Page 53 of Blown

It was a sobering thought.

“We can’t just stand by and let her get away with this,” he said, heading away from the table so he could find a broom to clean up his earlier broken glass. “There has to be something we can do, some way we can prove she stole our idea.”

“There are no phone records,” Jake said, eyes widening as he moved to help Rafe. “We spoke to her in person in London, and she never called or texted to say she was coming here on Saturday. There’s no proof she was ever here.”

“Of course there’s proof,” Rafe said, more upset by the minute. “My entire family saw her here.”

“They’re your family,” Jake said as he tidied up his workbench. “In the eyes of the people who matter, they’ll seem biased.”

“Rubbish,” Rafe growled, rejecting the idea.

He was worried that Jake had a point, though. The art world was fickle at best. Plenty of people would see his family backing any claim he and Jake made against Hélène as self-serving and unreliable.

“We have to get this sorted immediately,” he said once he and Jake had tidied the hot shop enough to leave it. “That was ourwork she posted online, our concept she’s poaching. We worked hard for that, and I’m not letting anyone else take it from us.”

SEVENTEEN

Of all thethings that could have brought him closer to Rafe and given him the feeling that they were once again on the same side, artistic plagiarism was not the one Jake would have chosen.

“I cannot believe that anyone would stoop so low as to steal someone else’s work and pass it off as their own,” Rafe growled as the two of them hurried up to the house once the hot shop was in order.

“That’s because you’re a good person,” Jake said, walking close enough to take Rafe’s hand if he needed to. “But trust me, people are shitty. I’m surprised this sort of thing doesn’t happen more often. Maybe it does and we just don’t hear about it.”

Rafe made a sound of derision. “What’s the use in stealing someone else’s idea? The entire idea of art is to create and to learn and grow through the creative process.”

Jake couldn’t help but smile. Rafe was so noble and pure of heart. Maybe it was because he’d always had a family to support him or maybe it was something else. Either way, it increased the pull that Jake felt toward him and made him want to move mountains on Rafe’s behalf.

“What?” Rafe demanded with a scowl, noticing Jake’s smile as they reached the front hall of Hawthorne House. “What’s that look for? Do you think I’m that big of a fool to allow this to happen to me?”

“No,” Jake said, his smile fading. “I think you’re a wonderful, good, incredibly talented man who does not deserve something like this happening to him.”

Rafe stopped, blocking the flow of students trying to move in and out of the building for a moment so he could stare at Jake suspiciously. When an older man with smears of clay all over his trousers cleared his throat and gave Rafe a rude look, Rafe grabbed Jake’s arm and moved both of them over to the side.

The touch was surprisingly electric. They faced a huge, possibly insurmountable problem, but all Jake wanted to do was fall into Rafe’s arms and do whatever it took to make him feel okay again.

“You’re probably laughing at me for being so blind,” Rafe said in a quiet, bitter voice once they were off to one side of the hall, near one of the large front windows and a display of kids’ art. “You probably think I deserve this.”

Jake gaped at him for a moment. “Not even a little bit,” he said. “I’m furious with Hélène for thinking she can step all over us like this. It’s disgusting, and I plan to do whatever we need to do to expose her for the fraud she is.”

He wasn’t sure how he expected Rafe to react to his declaration, but he didn’t expect the strange look that came over him.

“You’re not gloating,” he said. “You’re not laughing at me and telling me it serves me right for being a trusting fool.”

“Why would I do anything like that?” Jake asked, shifting closer to Rafe.

Rafe lowered his head slightly. “Because Iama fool,” he said. “I let my head be turned by Hélène when you saw how untrustworthy she was. You tried to warn me.”

Jake shook his head and rested a hand on Rafe’s arm. “I burned my credibility a long time ago,” he said. “Even with you. I’m the boy who cried ‘wolf’. Of course you questioned my motives. But that’s all behind us. We’ll deal with it later, once the bigger problems are taken care of. Right now, we need to pin Hélène down, get her to admit stealing our work, and have her, I don’t know, print some sort of retraction or take down her posts at the very least.”

Rafe stared at Jake intensely. The air between them practically fizzed. There was so much more there than just the art theft they were dealing with, but right then wasn’t the time to deal with it.

Rafe drew in a breath and nodded. “Let’s start by trying to contact Hélène,” he said, pulling his phone from his back pocket. “I know it’s unlikely, but maybe this is all just a mistake. Maybe she posted the wrong pics and she’s actually working on something else entirely.”

Jake knew that wasn’t true, but he stayed silent as Rafe dialed the number Hélène had given him the other night.

He could tell from Rafe’s tight expression that either no one answered or the number wasn’t real. It didn’t come as a surprise.

“Maybe there’s another way to contact her,” Rafe said when he lowered his phone and tapped to end the call.

---