Stage Two E-Book

Ariel Tachna

• Herausgeber: Dreamspinner Press
• Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 290

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2017

Beschreibung

Lexington Lovers Love has a steep learning curve. Assistant high school principal Blake Barnes has everything he wants—a chance to help troubled students and an outlet for his passion for theater. Well, almost everything—he still goes home to an empty apartment. Then his high school crush explodes back into his life, the unexpected guardian of two boys in Blake's care. Thane Dalton has always been a bad boy through and through. Not much has changed, including his mistrust of authority figures, and no amount of institutional bureaucracy will keep him from protecting his nephews from the bullies terrorizing them. If that means butting heads with Blake, so be it. Blake and Thane have lessons to learn: that they both have the boys' best interests at heart, that the tension between them isn't just confrontational, and that sparks can fly when opposites come together.

Leseprobe

Stage Two

By Ariel Tachna

Lexington Lovers

Assistant high school principal Blake Barnes has everything he wants—a chance to help troubled students and an outlet for his passion for theater. Well, almost everything—he still goes home to an empty apartment. Then his high school crush explodes back into his life, the unexpected guardian of two boys in Blake’s care.

Thane Dalton has always been a bad boy through and through. Not much has changed, including his mistrust of authority figures, and no amount of institutional bureaucracy will keep him from protecting his nephews from the bullies terrorizing them. If that means butting heads with Blake, so be it.

Blake and Thane have lessons to learn: that they both have the boys’ best interests at heart, that the tension between them isn’t just confrontational, and that sparks can fly when opposites come together.

Table of Contents

Blurb

Sneak Peek

Dedication

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty-One

Chapter Twenty-Two

Chapter Twenty-Three

Chapter Twenty-Four

Chapter Twenty-Five

Chapter Twenty-Six

Chapter Twenty-Seven

Chapter Twenty-Eight

About the Author | By Ariel Tachna

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Copyright

“I found my senior yearbook, you know,” Thane said in that deep, rumbly voice that did unspeakable things to Blake’s libido. “It’s probably a good thing I didn’t notice you back then. I wouldn’t have known what to do with you.”

Blake choked back a laugh at the memory of Thane’s casual announcement to the school cafeteria and the effect it had had on him. “I think you would have.”

Thane turned Blake around to face him, his heavy hands hot on Blake’s shoulders even through the layers of cloth that separated their skin. “I’m sure I would have managed to fuck you,” Thane agreed, and the thought alone was enough to make Blake weak in the knees, “but I wouldn’t have known how to treat you the way you deserve.” He stroked Blake’s cheek with one thick finger. Blake’s eyes fluttered shut despite himself. “I wouldn’t have known how to keep you.”

Blake’s eyes shot open. Thane hadn’t just said that. But Thane met his gaze steadily, not backing away from the statement in the slightest.

“Is that what you want?” Blake asked hoarsely.

Thane smiled and took a step back. “I’d be a fool to want anything less.”

To my mother and sister, who answered all my questions about Lexington, and to Nicki, who indulges my obsessions even when she doesn’t share them.

Chapter One

BLAKE Barnes stared across his desk at the two sullen boys huddled together on small plastic chairs. “You want to tell me what happened? Because if you don’t, I’m going to have nothing to go on but the fact that this is the third time you’ve ended up in my office in less than a month. Three times in a month isn’t a record, but if you consider that you only started school here four weeks ago, it might be.”

Phillip—the older of the two brothers, for all that they were both in tenth grade and thus Blake’s responsibility until they moved on to eleventh grade—snickered, a good sign as far as Blake was concerned, but neither of them spoke.

“Phillip, Christopher, you’ve got to give me something here. I can’t help you if you don’t tell me what’s going on.”

“Kit,” the other brother muttered. “Nobody calls me Christopher.”

