Spank or Treat 2014 Read online

  Lucas didn’t miss how the beady eyes scrutinized him from tip-to-toe and very obviously found him, as usual, quite lacking. Though, considering the state he was in at the moment, Lucas didn’t really have an argument against that one.

  “Please forgive me, Walker, but, as you can see, I’m not exactly presentable today and the house is in a bit of a state as well. I’m afraid you’ve rather caught me out.”

  Walker snorted. “Well, that’s nothing new, is it?” Walker’s eyes sparked with malicious humor. “Been digging about for the old man’s treasure, have you? Not like he might actually have left any, since he was just as worthless as—gargh!”

  It really was quite something to watch the fabric of Alex’s coat stretch over his shoulders as he lifted Walker by his collar and shook him a little. Walker’s pale, spidery fingers latched on to Alex’s arm, scrabbling somewhat weakly. Lucas would go to his rescue, but… well, there was… um….

  Well, there must be a good reason somewhere.

  “That’s such an old joke, Walker, and quite used up by now, don’t you think?” Alex said almost pleasantly. He snatched up Walker’s hand just as a tiny yellow ball of sputtering magic lit in his palm. “Ah-ah-ah,” said Alex and squeezed until the ball fizzled out. “I said,” Alex pressed, “your joke isn’t funny, don’t you agree, Wanker—oh, do excuse me, I meant Walker.” He shook Walker like a disobedient puppy. “Say you agree.”

  Walker only made small, whimpery gagging noises, but he nodded.

  The vase-hand! There it was. Lucas couldn’t very well go rescuing people with a vase-hand, could he? He knew he’d think of something.

  “And really not very funny when it was new, come to think of it,” Alex went on. “Because, as you may or may not be aware, considering you’re rather known to be somewhat... challenged when it comes to sense”—Alex paused with a wicked little grin, and ooh, he gave Lucas delicious little shivers when he got that touch of devilry to him—“making light of a man’s father—a father, I might add, who never got to be a father to his son, and is mourned more sincerely than you’ll ever be, it’s... well.” Despite his burden, Alex managed an eloquent shrug. “It’s really not well done of you.

  “And really,” Alex went on, “when you insult Lucas, you insult me, along with all Bookers. We will, after all, be uniting with the Tripp family eventually, just as soon as either Lucas finally agrees to have me for good—”

  “Hey!” Lucas put in. “I said I’d—”

  “—or my brother Anson manages to get Lucas’s sister Tress drunk enough to say yes.” Walker’s eyes widened a little and Alex tilted his head. “Ah, so Anson’s somewhat colorful reputation does indeed precede him, then. Good. As well it should. Now, you wouldn’t really want people thinking that you’re besmirching the Booker name with rumor and malicious innuendo, would you?” A quick jerk of Walker’s head. “Because Bookers, as a whole, are rather….” Alex turned to Lucas. “What word am I looking for, Lucas? Not violent….”

  “Big?” Lucas answered helpfully. “Strong? Always ready for a bloody good row? A right-hook like a sledgehammer? A little too fiercely protective sometimes?”

  “Fierce! That’s it! Thank you, love.”

  “Not at all, glad I could help.”

  “Too fierce? You think, really?”

  “Well, you’ve rather a tight grip there.”

  “What, he can still breathe.” Alex turned back to Walker. “Bookers are a bit fierce sometimes and we wouldn’t want someone mistaking your little joke for willful slander, would we?”

  A bit of a mewl this time and Walker shook his head again. Alex nodded, still grinning, and Lucas didn’t know how he did it but he managed to make it both cheerful and frightening all at the same time.

  “Right.” Alex’s tone was light and pleasant. “Because then we might have to get some of our uncles and cousins involved and—” He turned to Lucas again. “Have you seen Marsden lately? Damn me, but I think he’s doubled in size since he took over the threshing last season.”

  “Really?” Lucas asked. “He was almost as wide as Samish, last I saw.”

  “No one’s as wide as Uncle Samish,” Alex replied. “And you’ve not seen Marsden since last Solstice, I don’t think. You know, you really should get to the Spinney more. Mother’s always asking me, ‘When’s Lucas coming for a visit?’ and I keep telling her—”

  “Glurgh!” said Walker.

