Chapter 14

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

LAINEY

I can still feel his dick through his pants. See the way his eyes burned into me as I peered up into them, the breeze playing with his mussed hair. His muscular arms lifted overheard.

I can't like Jake, but I do want him—in a purely carnal, animal lust sort of way that I've never let myself experience before. In the past, lust has been a studied thing for me—what to wear to make him beg or drop to his knees. What sounds to make and when. Which angles complement me best.

This feels nothing like that. He makes me want to squirm. To make him squirm and beg.

Which is exactly how I don't want to feel about a man who's a man who embodies every one of my worst impulses.

Now, after a tense drive back to the cabin, Jake and I are sitting in the living room with Nicole and Damien. My bare feet are covered in the worst dirt and who-knows-what-else Marshall, NC has to offer, and I'm anxious to take a shower, but I have a feeling we'll be in here for a while.

Claire and Declan are still out on their date, and Rosie hasn't gotten back from Smith House, although she's texted, and she insists she wants a full and thorough update the instant she gets home. Honestly, I'm glad they're not here yet. This is the sort of situation that's best kept small.

Damien, Nicole, and I are sitting on the couch, and Jake's in the hot seat in front of us. The hot seat being a dining room chair, because Nicole insisted we shouldn't let him get too comfortable. Professor X, damn her, is curled up in Jake's lap.

I've just finished telling my friends everything that happened tonight, from finding Jake in front of that empty display case to deciding to help him.

Nicole glances at me. "And I hope you searched him?"

" Thoroughly ," Jake says with plenty of insinuation. His hand smooths over Professor X's back, and I have the obscene thought that I'd like it to glide over my thighs like that and dip between them.

My brain has been poisoned by this man.

Nicole bursts out laughing, which Jake clearly wasn't expecting, and gives him a once-over. "I'll bet she did."

"Who's threatening your brother?" Damien asks, one of the first things he's said all night. He's like that sometimes—a sponge, soaking everything in—before he makes a pronouncement. He has a bit of a threatening glower going on right now, but Jake hasn't shown any tells of being nervous. Then again, he's an actor. A cipher. Who knows if anything he does is real. I've always had the curiosity of a cat with nine lives, and I can't deny that I want to know more about him. But the more I know, the more human he'll be—the more relatable. It's safer to see him as other. As the enemy.

We're only working together right now because the enemy of my enemy is my friend.

"I'd rather not say," Jake tells him.

"We're private investigators," Damien tells him, and for a second Jake's reaction is genuine: surprise. Alarm. "We're going to find out, but you might as well save us some tedious legwork and be straightforward."

"Not my strong suit."

"Suit yourself," Damien says, leaning back.

Jake eyes him as he pets Professor X's fur again. "You won't get far without my last name."

"Don't need it," Damien says with a lazy smile. "We know Jake Jeffries is fake, and somewhere along the way of making him, I'm sure you made a mistake. Everyone always does, no matter how careful they think they are. We'll find you, and then we'll find your brother, and given he's a hostage to some sort of gangster, I'm guessing he's not as careful as you are. What's his name, anyway?"

Jake rolls his eyes. "You think I'd tell you my brother's name if I wouldn't tell you who has him?"

"He said his name is Ryan," I tell them. I'm lucky looks can't kill, because Jake not-Jeffries would have just sliced my head clean off. There's betrayal in his gaze, and I understand why. He told me something vulnerable in a moment of desperation, and he thinks I just stabbed him in the back with it. I know Nicole and Damien, though. They have their own version of right and wrong, and they're not particularly worried about anyone else's. They'll care more about helping Ryan escape this kidnapper than nailing him for past thefts.

"I lied," Jake insists, his eyes boring into me.

"He didn't."

His mouth closes in a firm, displeased line, then he regroups and says, "Look, you're all focusing on the wrong thing. I don't have the necklace, but someone else does. I'm gonna guess it's Anthony and Nina. Hell, maybe it was even Mrs. Rosings."

"You think Mrs. Rosings stole her own necklace?" I say with interest.

"She could have," he says, his jaw flexing. "Or Anthony and Nina, like I said. I'll set up that tea with Anthony. We can get everyone into one place. That should help me narrow it down."

"Oh-ho," Nicole says, leaning forward, her elbows propped on her knees, "you're not doing anything on your own, Flynn Rider, not until this situation is resolved. "

This is the first I've heard that Nicole watches Disney musicals, but my surprise barely registers before I realize what she must mean. "No," I say. "Absolutely not."

"Say hello to our new roommate," she says with a grin, leaning against Damien. "We're going to be staying here too, obviously." Shifting her face back toward Jake, she says, "Lainey may have temporarily saved your sorry ass, but you're on house arrest. You don't go anywhere, or do anything, without one of us."

