“I mean, look at this thing! Look at it!” He flailed his phone at her. “Who texts like this? This isn’t a text, this is a goddamned thesis!” He shook the thing like it was the author of his misery—maybe in his eyes, it was—and seamlessly continued the rant. “All this to tell me he’s nuts! Or playing the lamest practical joke ever! What is happening to my family, who were always weird but are now weirder?”
“Okay, okay.” She made soothing noises at him, plucked the phone from his hand, tossed it on the bed, then grabbed his hands and walked him backward until he was sitting on the bed beside her.
“I like your hands.” He sighed out of nowhere.
“Great. Now calm down. Let’s think about this. So, you think it’s a joke? In poor taste, but for some reason he’s—what? Lying about everything he’s doing in—what was it, Honey?”
Rake blinked at her. “Uh, no. Sweetheart.” He cut his keen blue gaze away. “Sorry, for a second I thought you were calling me honey.”
“Oh.”
“It was dumb.”
“No, it’s—” She shook off the distraction. She was dim enough to start falling for the carelessly casual idiot, but she’d never ever be dim enough to make the mistake of telling him. Not to mention that her employer’s fury would be dreadful to behold. “Okay, so your mom went to Sweetheart to help—what? Save the town?” At his glum nod, she continued. “And your brother sold a bunch of farms to the bank, thinking it’d help her, but for whatever reason it made the problem worse? Okay. And then she cut off his funds.”
“Well, yeah, that’s apparently the deal, but—that can’t be true. He either got it wrong or it’s his sad-ass idea of a joke. My mom wouldn’t do that. Not to him.”
Oh you poor idiot. “Or you just don’t want it to be true,” she suggested quietly. “Because if Blake doesn’t have money, he can’t help you. If Blake doesn’t have money, it would explain why you don’t have money. Not because of a screwup, or an online mishap. You’d really be broke. You’d really be stuck here indefinitely.”
He just looked at her.
“And if he disobeys … the nuclear option?”
Rake shuddered so hard, the bed shook. Interesting, she thought. Even the thought of imminent, permanent poverty didn’t make him shake like that.
“This is going to sound like I’m being a smart-ass,” he said at last, looking at her with that blue, blue, blue gaze, “but will you please hold me?”
“Oh.” She swallowed. No. Absolutely not. Don’t be ridiculous. Once you have sex with some random bim, you’ll feel better. “Sure.”
He slowly leaned over until his head was resting on her shoulder and, bit by bit, he relaxed, until he was pressed to her side like a sexy lamprey. She eased them back and put her arm around his shoulders, and they lay on her bed hip-to-hip and stared at the ceiling. It should have been awkward.
It wasn’t.
Which was bad.
Really very, very bad.
Twenty-eight
Okay, so. Blake had gone insane, which was bad. Very, very bad. But he was in bed with Delaney, which was the polar opposite of bad. Sure, they weren’t having sex. They weren’t even naked, or breathing hard. And she was a little stiff—even in a bed! Did she have excellent posture 24/7?—and her long, bony arm was slung across his shoulders in a way that was actually a little uncomfortable.
And it was fucking glorious.
“Thanks,” he said after another long minute where they both hoped the other would say something.
A small sigh. “S’okay.”
“It’s awkward, isn’t it? It’s okay to say.”
“No, no.”
“Delaney.”
“It’s awkward.” She giggled; he loved when she did that. How someone so tall and competent and no-bullshit and not giggly could make that sound was an awesome, endless mystery. “It’s a little awkward. But I don’t mind if you don’t.”
“I absolutely do not mind even a little tiny bit,” he said, and didn’t think he’d ever been more serious about anything.
“Okay, then. And listen, you’ll—huh.”
Rake groaned. His phone was rattling again. He’d gone from not being able to wait for a new phone to never wanting to see it again. He eased out of Delaney’s awkward half embrace and scooped the thing up.
“More long yet cryptic texts from your twin?”
“‘Long yet cryptic’ is the perfect description and I’m stealing it and using it to refer to Blake forever.” He scanned the thing and showed her, and she frowned at the sight of it.
The deepest darkest depths of Hell await you, little brommmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm Text sent 7:45 P.M.
“Huh. Did he break the thing?”