  Alex turned back, eyebrows raised, as though he’d forgotten entirely that Walker was still squirming at the end of his arm.

  “Perhaps you’d best let go,” Lucas told him. “I’m quite done in and really can’t be bothered to look for a place to hide the body today.”

  Alex looked disappointed. “Must I?”

  “Well.” Lucas shrugged. “Unless you want to dig the hole.”

  Alex looked Walker up and down with a critical eye. “Eh, not worth it, really.” He let go his grip on Walker’s collar and let him drop to the ground. He brushed at his own lapels. “New jacket,” he told Lucas by way of explanation.

  Walker sat panting for a moment, face red and twisted with rage, though Lucas didn’t think he’d dare a cross word now.

  “Buggering bloody Booker,” Walker gasped.

  Hmph. Well, what do you know?

  Alex made a bit of a lunge towards Walker, and Walker squawked out a little shriek, scuttling back. Alex only snorted and shook his head.

  “All right, that’s enough now, Alex,” Lucas told him. “I think Walker will behave now, won’t you, Walker?”

  Walker shot looks of fiery hatred between Lucas and Alex, but his eyes kept flicking back-and-forth between Alex’s fists and Alex’s predatory little grin. Lucas again found himself thinking of damsels and pointy little hats, then wondered if Alex might agree to a shag right here on the porch steps. He decided thinking was probably not something he should be attempting at the moment. Besides, Walker ended up nodding and that was something, anyway. It usually took Lucas a lot of gritting teeth and politely oblique insults to get Walker this red in the face, and Lucas really did have to hand it to Alex. Even if he was disgustingly bloody perfect.

  Tosser.

  “Here, allow me,” Alex said pleasantly, dipping down to take Walker by the arm. Lucas couldn’t help the little bit of satisfaction when Walker flinched again, but Alex only dragged him to his feet, making a fuss over straightening Walker’s jacket and tugging his waistcoat down from where it had rucked up about his ribs. “There, that’ll do it. Here, let me help you with your tie, it seems to have—”

  “No!” Walker yelped and took a few frantic steps backwards. He raised shaking fingers to his collar and pulled the tie loose. “I’ve got it.”

  “So you have,” was all Alex said then he turned his back to Walker, waggled his eyebrows at Lucas, and Lucas was torn between thwacking him so thoroughly he’d see stars and tackling him to the grass and shagging him so hard they dug up the daylily bulbs. And knew perfectly well that the only things preventing him from doing the latter were Walker’s presence and the vase-hand.

  Lucas gave his arse another good mental kicking before he said, “Now that we’ve got the pleasantries out of the way, what is this bone, Walker?”

  Walker was still seething, but there was a healthy dose of real fear beneath the rage. He glared at Lucas, but his glance kept drifting over to Alex, probably making sure he wasn’t inching closer.

  “It’s that parcel from over to Rancing,” Walker said. “You’ve gone and stolen it right out from under my nose and I won’t have it!” He jerked a quick glance Alex’s way, and when Alex didn’t lunge at him again, Walker’s chin lifted a little and he tugged sharply on his waistcoat. “Just because you’ve Mayor Sherling in your pocket doesn’t give you the right to go snatching at every tract there is, you know.”

  Lucas blinked. “You were bidding on that tract?”

  Walker’s eyes narrowed and he snorted. “As if you didn’t
know. As if you didn’t out-bid me apurpose, just to thwart me!”

  “As if I’d do anything just because of you,” Lucas retorted. “And anyway, I didn’t even win the bid, so I’m afraid you’re picking your bone with the wrong person.” And it narked him doubly because Lucas really had wanted that parcel—not only would it have expanded Rolling Green, but it would have picked up tenants who were sorely in need of looking after, considering they’d already endured almost a decade of neglect from an absent landlord. Also, it wasn’t all that far from Booker’s Spinney, almost equidistant to Rolling Green, and if Lucas and Alex ever actually did make things legal and permanent, it wouldn’t be a bad spot to settle. And not only had Lucas not won the bid, but now he had to deal with Walker because of it.