"Then how the fuck am I supposed to get the necklace back?" Jake asks, his expression closing down fast. Gone is the penitent man who let me run my hands all over him to search for a necklace he knew he didn't have. He looks like a rat caught in a glue trap. Maybe that's why Professor X is being so sweet to him—empathy is a powerful drug.

Nicole grins at him. "Sounds to me like you and Lainey already figured out how to handle that. You and Lainey are a couple now. You'll do your group therapy session with the happy couple and the old bird, which I would honestly kill to see. And since there are two of you, one of you can keep the others distracted while the other looks for the necklace. Divide and conquer. Boom. It's perfect."

"I don't think it's perfect," Jake objects.

"Then it's a good thing your opinion doesn't matter," Damien says pointedly, resting his elbow on the arm of the couch.

"I can't stay here." Jake glances at the front door as if he's contemplating making a run for it.

"Are you stupid?" Nicole asks him pointedly.

"Maybe. I just got caught by a woman in a knockoff Red Lobster uniform."

I shoot him a glare.

"Yeah, you did," Nicole says, holding his gaze. "And Lainey's definitely stupid, because she cares enough about saving your brother's ass to have risked her own freedom. She could have gotten caught putting the fake in that case. She could still get caught. You may not be happy to be here, but you're damn lucky."

Something passes through his gaze, but I can't read him. I remember what he said in the car earlier.

Damned if know who I am.

As if he's spent so long pretending he no longer understands what's real—something I relate to more than I'd like.

"What happens once we get the necklace?"

"That's above your pay grade, Flynn Rider," Nicole says. "But my husband and I will work out a plan for getting your brother released and getting the old lady back her Heart of the Mountain."

"I don't trust you," he says starkly.

She laughs. "And I sure as hell don't trust you. Which is why I'm also going to point out that after we had an intruder last summer, we shored this place up like it's Alcatraz. Damien and my sister's boyfriend, the really big guy who lives right next door, had a nice talk with the local police officers about what it means to serve and protect. If an alarm goes off in this place, they'll be shitting their pants trying to be the first to get here. You break out, they'll grab you."

He swallows, looks away before glancing back. "I don't do well in confinement."

Nicole gets up, stretches, then says, "You're a therapist, surely you appreciate the possible benefits of exposure therapy."

"I need my clothes. My things from the apartment."

I think of his sketchbooks, tucked carefully away, the comics of him and Ryan. I feel a pulse of unwanted sympathy for him.

"Damien has clothes. You'll wear his things. We can get you a phone charger, and there are extra toothbrushes and deodorant in the closet. Consider this your Club Med."

A half smile passes over his face right before he sags in his chair, and I know he's only pretending the fight's gone out of him. He's not going to let this go. He won't leave a piece of himself behind like that—not when it sounds like he has so few of them left.

"Fine, whatever," Jake says. "I have to pick up my car. Anthony's going to get suspicious if I'm parked outside of his old lady's place for days."

"This is a full-service prison," Damien says. "We'll pick it up for you."

Jake swears under his breath, but he plucks his keys out of his pocket and throws them to Damien.

"It's the red Corolla."

"Wait," I say, glancing between my friends in disbelief. "You're leaving me here with him?"

"He'll be locked in his room, and the window is alarmed," Nicole says. "You can handle him."

Here she goes again, trusting me to get it right, even though I've gotten it wrong every step of the way since the beginning of this thing. Maybe it was stupid of me to try to level up the Love Fixers. Maybe I'm only capable of glitter bombs and potshots on social media.

Nicole gets to her feet and claps her hands. "Okay, this has been fun and all, but nothing else is going to happen tonight. We need to give this a few hours to marinate, see if the fake is spotted." Nodding to Jake, she says, "Sleeping Beauty, your bedchamber awaits."

"Goody," he replies, lowering Professor X to the ground—earning a yowl and a paw swipe—and then getting to his feet.

I follow them upstairs to the guest bedroom. Jake glances inside before shrugging and stepping in. He turns to say something, and Nicole shuts the door…then pulls out a key ring and locks it.

"Keep prisoners here often?" he asks from the other side.

"When needed," she says.

It's bluster—we've never needed it—but they must have had the door retrofitted so it could be locked from the outside.

Leave it to Damien and Nicole to do that.

"This is completely unnecessary," Jake says from beyond the door. "As you've pointed out, I'm fucked. I need that necklace to save my brother, and if I don't stay on Elaine's good side, she'll tell Anthony everything. Hurting her would hurt me, and if I'd planned on doing it anyway, I would have already done it."

There's an edge of panic in his voice, and I remember what he said about not liking confinement.

Rat in a glue trap.

Nicole snorts at him. "I'm not worried about you hurting her. I've seen her with a Yankees bat."

"We'll unlock the door once we're back," Damien says.

Then Nicole turns to me. "Don't do anything I would do. And, for the love of God, take a damn shower."