“Never. Blake doesn’t break things. He doesn’t even drop them. His question, when I dropped my first phone and it broke, was, ‘Why did you drop it? How could you not anticipate it would break?’ Like I did it on purpose. Like it was a conscious decision. That’s what a tight-ass he is.”
She didn’t say anything, but her expression was eloquent. Time to set her straight. “Hey, I get it. I’m self-aware, kind of. I drink too much and party too much, and have just the right amount of sex”—he ignored her snort—“and am awful in all the right ways—”
“Oh my God.”
“—but I don’t deliberately drop phones. I’ve adored and respected all my phones. Until today.”
Delaney sat up and handed it back. “Damn. If I’d thought your getting texts would be this interesting, I’d have floated you a loan the day you got to Venice.”
“Sure you would have,” he sneered. “Ha! You’d never renounce your slave-driving ways.”
“You’re right.” She gave him a long look, then leaned in. Why? What was she doing? Who could she be leaning toward? If it was any other woman, he’d assume she was going for a kiss and he’d be delighted or freaked, depending. But this wasn’t any other woman. He probably had pink Easter grass in his hair or something, and she was getting close to brush it away. “Listen, Rake, I’m sure things with your brother will resolve themselves. Y’know, one way or the other. But in the meantime—”
“What is this now?” His phone had buzzed again, but a picture this time, not a text. He stared. And stared more. Then handed the phone to her. She took one look and started to laugh.
“What is it?”
“Oh my God. I gotta meet this guy.”
“Don’t even joke about that. You two must never lay eyes on each other. It looks like—but … no. No, right? Right.” Pause. “Is it?”
“It is,” she gurgled through giggles. “For whatever reason, your big-city brother—trapped on a North Dakota farm—has taken a picture of a pile of horse shit and texted it to you.”
“So that’s why they call them ‘horse apples.’”
“That’s why they call them horse apples.”
He collapsed back on the bed. “For this I worked my ass off. For this I stuffed baskets until the fake Easter grass wore my fingers to the bone! Knock it off! None of this is funny!” But he was giggling, too. Christ, what a day! What a week! Well, not quite a week. But “What a six days!” sounded dumb.
“Trust me,” Delaney was saying, “that’s what it is.”
“Yeah, you worked on a dairy farm when you were a kid, right?”
“Yeah.” Her giggles tapered off and she was looking at him in a new way, one he found he liked—a lot. It was scrutiny, which he was used to, but it was good scrutiny, like she’d expected to see something she didn’t like but was pleasantly surprised. “Yeah, it was one of the best times I ever had. You were paying attention, huh?”
“Sure,” he said, and didn’t elaborate. The truth—that he paid attention to everything she said, that, if anything, he wished she’d talk more about her “eventful childhood”—would sound fake. Or, worse, creepy. “It’s why you keep trying to score milk at dinner.”
“They have cows here!” she almost shouted. “It’s not an unreasonable re
quest!”
“All right, take it easy. There’s no Italian dairy conspiracy, okay? If I had my money, you could have milk with every meal and twice before bedtime. And room service would bring you milk every hour if you wanted. And I’d—I’d buy you your own dairy farm and they’d ship the good stuff to you wherever you were in the world that week.”
“That’s … sweet,” she said, and he decided to ignore the surprise in her tone.
“Because when you’re not in Italy, you’re elsewhere, and you liked living in Boston except when you were living in the country. You’re, what’s the word? Enigmatic?”
“Or I’m pathologically unable to settle down in one place.”
“Oh, baby,” he said, reaching out and linking their pinkies. “We’re kindred spirits.”
Another giggle. “You sound creepy when you leer and call me ‘baby.’”
“Shut up and pretend to be wooed by my sexy voice—”
“You do have a sexy voice,” she interrupted, and then blushed for some reason. “Sometimes I wish you didn’t.”
“No need to lie,” he said grandly. “Listen, I flew however many miles between Vegas and Paris and Montreal and New York and Vegas again and Majorca and Tokyo—”
“That’s about thirty thousand miles.”
“Jeez, that’s amazing! How’d you do that?”
“You’re not the only world traveler in this bed. Also, math.”