  “Oh, I believe that,” Walker sniped. He cast a wary glance at Alex but strangely, Alex had abruptly gone very quiet, only stood there, watching. “Just like you had nothing to do with Cráwa refusing my request to study magic at the palace.”

  “My god, Walker, that was nearly twenty years ago, I was eight years old, how much could I possibly have had to do with it?”

  “Oh, please.” Walker rolled his eyes. “Queen’s pet and now Mayor’s boy, no doubt.” He set his teeth. “I know you were bidding on that tract, Tripp, so don’t try this Gentleman of Honor rot with me. I know better, don’t I?”

  Lucas sighed. He wasn’t even exactly angry, just very weary and very much in need of a bath, and very much in need of the lack of Walker’s presence.

  “You know a lot less than you think you do, Walker, but that’s always been a problem for you. In point of fact, and whether you believe it or no, I did not win that bid. Not that it’s really any of your business.” Lucas stopped and narrowed his eyes. “And anyway, those were supposed to be blind bids—how could you know I was even bidding on it?”

  Walker sputtered. “I should think that’s my concern and none of yours, so—”

  “I should think it’s everyone’s concern,” Alex put in quietly. He shot a level glance at Lucas then a narrow one at Walker. “In fact, it’s of rather grave concern if bids held in private escrow somehow manage to become public knowledge.”

  Walker’s face reddened and his lips thinned. “I am having a conversation with Tripp here, if you please,” was his sally—rather high-handed, if you asked Lucas, which told Lucas that Walker thought himself cornered in something and my, wasn’t this getting interesting? “And the things I know are the things I know and how I came to know them is another thing I know and not something you need to know, and as long as I know it, then I’m the one who needs to know and….” A pause while they all tried to follow that one. “And you don’t,” Walker finished lamely, added, “Need to know,” then went silent.

  Alex lifted an eyebrow at Lucas, and shook his head. “It’s like watching a drunk trying to cross a frozen pond. On roller skates.”

  He really shouldn’t have—Lucas knew he really shouldn’t have—but he couldn’t help it: he snorted. Then he swallowed. And blinked. With effort, he pulled a straight face and peered between Alex and Walker. Then he choked on another snort.

  “Now, see here!”

  “You enchanted Parsons, you slimy wretch.” Alex turned to Lucas, eyes sparking. “I was wondering how he was so flush after his dad cut him off—was all whingy over how he had to actually work now and was ‘reduced’ to apprenticing the clerk at the Mayor’s office. And then he was out to Applethrow just a fortnight ago, buying drinks for the pub and losing enough at darts to buy a good stock pony, and when I asked him about his good fortune, he turned all blank-faced and couldn’t seem to remember for the life of him where any of it came from.”

  All good humor dried up. Lucas knew Walker was a worm—everyone knew Walker was a worm; well, excepting perhaps his mother—but this was beyond what even Lucas would have imagined from him.

  And bloody damn, how did Alex know these things? First the water thing and now shady, backroom politics. Was it even the slightest bit possible for Lucas to feel any more inadequate?

  Alex turned back to Walker, eyes narrowed and a knowing little smile curling at his mouth. “You sodding rotter! You dishonest, dishonorable—”

  “Now, see here! I don’t have to stand here—”

  “But your reluctant, oblivious inside rat wasn’t worth whatever you paid him, was he?” Alex went on, every word now grinding out through clenched teeth and a rigid, hard little smile. “Because otherwise, you’d know that I won that bid, wouldn’t you?”

  ...Wait.

  “You?” This from Lucas, who, despite having been treated to two quite lovely sights in the past five minutes—those sights being Alex’s broad shoulders flexing, and Walker choking and sputtering respectively—was suddenly reconsidering acquainting Alex’s head with the vase. “You were bidding against me?”

  Alex opened his mouth, blinking. “Well, I didn’t know you were bidding, did I?” Not quite as indignant as it might have been otherwise. “They were blind bids, after all.” He aimed another sneer at Walker. “And I, unlike some, don’t go about bewitching people in the public’s employ for inside information!”

  Well. Lucas had to give him that one. But still.

  “And anyway,” Alex went on with a grim little shake of his head at Lucas, “you really shouldn’t be bidding so low on a tract like that, you know. The water-rights alone are worth—”

  “And how do you know it was a low bid?” Walker snapped, all sniffy and heavy with unmerited umbrage. “Sounds to me as if you’ve your own inside information.”