Blake sighed. “Come on, boys. I’m not the bad guy here. I don’t want to have to drag your parents into this if we can resolve it at school.” He’d managed to deal with the issues in-house the first two times the boys had gotten in trouble because the shouting matches had been relatively minor incidents, but he couldn’t continue, given the trend, especially not now that it had escalated to physical contact.

“Our parents are dead,” Phillip spat.

Blake blinked a couple of times. He hadn’t known that. Well, crap. So much for building rapport with the troubled teens, although that explained a number of things. He frowned and pulled up their records to see who they were living with. It took a moment for the computer to catch up with his request—he’d insisted on taking one of the old computers when the school had gotten some new ones. The teachers needed the newer technology more than he did. Finally the database loaded and gave him what he was looking for. Phillip and Christopher Parkins, currently living with….

Crap on a cracker. Thane Dalton, listed as their guardian. He rubbed his temples and prayed the boys would talk to him. He hadn’t seen Thane Dalton—assuming it was the same Thane Dalton, but in a town the size of Lexington and with a name like that, he wasn’t counting on it being anyone else—since Thane graduated from high school, but he doubted seeing him again almost twenty years later would be any easier. “Do I need to call your guardian or can we work this out ourselves?”

“Please don’t call Uncle Thane.” Kit finally met Blake’s eyes, a look of such hopelessness on his face that Blake’s heart broke for the boy.

“Kit, I keep telling you Uncle Thane won’t kick us out.”

“Look, tell me what happened—the truth, mind you—and I’ll see if I can keep your uncle out of it,” Blake offered. “The whole truth.”

“Those boys, the ones I shoved—” Phillip began.

“Don’t,” Kit said. “It’ll only make it worse.”

Blake’s stomach sank. “Kit, I know how it feels to be the new kid at school. We moved to Lexington when I was about your age, and I didn’t have an older brother to look out for me, but I also know that keeping silent about whatever the problem is won’t make it go away.”

Phillip looked at Kit again, then back at Blake. “They think because they’re star athletes and we’re nobody that they can push us around. They think they can make Kit do things for them. They….”

Blake could already tell where this was going, but he had to hear it from the boys. He folded his hands in his lap and squeezed hard to hide the tension that had its claws in him.

“Go on,” he said as gently as he knew how.

“They had him on his knees, holding him down. If I hadn’t gotten there when I did… one of them was reaching for his belt,” Phillip said in a rush. “Yeah, I shoved him. Yeah, I would have done worse if security hadn’t shown up, but they were going to hurt Kit. I couldn’t let them do that.”

Blake’s eyes closed against the desperation in Phillip’s voice. “No, you couldn’t. As a principal, I can’t condone violence, but I understand why you did it. Unfortunately, by the time security got there, Kit was off the ground and the security cameras don’t reach the corner where you were at the time, so it’s your word against theirs.”

Phillip spluttered a protest.

“I didn’t say I didn’t believe you. As a matter of fact, I do believe you, but dealing with it isn’t going to be as simple as it would be if we had witnesses beyond the people involved. Kit, did they say anything about what they were going to do with the belt once they took it off?” Blake could imagine two scenarios off the top of his head—a beating or a gang rape—but he’d long since learned that his students were far more creative than he was. The other boys could have had some other motive entirely.

Kit shook his head.

“Kit,” Blake cajoled. “I can’t help you if you don’t tell me the truth.”

Kit shook his head again.

“Call Uncle Thane,” Phillip said suddenly. “Maybe Kit will talk to him.”

Blake nodded and reached for the phone to dial the number still on his computer screen. He ignored the way Kit flinched, hoping he was making the right call. Thane Dalton had always been rough around the edges—“I may have flunked biology, but even I know you can’t get a girl pregnant from fucking her in the ass”—but Blake had never known him to be cruel. He hoped time hadn’t changed that about him, even if it had changed other things.

The phone rang three times before someone answered.

“Dalton.”

“Mr. Dalton, this is Mr. Barnes at Henry Clay High School. I have your nephews here in my office. There’s been a bit of an altercation. We need you to come up to the school, please.”

