There. He’d said it. Luke stared at Adam and tried hard not to hope. Adam looked a bit confused and definitely still half-asleep. Luke could see an ironing board set up behind him, the suit Adam had been wearing last night draped over it. Adam was still in the clothes Luke had given him the night before, and he looked wonderfully sleep-rumpled in them, especially with their being a little big for him.

Dammit. He looked adorable and confused, and Luke wished he was standing there to ask if Adam wanted Luke to take him to a local shop to get some clothes, and then maybe brunch... because he was turning into a goddamn sap, apparently. But instead, he was asking if Adam was working for Seth’s grandparents.

Yay.

Adam blinked at him for a moment. Then his face tightened up and even before he said anything, Luke had his answer. Adam’s eyes dropped to the ground for a moment, then he cleared his throat and he looked up, squarely meeting Luke’s gaze.

“Yes,” Adam admitted. He looked guilty, which was something, Luke supposed, but it wasn’t enough to take away the anger rising up in the pit of his stomach.

“Then what the hell?” Luke asked.

“I don’t know!” Adam admitted. He seemed to know exactly what Luke was talking about, thankfully. Luke didn’t want to spend another ten minutes explaining just how Adam had messed up.

“I’m sorry,” Adam said immediately. He leaned heavily against the doorframe, looking a lot more exhausted than he had a few seconds ago. “It was a bad day, and I was miserable, and I just wanted to dry off and that took over from my professionalism. And then you—”

“You let me—”

“Have you seen you!?” Adam protested, gesturing wildly at Luke’s body.

Luke laughed in spite of himself. Adam looked honestly put out, as if Luke had offended him by being good-looking. It was flattering and kind of adorable.

Adam sobered up, though. “I’m sorry. I should have told you. It was—I don’t have an excuse, that’s not—I’m not pretending that what I did can be waved away, but it was just a really bad day. I was tired and you were hot and flirting with me and—guys don’t do that. Um. Guys like you... don’t flirt with me.”

He fidgeted a little, a bit of a blush showing back up on his cheeks. Luke, damn it, had the urge to reach out and reassure him. Adam was gorgeous, of course Luke was going to flirt with him and try to put his hands on him. This wasn’t about their attraction though. As annoying as that was—annoying because he couldn’t do anything about it—this was about the bigger issue of Adam lying to him.

“So when you said you couldn’t,” Luke said, “Right before Seth walked in—”

“I was about to tell you,” Adam replied. “Yes. But… then I just didn’t know how to do it in front of Seth.”

They stood there for a moment, Adam looking as awkward as Luke felt—actually, even more awkward. Luke at least had his anger to fuel him. Adam looked like he wanted to crawl into a hole and never come out. That… didn’t sit right with Luke. Even though he probably shouldn’t care, he did.

“I should have asked Seth to leave and told you the truth,” Adam said. “I should have said something the moment I walked in. It was unprofessional of me, and unfair to you.”

Luke… honestly hadn’t expected such honesty from Adam, or for Adam to be so apologetic. He’d expected yelling, and defensiveness, and maybe even some threats.

“So you’re here to serve me papers?” Luke asked. The anger in his stomach was hardening and tightening, transforming into worry.

Adam looked honestly upset. He bit his lip, then nodded. “Yeah. The Harpers want custody of Seth and they’re willing to go to court with you over it.”

“Jesus Christ.” Luke felt his knees buckle a little and he propped himself up against the wall.

Adam looked for a moment like he was internally struggling with something. Then he said, “Come in for a second.”

Luke looked at him. “Why?”

“Just… please?”

Luke shrugged, but followed. Why not? It wasn’t like Adam could possibly have any worse news to deliver.

Adam closed the door behind him and then walked over to his briefcase. Luke hadn’t really noticed it the night before, given that he was rather busy ogling Adam and then helping him get dry and then helping him get… other things. Adam rifled through the briefcase for a moment before pulling out a few pieces of paper.

“Okay, so when I did research for the case, it basically came down to a matter of—”

“Whoa, whoa, whoa.” Luke held up a hand to stop him. “Hold it with the lawyer talk. You’re supposed to be serving me my papers and then getting the hell out before I decide to punch you.”

