Page 4 of Blown

The way Rafe’s composure cracked and his eyes went wide when he asked about marriage sent acid pooling in Jake’s stomach. What if Rafe wasn’t on board with his last-ditch effort to move overseas? What if Rafe had only brought him there to tell him in person what a waste of time he was and that no one would ever truly love him? What if he’d screwed this whole thing up before it even started?

He laughed. It was his reaction to everything when he was so nervous he thought he would puke, which included several times during the drive from Heathrow to Hawthorne House.

“Just kidding,” he said, slapping Rafe’s arm, then scrambling to get out of the car.

He needed air. He needed to breathe the fresh air of the English countryside. He needed to sit still in a country that valued sitting still and somehow find his center again. Because God only knew that after the last year he’d had, after the last several, he was so far off-center that he didn’t know which way was up anymore.

He shut one car door, opened the back passenger door, and fumbled for his backpack. Rafe was only just getting out of the car as he circled around the back, ready to get his suitcase.

“I brought a lot of stuff,” he said in a rush, hoping to cancel out the shock of pushing his marriage idea on Rafe right off the bat. “My plan is to stay for as long as I can, hopefully getting some work done, if you’ll let me share your hot shop, and we’ll see where things go from there.”

“Right,” Rafe said slowly, opening the trunk.

“I don’t have to stay here if it’s too much of a hassle,” he went on, trying to slow down his words and not send himself careening into the kind of trouble that seemed to follow him wherever he went. “I’ve got plenty of money. I could book a hotel or an Airbnb if I need to.”

He absolutely did not have a lot of money. If the Hawthornes refused to let him stay with them, he’d be looking for a hostel somewhere. He might have to live rough for a while.

“My family is eager to have you stay with us,” Rafe said, shutting the trunk once Jake had his suitcase, then standing with all the regal grace that could be expected from someone who was genuine aristocracy. “Are you certain you don’t need me to carry anything?”

“Nah, I’ve got it,” Jake said. He glanced up at the stone face of the ancient building in front of him. “This place looks amazing. When did you say it was built again?”

Rafe gestured for Jake to follow him across the modern parking lot and along a small flagstone path to a side door. “The original house was constructed in the early seventeenth century. Subsequent earls built on that, and the structure you see now was completed by the early eighteenth century. The outside, at least. As you’ll see, the inside has been renovated several times, most recently in the nineteen-nineties, when the family flats were made.”

“Right,” Jake said, nodding and glancing around as they entered the vast house. “I still can’t believe anyone would want to live near their family. I can’t get far enough away from my family, but that’s probably because they can’t get far enough away from me. Good, middle-class Christians from Ann Arbor, Michigan don’t admit to having sons who are as gay as a tambourine.”

Rafe turned back to stare at him as they made their way toward a staircase at one end of the hall. That end of the hall opened out to what looked like the lobby of a grand hotel or the central hall of a school building.

“Are tambourines gay in America?” Rafe asked.

Jake laughed. “Nothing is gay in America. Not if you listen to my dad.”

Rafe made a typically British sound that Jake translated as “I don’t know what to say about that, so I’m not going to say anything.”

Jake just smiled back at him. He’d learned a long time ago that a smile went a long way to getting people to like you, and more than anything, he wanted Rafe to like him. HeneededRafe to like him. That’s why he’d bent over backward in an attempt to impress him back in Corning.

“We have several empty family flats at the moment,” Rafe said, pausing by a door with a brass “4” on the front. “Dad’s giving you this one for the duration of your stay. It’s one of the ones we occasionally rent out to tourists.”

The way he said “tourists” made Jake cringe inwardly. You didn’t usually refer to the man you were going to marry, even if it was just for the visa, as a tourist.

“We need to fetch the key from the office, though,” Rafe went on. “You can leave your things here.”

“Thanks,” Jake said, wheeling his suitcase around to stand next to the door. He took his backpack off and rested it against the door as well. “I remember you telling me your family’s house was now an arts center and that it used to be a school, and that it was a convalescent hospital after World War One before that, just like Downton Abbey.”

Rafe glanced at him as they continued down the hall and into the lobby area. “Jullian Fellowes didn’t pull his ideas out of the ether,” he said. “A lot of estates became convalescent hospitals during the Great War.”

Jake felt chastised by about five things in that one sentence. He was so out of his league with Rafe in every way. It made him question whether his idea to get a UK visa by marrying Rafe was brilliant or the worst thing he could have done.

The trouble was, Rafe was the only guy in the UK who he could marry and make it look like a plausible love match in the eyes of the UK Home Office. He could prove he’d known Rafe for more than a year, that they had a lot in common, and that they’d spent a significant amount of time together within the last year. As long as whatever immigration official interviewed him for the visa didn’t probe too much, everything would look legit.

He had a lot of experience in making utter lies look completely legit.

“Ah, Rafe. This must be your American friend.”

They’d entered a small office that looked like someone had constructed it off-site and slotted it into an existing parlor off the front hall and were greeted by an older man with a young twinkle in his eyes and an excellent, grey beard that reached down to his chest.

“Dad, this is Jake Mathers,” Rafe introduced him.

“Robert Hawthorne,” Rafe’s dad said, stepping forward to shake Jake’s hand vigorously. “It’s wonderful to meet you. Welcome to Hawthorne House.”

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