hinted at humor, even though David was too far away to hear what he was saying. The gentleness of Lionel’s face was in direct contrast to the broad lines of his shoulders and the decidedly masculine, though slender, set of his body. Lionel was an erotic blend of masculine and feminine that never failed to leave David breathless. Which was inconvenient in a room filled with children.
He sucked in a breath, forcing himself to stop watching Lionel and get on with his business. But the second he resumed walking to the next table, Lionel darted a covert look at him. He managed it without moving a single muscle, only his eyes, and the effect had David breaking out in prickles down his back. It was no surprise to him that Lionel was aware of him staring. Lionel always knew when David was watching him. Possibly because David was always watching him.
David cleared his throat and sank into a free chair at a table with three boys who looked to be between nine and eleven. “Hello,” he said, holding out his hand as though they were adults. “I’m Mr. David Wirth. Has Mr. Siddel explained who I am?”
“You’re the man trying to find people’s families,” the boy with ginger hair said.
“That’s correct. Can you tell me anything that might help us search?”
“Fred here cries for his mama in his sleep.” The ginger boy stuck his thumb out at the mousey boy sitting next to him.
“What’s her name, lad, and where are you from? I’m sure we can find her and reunite the two of you,” David said.
“She’s dead, sir,” Fred confessed, lowering his head. “Trampled by a horse two years ago. I got no other family.”
David let out a sympathetic breath and reached out to pat the boy’s hand. He’d been hearing the same story over and over from the remaining children. Everyone who had a family they could be reunited with had already been taken home. The ones who were left had no homes to go to.
The sensation that thought brought with it was oddly familiar, tender, aching, and emotional. David glanced across the room to Lionel, feeling it acutely in his chest. Lionel was still reading and the girls around him continued to giggle, but there was a distinct tension in the air, tension in the distance between him and Lionel, a barrier keeping them apart in spite of the pulse of emotion that throbbed between them.
David let out a breath and leaned back in his chair, rubbing a hand over his face.
“You all right, guv’nor?” the ginger boy asked.
David lowered his hands and sent the boy a lopsided smile. “I honestly have no idea.”
And he didn’t. In the last few weeks, his life had gone from business as usual to a jungle of intense and conflicting emotions, and all because of Lionel. He didn’t try to hide the way he stared at his partner and thorn in his side. He’d never hidden the way he felt about Lionel from himself. Lionel captivated him. He had almost from the moment John had hired him four years before, right before he left for Manchester and a new life. Lionel was brilliant, powerful, and beautiful. It was impossible not to want him in every way. And for a while there, David had been convinced he was on the verge of having him at last.
Until Everett Jewel had blasted into the picture, like a cannonball tearing down a wall.
No, that wasn’t fair. Jewel wasn’t interested in Lionel and hadn’t been for years. Besides which, Jewel was happy as a clam with Patrick Wrexham now. But Jewel was also under Lionel’s skin somehow, as evidenced by the very public argument they’d had at The Chameleon Club a fortnight ago. An argument that had proven to David that there was no place for him in Lionel’s heart as long as he still carried a torch for Jewel.
Nothing destroyed a man’s pride faster than being hopelessly in love with a man who loved someone else.
But there was something else, something David couldn’t put his finger on. He couldn’t shake how uncharacteristically upset Lionel had become during the argument with Jewel or some of the vague things Lionel had said. There was something Lionel wasn’t telling him, something important.
“Oy!” The ginger boy snapped his fingers at David, startling him back to attention. “You gonna stare at the girls all day or you gonna try and find my folks?”