“I mean, you’re welcome to take a swing, but I reserve the right to duck,” Adam replied dryly.

Luke managed to do a better job of holding in his laugh that time. Before he could say anything else, Adam waved the papers practically in his face. “I’m trying to help you, idiot.”

“Who says I need your help?” Luke demanded, bristling. Who did this guy think he was? Luke didn’t want help from someone who was literally hired by the opposite team and had started off their acquaintance by lying to him.

Adam arched an eyebrow. “Oh, and you know all about what the Harpers are planning and their case against you, do you?”

“Like I can trust you to tell me the truth about something like that,” Luke replied, folding his arms across his chest. He didn’t fail to notice how Adam’s eyes tracked the movement, taking in the stretch of his muscles, before his dark eyes shot upwards again, his blush intensifying.

Luke had to resist the urge to preen a little. “How do I know that you aren’t giving me false information?”

Adam looked horrified at the implication, his eyes going a little wide, but then his eyes narrowed again and his jaw tightened in exasperation. “I’m—are you kidding me?”

“You just lied to me last night, you can’t blame me for expecting you to try it again.”

Adam sighed, his shoulders slumping. “All right. Fair. Um… Look, can I just… tell you? Everything? And you listen? Then you can decide if you think I’m lying or not. But I’ll start over. We’ll start over, and I’ll say the things that I should have said last night.”

Luke was skeptical, but he nodded at Adam to let him know that he agreed to this. It couldn’t do any harm, could it?

Adam shuffled the papers together and cleared his throat. Despite the too-big, relaxing clothes he was wearing, and his hair still sticking up at odd angles, there was a new air settling around him. Luke could really see the competent lawyer in Adam for the first time.

“So. Luke Markum. I’m Adam, and I’m here to serve you papers regarding the custody of your half-brother, Seth.” Adam winced a little, like he knew the words would hurt.

Luke worked to keep his face utterly still, except for raising his eyebrow at Adam, silently telling him to get on with it.

“The Harpers hired me, and so I have to give you these papers, but if you have a moment, I’d like to talk to you about some things that might help your side of the case.” He deflated a little. “Sorry, it helps if I deliver it like a speech. I’m not good with people.”

It was kind of adorable that he had to deliver a speech like that, but Luke ignored that thought. This wasn’t the time.

“That’s what you were going to do last night?” Luke asked. “Declare yourself secretly on my team?”

“I wasn’t sure,” Adam admitted. “I don’t like the Harpers. They’re… well, you know. I have to do a good job though; I can’t afford to get fired. I really like what I do, but you seemed like a good person. That’s what I need you to look at, actually.”

He walked over to the bed and sat down, then looked up at Luke expectantly.

Luke sighed, then walked over and sat next to him. It felt a little too intimate for Luke’s liking. Adam smelled nice—he’d obviously taken a shower—and with his hair soft and curling, and wearing Luke’s clothes… well, it was hard to think about the task at hand and remember to be angry with Adam.

“Okay, so when I did my research, it showed things like your bumpy educational history and your past petty crimes, right?” Adam showed him some papers on which were compiled Luke’s school attendance records and things. It made Luke’s body go cold to think that someone could pull this shit up on him so easily.

“But,” Adam went on, “this is all stuff that’s easily countered by a lawyer on your side. It comes down to spin. That is, where one lawyer’s trying to spin the story so the judge thinks you’re an asshole, while the other one tries to spin it to make you look like a saint. This happens all the time, but rarely is a case purely built on that. I think that you can win, with that. You’d just need a competent lawyer, especially since Seth seems happy with you. I mean, no judge is going to be inclined to give Seth to grandparents he’s never met over a brother he’s happy with. You’re closer family and less likely to die of a heart attack.”

Luke snorted. Adam stopped and blushed, staring down at the papers with the tiniest of smiles on his face. He seemed happy when he could get Luke to laugh.

“The only catch,” Adam added, “is your finances.”

He showed two papers to Luke. One was Luke’s finances—which he was well aware of, thank you. The other showed the Harpers’. It was pretty clear who could better support Seth.

“I’ll have to make the case that you can’t support Seth,” Adam said quietly. He was staring down at the papers, like he couldn’t manage to look Luke in the eye. “You’re barely breaking even on the bar; developers are hounding you.”