“Let me talk to them,” Dalton demanded.

It went against protocol, but Blake hadn’t gotten where he was by following the rules. He might not look like a risk-taker, but the kids always came first for him. “One moment.” He looked at the boys. “Which of you wants to talk to him?”

Kit flinched and Phillip squared his shoulders. “I’ll talk to him.”

Blake offered him the receiver. The cord wouldn’t stretch to where he sat, so Phillip had to approach the desk to take it.

“Uncle Thane?”

Blake couldn’t hear what Dalton said over the phone, but he could hear the angry tone clear as day. He sighed. This was going to get messy, he could tell already. Either the boys had confided in Dalton enough that he knew what was going on, or he had turned into a total authoritarian and was yelling at them purely for being in the principal’s office. Phillip listened to whatever Dalton was shouting without comment. After a few minutes, he handed the phone back to Blake and sat back down.

“Mr. Dalton?”

“I’ll be there in twenty minutes. Don’t let my nephews out of your sight. If those thugs get another chance at my boys, I’ll be taking it out of your ass.”

Blake didn’t shiver at the words. He was an adult, long past his adolescent crush on the bad-boy senior. Never mind that he’d figured out he was gay because of Thane Dalton and his outlandish disregard for anything like propriety.

“I will keep your nephews in my office until you get here,” Blake replied as civilly as he could. In his four years as assistant principal, he’d dealt with enough irate parents to know how to handle this. Losing his own temper wouldn’t help anyone, least of all the boys across from him.

The click of the phone call ending was Dalton’s only reply. Blake stifled a sigh. Some things never changed.

“Your uncle will be here in twenty minutes,” Blake told the boys. “Is there anything else you want to tell me while we’re waiting?”

Both boys shook their heads, so Blake left them to their silence. He had more than enough work to do if they didn’t want to talk to him, but his thoughts kept circling back around to their situation. They needed a peer group of their own, a circle of friends to insulate them from the bullies who were picking on them, to give them the same security working in the theater had given him when he’d first moved to Lexington. Being the new kid was always a challenge until they could fit in, and from what little he’d just learned of their situation, they had enough challenges facing them already.

If he could get them to talk to him and tell him the full truth about what was going on, he could help them, probably, but if they wouldn’t talk to him, his options were limited. Security had broken the argument up this time before it could get bad enough to really be considered a fight, but the next time they might not be so lucky, and Fayette County had a strict zero tolerance policy where fighting was concerned. If an actual fight broke out, he’d have no choice but to send them to the alternative school, no matter how convinced he was that they didn’t belong there. And he’d be sending them with the same boys who’d harassed them to the point of fighting back. There had to be a way to avoid that. He just had to find it, preferably before Thane Dalton got here, because Blake had no doubt what would ensue then—all hell would break loose.

He smiled at the thought. Phillip and Kit needed someone like their uncle in their corner. He almost pitied the parents of the other boys if this turned into a mediation situation. Then he remembered what Phillip had told him and changed his mind. The other boys deserved whatever Dalton chose to dish out.

He’d started shuffling some papers on his desk, looking for the report he was supposed to fill out at some point today, when his gaze landed on the announcement of the theater department’s latest project. He eyed it speculatively for a moment. A little physical labor in the guise of a bit of community service with a group of kids who prided themselves on being “different” might be exactly what Phillip and Kit needed to start fitting in. It had worked for him all those years ago.

THANE Dalton stared down at the phone in his hand and cursed until the air around him turned blue. When he’d promised Lily he’d take care of her boys if anything happened to her, he hadn’t expected it to ever come to pass. Unlike her soldier of a late husband, she had a perfectly safe nine-to-five job at a bank. No reason to think he’d suddenly end up with custody of his nephews because she’d gotten sick and didn’t recover. No reason to imagine that he’d suddenly find himself with two grieving teenagers living under his roof.

He tucked his phone in his pocket and whistled sharply to get the attention of his site manager. “Derek, I have to go check up on my nephews. I’ll be back when I can.”

