Lying Eyes Read online

  About Lying Eyes

  This bartender’s art lies in more than mixing drinks …

  Randy Vaughan is a six-foot-three mass of mysteries to his customers and his friends. Why does a former Secret Service agent now own Mata Hari, a successful piano bar? Where did a muscle daddy get his passion for collecting fine art? If he’s as much a loner as his friends believe, why does he crave weekly sessions at an exclusive leather club?

  Randy’s carefully private life unravels when Jack Fraser, a handsome art historian from England, walks into his bar, anxious to get his hands on a painting Randy owns. The desperation Randy glimpses in whiskey-colored eyes draws him in, as does the desire to submit that he senses beneath Jack’s elegant, driven exterior.

  While wrestling with his attraction to Jack, Randy has to deal with a homeless teenager, a break-in at Mata Hari, and Jack’s relentless pursuit of the painting called Sunrise. It becomes clear someone’s lying to Randy. Unless he can figure out who and why, he may miss his chance at the love he’s dreamed about in the hidden places of his heart.

  Note: Lying Eyes is a standalone gay romance novel with consensual bondage and a strong happy ending. It contains potential spoilers for Robert Winter’s prior novel, Every Breath You Take.

  LYING EYES

  BY ROBERT WINTER

  This novel is a work of fiction. Names, characters, and locations are either a product of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious setting. Any resemblance to actual events, locations, organizations, or people, living or dead, is strictly coincidental or inspirational. No part of this book may be used or reproduced without written consent from the author. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

  Lying Eyes

  © 2017 Robert Winter

  Cover Art

  © 2017 Dar Albert

  Author Photo

  © Brad Fowler, Song of Myself Photography

  Cover content is for illustrative purposes only and any person depicted on the cover is a model.

  All rights reserved. This book is licensed to the original purchaser only. Duplication or distribution via any means is illegal and a violation of international copyright law, subject to criminal prosecution and upon conviction, fines, and/or imprisonment. Any eBook format cannot be legally loaned or given to others. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without the written permission of the Publisher, except where permitted by law. To request permission and all other inquiries, contact Robert Winter at [email protected] or www.robertwinterauthor.com.

  First Publication, July 2017

  v. 1.0

  Kindle Edition

  ISBN: 978-1626227644

  Other Books by Robert Winter

  September

  Every Breath You Take

  Discover more about the author online:

  www.robertwinterauthor.com

  Dedication

  To the community of storytellers, writers and readers alike,

  who believe in happy endings for two men.

  Table of Contents

  About Lying Eyes

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Other Books by Robert Winter

  Dedication

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Epilogue

  Author’s Notes and Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  About September

  About Every Breath You Take

  Chapter One

  There it was again.

  The back of Randy Vaughan’s neck prickled as he polished a glass, and he peered sharply around the almost-empty bar. It was a typical weeknight, and only a handful of patrons remained amid the deep couches and inviting club chairs grouped around cocktail tables of dark wood. He’d designed Mata Hari so that his customers would feel that they were guests at a cocktail party rather than a bar, and he even hung the walls with pieces from his personal art collection. Usually the homelike environment gave him a sense of satisfaction, but he drummed his fingers on the bar rail as midnight came and went.

  None of the customers appeared to be paying him the slightest bit of attention. Yet he couldn’t shake the sense of being watched—and not in the usual way of guys sizing up his muscular build and deciding whether to make a pass.

  As the night wore on, Randy tried to tell himself it was just stress, but twenty-five years of law enforcement left him with an instinct for wrongness he didn’t want to ignore. Surreptitiously, he checked to make sure that the .357 Magnum he kept under the bar was accessible. Then he shook his head at his own paranoia. At least whatever was off seemed to present no immediate threat, so he focused on serving drinks to the last stragglers.

  At a few minutes before two, he sent his assistant Malcolm to deal with the back area in preparation for closing before he came out from behind the bar to begin his walk-through. In one of the side rooms off the main bar, he suppressed a chuckle. “Guys, time to take it elsewhere.”

  The two men pawing at each other in the corner jolted apart, and Randy snorted at their wide eyes and swollen lips. He turned away to pick up a few stray glasses and napkins from a nearby table, allowing them some privacy to adjust clothing and tuck away obvious erections. When he turned around again, the younger of the two would-be lovebirds ran hands through his hair as he scanned up Randy’s six-foot-three frame.

  His red-faced partner, or partner-of-the-moment, caught Randy’s eye and muttered, “Sorry. Didn’t realize it was so late.”

  The younger one raised a suggestive eyebrow. “Is it just the three of us here now? Maybe we could—”

  “Malcolm will let you out the front,” Randy said pointedly. The men hurried away then, hand in hand. Well, at least someone was getting laid tonight. He hoped they didn’t try to get it on in the alley or the parking lot. There was little worse than a bare ass mooning him through a windshield at two in the morning.

