Just safe.
She was safe. Tough to worry about anything when she was safe. Not that she needed Rake Tarbell to feel safe. Or anyone.
Then: What are you doing? Of course you have to worry; it doesn’t matter that he’s got a doctorate in locking lips.
True, but where would you even go to school to get that kind of doc—
You have to leave! Bad enough you let him get mixed up in this, but lingering after a hack isn’t smart. You knew better than this when you were fourteen.
She pulled back and Rake groaned again, a deep rumble she felt all over, but he let her go. “Should I be preparing for a beating?” he asked. “It’s fine, you know. I just want to know what to expect.”
“Don’t be an idiot. It was as much my idea as yours.” She’d been working up the courage to go over to him and kiss the flour off his nose, when he’d crossed the room and kissed her. Like it was easy. Like it wasn’t a terrible idea.
And then, because she was a stupid, stupid woman and had to know: “There’ve been some positive things, right? Being trapped here, um, with me … it hasn’t been all bad?”
He smiled. “It’s been pretty much all positive since I stopped compulsively barfing.”
Pathetic how much that meant to her. But at least now she could get back to business. “We have to go. The volunteers will finish.”
“Really?” He made no effort to hide his delight. “We’re done? No more orange peeling? No more paste squeezing? We’re finished?”
“You are.” And why aren’t you asking about the DNA results, Rake? Because I don’t dare bring them up until you do.
Operation: Make Rake Embrace Responsibility aside, she’d have to follow up to see if that selfish pig of a chairman was going to see reason or if she’d have to use the hack, but that wasn’t Rake’s concern. She almost hoped he wouldn’t see reason, so she could put out the hit. That was happening more and more often these days.… “I might have to come back.”
“Charity’s never done, huh?” he said, and for a wonder he wasn’t teasing.
Charity. Revenge. They were often the same, she’d found out. At least the way her family did things. “C’mon. I’ll lend you twenty bucks for a small coffee. You like tons of whipped cream and syrup in your coffee, right?”
“Who doesn’t?” He was whipping off the apron and swiping halfheartedly at the messy counter. “We’re really leaving it messy like this?”
“Like I said, the volunteers”—the real volunteers—“will take care of it.”
“Excellent.” Then he gallantly held out a (floured) elbow. “Shall we?”
Enjoy this. He won’t be speaking to you soon enough.
“We shall,” she replied, and found a smile from somewhere.
Thirty-two
Rake made it back to their room with every intention of texting Blake, but when the adrenaline rush of the kiss wore off, he realized it wasn’t even 8:00 A.M. He could actually get in a nap and wake up closer to an hour that wasn’t quite so horrific. Besides, Delaney was only a few minutes behind them—she’d lingered with the others to tell them about her meeting at the church. Maybe they’d kiss more. Maybe they’d kiss a lot more. And she seemed pretty interested in his texts from Blake; maybe there’d be more pictures of animal shit to show her. (Wow. That was a sentence he’d never thought before.)
So he got comfortable on the hide-a-bed to wait, and the funny thing was, he wasn’t even tired. He should be; between playing with his phone and then thinking about Delaney’s sleepwalking, he’d gotten about two hours before she yanked him out of (sofa) bed. Should he tell her? Would she freak? Hard to imagine Delaney losing her cool; it was more likely she’d be embarrassed. Self-assured people didn’t like it when other people saw their vulnerabilities. He’d grown up with two of the most self-assured people he’d ever met (helloooo, Mom and Blake!); he knew all about how they didn’t like looking vulnerable.
Well, he’d think about it while he waited for the gray-eyed whirl of sarcasm/slave driving that was Claire Delaney—and what was happening? Why was she looming over him? And shaking him?
“Rake? You okay?”
“Course.” He yawned, glanced at the clock— Oh. “Huh. Ten o’clock? Really?”
“Did you— How’d it go?” Delaney was actually nibbling on her lower lip, which was distracting as all hell, because it made him want to nibble on her lower lip. “Are you okay?”
He was warmed by her concern and caught the small hand shaking his shoulder. He squeezed it, then reluctantly let go. “I haven’t tried to call him. Thought I’d wait for you first.”
“Why?” Delaney’s eyes were narrow with suspicion, because he could never figure her out. To be fair, they’d only known each other for a few days. “Why would you do that?”
He didn’t even have to think about it. “Because I like being around you guys. What, that’s so hard to believe?”
“Yes. Very. You didn’t think you were going to get laid, did you?”
“No! I swear!” Truth! At best, he’d thought … “I wouldn’t have said no to another kiss, though. You’re the best kisser.” He saw the unwilling smile bloom. “You are! You fiend, you knew it all along.”
“I did not!”
“You’re always walking around with your lips hanging out, flaunting them, being all oh my God please don’t tickle me again.”
She’d been reaching for his ribs but pulled up short when he begged. “Hmph.”
He grinned up at her and squashed the urge to sit up, grab her, and pull her down onto the bed into a full-bodied hug. “Your ‘hmph’ isn’t fooling me, look at you! You were worried and everything. What, you thought I’d have such an infuriating conversation I’d pass out in a rage?”
“Kind of,” she admitted.
“You’re sweet!”
“Shut up.”
“‘She said sweetly.’”
“Stop it. Look, will you please call him? Don’t you want to get this over with?”
“All right, jeez, such a nag. A nag with good advice, actually.” He got up, unplugged his phone from Delaney’s charger, then reread Blake’s doctoral thesis of a text. He sat back on the bed and got right to it.
Christ Blake I thought my phone was going to blow up what’s going on with you I mean jeez?
Ahhhh, felt so good. He didn’t have the vocabulary to express how good it felt to be texting again. And this was just the sort of text that would aggravate the bejeezus out of his brother: profane, a run-on sentence, no punctuation. Heh.
A few seconds went by, and then:
Did you lose another phone, idiot?
Nice. All his bro knew was that Rake hadn’t been returning his texts. Was it because he’d been kidnapped? Hurt? Gored by a bull? Run over by a train? Bobbing facedown in the Grand Canal? Any of those things could have been true. (One of them was maybe true, and the third one almost happened.) But noooo, it must be because Rake lost another cell phone. God, lose five in two years and everyone rushed to judgment.