Derek Jackson, his foreman, best friend since forever, and the only other person he trusted with Dalton Construction, waved to show he’d heard him, leaving Thane free to head toward his truck. He knocked the mud off his boots as best he could before climbing into the cab.

He had managed to avoid schools since he graduated from Tates Creek almost twenty years ago. He’d been planning on keeping it that way, but Kit and Phillip were all he had left of his beloved twin sister. He wasn’t about to let them down by not being there when they needed him. They hadn’t told him much—they didn’t say much of anything to anyone but each other, as far as he could tell—but they’d said enough for him to fill in the blanks. He might be pushing forty, but he still remembered how high school worked. He’d played the game with the best of them back then, but his nephews, his precious boys, hadn’t learned those lessons yet. Thane was trying to teach them, but they were still too raw to hear what he had to say.

It had been hard enough to lose his parents at thirty. He couldn’t imagine being an orphan at fifteen and sixteen. He’d be damned if he let anyone else make their lives more difficult now, and fuck anyone who tried to stand in his way. They had no idea what he was capable of.

Chapter Two

“EXCUSE me, Mr. Barnes. Mr. Dalton is here to see you.”

Blake nodded to his secretary. “Thank you, Natalie. Please show him in.”

Blake watched the boys across from him reach for each other as Natalie went back to the main office. He braced himself mentally for whatever the next minutes would bring. He would defend them from their uncle just as he would from the school bullies if it came to that, but he could only do so much once they left his office.

The door slammed open, startling all three occupants of the room, and Thane Dalton stormed in. He hadn’t changed a bit, except maybe to get better. He still wore his black hair pulled back into a tail at his nape. The black leather jacket Blake remembered had been replaced with a nicer one, but the jeans and work boots could have been the same ones Thane wore in high school. He still took up way more space in the room than his physical size accounted for, sucking all the air out of it with his sheer presence. Blake took a breath and reminded himself he wasn’t a nerdy freshman anymore. “Mr. Dalton. Thank you for coming so quickly. I’m Mr. Barnes.”

“I know who you are. I want to know what you’re going to do to stop these fucking thugs from terrorizing my boys.”

“I’d be happy to discuss a mediation plan with you,” Blake began.

Thane’s glare should have left Blake a pile of ashes on the floor. “Mediation?” he ground out. “I don’t see anything to mediate. From the day they enrolled here, they’ve been picked on by the same gang of jocks. You will not tell them not to defend themselves.”

“Fayette County has a zero tolerance policy where fighting is concerned. It doesn’t matter who started it,” Blake said, feeling like the worst kind of hypocrite. “If they are being bullied, they need to report it to an adult rather than taking matters into their own hands.”

“Like who?” Thane demanded. “You? You really expect me to believe you’d take their side over your star athletes?”

“There are procedures in place—”

“Fuck procedure.” Blake didn’t flush at the sound of Thane saying fuck. He didn’t. He wouldn’t.

“Please, Mr. Dalton. If you would keep a civil tongue, it would help matters immensely.”

Thane snorted. “You’re all the same. All full of polite words and pretty manners and all afraid to do anything that might get you fired or sued. Well, fuck that, Mr. Barnes. Someone is threatening my boys, and it’s going to stop now.”

“And how do you propose to stop it?” Blake asked.

“How do you propose to stop it?”

“Bullies have a tendency to pick on those without an established peer group,” Blake explained. “They look for those who are alone with no one to defend them or to bear witness to what’s going on.” Thane opened his mouth to interrupt. “Please let me finish. I do have a point, if you will hear me out.”

Thane glared at him, but Blake refused to back down. He had a job to do, boys to protect, and a school to run. He refused to be intimidated by anyone. Even the man who’d been the subject of his first wet dream.