“I’ve been thinking about selling the house,” Luke admitted. “I’ll have to, to pay for a lawyer.”

Adam looked startled at that, then determined. “If you can find a way to prove that you can financially provide for Seth, then you’d be free and clear.”

“I can’t do that. Either I sell the bar and I take some job somewhere else, or I sell the house. Either way, I’m giving up—” Luke huffed in frustration and stood up, his anger making him antsy. “Either way, I give up a part of my family. That bar was everything to my dad, and Seth and I both grew up in that house. And then what? Most of the money will go towards paying for a lawyer, no matter which one I go with.”

“You could get investors to help you expand the bar,” Adam pointed out. “You’re in a good spot, especially with all of the local development. You could add on a kitchen or something, start serving food, put in a pool table or two, make it more than just a dive bar.”

“Where the hell am I going to find investors?” Luke asked. What the hell? This guy was his financial advisor now?

“You were a business major, weren’t you?” Adam asked.

“Yeah, so I could help take care of things at the bar,” Luke admitted. He rubbed at his eyes, frustrated. “But I was never—I didn’t plan for that. I have no experience. You have to understand, this is—I’m a fuck up, okay? I’m not good at talking to fancy business people, and how the hell am I supposed to get investors? I have no experience in this kind of thing. Any experience I was going to have would have been after I graduated, which I was already about to do a year and a half late when I had to drop out, and…” He could feel his frustration growing even more and he growled, turning away.

“Then let me help you,” Adam countered. “Look, this is a rapidly expanding area, okay? I do my research and I do it well. That’s why I’m a senior member of the firm, even though I don’t think that anybody there actually likes me. It’s why developers are salivating over Joe’s, right? They know how popular this area is becoming. The houses are the first things to be built, yeah? Nobody wants to set up a business if there’s nobody around to buy your products from it. So when in-fill starts to happen between a city and former small towns to handle the growing population, it’s the houses that get built first. The businesses come after.

“You’re in the perfect timing spot. Your area’s become a suburb, sort of, but there aren’t quite enough businesses yet. I bet you’ve started noticing new places opening up around here.”

Luke paused. That was true. Jake had literally met Matthew because Matthew had come up to be the cook for Thomas, who had opened the Bluebird Café. The café was thriving, last Luke had checked.

Adam stood up, walking over to him. “Investors will be happy to invest in something right now. They’ll look at the numbers coming from other local places that have sprung up or had a facelift. I bet you anything that if you were to sell your bar to the developers, they’d put in a mall, and one of the restaurants in that mall would be a cheap chain version of Joe’s. You have a chance to give people what they want!”

Luke had to admit, at least to himself, that Adam was pretty persuasive. If this was how he was in the courtroom, then Luke was fucked, since Adam was working for the opposite side.

Actually…

He looked over at Adam. “That still doesn’t explain why you’re telling me all of this.”

Adam shrugged, looking sheepish. “I like you, and I don’t like the Harpers. I can’t just blow the case, and I doubt I can persuade them to back down... so you just have to go in there and beat them.”

He sounded so earnest, so sincere, like he truly believed that Luke could find a way to succeed and come out of this mess the winner. It’s as if he saw Luke as somebody who actually did things like win, instead of having a string of bad luck and messing things up even more.

“I wouldn’t even know where to start,” he admitted. “And how could I find anyone in time for the court case?”

“Court dates generally take a while to happen,” Adam replied. “It’s rare that someone gets, say, arrested or served papers and then they’re in court just a few days later. That’s why it’s really hard on people who’ve been arrested and couldn’t make bail. They have to stay in jail until their court date—that’s even why bail exists in the first place. It’s so you can go home and live a normal life until it’s time for your court date.”

“John and Wendy are going to want to push this through,” Luke replied. He knew in his heart that after increasingly impatient phone calls, they weren’t going to be happy waiting for much longer. “And investors are going to give me the money to put into the bar. That’ll all take time. It doesn’t solve how I’m going to pay for a lawyer now.”

Adam looked down at his hands for a moment, his brow creased in thought. Then he looked up at Luke, and nodded. “I can help with that.”