Oh, crap. Why’d she have to put it like that? Not about math. The other thing, and now he was thinking about all the world travelers in bed together. Specifically Delaney and him. Together. In the same bed. Together. Touching pinkies! Which sadly was not a sexual euphemism.
“I’ve been traveling since I was a kid—mostly just in the States—and when I was old enough, I did my work—the charity—all over. But the thing about milk.” She was sitting up straight again, gesturing as she got into the story. A good story, judging from her expression. “Once when I was thirteen, it was just me and two other girls on this big farm outside St. Cloud—that’s in Minnesota. They had dairy cows and chickens, and we had to feed them. I thought they’d just eat grass all day, but it’s not like it is on TV.”
“Is anything? Stupid misleading television programming.”
She grinned. “Yeah. Point. Anyway, the first couple of days sucked, but the food made up for it. Mrs. Hardy was a great cook and everything was from scratch—I didn’t know people could bake a cake without a box of cake mix before I stayed with her. And there was a pool, and we could jump in once our chores were done. So we’d get all hot and sweaty and we could just jump in the pool, we didn’t even have to take our clothes off! Good thing, too, because we didn’t have swimsuits.
“Anyway, by the third day we had the routine down and it was work, y’know, but it wasn’t difficult and it didn’t take more than two hours. And it was kind of fun. The animals were nice, they never tried to hurt us. Okay, once a cow ran Crystal down, but it was kind of her fault—she got between the cow and the feed.”
“Never get between a cow and the feed?”
“Never get between a cow and the feed. Besides, there was so much cow shit, Crystal wasn’t hurt. She just sort of got pressed into all the muck and had the breath knocked out of her. And when I yanked her out, there was this awesome splooch! as the muck slowly gave her up.”
“This is a wonderful story.”
“Isn’t it? And then all the food and plenty of time for homework after supper and after that we could do whatever we wanted. And Mr. Hardy was gone most of the time, so I didn’t have to worry—I mean, the girls and me and Mrs. Hardy had the farm to ourselves mostly. It was really great. It was one of the best times ever.”
He forced a smile. “It sounds great.” Sure. Backbreaking work where she was paid in food. Oh, and not having to worry about being raped behind the barn. Access to a pool, but it never occurred to anyone that the foster kids might need, or even like, swimsuits. Nothing positive about Mrs. Hardy except she fed them, which, apparently, made her aces in Delaney’s book.
One of the best times ever. Jesus Christ.
“It also explains why you’re such a huge dairy snob. Which is very unattractive, by the way.” Lie. Nothing about Delaney was unattractive. Why he hadn’t noticed this the day they met was a mystery, or just proof he was a blind jackass when he wanted to be. And sometimes when he didn’t want to be.
He got a pinch in the ribs for his pain, and couldn’t hold back the yelp. “Easy! You don’t want to hurt your fingers trying to pinch through all the muscle.”
“Oh, this muscle?”
“Yeow! Those are—my—rock-hard—abs!” He was gasping around each word, because Delaney’s long, skinny fingers were relentless, like evil, sentient bread sticks.
“I can’t believe I told you that,” she was saying, never letting up on the tickling for a second. “I always tell you things I mean to keep to myself. Forget a dairy, buy a bar, you’ll be great at it and no one will care that you refuse to serve vermouth.”
“It’s the devil’s—agh! Quit! You—agh! Don’t make me—agh! My abs! My rock-hard abs! All right, that’s—huh.” He’d used his superior weight and height to tumble them over and off the bed, but somehow she’d twisted in midair and landed on top, her knees pinning his hands flat to the carpet while the tickling somehow intensified. He tried to flop like a fish on the dock, but Delaney had him cold.
“Jesus Christ,” he yelped, “the first boss I’ve had in over a decade is a dairy-loving American ninja with an Easter fetish!” He tried to buck her off, but Delaney rode him easily, and he really wished she hadn’t, because now he was thinking about another situation in which she might ride him easily, and it wasn’t exactly his fault; she was exceptionally yummy and he hadn’t had sex in days, and he tried again to buck her off and it worked just as well as it had the first time.
“Ha! Give up?”