“As I was saying, new students, students who don’t have a lot of social skills, and students who don’t fit the mold are the most frequent victims of bullying. In this case, I believe it’s a matter of Phillip and Kit being new. They haven’t had long enough to make new friends and find a niche for themselves, so the hyenas have closed in. Unfortunately, once that starts, it makes it harder for the victims to find their peer group because it’s a bigger risk to befriend someone who’s already being picked on than it is to simply befriend someone new.”

“That’s all very interesting, but it’s not a solution,” Thane said with a scowl.

Blake ignored him and turned to Phillip and Kit. “Have you boys learned anything about building from your uncle?”

“A little,” Phillip said. “We go with him to jobsites on the weekends sometimes to earn a little spending money. Kit’s too young to work officially, but we hang out with him.”

“Then I have a proposal. The theater department is looking for volunteers for the stage crew. You’d be helping to build the sets, so some basic sawing, hammer and nails, maybe a screwdriver, a paintbrush, nothing terribly complicated, but theater kids are a tight-knit group. They’d give you those friends to hang out with, which would make it harder for the bullies to isolate you.”

“Theater?” Thane said. “That’s the best you can come up with?”

“If you have suggestions, I’m happy to listen to them,” Blake said. “But if all you’re going to do is criticize my suggestions, then let me explain the other options to you. This will go on record as being assigned as community service. Their other choices are three days of out-of-school suspension or two weeks of in-school suspension. Those look far worse on their record than community service, not to mention the instructional time they’ll lose and the fact that it will bring them to the attention of the real delinquents in the school, which I don’t think you want. I don’t make the rules, Mr. Dalton, but I am doing my best to work within them to help your boys.”

Thane didn’t look convinced, not that Blake blamed him. He’d heard enough stories about Thane’s adventures in high school to understand that he didn’t have a lot of respect for school administrators. Few people outside the profession understood the tightrope Blake walked on a daily basis and all the regulations imposed on him by a system outside his control. He’d gotten good at finding creative ways to bend the rules, but it only worked if the parents were on board too.

When Thane didn’t offer any alternatives, Blake turned back to Kit and Phillip. “What do you think? Do you want to try stage crew?”

“It’s better than ISS or being suspended,” Phillip said. “It’s not like it can make things worse.”

Thane looked like he was about to say something cutting, so Blake gave him his best “don’t you dare” stare. He knew Thane’s type. As much as he’d crushed on him that year in high school, he’d had a few years to learn what boys—and men—like him thought about theater. Band was okay, but theater was for the fags. If Kit and Phillip had any musical background, they’d already be in band instead of taking pottery. If he had to guess, that had been stuck in their schedule to fill a hole rather than because they had any interest in it. He could be wrong—it wouldn’t be the first time—but Phillip and Kit didn’t strike him as the pottery type.

To his surprise, Thane didn’t say whatever he’d been about to say. Blake hadn’t expected his stare to work.

Kit looked at his uncle for some kind of guidance. Blake braced himself to make his case again against Thane’s disapproval, but Thane met Kit’s gaze impassively. “It’s your time. It’s your decision.”

Kit looked up at Blake. “How long do we have to work on it for, if we decide we don’t like it?”

“The entire preparation for the play only lasts eight to ten weeks,” Blake said. “Most of the building crew stays around for the performances and helps manage props or lights or other things, but that’s not really a requirement. To answer your question, though, give it four weeks. If, at the end of that time, you don’t wish to continue, we’ll consider your community service complete.”

“We can do four weeks, right, Kit?” Phillip said.

“Right.”

Blake turned back to Thane. “Then we’re in agreement. Boys, let me get security to walk you back to class. Mr. Dalton, could I have five more minutes of your time?”

“I want to talk to Kit and Phillip before they go back to class,” Thane said.

“That’s fine. Boys, if you’ll wait outside with Ms. Wright, I’ll call security to escort you back to class after you’ve talked to your uncle.”

Kit and Phillip filed out and closed the door behind them.

“You’re welcome to sit,” Blake offered. “This won’t take long.”

