Page 17 of Laying Low

“The boys are right,” Anthony murmured.“Life’s too short to put off a kiss like that.”

“But—”

“More.Later.”Anthony raised his thumb to brush Reg’s lips.“I’ll promise if you will.”

Reg nodded.“Yes,” he rasped.

“I’ll hold you to it.”

Another quick kiss, one that made Reg long for arealkiss—with exploring and touching all along their bodies, with open mouths and tongues and everything he’d ever been promised in all the storybooks—and then Anthony pulled away and grabbed his hand, and this timehewas the one being pulled along toward his parents’ house in confusion.

His one overriding thought was that he couldn’t believe the most ambitious he’d been able to get about that night had been Frida Kahlo!

His mother’s kitchen was the same as always—even the smell of pizza, although take and bake was far superior to frozen.As he and Anthony walked in, his father pointed them to the counter, where a variety of pizzas sat cooling, all of them with missing pieces, and a stack of paper plates stood waiting to be filled.

There was even salad, which Reg planned to serve himself after he washed his hands.

The conversation was already in full swing.

“Yes, Mom,” Dean was saying dutifully as Reg neared the sink, “you’re right, they’re all bad people, but sending an entire agency into the fiery depths of hell isn’t sound policy any more than their current tactics are sound policy.”

“I beg to differ,” Marcus said, “but I do see how it would be difficult to implement.”

Dean shook his head.“Okay, okay—itissound policy, but figuring out who goes straight to hell and how they get there is going to take some doing.”

“They were bastards,” Julie said shortly, before turning her unhappy gaze to Reg and Anthony.“You boys okay?Your kids okay too?”

“Yes, Miss Julie,” Anthony said, the deference in his voice as he spoke to Reg’s mother as endearing as everything else about him.“And as much fun as your policies would be to implement, I think we need to work on the short term here.”

She let out a sigh, and Reg dried his hands before bending down to where she sat and kissing her cheek.Julie Royal was a small, graying, wiry woman in her sixties, still strong after seven children and heartbreak Reg wasn’t even sure his siblings remembered.And boy, had she never backed down from a fight.

Reg’s father, Ed, was also slightly built, with a plain face and ears that stuck out a little from his thinning hair.Together, they were two of the best people Reg knew and his gold standard for how a marriage should work.

Not perfectly, not always smoothly, and definitely with swearing, but with a solid sense of partnership.

As Reg grabbed his pizza and settled down next to Anthony at a table that could easily accommodate five more people, he wondered if Anthony was ready for that sort of pressure, but then Dean started speaking and there were other things to worry about.

“Okay,” Dean said, nodding to Marcus for the go-ahead.“You were right about ICE—they had no idea who they were looking for, and they wereverysurprised to find a recovering FEEB in a wheelchair.I love that you wore your ID on the lanyard, by the way,” Dean told his partner with dry humor.

Dean was average height, as were most of the Royal siblings, with dark hair in a G-man cut and hazel eyes.Reg figured he was the second prettiest of the boys, coming in after Chance, and all of them were far behind their sister, who was gloriously beautiful.

In contrast, his partner, Marcus Cabrillo, was taller, dark-skinned, and mouth-wateringly gorgeous in an “I am a Latin god” sort of way, complete with dimples and a cleft in his chin.

But their complete disdain for any sort of authority gave them matching expressions of contempt, recalcitrance, and superiority that Reg was sure could hinder anybody’s appreciation of their looks.

Well, except for Bailey, Dean’s boyfriend, who sat next to Dean now, a sweet-faced doctor with shaggy blond hair, lake-blue eyes, and freckles.Bailey’s expression of adoration as he listened to Dean and Marcus banter was borderline nauseating, but only because Dean was Reg’s brother.

Marcus smirked.“I told them it was because I knew all they understood was brown on the color scale, so I thought I’d give them something concrete they could look up on their phones.”

“And that was when we walked in,” Reg’s mom said.“I swear, Marcus, they were going to dump you out of your chair.”

“Yes, they were,” Marcus said complacently.“And now they’re going to hear about getting their pay docked for assaulting an officer, because as much as our boss hates us, he doesn’t fucking play.”

“You already sent that, right?”Dean asked.“And he doesn’t hate us.He hates me.You he tolerates.He thinks I’m the reason you always get into trouble.”

Marcus shook his head.“Youarethe reason I always get into trouble.Back me up here, Bailey.”

Bailey shrugged.“He’s right, Dean,” he said before taking a bite of pizza.“You do tend to barrel right over rules and the people who make them.”