His shaving finished and having spent several ritualistic moments admiring his face and the frosting effect of his blond-blended-into-auburn curly hair in his bathroom mirror in the Savannah, Georgia, East Hall Street Victorian mansion, twenty-four-year old Andy Towson's attention was brought back down to earth by the sound of the car horn from the parking pad in back. Andy's bedroom and bath were on the back of the house. His wife's bedroom and bath were one floor down and on the front. That separation pretty much reflected where their three-year marriage had gone. It was something they had accepted from the beginning, having gone into the marriage with separate needs from being married to each other.
Not that this was a different marriage arc from Sherrie Guilford's earlier marriages. Sherrie, the owner of two iconic Savannah restaurants, Sherrie's and Guilford's, a local celebrity, and a national cookbook best-seller, admitted to being forty-two but undoubtedly was years older. She liked having boytoys, but, like Elizabeth Taylor, publicly declared that she wanted to keep it on the up and up by marrying them before bedding them. As with Andy, she needn't even bed them often as long as they looked really good escorting her to events.
She didn't marry them for very long, though, and her time married to Andy had actually been longer than for most. Like most of the others, Andy had been working as a waiter at Sherrie's on Barnard Street when they met. He was studying the fine arts at the Savannah College of Art and Design—SCAD—at the time and putting himself through college by waiting tables. He was a damn fine artist and had works in area galleries. Marrying Sherrie had moved him out of the restaurant and she was paying his graduate-study bills. He wanted her to continue doing so, but the prenup he had signed necessitated him living on a short leash until a divorce settlement.
Some of Andy's art involved camera work, and when he'd stopped working at the restaurant, he picked up part-time work for a law firm photographing insured property from jewelry to houses. He was a guy who liked to keep in great shape, so he was a volunteer fireman for the SCAD Number Nine W. Henry Street Fire Station, as well. The fire station was south of the large Forsyth Park and Sherrie's East Hall Street mansion was east of the park. Andy could make it to the station in less than ten minutes when he was home.
Andy was quite good publicity for the fire department. He was so well-built, handsome, and sexy that he'd made the cover of the department's jazzy beefcake calendar the last two years running.
And the reason Andy wanted to stay in great shape as well as the reason he chaffed at being on Sherrie's short leash until their marriage took its course and he got a payoff in the settlement was that Andy was a guy's guy—a gay top. He could say he was actually bi, as he didn't really mind fucking Sherrie a few times a month and could get off on that. But he much preferred fucking men. Since he'd seen there was a finish line for his marriage, though, to keep his legal position as strong as possible, he'd kept himself celibate where other men were concerned. It hadn't been easy, though.
What rankled with him was that he suspected Sherrie wasn't holding back. No matter what she publicly said about not bedding them before wedding them, He was sure she already was grooming her next husband, a twenty-one-year-old by the name of Matt, who was a waiter at her Guilford's restaurant on West Liberty Street. Her trip-to-the-altar pattern had become quite clear, as was her need to trap them younger as she got older.
If he could just catch her and Matt in bed together and photograph them, that would go a long way to neutralizing the prenup he'd signed.
The car horn he'd heard blare at the back of the house, played to that possibility. He went to the window and looked down into the parking area at the side of the pool in the backyard, where the cute young pool boy, a mixed black-white named Caleb, was cleaning the pool, getting it ready for use. I was late March, but in Savannah that meant it should be warm enough to swim soon. And it already was unseasonably warm. Caleb was braving it. He was just in a Speedo—and looking good and oh so fuckable.
The car, which was Sherrie's distinctive pink Jaguar, was being driven by Matt, and he was sounding the horn to let Sherrie know he'd arrived to take her to one or both of her restaurants.
Andy got to the window quick enough to see Matt come out of the car and kiss Sherrie before both of them got back into the car. He cursed himself for not having a camera at the ready, but by the time he got one back to the window with him, the Jag was driving off.
Caleb was standing there, posing nicely, though, and looking up at the window at Andy, standing in a nearly full-length window with just a towel around him. The two ogled each other for a long minute, Caleb obviously flirting, going into a pose, flexing, and dropping a hand to his crotch. He was giving Andy one of "those" smiles. Andy knew he could have the pool boy if he wanted him. And he wanted him. But Caleb was such a recent hire that Andy had a fixation in his mind that Sherrie had hired the pool boy to lead Andy astray to allow her to cut him off in the divorce settlement, using the prenup he'd signed.
Andy would resist that, even though it gave him blue balls. Caleb was oh so fuckable. Andy wasn't going to bite on this challenge to his resistance. That didn't mean he wasn't going play a bit, though. He snapped a couple of photos of Caleb and "accidentally" let his towel drop from his waist, showing Caleb what was being held out of his reach. Andy's erection, flashed right before he moved away from the window, was enough to keep Caleb speculating on possibilities. If he was reporting back to Sherrie, Andy hoped that would make her frustrated about what was "oh so close" to working but that wasn't happening.
