Page 2 of Look What You Made Me Do

Not that she cared. He was here and – hopefully – a means to an end.

If she could pull it off.

Ella strode the short distance to the bar, placing her elbows on the aged wooden top, as pock-marked as the road into town. He’d changed and yet he hadn’t. Physically he’d matured. Grown into those good looks he’d wielded so indiscriminately back in the day. And there was a polish to him now she didn’t recognize.

Yet he still felt like the Jake Prince of her past.

A beat or two passed as Ella held Jake’s gaze. Despite their situational similarities growing up, she’d barely ever spoken to him. He’d been two years ahead of her at school and already refining his bad-boy rep. The last thing she’d needed was an association with him tainting the good-girl persona she’d tried so hard to inhabit.

And now here she was, about to proposition him.

Publicly.

Neither of them said anything but everyone in the place inched slightly closer, including the gum-chewing, peroxide blonde pulling a beer at the taps.

“Jake.”

Regarding her for a moment, he picked up a glass. “Ella,” he murmured, drawing her gaze to the scruff of whiskers smattering his jawline which seemed more lazy than designer. “I’m so sorry about your mother’s passing.”

Ella nodded, swallowing a sudden lump in her throat. He’d be about the only one. She wasn’t entirely sure she was sorry herself and the harshness of the realization almost sucked her breath away. What kind of a daughter was she?

What kind of human being?

Disgust with herself intensified her grief and strengthened her purpose. And yet, as her gaze flicked to the side, her conviction wavered. Perched primly on the closest stool, decked out in her standard attire of twin set and pearls, was Mrs. Coleman, Trently’s retired school librarian.

Ella’s plan had seemed simple when she’d come up with it back in her mother’s house, with its memories and a hostile teenage brother goading her into action. But she hadn’t counted on doing this in front of the elegant octogenarian who had taught her how to use the Dewey Decimal System.

Taking a deep, fortifying breath, Ella gathered the simmering anger around her like an armor.

She wasn’t seventeen anymore.

“Your dad still have an apartment upstairs?”

It came out steady and clear and she was proud of that, even more so because of how it had surprised him. Not obviously – she doubted anyone else picked up the slight falter as he dried the glass or the what the hell widening his eyes.

But she had. She who had spent many teenage moments furtively studying his carefully maintained screw everybody demeanor.

“Yes, ma’am,” he confirmed, barely dropping a beat.

“What do you say? Wanna give everyone round here something real to talk about?”

Ella ignored the gasp from a rapt Mrs. Coleman as her heartbeat thundered through her head. She felt thirteen years old again, as awkward beneath Jake’s scrutiny now as she’d been the night he’d asked her to dance with him at the only homecoming she’d ever attended.

She couldn’t tell what he was thinking. His rugged expression was completely inscrutable now as time seemed to slow. As the silence stretched.

Damn it, say something!

After what felt like an eternity, he put the glass down and, without looking at the blonde said, “Mind the bar, Kel.” Then he gestured toward the door marked private on the far wall and said to Ella, “Ladies first.”

The irritating noise of the barmaid’s gum chewing was suddenly silenced and Ella knew in that moment that every Trently resident inside The Rusty Nail was judging them.

But, when hadn’t they?

Ella’s legs were shaking as she passed the jukebox to one side of the door before she opened it and turned left to head up the stairs. Trently’s reaction vaporized into nothingness as Jake’s gaze seared liked a brand on her ass.

Were things jiggling too much back there? Damn it, why hadn’t she ever used that ridiculously expensive Thigh Master?

The stairs terminated at a door and Jake overtook her at the top, inserting a key into the lock. He pushed it open and stepped into the large open-plan room. Ella briefly noted the two windows that overlooked the street below, a small kitchen area and an unmade Murphy bed pulled out of its cupboard.

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