Page 76 of The Love Bandits

She takes my hand, her touch sending a shockwave through me, because she did it purposefully, pointedly. Watching me, she weaves her fingers through mine and holds on tightly, telling me something without words. “I wasn’t right about you at all. And I lied. Your illustrations are amazing.Obviously. I want to see all of them.”

I think about the sketchbooks. It’s my history with Ryan, or some form of it. It’s our story, which doesn’t actually have an ending. Yet.

“Someday,” I agree, and I mean it. I’d like to show her someday, even if our time is limited.

Two weeks, Roark told me. And Roark is not the type of man who gives extensions. If I don’t manage to locate the necklace within two weeks, I’ll have to go back anyway. I’ll have to beg him to spare Ryan’s hand—even if it means accepting whatever price he sets.

Not for the first time, it occurs to me that he might have purposefully set me a task he didn’t think I could fulfill, or at least not fulfill alone.

I lift her hand to my mouth and kiss it.

“Jake,” she says, her tone urgent, her eyes holding mine. “I don’t know—”

“I’m not going to do anything you don’t want me to do. Ever.” It’s the type of promise a person probably can’t fulfill, but I mean the words as they leave my mouth. I nod to the computer again. “But I want to do this with you. I want to help. Do you think you can take off some time tomorrow afternoon so we can give Peter, Peter, Pussy Eater a realfuck youhe’ll always remember?”

She feigns a cough. “I think I’m coming down with something.”

“That’s my girl.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

LAINEY

Jake and I spend the rest of the day answering emails on the Love Fixers account and then we work on erasing every last breadcrumb of “Droopy Dave”—Jake’s nickname for him because of his resemblance to a basset hound—from his former fiancée’s social media accounts.

I laugh and melt when I read the responses he wrote by himself that morning. He gets it. He understands. He enjoys doing this too.

And when I look at him, I feel a raw, aching want in my chest. I don’t need anyone to tell me it’s an unsafe feeling. Jake’s not going to stay. He has one reason to be here: to steal a very expensive necklace that I can’t let him keep. Once we acquire the necklace, he’s going to leave, one way or another, and I’ll never see him again.

I’ll never see him again.

I swallow down the fear that rises up in the wake of that thought, telling myself I’m being ridiculous. I barely know Jake. And if I feel like he understands me better than most of the people I’ve known my entire life, maybe that’s just a sign that I need to be more forthcoming.

Maybe it also means I should let myself enjoy him fully, for as long as I do have him.

“You look deep in thought,” Jake says, nudging my shoulder from his chair as he pulls up another photo on Droopy Dave’s fiancée’s account. “Are you plotting someone’s ruin?”

“Not at the moment,” I hedge. “But that could change. Would you like to be ruined today?”

His lips tip up. “Maybe.”

He’s still sitting close, his proximity seeping into me, but I don’t move. Neither does he. He doesn’t look away either, and that fear creeps back in. I glance away, looking at the photo drawn up on his screen, and he averts his attention to it too.

“Hey, is that him?” he asks, pointing to a yawning dog in the corner.

“You’re terrible,” I say with a grin.

“Nah,he’sterrible. His resemblance to a dog is the best thing about him.”

I glance at him and find him staring at me, his gaze appreciative. He’s smiling again. I know he’s enjoying this—he’s enjoying this thing I’ve made for myself—and I have the urge to lean in and kiss him. To show him I appreciate him too.

But Nicole strides into the room without knocking, a duffel bag slung over her shoulder. “What have you been doing in here all day?”

I glance out the window and am surprised to see the sun’s going down. It passed in a blink.

“Kicking ass and submitting cookie orders,” Jake says, making me laugh.

“We’re keeping Claire busy,” I confirm.

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