“Oh, you should come next time I meet my girlfriend, Sarah. We can rope Jake into babysitting.”
Lola winked at him, and he easily picked up the thread. “I’d love to, Mags. Honestly. I don’t see enough of my favorite niece.”
“Really?” she asked. For a moment, a brief flicker of excitement filled her eyes.
Jacob couldn’t help but reply, “Really.”
“Are you sure you two can’t stay longer?” June walked back into the kitchen where they had all conglomerated.
“We can’t, Mom. We’re running late already.”
“Some other time?” Lola asked.
When Lola leaned into his side, Jacob roped his free arm around her so that he had Gracie on one hip and Lola by his other side. “Some other time,” he confirmed, choosing to solidly ignore his family’s blanket smugness.
“Perfect. How about Sunday?”
“Mom!” Jake laughed. He didn’t want to think about Sunday, didn’t want to hope that they’d be able to do something as normal as family lunch by then. “If I don’t get wrapped up in this investigation that I’m working on, we’ll try to make Sunday. Okay?”
June clapped her hands together like a child about to blow out birthday candles on a cake, and everyone grinned at her. “Perfect. I’ll make Beef Wellington.”
“Jeez, Jake,” Hudson chuckled, his big shoulders trembling slightly with the deep sound. “You should have brought Lola home ages ago.”
“Okay, okay, we actually have to go now.” He gave Gracie a smacking kiss on the cheek, sending her into a fit of giggles before handing her back to Maggie and propelling Lola towards the door.
His family followed them out, each taking turns to hug and say goodbye, first to Lola and then him. By the time that they were both strapped back in the car, he glanced at the clock on the dash. Shit. They were twenty minutes late already and the bar was another ten minutes away. “Sorry about that.”
“Don’t be.”
He looked over to find her smiling. “Not too bad?”
She blew out the big breath that she had been holding. “They’re…special, Jake. You know that, right?”
He nodded, unwilling to admit how important it had been for her to feel that way. “I do,” he said before putting the car in reverse and backing out of the driveway.
Chapter 18
Jacob looked down at his phone when it buzzed late on Wednesday night. He shifted Lola, who was snuggled against his side as they watched The Last Kingdom, and reached for it. “Murph,” he answered, seeing Zac’s name flash across the screen.
“Hey, I have an update. Meet me at Sarah’s house in ten minutes?”
Jacob pushed to his feet immediately. “Sure thing.”
When the phone clicked, he looked down at Lola, felt his body tighten at the picture she made sitting on the purple sofa, her legs curled under her. He still wasn’t sure how just looking at her in sweatpants made him hard as hell, but every time that he saw her, irrespective of what she was wearing, his entire brain seemed to shut down as his body overrode every basic mental function.
“What is it?” she asked, her brow furrowed with worry.
“Zac has an update, but I just realized that I can’t leave you here alone.” He tapped the cellphone against his hand. “I’m meeting him at Sarah’s. Do you mind coming with me? I shouldn’t be too long.”
She stood immediately, and her sweatpants straightened, falling to the floor, the long leg of them pooling past her ankles. His mouth watered when he noticed that her small, rosy nipples were hard through her white camisole. Because he had removed her bra himself only an hour earlier, he grinned. Because he did not want Zac Murphy to notice, he picked the bra up off the floor by her bed and handed it to her as she pulled on her white Nike’s.
She blushed prettily and pulled the straps of her camisole down, spilling her small breasts. Jacob groaned audibly, making Lola look up at him, a wicked grin on her face as she slipped her bra back on. “You said we’d be quick at Sarah’s, right?”
“As quick as humanly possible,” he confirmed, moving to hold the door open for her.
He waited there while she threw a sweatshirt over her shirt, deliberately didn’t touch her as she walked past because experience had taught him that once they got started, there was no stopping for anything. She was his own personal brand of French fries, better to avoid eating the first one than devour the entire box.
True to his word, within ten minutes, they were pulling into Sarah Boyle’s driveway. Not for the first time, Jacob wondered exactly what she did for a living.
The double-date they’d been on had been so awkward that they hadn’t managed to touch on anything personal. Matt and Sarah had spent the entire evening volleying back and forth, their conversation—or rather, argument—kept going by the fact that they had absolutely nothing in common and seemed to disagree with each other about everything.
He turned to Lola, who sat with her feet on the dash, gazing out of the window quietly. “What does Sarah do?” he asked, drawing her big, brown eyes to him.
“She dabbles in the arts,” she said, a small grin tugging at the corners of her mouth as she fluttered her hands theatrically.
“What does that mean?”
She shrugged. “I’m not entirely sure, to be honest. She supports a lot of upcoming artists and musicians, produces plays…that kind of thing. That’s actually how we met. She funded my first show…”
“She can afford this?” He glanced pointedly at the house. “Doing that?” He stopped the SUV in the gravel driveway, close to the front door of the house.
“Oh, no. Sarah is an heiress of some sort. She keeps pretty tight-lipped about it, but the house was a gift from her parents.”
He felt his jaw drop open as they walked hand-in-hand to the huge, walnut doors. They looked like they should be the big, barn doors on a winery, not the entry feature to a single-family home. “It was a gift from her parents?” He looked up, all the way up, at the pretty terracotta villa with its big, wrought iron balconies and slanted shingle roof.
“I know, right? Beats the rug that I got last year.”
He nodded, but he couldn’t fully ignore the hint of suspicion sitting in the back of his mind. He wasn’t entirely sure why, but something about the way that Sarah Boyle interacted with him came to the forefront of his mind.
Even on the double date, which had been insanely awkward anyway, Jacob had gotten the distinct impression that she was anxious around him. Was he misremembering that? To be fair, it wasn’t every day that a cop showed up at your door looking for your best friend and then started dating her.
A few moments after they rang the doorbell, Sarah Boyle herself answered. Jacob smiled kindly, trying to ease the weariness that crept into her eyes when she saw him.
Definitely remembering clearly. She does not like cops. Or just me in general.
“Hey!” she said, her eyes warming as she stepped forward to wrap Lola into a hug. Her long, red hair fell forward, curtaining her and Lola as green eyes assessed him over Lola’s shoulder. “I’m glad you came. I didn’t think you’d speak to me again after that terrible date.”