Although Andy would dearly love to get Caleb under him. And he was coming close to the breaking point today. He was calculating in his mind just whether or not he could get it on with the pool boy and not be caught by Sherrie when he was saved by the siren. The call to a fire was being sounded by the fire station and Andy needed to be on his way.
He was so keyed up, though, that he was still hard and panting for it while they were fighting a brush fire at the Mother Mathilda Beasley Park on the seedier, east side of the planned garden city, with its network of park squares. While getting into his fire gear at the station, he, in high need, was exchanging looks of desire and need with another young fire fighter, Adrian, who he been dancing around with in sexual negotiation for some weeks. And such was the state of his need that, if his situation wasn't what it currently was, he probably would have gone with Adrian somewhere after the fire was put out and they'd both taken care of their want. Maybe Sherrie didn't know about what was possible at the fire station.
But Adrian got singed in putting the fire out, and he went to the hospital for treatment instead. They exchanged forlorn looks as Adrian was been wheeled over to an ambulance.
Something had to give soon, Andy thought, or he was going to bust. Just let's get on with this divorce and a juicy settlement, he thought, as he went home to dress and to check in with the law firm of Christopher, Wyly, and Wolfe that he did some work for and from which he'd gotten a summons to do a job on Tybee Island, an Atlantic barrier island to the southeast that served as Savannah's beach resort.
* * * *
"Evan Hart? Evan Hart, the movie actor? You want me to photograph him in a compromising position?"
"We want to be very discreet about this. He's going to be in a sticky divorce situation with quite a lot of money on the line. His wife—"
"Vicky Drake?" Andy asked. "The hotel chain heiress?"
"His wife, our client, who will remain nameless for this transaction," Hunter Wolfe of Christopher, Wyly, and Wolfe overrode Andy, "wants to have the best advantage in the divorce settlement."
"He's signed a prenup she's going to try to invoke?" Andy asked. This was almost too coincidental. This was essentially the same jockeying that he and Sherrie were moving into. They just weren't on the public celebrity level that Evan Hart and Vicky Drake were. He was supposed to stay clean from sex with men to avoid his prenup with Sherrie from kicking him and him being kicked out of a healthy monthly check from her, but he was going to be expected to photograph the hunky movie star, Evan Hart, getting it on with another man? His wife must be worth billions. This was essentially what had been laid out to him in this meeting with the law office partner.
Evan Hart. Who would have known that he was gay, Andy wondered. And, according to this lawyer, a bottom to an older man, a former professional basketball player. But then, Andy had met many older men—not that Evan Hart had hit fifty yet—who wanted to bottom for him, and that was OK with him—or, at least, was until his marriage started going on the rocks and he had to give that up.
But Evan Hart. That would be a particularly thick notch for Andy's bedpost.
Winning the prenup battle wasn't easy right at the moment. It wasn't just the thought that Evan Hart took cock but this wasn't the largest of offices he now was in, and there were two men here in their late thirties or early forties who were real hunks. Hunter Wolfe was handsome, in great shape, and was both stylish and elegant in his dress. Andy thought he also was giving him the eye. The other man, sitting off to the side and not yet formally introduced, was a bit rougher than Wolfe, but even more ruggedly handsome. He was Latin, dusky in skin and dark of hair, with a sense of mystery and command.
"You want me to get close enough to Hart and his boyfriend to photograph them in the clutches?" Andy asked. "Where is this to happen? Where are they shacking up? And do you have any idea how I'm going to get close enough to them to get the shots?"
"They have a beach cabin out at Tybee Island," Wolfe said. "We have a cabin near them. They like to party with other gay guys. And getting close to them is where Eduardo here comes in. This is Eduardo Fernandez, Andy. He is a makeup artist for the movies, and he knows and has worked with Evan Hart. He'll be going to Tybee Island with you—as your boyfriend. And he'll be getting you into the beach parties and, we hope, close enough to Hart and Kyle Borden to do the job."
"Kyle Borden? The black basketball phenom who went out after breaking his legs in a skiing accident?"
"The same. He landed in Hart's bed, and Hart's wife doesn't like it that much. You think you can handle the job? You'll have to pretend to be in their world and to be in it with Eduardo here."
"Yes, I can handle that," Andy said, turning away so that Wolfe couldn't see his slight smile. It would be less difficult than avoiding getting it on with Wolfe, who couldn't know how interested in men—and maybe Wolfe himself—Andy was. Christopher, Wyly, and Wolfe was Sherrie's law firm and most likely would be handling her divorce case. Andy's problem wouldn't be one of convincing Hart and Borden that he could run with a gay crowd. It would be in holding off from actually running with a gay crowd.
And the intriguing hunk over in the corner, the Latin Eduardo Fernandez, would be a problem too. He was just too sexy to be real.
"So, it will be you and me, Eduardo," he said, turning a smile in his direction. "I hope you're up for this."