  He finished gathering glasses, then wiped down the tables. The cleaning crew would wash up and run a vacuum in the morning, but he never left the place messy. He ran a hand over the gleaming wood of the bar as he left a stack of glasses for Malcolm.

  When he was strongly invited to take early retirement from the Secret Service because of the fiasco that was Trevor Mackenzie, he was left at loose ends. Barely fifty years old, he’d been aimless and despondent until his best friend, Thomas, came up with the idea of running a bar.

  “We’ve got enough dance places around DC, but there isn’t a good place anymore to have a drink and just enjoy conversation,” Thomas had said. “What about a piano bar?”

  Randy had warmed to the notion immediately and threw himself into finding the right building, refurbishing it, and opening the doors. Now here he was with a place to call his own. Mata Hari had been open less than a year, but he’d built a good base of loyal regulars already. They talked the bar up, and on weekends Mata Hari was usually packed.

  Tuesdays and Wednesdays though,
not so much.

  Randy walked through the main room again and stopped to adjust a picture frame that had been knocked askew during the evening.

  The painting was a small pastel he’d bought in Kyoto, one that featured cherry trees lining a small stream. A single blossom had detached and drifted down toward the water. The elegance of the lines and delicate shading of pinks and blues pleased his sense of composition. A small tap on the frame’s edge squared the painting again.

  “Anything else, boss?” Malcolm called. The tall black youth waited for Randy to send him home, but he already had his jacket in his hand and a baseball cap over his fade.

  Randy passed a hand over his bald scalp as he considered. “The side rooms are all empty, so we’re good, Mal. See you tomorrow.”

  “Uh, boss?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Tips were a little light tonight. You think you could give me a small advance on the weekend?”

  Randy grinned. “Got a hot date, kid?”

  Malcolm preened back. “I’m meeting Sarah at Tryst after this, and then there’s an after-hours club we’re going to hit up.”

  Randy didn’t carry a wallet while working but just shoved cash into his pockets. Reaching in, he found two twenties and held them out. “Is this enough? If not, I’ll reopen the till.”

  “Forty’s great. Thanks, man.” Malcolm smiled as he took the bills. “Don’t want Sarah to think I’m sponging off her. You remember how it is, right?”

  Randy shook his head. “Honestly? No. The last time I took out a girl, you could probably still get a movie and dinner for ten bucks.”

  Malcolm reeled a bit and flashed wide eyes, then laughed. “Fuck off, Randy. You never dated girls, did you?”

  “I had my moments, back in high school.”

  “Yeah? Were you the big man on campus or something?”

  “Girls kind of went with the territory, playing football. At least until I wised up and ditched the cheerleaders for the tight end.”

  Malcolm’s white teeth shone in his dark face as he grinned. “I’m disappointed in you, boss. Couldn’t you have banged the quarterback at least?”

  “Nah, he was too easy. But Mickey Evans, now, he really did have a tight end.”

  Malcolm shook his head and laughed as he put on his jacket. “I’d like to see what kind of man you go for. You get these guys wanting up in your muscly, growly business, but in all these months I’ve never seen you take up even one of these dudes on their offers.”

  “Aah, it gets old. Everybody wants to fuck the bartender.”

  “Whatever you say, boss. But we’d get better tips if you’d play it up a bit instead of snarling. And since you give us your share of the tips, there’d be more to go around, you know what I’m saying?”

  “I know what you’re saying,” Randy rumbled in mock outrage. “You want to pimp out your employer.”

  “A little smile, a wink here and there—it goes a long way in filling the tip jar!”

  “Does Sarah know how much you flirt with these guys and lead them on?”

  “C’mon, you know I don’t ever get anyone’s hopes up. I’m just friendly. If they get handsy, I let them know I’m all about the vajayjay and most of ’em drop it.”

  “And the ones that don’t?”

  “Well, then I holler for you.” Malcolm gave him a huge smile. “Nobody’s messin’ with the boss bear!”

  “Get outta here before I remember I don’t need an assistant bartender on Tuesdays.” Malcolm chuckled and waved a goodbye as he left through the front door.

  Randy smiled to himself as he took a last walk around the place for the night. He stopped by the piano, raised the cover on the keyboard, and plinked a few keys. The tone was clear and the notes seemed to hang in the air of the quiet, empty bar. Even as the sound faded away, the hair on his arms stood. He just couldn’t quite shake his unease.

  I need a drink and a good night’s sleep. That’s all.

  He closed the keyboard lid and pulled on his leather jacket, only then remembering the hand-addressed envelope he’d stuffed in there earlier as he left his house. The thick stationery of the Kensington Museum of European Art had an address in London, England.

  Dear Mr. Vaughan,

  I am employed by the Kensington Museum. We are renowned for the scope of our collection of the most important European artists of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. My personal area of expertise is in the works of the post-impressionists, including Vincent van Gogh, Paul Cezanne, Georges Seurat, and Jean-Pierre Brousseau.

