Dan Sharp Mysteries 4-Book Bundle Read Online Free PDF Page B

it turned out he’d operated on the cop’s mother and got off with a warning. Bill was lucky that way. What if he’d been in an accident? Dan tried not to think about it. In another minute he’d have himself convinced Bill was somewhere out there, hurt or in trouble, and that Dan had failed to be there for him.
    He rolled onto his back and stared at the darkness. Anonymous calls pissed him off. He might lie awake for hours wondering who it was. Part of him liked to think Bill would call to say he wanted to come over, screw the late hour. Even with Ked at home, Dan would’ve agreed. But that never happened. Bill didn’t sleep at other peoples’ houses.
    He tried to drop back to sleep, but with no luck. Sometimes he dreamed of Bill and woke up arguing aloud. They were usually on a train in a foreign city — London, New York, once Miami — headed somewhere that mattered to Dan, but never to Bill. Dan would try to impress on Bill the importance of the trip, but without success. The dreams always ended in confusion, with missed connections, lost tickets, and dashed hopes for arriving wherever they were heading.
    Dan’s therapist encouraged him to explore how he felt. It didn’t take a shrink to tell him all the signs of a heavily flawed relationship were apparent in waking life, never mind in la-la-land when he was asleep. Even intelligent people let themselves be deluded by their emotions.
    Bill seemed incapable of affection, elusive and ambivalent about his feelings. Commitment-phobe didn’t cover it. He’d make dates and cancel at the last minute. He had excuses — work commitments, family obligations, social networking. Despite the fact they’d been dating a year, they never seemed to get closer. When pressed, Dan found it hard to point to anything meaningful between them. In all that time, he’d met only a handful of Bill’s closest friends and not one family member.
    â€œWe’re not close,” Bill had said of his four brothers and two sisters.
    In this case, “not close” meant sporadic telephone conversations with his siblings, and infrequent family gatherings of unstated intent. Dan was never invited. At least not by Bill. Even Christmas seemed a duty, though not one Bill felt required a spouse. When Dan pressed him, Bill would shrug and say it wasn’t important, shutting down the conversation.
    To Dan, the ideal relationship was an easy-going fusion of personalities that allowed both partners to remain healthily independent while knowing each could depend on the other. A state in which late night phone calls were a cause for joy, not alarm, and trust was a matter of course rather than fantasy. Bill was a constant challenge to that goal.
    And then there was the small matter of Kedrick. Dan’s dates were impressed to learn he was a father, but he sensed their wariness, as though it meant he was already taken. They seemed to doubt he could divide his loyalty between his son and a partner. Maybe they were right — part of him would always be devoted to Kedrick, no matter who came into his life. But Bill didn’t demand Dan’s loyalty so much as his physical availability. In that, at least, he was easy to please.
    It was Donny who’d dubbed Bill the “heartless heart doctor.” “It’s ironic,” he said, “but that man has no feelings for anyone but himself.”
    They’d been sitting in Timothy’s Coffee on Church Street, adrift in a minor sea of T-shirts and denim. Donny had just come from work. He was dressed impeccably in a white button-down shirt, Gucci tie, and black Oxfords — Will Smith behind the perfume counter at Holt Renfrew.
    He thrummed a finger in Dan’s face. “That man is a self-centred egotist. He expects you to come running when he’s free and complains if you won’t. On the other hand, he doesn’t return your calls for days and whines if you