Page 116 of The Love Bandits

“Five minutes,” she says. “I’ll start gathering up Nina’s things.”

“I’m guessing you won’t be returning them to her with a bow on the box,” I say.

“No,” she replies flatly, then nods to Rosie. “Come, you might as well make yourself useful. There are some boxes in the basement. I suppose you can build a box?”

Rosie gives her anare you for real?look, but it’s obvious stealing this woman’s multimillion dollar necklace has humbled her, because she just says, “Of course.”

They leave the room, and I turn toward Jake, who’s still studying me. His gaze is so deep, I could fall into it—fall in andstay. His whole being in his eyes, and they’re fixed on me. He wraps his arms around me, leaning his head in close. “Lainey.”

“I love you,”I tell him, able to say it now. “And I want us both to be Love Fixers. We’re going to run ads, do the website, all of it.If you stay. We haven’t really talked about it, because we didn’t know how all of this—” I wave at the house, “—would work out, but I want you to stay. I really, really want us to do this together. For this to be our life.”

My heart is beating so fast, I’m afraid it’ll burst like a squished grape. I’mterrifiedthat he’ll tell me no. That he’ll say his existence is tethered to New York, and we can only be together if I go back to the place where I always felt like a prisoner in a glass cage.

“I just said I worship you, didn’t I?” Jake says, tucking some of my errant hair behind my ear. “I’ll stay for as long as you’ll have me.”

“That’s good,” I say with a laugh, feeling effervescent and good. “Because once I decide to keep someone, it’s extremely hard to get rid of me. Ask Claire.”

“Is that a promise, Elaine?” he asks, his voice hoarse. He’s studying me in a way that makes me remember that he’s someone who’s felt abandoned and unwanted too. His mother walked out on him and his brother, and they never knew their father. The man he’d thought of as a father had betrayed him too.

“Yes.”

And he leans in and kisses me, his lips making a promise of their own. His hand weaving into my hair to take it deeper.

A beleaguered sigh gusts from someone’s chest. I break the kiss but don’t back away from him. I can’t right now. I need his arms around me. I need the reassurance that he’s still here—that he’ll continue to be here. When I look, Mrs. Rosings and Rosieare emerging from the stairwell to the basement, Rosie carrying four boxes, Mrs. Rosings carrying nothing.

My boss sighs, her lips pressed tightly together. “Does this mean I’m going to have to find another assistant?” She says this as if she doesn’t have Rosie grappling with giant boxes for her for free.

“Do you really need one?”

Most of what I’ve done has been in service to her attempts to break up Anthony and Nina, and surely the wedding will be cancelled.

Her eyes widen, as if she’s only just realized the import of what happened here today. “Perhaps not.” Her gaze shifts to Jake. “I expect you’ll find a way to make it up to my son.”

The scene around me still looks different than it should. Sharper, brighter, and everything is too funny or not funny enough, but when I focus on him, it all seems all right anyway.

Clearing his throat, Jake says, “I’d like to. I…have a plan for doing that, if he’ll let me.”

She drills a hard look into Jake. “I don’t want him marrying another gold digger.”

He lifts his hands. “It wouldn’t be like that if it were a business arrangement with a firmly established prenup—both of them get money, then they walk away after the one year separation period.”

She considers this for a moment before nodding. “Good. I couldn’t care less about the money. God knows, I have plenty of it to share with both of my children, but my boy needs to feel like it’s really his. He won’t take it otherwise. But we’ll cross that bridge when we come to it. First, we have to put this nonsense at bay.” A smile spreads across her face. “You know, I have to admit, it’s been some time since I’ve had this muchfun.”

Anthony’s not having a banger of a day, but I’m not going to point that out, since she’s opted not to press charges against my friend or my boyfriend.

Boyfriend.

Rosie’s right. It’s such a stupid word, like we’re children drawing in each other’s notebooks. It doesn’t encompass the way he’s drawn me out and helped me process the past seven years of repression. But using it—even thinking it—puts a warm, soft glow in my chest.

And…is the carpetmoving?

CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

JAKE

My heart thumps fast and wild in my chest—a real fucking rabbit of a heart. Lainey’s here but not here. She’s in a car with Nicole and Damien a couple of blocks away. Backup, they say. Sitting ducks, I say. I didn’t want her that close to Roark and everything he represents, but it’s incredibly hard to tell my woman no. Usually, I wouldn’t have it any other way, but today her proximity has me riding scared.

So does the multimillion dollar necklace riding shotgun in a little hinged box—and Mrs. Rosings, reclined in the backseat so she can’t immediately be seen.

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