to run first.”
Casey grinned up at him. “By the time you get home, I’ll have this all changed out.” Then his expression went a bit queasier. “And I’ll know what my folks have to say about everything. I’ll have a better idea of what the future holds.”
Joel touched Casey’s cheek, feeling the line between smooth skin and stubble with this thumb. “If it turns out they are stubborn assholes, you can stay here until we get things figured out. Maybe not technically move in, but I’m not going to leave you high and dry.”
“Thank you.”
“But it won’t come to that,” Joel murmured.
Casey shook his head. “No. I don’t think it will. Dad said a lot of things he’ll come to regret, if he doesn’t already. I don’t think he’ll really disown me.”
Joel nodded, lingering to feel the drag of stubble over his thumb for a few moments more before kissing Casey’s mouth. He broke away, groaning when Bruno darted back through the dog door bringing more snow with him.
“I’ll get it,” Casey said, indicating the footprints. “You go on to work.”
Joel nodded and left, his heart tripping and a new plan for his morning formulating in his head. He texted Brandon when he got to his truck, and once he was sure the store was taken care of, he headed off in the opposite direction instead. Just because he wasn’t going to have to field an uncomfortable meeting with his own father for the first morning in way too many years, didn’t mean he couldn’t choose to have an uncomfortable meeting withsomeone else’sfather.
What would a morning be without one?
Downtown Knoxville glistenedwith frost as Joel gazed out from the wide windows of Jonathan Stevens’s sixteenth-story office. A tall, pretty woman named Aditi with dark brown skin and lush, wavy hair had led him here and asked him to wait while she located Mr. Stevens.
He could see the Sunsphere, the distinctive Knoxville iconic building, from where he stood—round and shining with morning light on its reflective gold glass. Looking down at his work boots, he knew he didn’t belong here. This was the land of suits and skirts, polished shoes, and ties. It wasn’t the place for callused, dirty hands and frayed blue jeans.
Still, he had to try. For Casey. And for himself.
He wasn’t devoid of pride, after all. He still had some left in there somewhere. And he’d show Jonathan Stevens what it meant to have a working man’s pride, what someone like him was willing to give up for the happiness of the man he loved.
“Joel.” Jonathan Stevens’s voice held all the disapproval that a father could muster for a friend deemed a bad influence on a beloved son.
“Mr. Stevens.” Joel turned around to put out his hand. “Good morning.”
Jonathan tilted his head and considered Joel a moment but took his hand after only the briefest hesitation. His handshake was firm, and Joel tried to balance his end of it.
Releasing Joel’s hand and moving behind his desk, Jonathan asked bluntly, “Why are you here?”
His throat went dry, but he stood his ground. “I wanted to talk to you about Casey.”
“Unless you’re here to tell me that you see the sense in ending things with him, then I don’t think we have much to say, and you can see yourself out.”
Joel sat down in the chair opposite Jonathan’s desk. “That’s just it. I think we do agree on some important things. Like that Casey won’t be happy with me. Not in the long run, anyway.”
He hoped deep down that wasn’t true. There was no way he could deny to himself what he’d seen the night before in Casey’s eyes: the love, the devotion. Nor could he deny his own returning feelings for Casey, or his new, optimistic hope that Casey was right, and they could, in the end, be happy together forever. But for Casey’s sake, he could fake this certainty in Casey’s eventual loss of interest to convince Jonathan Stevens not to cut him off.
Jonathan stared at him, disbelieving. “So, you’re here to…what? Ask for some money to bug off and break his heart? Because if that’s the case, name your price. Six hundred? A thousand? Five thousand? If it’s reasonable, we have a deal.”
Joel stared at the man behind the desk—his well-ordered in-and-out boxes, his tidy hair and slick suit. What sort of monster was under all that co-opted “class” that he’d think Joel could be bought? “No, I don’t want any money from you.”
“What then?”