“Uh.” Please don’t notice I’m hard please don’t pleasedon’tnoticeI’mhard. “Yes. Sure. Um, listen, I don’t suppose you’d be interested in—”
He cut himself off, since someone was fumbling with a key card, and then the door was thrown open and Sofia and Lillith were there, and spotted them on the floor, which, for some reason, didn’t phase them even a little. She immediately rattled off a bunch of Italian, and they both frowned, Delaney because she couldn’t understand, and Rake because he could. (Lillith seemed neutral.)
“Wait, so the church you didn’t think you could go to you can go to?” he said for Delaney’s benefit, and then, to Sofia: “Ho ricevuto questo diritto?”
“Yes.”
“I just came for my toothbrush,” Lillith said, and disappeared into the bathroom. Sofia barely noticed; she seemed a little frazzled, but the good kind. Her carroty hair was standing out in some kind of orange nimbus, and she was wearing purple—again! Her outfits made her look like a mobile migraine. “But we must be quick, Delaney.” And she actually hopped in place, like a frazzled, giddy rabbit.
“What?” Delaney stood straight up from Rake’s tickled body without using her hands. Just popped right up, like a sexy jack-in-the-box. “But that’s great! We didn’t think we were going to get in there for a month, at the earliest.” Then she looked down at Rake and bit her lip.
Ohhhh, he wished she hadn’t done that. Her glossy dark hair fell forward to frame her face, her full lower lip swelled when she nibbled it, and she’d just been riding him a few seconds earlier, so he barely had to use his imagination to picture what she’d look like during his second-favorite sex position. Even better, what she’d look like during sex with him in his second-favorite sex position.
Please don’t notice I’m hard please don’t please don’t pleasedon’tnoticeI’mhard.
Then Sofia said something perfectly innocuous
“Ci può aiutare—we need the help.”
and Delaney just went off. “No! We can’t. Absolutely not. No.”
Even if Sofia hadn’t understood English
fairly well—and she did—Delaney’s tone alone would have been sufficient translation. But she stuck with it. “Perchè no?”
“Because it’s our work. He and Lillith need to keep out of it. Especially Lillith—you know Donna would never want this for her.”
“Tale merda! Abbiamo bisogno di lui.”
“You get that no means the same in English and Italian, right?” Delaney asked, exasperated.
“Hey.” To his relief, his hard-on was fading. Thank God, because here was a conversation he wanted to be part of. “Hey, it’s fine.”
“No.”
He decided it was good that Sofia had interrupted them. If she hadn’t, he would have made a bigger fool of himself than usual. Nothing like putting the moves on a woman you knew (a) you weren’t worthy of, (b) had no interest in you, and (c) might be skittish about sex in general through no fault of her own. And since the blood had left his dick and gone back to his brain, he could think (pretty) clearly.
“What, no? Listen, my phone hasn’t fixed all my problems yet.” In response to their stares, he elaborated. “I mean, it will, give it time, but I’ve only had the thing for an hour and Blake’s gone crazy, my money’s still missing, we still can’t call the cops, I still have to crash with Delaney at least one more night”—Yaaaaay!—“and pay for breakfast in the morning. I’d be glad for the chance to earn some more money.”
Wow. What was happening to him and yet another charitable impulse? It definitely wasn’t a niggling fear that Blake had been telling the truth about everything. It definitely wasn’t a way to postpone finding that out one way or the other. And it wasn’t a way to keep hanging out with Delaney and Lillith without making it look like he wanted to keep hanging out with Delaney and Lillith. It was all altruism, all the time: his new motto. He made a mental note to have shirts made. And maybe bumper stickers.
For some reason, Delaney was shaking her head even as Sofia nodded so hard, she probably made herself dizzy. “Grazie, Rake! We need you.”
“We don’t,” came the sharp reply. “Sofia, we can’t let him—”
“Whoa, ‘let me’? Delaney, how’d you like it if some man came along and tried to tell you what to do? Exactly,” he added before she could reply, “you’d drown him in milk or set cows on him or push him into traffic or tickle him until he barfed. I want to help.” (Somewhere, Blake was laughing his ass off.) “I demand you let me help.” (Laughing so hard he choked. Rake hoped he did choke.) “And we still don’t know what those two hoseheads are up to. We haven’t seen them lately, but they did follow us, and one of them tried to grab Lillith. We should all be sticking together.”
The Love Scam Page 13