  I am led to understand that approximately four years ago you purchased an oil painting from the Gates Gallery in London. I am very keen to see this painting for myself as it may shed light on some scholarly work I have undertaken.

  My job brings me to Washington, DC, in the near future. If you would consent to allow me to see the painting, I would be very grateful.

  Please contact my assistant at the number or email address below to arrange a convenient time, as I will be traveling and possibly unreachable until I arrive in Washington.

  Sincerely yours,

  Jack Fraser, Assistant Curator

  Well, that was interesting. Randy knew exactly which painting the guy was referencing, because not four months earlier, he’d received a letter from Bernard Gates of the Gates Gallery in London about it as well. Except in that letter, Gates had offered to repurchase the painting for the price Randy had paid.

  Four years or so previously, Randy had been shadowing Senator Grace Gibson, Democrat, Washington State, while she attended an economic conference in the UK. As the then-majority leader in the United States Senate, she was entitled to Secret Service protection, and Randy and his team had gone along as a protective detail. Whenever he had a free afternoon during such official trips, he’d liked to stroll through museums and art galleries. That particular rainy afternoon, he’d wandered past the Gates Gallery in the Whitechapel district.

  The subject of the letters from Gates and Fraser wasn’t a particularly beautiful or well-executed canvas, but it had captured Randy’s attention through the gallery window. Trees filled the foreground, dominated by two larger ones that tilted left and drew the eye toward the stone towers of the ruins of a nearby church or perhaps abbey. Wildflowers dotted the slopes down into a valley, while clouds shaded from purple to red to orange against a sky of cerulean, suggesting sunrise. It was the choice of a particular progression of blues in the sky, a light cyan shading in hue almost to cobalt, that had intrigued Randy.

  He’d gone inside to inquire, and Bernard Gates himself had greeted him. Gates was a little, pear-shaped man who wore his white hair swept back off his forehead.

  “Hallo, sir. Not the best weather to be strolling the galleries, is it?”

  Randy smiled. “I’d rather be inside than out there.”

  “Quite so. Myself, I’d like to be with a cuppa tea in front of the telly. Broadchurch or something juicy like that.” He shrugged. “Perhaps later if it stays slow. Did anything catch your eye, sir?”

  Gates enthusiastically nodded his approval of Randy’s questions about the work in the window. He was small next to Randy’s bulk, but he hoisted the large canvas with ease and placed it on gallery hooks against a white wall to allow Randy to study it more closely.

  “Lovely brush work, as you can see, Mr., uh…”

  “Vaughan.”

  “Indeed. Mr. Vaughan. I have this on consignment from an estate. The heirs are quite interested in liquidating their grandfather’s collection. He apparently referred to it as the Sunrise painting.”

  “It’s unsigned,” Randy observed. “Do we know who the artist was?”

  “My understanding is that we do not. The heirs’ best guess is a student of the post-impressionists painted this in imitation of the style of Jean-Pierre Brousseau. The composition is quite different to most of Brousseau’s body of work, but the ruin on the hills here appears to be an homage. Perhaps it was even painted by a private student of his
. Are you familiar with Brousseau?”

  Randy rolled his eyes and turned his full, heavy stare on the short gallery owner. It wasn’t the first time people assumed his muscle couldn’t possibly support brains too. In fact he knew quite a bit about art, both from his academic studies before he switched to criminal justice, and from countless trips to museums with his uncle Kevin before he died in the line of duty. In his driest tone, he said, “I’m familiar with the post-impressionists.”

  Gates blinked rapidly and returned to the Sunrise painting. “Of course, Mr. Vaughan. You will be aware, then, that Brousseau pioneered a style of heavy impasto that he would use to bring a movement and depth to his canvas that was revolutionary. You see how the artist here attempted to do so, though in a far inferior manner to the elegance of Brousseau’s brushwork.

  “As you probably know, van Gogh cited Brousseau as one of his principal inspirations when he began searching for a new style during his years in Arles. Brousseau left detailed descriptions and records of approximately four hundred and fifty oil paintings and many other works he created. Nothing is quite like the subject of this painting, so this isn’t a simple copy of an existing work. It’s possible that the artist, whoever he or she may have been, was attempting a pastiche of elements of different Brousseau paintings, or rather applying his techniques to attempt an original composition.”

  Randy considered Gates’s words before he said, “Five hundred.” Gates blinked at him again, and Randy commented, “Brousseau painted almost five hundred oils, not four-fifty.”

  “Ah. Yes.”

  The intense colors of the sky drew Randy in. The rich, velvety texture of the cobalt at the top of the image, where dawn’s rays had not yet reached, gradually paled as the viewer’s eye trailed down to the horizon. The sun was just out of sight, below the hills, but the artist had captured a warmth in his or her choice of pigments where the sky was obscured by the silhouette of a ruined castle. “What are the consigners asking for this?”