Page 63 of The Love Bandits

“I’m glad you took their car, but you might have picked the wrong lesson to teach them. You should have taken whatever they value most.”

I huff a little laugh. “Then I would have had to takethem, and no thank you. Still, you’re right about the car. They probably don’t care. They haven’t bothered to report it stolen. They didn’t even call me to bitch about it. I’m guessing they’re waiting for me toapologize.”

It probably goes without saying they’ll be waiting forever.

“Maybe they don’t want to get you in trouble,” he says, but his expression is slightly sympathetic now. Fantastic. The thief I’ve captured feelssorryfor me.

I shake my head slightly, looking down at the car again before I meet his gaze. “I doubt they care. Maybe they’re happy I’m gone. I didn’t do my part. I was supposed to marry a rich man. A man with connections.”

His eyes beating into me, he says, “It wasn’t your only chance. Maybe Nina will run off with the necklace, and you can have a go at Anthony.”

“Is that your way of asking me if that’s my angle?” I ask, horrified.

“Nothing personal.” He straightens a framed photo on the wall, as if he’s incapable of keeping still, and I barely repress the urge to slap his hand away and to hiss for him to leave my things—and me—alone. “I need to know.”

“It’s not my angle,” I snap, pissed off even though it makes sense for him to question me. “I’m trying to save Nina from the worst mistake she’s ever made. It’s a mistake I’ll never make again.”

His gaze finding mine again, he inclines his head slightly, barely a nod. “Did you take anything fromhim?”

“His name’s Todd.”

He snorts. “Of course it is. And what did you take from dear Todd?”

Rolling my eyes, I nod toward the very expensive Yankees bat propped in the corner of my room.

Jake walks over, obviously grateful for the excuse to touch another one of my things. Picking it up, he turns it to study it from different angles. Whistles in appreciation. “They all signed it.”

“Yankees fan?”

He watches me for a second before setting the bat down, then says, “I’ve been trained to recognize valuable things. Rare things. You’re a rare thing, hellcat.”

I feel raw and exposed, like a bug that’s been hiding under a rock turned over by a child.

“You said he didn’t hit you,” he presses. “But I can tell he hurt you. What did he do?”

He sounds like he actually gives a shit about the answer, although he has no reason to. Maybe that’s why I respond. Or perhaps it’s because he’s not going to judge me, the way Claire might, the way even Nicole could. “It wasn’t all his fault.”

“Oh?”

“You stole Anthony’s wallet so you could get to know him.”

He shakes his head slightly, walking over a couple of steps so he can run his fingers over the carved knob at the right foot of my bed. “So we’re shifting the subject back to me again. I’m flattered.”

“No,” I say, capturing his hand on top of the knob. “Do you always have to touch something?”

His eyes are amused as they meet mine, his hand stilling beneath my touch. It’s his right hand, I register. The hand that nearly made me come last night. The fingers I watched him lick as if he’d just had a gourmet meal. There’s a needy ache between my legs that I resent. “Yes. Would you prefer for me to touchyou?”

I pull away as if he’d burned me. Clearing my throat, I say “My point was that I did something similar with Todd…”

“You stole his wallet?”

“No…but I pretended to trip in front of him, and I let him help me up. He liked being seen as the good guy. The hero.”

He doesn’t comment, probably because he knows as well as I do that the best way to get someone to talk is to wait on them.

“So it was a lie from the beginning. I knew who he was. I studied the way his friends and their girlfriends dressed and talked. Their interests. I tooknotes. I paid attention to what he liked and disliked. And then I changed what I wore. Which classes I took. Which activities I pursued outside of class. I became exactly what he wanted.” I pause, swallowing. Not quite sure why I’m telling him all of this, but needing to, anyway.

He runs his fingers over my arm without saying anything, his eyes on mine. Waiting. Somehow he knows I need to say the words, and he’s silently telling me he’s here to listen.

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