Page 56 of Blown

“What are you thinking?” Jake asked. “Is it anything I can help with?”

Rafe remained silent for another few seconds before meeting Jake’s eyes. “This might be impossible,” he said. “Todd is right. It’s incredibly difficult to bring someone down once they’ve risen as high as Hélène has.”

“But we can do it,” Jake said, resting a hand on Rafe’s arm. “I’m not going to let anyone, no matter how important, take away from your accomplishments. That’s your work, our work, and the world is going to know that. You deserve every bit of the praise she thinks she can get for it.”

Rafe smiled, his shoulders dropping. “I don’t know how you can still be on my side after the way I behaved when Hélène was here,” he said.

Jake rested a hand on the side of his face. “I’m just standing by my man is all.”

Raffe huffed a laugh. “I’m not sure your man deserves standing by.”

Jake laughed and took a step back. “Imagine how I feel? I’m the compulsive liar who has to rewrite thirty years of behavior to stop his life from completely falling apart.”

He started for the family corridor, Rafe by his side.

“You’re a better man than I am,” Rafe said.

“I am not,” Jake snorted. “But we’re both better than Hélène.”

“I can agree to that,” Rafe growled. “She’s not going to get away with this. We’ve worked too hard to let anyone else take credit for the things we’ve done.”

“Damn straight,” Jake said, excitement pulsing through him. He felt like they were getting somewhere. He wasn’t sure it even mattered if they were able to bring an artistic giant like Hélène Rénard down. The two of them were working together, and he wasn’t going to let anything come between them.

EIGHTEEN

Everything moved fastfrom the moment Rafe and Jake made their decision to go after Hélène.

“Do you have enough packed?” his mum asked as she drove the two of them to the nearest train station. “There’s no telling how long this might take. Did you bring enough changes of pants?”

“Mum,” Rafe mumbled, face heating. He peeked over his shoulder to Jake in the backseat.

“You never know with these things,” his mum said, also checking on Jake in the back. “You never know what might happen. Extra pants might come in handy.”

Jake subtly put his hand over his mouth and glanced out the window, pretending not to pay attention, but his shoulders shook. That was all the proof Rafe needed that Jake understood the British definition of “pants”.

“We’re going down there to confront Hélène at her studio in an attempt to strike a deal with her to take down her posts and give the two of us credit for our work. This isn’t some wild holiday weekend.”

“Of course,” his mum said, peeking sideways as if he was lying to cover up the true purpose of the trip.

Rafe didn’t say anything more about it, since they’d reached the train station anyhow.

They said their goodbyes, and then it became a waiting game.

“I still think it’s amazing that you can just order train tickets to a different country online and then pop down to the local train station, whiz through a queue, hop aboard, and get there,” Jake said as they waited on the platform in Aylesford.

Rafe grunted. “It still takes too long, if you ask me. The queue at St. Pancras will be awful.”

He couldn’t shake the feeling that time was of the essence. Hélène had made her social media post that morning, and the longer they let it stand, the harder it would be to get her to go back on her treachery. Rafe didn’t think there was much hope of exposing Hélène’s treachery to begin with, but waiting for failure was even harder than anticipating success.

The train into London felt like it was moving through treacle, and the queue at St. Pancras was every bit as slow and ponderous as he’d feared it would be, which didn’t help Rafe’s mood at all.

“It’ll be fine,” Jake said once they’d finally boarded the Eurostar and settled in their seats. “I know how people like this operate. If Hélène cares about her reputation at all, she’ll do whatever it takes to keep things quiet and avoid any appearance of wrongdoing. It’s appearances that matter to people like this.”

Rafe sent him a worried, hopeful look as the English countryside rushed past. “I hope you’re right,” he said.

He slid his hand into Jake’s and was surprised when Jake took it and squeezed with both hands. His entire relationship with Jake had been a yo-yo so far. One minute he’d been lusting after the man and the next he’d been furious with him and felt betrayed.

But there was something more in Jake’s eyes as the two of them shared that moment of uncertainty on the speeding train, sunset painting the sky outside the windows. For all his lies and desperate grasps at whatever he thought would make people like him, Jake was a good man. He was lively and full of inventiveness. You had to be inventive to be such a convincing liar.

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