Page 75 of The Love Bandits

“You did say he just got engaged. Why don’t we really stir up some shit and say it’s from the guy he stole it from?”

Her eyes gleam. “He’ll think it’s one hell of a grudge for him to do it after all these years.”

“I think a monthly delivery would be best, don’t you?”

She leans in a little, her smile in her eyes, and I feel a swell of something warmer and sweeter than attraction, like I just ate one of the one-pound peanut butter cups on my computer screen. It’s intoxicating…and terrifying. “I think I like you after all, Jake Not-Jeffries.”

That feeling wraps its arms around me and hugs. I swallow, I squirm, I try to shake it off. “Should I get my name legally changed? Not-Jeffries has a certain ring to it.”

“Can’t tell you without knowing what you’d be changing it from,” she says pointedly.

She wants me to offer up my last name willingly to prove that I trust her. I do. To a point. But I know she’ll tell Damien and Nicole for my own good. Part of me wants her to do that, but there’s another part—the kid who’s never left the room he was locked into—who doesn’t want to trust another human being with my brother’s life. That part of me thinks it needs to be just us, against the world, and no one else can fully be let in. I’m also uncomfortable with my own need for her. I’ve known her a week, and only really known her since finding out who she was at the party, and yet…

I care about her.

I’d gladly destroy Todd for her.

I want to make her smile, and moan, and I want so badly to take some of the heaviness off her shoulders.

That terrifies me.

So even though I’d like to tell her my last name, then kiss her, then lock the door to this office and spend the rest of the afternoon showing her what sex should be, I clear my throat and look at my computer screen. I select the biggest peanut butter cup on the page. Hurling it at someone’s head might kill them, and while I doubt the delivery person will do such a thing, a man can hope. “Should I include a balloon?”

I dart a glance at her, worried she’ll be upset, but if she is, it doesn’t show. “Jake Not-Jeffries, you shouldalwaysinclude a balloon.”

As I make the order, I feel her eyes on me, lasering through me again as if she’s a non-lethal Cyclops from X-Men. When I ask for the address, she gives it to me without flinching, and I’m glad for that. It was her address once, but she doesn’t regret that she no longer lives there, even though I recognize where the building is located. It’s nice. A whole hell of a lot nicer than this place with the sagging walls and blotchy paint.

We both laugh as I type in the note to Todd.

I’ll never forget, with the name of his peanut-butter-loving co-worker.

Then, when it’s done, Lainey tells me about her piece of luck with Mrs. Rosings. I’m glad for it, because it means waiting is our best strategy—why risk breaking in when they could be home if Mrs. Rosings is going to hand wrap an opportunity for us?

It means that I get more time with Lainey. I want that. I want it bad, even if I feel guilty that I’m not more proactively working on solving Ryan’s problem.

I pull up the Love Fixers spreadsheet again and turn my chair toward hers. “I want to be your sidekick, Elaine.”

She smiles at me, that one lock of hair still loose at the side of her face. Without meaning to, I lean in and tuck it behind her ear, my fingers feeling the soft skin of her neck and trailing down it like they don’t know how to pull away. Her eyes dilate, but she doesn’t touch me. Doesn’t swat me away either.

“I already have Professor X,” she says.

“She’s your familiar. You need a sidekick too.”

Her mouth lifts. “So I’m a superhero and a witch? What’s my code name?”

“You’ll be the Love Fixer, of course.”

“And you?”

I think for a moment, then grin. “The Love Bandit.”

“Of course,” she says with a soft smile that activates that warm feeling in my chest again. Maybe that’s her special power—dispensing sugar and retribution. Dazzling people with her witchy splendor enough that they’ll do anything for one of her smiles. “Will you draw us, Jake?”

I think again of that moment last week, when I dropped the book and she flipped through it. “You didn’t seem to think much of my scribbles,” I say, lifting my eyebrows.

“I thought you were one of those guys,” she says, nodding toward the spreadsheet. “A cheater. A thief—”

“Well, you were right about that last part.”

---