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you can take? Lamont, maybe?”
    Rupert shook his head. There was no one else. And certainly not his best friend, Reese Lamont, who could barely leave his house, let alone the country, without having a paralyzing anxiety attack.
    “No, I—” He looked at Callum, utterly overwhelmed. “I have no family.”
    “You have Oliver,” Callum reminded him.
    “Yes. Yes, of course,” Rupert said. “I just meant—”
    “What about friends?”
    “None that could get to London in the matter of hours.”
    “Okay. Then, I’ll go.” Callum said, looking as incredulous as Rupert felt about that offer. “I mean, if that’s—”
    “Why would you help me? You don’t even like me,” Rupert said, bewildered.
    “He’s a child . Barely more than a baby, Rupert.”
    And oh, god, Rupert knew that. Just hearing someone else say it, hearing the concern in Callum’s voice, brought the panic rushing back.
    He was so far out of his depth that the water was closing over his head faster than he could begin to swim. Suddenly, the bane of his existence looked like the only life raft he could reach. “Yes. Okay. Thank you. I just—”
    “We got this,” Callum said with a reassuring amount of confidence.
    That made exactly one of them who thought they had any idea what the fuck they were doing.
     
    That night passed in a blur. Jack was a godsend, booking them an early flight through Toronto that would get them into London the following evening. Callum didn’t know what he would have done without his help, since Rupert was so overwhelmed, he was useless. Callum had secretly dreamed of seeing the always perfectly put-together Rupert completely out of sorts, but now was really not the time .
    Callum dragged their asses through packing up laptops and paperwork at the office, then to Callum’s hotel for his bag and passport. Once they arrived at Rupert’s hotel, another extended-stay set up like Callum’s, Callum practically had to shove Rupert in the direction of the bedroom to begin packing.
    Callum stayed in the kitchen to call Garrick.
    It was getting late and Callum worried that Garrick wouldn’t answer. He kind of wished no one had when a sleepy-sounding Rhian Savage picked up the phone.
    That was an answer to a question Callum hadn’t wanted to ask. Then he heard his sister’s voice mumbling in the not-very-distant background and almost hung up the phone.
    “I hear you’re going to London,” Garrick announced by way of greeting once the phone had finally been passed to him.
    Callum sighed. “Jack called you, didn’t he?”
    “Probably no more than two minutes after he left your side.”
    It wasn’t like Callum didn’t know Jack was Garrick’s oldest friend. Then another thought occurred. “Oh god. And Savannah knows?”
    “Of course,” Garrick said with a chuckle. “We got to witness the activation of the Morrison phone tree. Pretty impressive.”
    Callum rested his forehead against a kitchen cabinet. “ Great .” He loved his family, he really did, but they had a compulsive need to be all up in each other’s business. Not that he had any right to bitch, since he’d made this trip to Moncton with the express purpose of forcing Garrick and Savannah to sort out their super weird love lives.
    But still.
    Deciding he’d deal with questions from his family when they arose and not one minute before, he turned the conversation to what needed to be done in the next couple days and secured Garrick’s promise to do whatever he could from Boston. Then Callum called Reese, who was far more interested in why Callum was going to London with Rupert than on the business issues the trip might create. At least Reese offered to have his assistant arrange for rooms at Rupert’s usual hotel in London, taking one thing off Callum’s plate.
    It wasn’t ideal, but between Reese, Garrick, and Jack, and it almost being the weekend, he thought he and Rupert could disappear for a few days without the whole world, or at least one