Jane stood half-crouched in the doorway, her battered Red Socks cap covering her curls and her mossy eyes flat when they met his. Lars put out his hand and it stung a little when Jane hesitated before taking it. But when he touched her, sliding her hand into his as she had last night when they danced to “Woman,” a fierce longing for her clenched his heart, stronger and more visceral than any emotion he’d felt sitting beside Samara Amaya for ninety minutes.
Do you feel it too, Jane, this tremendous chemistry between us?
When his eyes skimmed back up to her face, he saw the confusion there, but something else too: compassion, maybe? Or pity? Dropping her hand like it was on fire, he backed away from her, feeling hurt. You don’t want me? Fine. But I don’t need you feeling sorry for me, Jane.
“Janie, darling! We don’t have all day!” Samara called from the front seat.
Lars turned his back on Jane and moved to open Samara’s door. She swung her legs out of the door in one elegant, pivot, reaching out her hand. Lars took it, offering her a wide smile.
“Thanks,” Samara winked at him, lacing her fingers through his, and with a small note of disappointment, Lars realized that touching Samara’s hand was nothing like touching Jane’s. For all of her sexiness and beauty, he felt…nothing.
“Jane. Janie!” she cried, looking at her cousin with delicately furrowed brows. “How strange! My cell phone has four bars here. Didn’t you say there was no service here? Wasn’t that why you couldn’t write back to me?”
“Oh, well, like I told you, we got that fixed. I’ll, um, I’ll have to call the governor and thank him for working so quickly to make sure you’re comfortable,” Jane answered, glancing at their laced hands for a pregnant moment before looking back at her cousin. “When I told him Samara Amaya was coming to Minnesota, he said he would move mountains to get cell service here in time. I heard some machinery last night and voila! Mountains were moved. Just for you.” She turned to him, her expression salty. “Lars, did you hear? Gardiner has cell phone service now.”
Everything she’d said, in such a deadpan voice, was so absurd, he couldn’t help smiling at her. “Go, Minnesota!”
Samara looked back and forth between him and her cousin with narrowed eyes, uncertainty passing over her pretty face before she smiled brightly and shrugged.
“What a relief that you were able to take care of it, Jane. Such a capable little mouse. What would I do without you?”
Lars noticed that Samara didn’t say much as Jane showed her around the cottage. She nodded, her face unreadable but for the occasional tight smile she offered Lars as Jane pointed out the improvements that had been made in time for her arrival.
Now, Samara wasn’t exactly jumping up and down with delight, but she certainly wasn’t yelling or screaming or carrying on in protest either as Jane had led him to expect. No tantrums. No throwing things. No prima donna behavior whatsoever.
Hmmm. Lars started to wonder how much of Jane’s complicated relationship with Samara was based on pure and simple jealousy. Samara was strikingly lovely, confident and charming, while Jane was smarter, sharper and more down-to-earth. Maybe Jane had some seriously bitter feelings about being the girl-next-door beside her drop-dead-beautiful cousin?
Had Jane set up Samara, purposely implying that she was difficult to put her cousin at a disadvantage in his eyes? None of what Jane had implied about her cousin appeared to be true. Samara seemed like a genuinely nice person, especially for a celebrity. It made him feel a little disappointed in Jane, and a little protective toward Samara.
Lars couldn’t account for the disconnect, and there were really only two reasons: either Jane was jealous of Samara and had misrepresented her, or Jane had told the truth and Samara was hiding her true nature. But, Lars, who had just spent two hours in her company, didn’t see how that was possible, which meant that he had to consider the possibility that Jane, whom he had liked so much based on who she was, wasn’t really who he thought she was at all.
***
Jane watched out the cottage window as Lars pulled away to take Ray and Sebastian to the Best Western. After that, he’d go back up to Bozeman to pick up the rest of Sara’s team, who were coming in on a later flight. It was unlikely Jane would see him again today. Her shoulders slumped with exhaustion and sorrow.
She could already feel the change in him, the confusion, the migration from liking her to liking Sara. The way he had pulled back from her after offering her his hand, running to do Sara’s bidding. He was still angry at her for breaking things off between them, but he was backing away from her too. She could also read the puzzlement in his eyes, and she was sorry for that. The thoughts he must be having and the feelings he was trying to process would be difficult and conflicting for him, but she had seen it all before, and she knew that he would resolve them in Sara’s favor. She was a modern-day siren, and no man could reject the spell Sara was capable of casting. There were no exceptions.
Jane sighed as the van drove out of sight, a cloud of dust the only visible reminder that he’d even been there at all.
“Are. You. Fucking. Crazy?”
A glass flew by Jane’s head and smashed into the wall beside her. She jumped, her heart thumping with shock.She had noticed Samara’s tight-lipped assessment of the little cottage and knew she was unhappy, but Jane hadn’t braced herself for her cousin’s first tantrum. She turned to face Sara, who stood across the room with her hands on her hips, her pretty face red and snarling.
“I will not stay here, Jane, in this fucking rickrack hovel. Fix this. Now.”
Jane took a deep breath to calm herself, blinking at the shards of glass on the floor. “I can’t. We’re in the middle of nowhere. There’s nowhere else to stay unless you want a hotel room.”
She squatted down, picking up the larger pieces of broken glass first. She’d need to see if there was a vacuum hidden somewhere in the small cottage. Sara liked to go barefooted.
“I don’t stay in fucking motels, and I refuse to stay in this, this, Kozy Kabin SHIT HOLE.” She pointed at Jane. “You are enjoying this, you little bitch.”
“I assure you, Sara…I’m not.” Jane crossed to the kitchen, opened the garbage can, and threw the pieces in. Rise above it, Jane. Rise above it.
“Don’t you dare talk back to me. You fucking are if I say you are, you worthless piece of shit.” Sara leaned over the kitchen counter, eyes bulging, and nostrils flared. “Tell me this, Jane: What the fuck were you doing out here for three days if this is what you have to show for it?”
“Unpacking your bags, taking photos of your locations, getting groceries for you…” …falling for Lars, seeing fireworks, feeling fireworks…
Jane turned to rinse her hands in the sink, but Sara had already seen her face. She sidled up alongside Jane, her eyes boring into Jane’s head. She leaned forward until Jane felt her cousin’s breath on her ear.
“You can’t have him, Janie,” she hummed. “You know that, don’t you?”
Jane stared at the water running over her hands. She didn’t feel any physical pain, but she must have nicked herself on some glass because she saw some red streaks swirl down the drain.
“How do you like it?” asked Sara. “A little taste of your own medicine…cousin.”