Androgynous Love

What the heart wants.

He couldn't stay at the house, where all the memories of Tatum lurked. The place which had once been his sanctuary would be a prison without Tatum there to share it with him.

Damn it.

But he would find him.

He'd directed Jonathan to find him. The searing bitterness went some way to disguise the agonizing pain in his chest.

I miss him.

It had already been 4 months since Tatum vanished and the pain in his chest was just getting worse, he had started working again and had been pacing up and down his office daily waiting for news from Jonathan who had gone off to London to find Tatum, while he stayed and actually ran the company for the first time in 10 years.

He had completely come out of his self-imposed isolation.

...

Four months later in Mud chute London.

"What are you thinking, Tatum, in your condition?"

"Give me it back, Mel." Tatum scowled as his sister wrestled the heavy spade from him. "I'm four months pregnant. I'm not an invalid."

"You're four months gone and on your own." His sister's blue eyes narrowed dangerously. "If you're after planting a garden, why didn't you say so?"

"This is my cottage and I'll do as I please." He'd moved into the quaint stone house on the edge of his family's farm as soon as he'd returned from New York. Keeping anything a secret from his sisters had proved impossible—pregnancy included. Dealing with their overprotectiveness, though, had soothed his battered heart in the early days after he'd arrived home. But now it was starting to annoy him.

His bull-headed sister refused to relinquish the shovel.

Figures.

"Suit yourself," he said. "I'm off to the village to get some groceries."

He stomped through the back door before his sister could insist on helping him with that too. But after stamping on his boots and donning his raincoat—this was London, there was bound to be rain at some point in the afternoon—he stepped outside... And stopped dead in his tracks.

A shiny black SUV he didn't recognize was travelling up the track. Sunshine glinted off paintwork flecked with mud. But when the all-terrain vehicle stopped and a tall figure climbed out, his insides coalesced into a lump of raw emotion.

"Andrew?" he whispered. He tried to bolt but Andrew was faster by far, he grabbed onto Tatum's arm and yanked him back into his chest.

"Hello, Tatum."

Was it really him? The man he'd run from four months ago? The locks of golden hair were gone, the darker hair beneath shorn close to his scalp. But the forbidding frown and that voice—raw, rugged and disturbingly intimate—were exactly the same.

Panic consumed him. Why was he here? Surely he had gotten his note? The white lie he had told him to set him free?

He tried to break free to dart back into the house, to barricade himself in if necessary—he didn't want to speak to him, any more than he had four months ago—or he would know how hard he had fallen for him, and then his pride would be in tatters along with his heart. But before he could make a clean getaway, Andrew tightened his grip around his belly.

"Don't run from me again, damn it," Andrew said. "I know you didn't take the money."

Oi!!! You mother fucker let go of my brother or you're gonna squeeze the baby right out!