Thane sat in one of the chairs his nephews had just vacated, but having him at eye level instead of looming did nothing to reduce the impact of his presence in the room. “I need you to reinforce at home that violence doesn’t help the situation and that Kit and Phillip need to report any actions against them rather than fighting back. I can help them if they report bullies. I can’t help them if they fight the bullies.”

“You really expect me to believe that will work?” Thane scoffed. “It hasn’t been that long since I was in high school. I don’t think things have changed all that much.”

“What’s changed are the rules, Mr. Dalton. When we were in school, fighting got you suspended for a few days, and that was it. Now, it can get you sent to the alternative school or expelled. Not quite the same order of magnitude.”

“And not fighting back can get you gang-raped,” Thane said bluntly.

Blake winced. “They didn’t tell me that part.” The thought had crossed his mind, but he’d hoped…. Well, it didn’t matter what he’d hoped. “Then I’ve changed my mind. I need you to convince them to tell me the whole truth, because that’s a whole different situation than bullying. Not that I condone bullying, you understand, but bullying is an internal school matter. Rape is a crime.”

“They didn’t tell me either, but they didn’t have to,” Thane said.

“No, I don’t imagine they did, but they do have to tell me if their aggressors made that threat. I can’t go on hearsay or supposition. One of them has to tell me exactly what threats were made and by whom. If they will do that, then I have options that aren’t currently open to me,” Blake explained.

“Options,” Thane repeated with a roll of his eyes. “Tell me why I shouldn’t just pull them out and enroll them somewhere else.”

“Because without an explanation for what happened this month, the district won’t allow the transfer unless you move,” Blake said. “You could look into private schools, but they’re going to take one look at the discipline record and make assumptions about your nephews that will probably result in them being isolated there as well. I understand your frustration—”

“You understand shit. I know your type. You grew up in some rich neighborhood, went to some fancy school, and haven’t ever had to deal with any real hardship. Kit and Phillip lost their father when they were small. Kit doesn’t remember him at all. Last month their mother died of cancer. And now they’re having to deal with a bunch of ignorant-ass jocks who think they run the school because they’re good on the football field or a basketball court or wherever. They’ve had enough.”

Blake’s heart broke for Kit and Phillip, hearing it all laid out that way, and it only increased his determination to find a solution that would protect them and help them get settled in their new lives at the same time.

“You’ve made it very clear what you think of me, regardless of how far off base you are in your assumptions, but that doesn’t change the fact that right now, you and I are the only people in their corner. You can curse the system all you want, but the fact of the matter is I do know how to play it, so it really comes down to one question: Are you going to help me play the system or are you going to fight me the whole time and put your nephews’ future at risk?”

Chapter Three

THANE stared across the desk at the man who held Kit’s and Phillip’s future in his hands. God, he wanted to hate the man in his starched white shirt and perfectly knotted tie. He wanted to pick up the chair he was sitting on, put it through the asshole’s desk, and tell him to go to hell and take his entire system with him. He could do it. He might own Dalton Construction, but he still spent his days on one worksite or another. He had the strength to do it, and he was angry enough to use that strength, but it wouldn’t solve anything. Barnes had him by the balls, and he couldn’t do a damn thing about it.

“You have four weeks,” he spat. “If your plan works in that time, we’ll call it even. If it doesn’t, or if it gets worse between now and then, I’m done with waiting and playing by asinine rules.”

“That’s reasonable,” Barnes replied in that same even tone that made Thane want to pinch him just to see if he was capable of reacting. “You didn’t answer my question, though. Are you going to help me or are you going to fight me the whole time? Because I can tell you now that if you fight me, it won’t work. I work with teens, and I know all the ways they interact with their parents.”

“I’m their uncle, not their father,” Thane muttered.

