Page 4 of The Love Bandits

“Here?” Nicole asks, raising her eyebrows.

“Starbucks.”

Cleo’s a little woman, with long black hair and big brown eyes, more Bambi than Disney princess, and I instantly felt an urge to protect her. I mean, what monster would want to inflict emotional damage onBambi?

One who deserves to have his fortress stormed—and I’m more than ready to do the storming.

“Good,” Nicole says after I tell her about the meeting. “Let her know it’s a go. We’re in.”

“Good,” I repeat, feeling a smile slide across my face. I instantly feel ten times better. I feel a rush, not entirely unlike what I felt the day my mother and I left that private club.

“You know,” Nicole ruminates, “the best way to get close to him is probably to pretend you’re interested in his dick.”

I shrug, grinning at them. “Revenge as therapy. I don’t hate it. And get this…the guy’s actually a therapist.”

“I feel the need to point out that actual therapy, with someone other than the man you’re trying to trick, would be less dangerous and more dignified,” Claire says.

“Probably,” Nicole says with a smirk. “But I’m guessing she’ll never know. And the therapist will be spared thirty-minute long stories about her mother.”

I shake my head at her, then lift my bottle toward the ceiling and say, “Jake Jeffries, I’m coming for you. You hear me? I’m coming for you.”

CHAPTER TWO

JAKE

I’m so bored, I’ve been reduced to counting the flecks of peanut shells on the bar top, wondering what would happen if my brother or someone else with a peanut allergy walked into this dump without knowing it was the place that might murder them. We’re just outside of Asheville, so you think they’d have some sort of ordinance about peanuts, but this place is probably intentionally giving the middle finger to tourists and anyone who might give a fuck about trying not to poison people. Maybe I should send the bartender an anonymous EpiPen.Use in case of balloon face.

Then again, my brother Ryan is an idiot, and it’s his fault that I’m here, listening to Anthony Rosings Smith drone on—his ability to complain seemingly as deep as the Mariana Trench—so maybe I’ll invite Ryan out for a drink as soon as Roark lets him go.

“You okay, Jake?” Anthony asks, pausing with his beer halfway to his mouth. His brow is furrowed. The look he’s giving me would probably be called patrician. Everything about him, from his expensive hair cut to his houndstooth jacket—which haspatcheson the elbows—makes him look out of place here.He’s a sore thumb, a hundred dollar bill in a dirty tip jar, and I wonder if he always feels fingers reaching for him.

I fist my hand under the bar, letting my nails bite into my palm as a reset. I can’t let my mask slip again. That was one of the first rules Roark taught us:Never let your mask slip,usually followed by “dumbass.”

I grin at Anthony, then slap him on the back like he’s my best buddy old pal. “Never better, my friend, never better. You were telling me about your mother?”

Anthony runs a hand over his face. “Jesus, when you say it like that… It’s just…you’re easy to talk to, but I didn’t mean to spend the last half hour venting.”

Yes, he did.

“Not at all!” I say, lifting my hands, palms out. “My mother’s a pain in the ass too. Always complaining about…”

Shit, what would a mother always complain about…?

“She tries to control your love life too?” he asks with understanding.

I snap my fingers. “Yes, always. Like, find yourself a girlfriend if you feel so strongly about it. She really hated my last girlfriend. Told me I was a fool for choosing her.”

He smiles, and I feel a smooth certainty slip in—like a fine wine. This is it. It’s time. I’ve built the framework, and now it’s time to slap up the house.

“You know what, my friend,” I say, nudging his arm. “I’m good at getting to the bottom of problems.”

“Because you’re a therapist,” he says knowingly.

I nod, accepting the lie as truth. “Exactly. You said your mom’s having an engagement party for you and your fiancée next Saturday.”

“She only agreed to it to make a point,” he says darkly. “She’s always trying to make a point about something. And Nina onlywants to go becauseshe’strying to make a point. God only knows what any of it is really about.”

Man, this guy’s really got the whole poor little rich kid thing going on. I wonder if he’d be making this same argument if he knew my mother took off when Ryan and I were just four, and the only thing I remember about her other than that is the fact that she named us Jake and Ryan after the dumbass main character ofSixteen Candles. Or that the only parental figure who stuck around for more than a year or two is the man who’s currently holding my brother hostage for trying to steal from him.

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