  Alex’s jaw clenched tight. “I know,” he ground out, “because I bid low myself and if I won the sodding tract, neither of you could have bid higher than I did, could you, you arrogant, bloody ass!”

  Walker’s eyes went black and glittery. “I don’t have to stand here and take this from some lowborn merchant’s whelp who spends his time tupping—”

  “No, you don’t,” Lucas cut in, low and hard. “So, why don’t you just nip along before Mister Booker decides to re-check your tie size?” Good thing Walker hadn’t seen the vase-hand, else Lucas’s cutting tone might not be working so well. “Or better, before we both decide to have a sit-down with the mayor and have a look through all of the bids and awards that have gone through his office since Parsons has been in its employ. And then, perhaps a little talk with the Queen’s Magician is in order, since you still don’t seem to have learned how to better contain your paltry and really quite cheap ‘gift’ for unenviable parlor tricks.”

  Walker stilled. “You wouldn’t.”

  Lucas let the corner of his mouth turn up just a little. “Oh, Walker,” he answered, liberally lacing his tone with pity and disdain, and he shook his head. “After all these years, you really have no idea what I would or wouldn’t do, have you?”

  Ha! Something Lucas had done that finally worked on this bloody, stupid, never-ending day: Walker opened his mouth, closed it, did a rather good impression of a landed carp, then turned sharply and strutted off down the path. It wasn’t until Walker threw the gate open and left it swinging on its hinges in his wake that Lucas let loose a great, deep sigh and rested his head in his palm again.

  Ow.

  “Headache?” Alex asked.

  “Mm,” was all Lucas replied.

  “Well, it’s not a wonder.” Lucas didn’t look up as Alex sank down beside him, and began a thorough kneading at his nape. “After the day you’ve had, and I’ll wager that no matter what you say you’ve not had more than a bite.” Alex nudged at Lucas’s arm until Lucas opened his eyes and peered over at him. “Here, at least have a biscuit until we can get you something more resembling a meal.”

  Lucas glared at the biscuit then slanted the glare up to Alex. “What is that?”

  Alex blinked a little as he inspected the sweet in his hand. “Um… it’s a biscuit.” He creased a small smile. “I’ve a pocketful. Mum sent them along.”

  Lucas glared
some more. “It’s chocolate.”

  “So it is,” Alex replied and good glory, if he got any more condescending, he really would end up with the vase upside his head.

  Lucas stuck out his hand and offered it to Alex. “Hullo, Lucas Tripp, apparently we’ve not met before.”

  Alex rolled his eyes. “I’m only trying to help, you know, and Mother sent them just for you, even told me she was going to ask how many got here so she could tell if I nicked some on the road, so I—”

  “I hate chocolate!”

  Alex blinked. “Well, I know that’s what you’ve always said, Lucas, but it’s just so wrong, and I thought maybe you were having me on.”

  “Why would I have you on about something like that?”

  “Well, I dunno. Why do you insist upon arranging your pens by size? Why can’t you sit down to have your supper unless you’ve checked three times that the backdoor is shut? Why do you always have to have the top on Sun’s Days? Why—”

  “Just—You know—” Lucas shrugged Alex’s hand from where it was still kneading at the back of his neck. He rather instantly regretted that one, because he was pretty sore and it had actually felt quite good. Still. “Not that I should have to explain anything to anyone, but I arrange my pens by size so I can grab up the one I need without having to look up when I’m working. And I check the backdoor when I have supper because… well, because I don’t know, really, but Mother always used to shrill at me for leaving the door open behind me when I was late to supper and now it’s just a habit.” He paused, a bit of a pout tugging at his mouth. “Sincerest apologies if it bothers you so.”

  Oh, someone just kill him now, could he be any more truculent and pathetic?

  “I never said it bothered me.” Alex inched a little closer and put his hand on Lucas’s shoulder this time. Mercifully, he started rubbing again. Lucas, of course, let him, because indignation—however petulant—was one thing, but Alex was very good at this and it did feel awfully nice. “What about Sun’s Day?” Alex ventured.