“You’re their legal guardian. For all intents and purposes, that makes you their parent. As I was saying, I know all the ways teens interact with their parental figures. I saw how they look at you. They’re scared, which is perfectly logical after everything they’ve been through, half of the situation and at least half that you’ll change your mind, and they want your approval desperately so you won’t throw them back. If you don’t make them believe this is the best idea you’ve ever heard, they won’t put their hearts into it, and if they go in with sullen attitudes and long faces, the regulars in the theater program are going to know they’re there because they have to be instead of because they want to be. My entire plan depends on them making friends and becoming part of a group that will embrace them. Don’t undermine that before it ever has a chance to work.”

Not only did he have to deal with this shit for a month, but he had to pretend to think it was a good idea? No way in hell Kit and Phillip would believe that. Barnes might think they were that stupid, but Thane knew better. His boys were sharp as tacks. They’d just had a rough year. They were entitled to some struggles with academics and everything else. Not like he could help them much either. He could teach them how to swing a hammer, but he’d stacked his high school schedule with as many shop classes as they’d let him take. Academics had definitely not been for him. At least the boys had gotten Lily’s intelligence.

“How do you suggest I do that?” he demanded.

Barnes shrugged. “They’re going to be building sets. You could offer to help. You could keep an eye on them to make sure they’re safe and get to spend some quality time with them all at once.”

Thane snorted. “Free labor? Am I supposed to donate supplies too? I run a business, not a charity.”

“It was a suggestion, not an order,” Barnes said mildly. “You asked for suggestions, so I gave you one. And no, you don’t need to donate supplies. The theater department has a budget for sets, costumes, and the rights to put on the performance. All you’d be doing is providing the students with a little expert guidance and spending time with your nephews. This is not our first performance. Our team knows what they’re doing.”

Thane felt the sting of the gentle reproof but ignored it. Maybe Barnes really hadn’t been trying to take advantage, but enough people had in the past to justify Thane’s distrust.

“I’ll think about it. If there’s nothing else, Mr. Barnes, I have a business to run.” He also had two scared boys to talk to, but that was between them. Barnes didn’t have any part in it.

“Help me make this work. That’s all I ask,” Barnes said.

Thane nodded sharply and rose. He had to get out of this office. Too many memories, for all that this office looked very little like the one at Tates Creek where he’d spent more time than he cared to admit. High school hadn’t been the most successful stage of his life.

He walked out of the office to find Kit and Phillip sitting with the secretary. So much for any heart-to-heart talks, not that he was any good with those regardless of the circumstances. Kit and Phillip stood up immediately, rocking on the balls of their feet like they were caught between running and standing their ground.

He reached for them to clasp their shoulders in a strong grip and met their eyes each in turn. “We will find a solution,” he said. “If this isn’t it, we’ll do something else. I won’t let anything else happen to you. I swear.”

Tears welled up in Kit’s eyes, wetting his lashes and making him look like a kicked puppy, but Thane read the gratitude there as well. He squeezed Kit’s shoulder more tightly. Phillip hid his emotions better, his face impassive, but the way he clung to Thane’s arm gave him away. “Stay in busy areas in view of teachers as much as you can. If they can’t get you alone, it’s harder to pick a fight because there will be witnesses and people you can ask for help.”

“We’ll try, Uncle Thane,” Phillip said in a wobbly voice. He might’ve had the poker face down pat, but he needed to work on the rest.

“That’s my boys.” He squeezed their shoulders one more time and took a step back. “I have to go back to work. I’ll see you at home tonight.”

They both nodded and returned to their seats. He wanted to say something else, but words had never been his strength. He preferred action, but he had no authority here to act. He bit back a frustrated growl and stalked out of the office. He’d spend the afternoon pounding nails. That would release his tension better than any other option open to him. Kind of hard to pound a willing ass with two teenagers sleeping in the next room.

BLAKE slumped back in his chair when the door closed behind Thane. He wasn’t fourteen and figuring out his sexuality anymore. He knew exactly who he was and what he wanted—and Thane Dalton wasn’t it. Sure, he was nice to look at, but Blake had no use for the Neanderthal caveman type. Especially a judgmental Neanderthal caveman.