Luke felt sort of like—like someone had taken a hold of his heart and squeezed, but in a good way. “You’re—you’re going to help me get a lawyer?” The words felt stuck in his throat.

Adam nodded. “I can’t back out and even if I did, there’d be another lawyer to take my place. The Harpers pay well. There will always be someone willing to go after you for them, but I can get you someone to defend you.”

Luke stared at him. Nobody had volunteered to help him out like this. Sure, he had Jake and his other friends, and he’d always had the love of Dad and Mom, and then Lyla. Nobody had ever stood up though and said here, let me help you out; you’re worth this extra effort.

“You don’t owe me anything,” Luke pointed out. “If this is for last night, your apology is accepted.”

“It’s not because of that,” Adam replied, sounding irritated that Luke would think that. “I’m doing this because you seem like a good person and I want to help you out, okay?”

Maybe it was how matter of fact and annoyed Adam sounded, or maybe it was that he was still wearing Luke’s clothes and blushing, or maybe Luke was just in an emotional mood. Whatever it was, without thinking about it, Luke stepped forward and grabbed Adam, pulling him into a hug.

Adam made a surprised noise, grabbing the front of Luke’s shirt to help him balance. “Thanks,” Luke said, feeling kind of like a sap.

“Don’t worry about it,” Adam replied. He pulled back, and Luke instinctively settled his hands down at Adam’s hips.

It felt natural to stand like this, only a hair’s breadth apart, his hands curving around Adam’s smooth bones, feeling how well he fit into Luke’s palms. All he’d have to do would be to tilt his head forward a little and he could taste that wry mouth again…

For a moment they just stood there, Adam’s eyes at half-mast, his gaze trained on Luke’s eyes like they were a magnet. It was intoxicating, to be looked at like that, like he was the only thing in the world, and Adam couldn’t even bring himself to look away. He could far too easily conjure up how Luke had felt and tasted the night before, and how easily he’d fit into Luke’s arms—how responsive he’d been, trembling at the slightest touch.

Fuck. Fuck! He couldn’t be thinking about this! Luke stepped back, dropping his hands like Adam’s skin burned him. Maybe it did. His palms did feel hot, tingling, like he’d been branded somehow. Adam swayed slightly, like he was drunk, then he blinked and seemed to come back to himself as well.

Luke couldn’t believe it. He’d almost kissed the lawyer for the people who were suing him. Again. At least he couldn’t be blamed for last time, not knowing who Adam really was, but this time? He had no excuse. For crying out loud, how stupid was he? He should know better than this.

He didn’t know which was stronger: the desire to run away, or the desire to haul Adam in again and kiss him until they both forgot everything else about this mess.

“So what’s the plan?” Luke asked, hoping his voice wouldn’t betray him.

“Um…” Adam straightened up, drawing himself together the way he had before. “If you can take the day off, we can drive up into the city. It’ll take me a bit, but I can arrange some meetings for you.”

“Meetings.”

“With a lawyer, and a few investors.” Adam was already pulling out his phone and texting someone.

“You can do that, that quickly?”

“My firm represents corporate and family law. If the rich people aren’t hiring us to handle custody and divorce, they’re hiring us to handle their company. I know plenty of investors.” Adam continued tapping away on his phone, where it appeared he was now composing an email. “I know a few people who owe me some favors.”

Luke stared at him. Adam appeared to be more in his element now, typing quickly on his phone, filled with a laser-sharp focus. “You’re one of those terrifyingly efficient types, aren’t you?”

Adam looked up at him, startled, and then seemed to realize it was a compliment. “Oh, yes. I was told that if being a lawyer didn’t work out, I had a great future as an enforcer for the mafia.”

Luke laughed. “All right then. Let’s see if your little plan works out. God knows why I’m agreeing to it, when it’s complete lunacy.”

“I’ll let you in on a secret, if you don’t tell anyone.” Adam smiled, really smiled, and Luke realized with a pang of want that Adam had honest-to-God dimples. “We lawyers are all complete lunatics. You have to be certifiably insane to win cases.”

Luke found himself grinning back, surprisingly touched. He’d come in ready to yell his head off at Adam, and instead of getting defensive, Adam had apologized, was offering to help him, and was now joking with him.

This day was actually starting to turn out better than he’d thought.