Page 79 of Into the Dark
“Yes, he is,” I say in English.
She smiles again, falsely. “I like her, Jack. Feisty.” She preens at him. “Keveen can look after me now. But I’ll be in touch. We almost have a deal, yes?” she says, touching her hand to his bicep.
“Almost,” he smiles, all charming and flirty.
My nostrils flare as I watch her walk away. She’ll be in touch. In touch with what? His thigh again?
Jake gives Kevin a long look before the elevator springs open and they both get in.
When Jake and I are alone again he turns to me, his eyes softer. “Any languages you don’t speak?” A small, amused smile plays across his mouth.
“Plenty. She’ll be in touch? What the hell does that mean? Not get to finish what you started before I interrupted?”
The light disappears from his eyes. “You think I’d cheat on you?”
“No. I don’t. But if that was some kind of revenge for what happened in France, then—”
“Alex, I didn’t want to look at another woman then, and I don’t now. That was business. That’s all.”
“I didn’t know your business involved allowing Bond girls to drape themselves over you.”
His eyes lighten, and his mouth twitches with the hint of a smile. “Bond girl?”
“I hate her.”
He smirks a little, looking so bloody sexy. “Have I ever told you how fucking gorgeous you look when you’re jealous?” He strokes my arm softly through my jacket.
“I’m not jealous,” I huff.
He raises an eyebrow.
“I didn’t like seeing her all over you.”
He nods. “Okay. I’m sorry. It won’t happen again.”
I can only blink at the straightforwardness of that. “Okay.”
“Okay. So why are you here?”
“We’re in a relationship, in case you hadn’t noticed, Jake, and I’m not going to just sit at home until you decide you’re not angry at me anymore. We’re not going to sort this with you ignoring me and sleeping at your club. We need to talk this out. Properly. Together.”
Jake mulls over my words for a moment while he nibbles on his bottom lip. Finally, he lets out a deep breath. “Okay, fine,” he says, shoulders dropping. “Let’s go back in and talk it out then, properly.”
At the door he swipes his own key card, holding it open for me. “You want anything?” he asks as I walk toward the sofa, where the faint indents of two bodies still remain. I shake my head, and he moves to lift the bottle of Jack Daniels and the glass from the table before taking a perch on the edge of his large desk. He’s silent as he refills his glass halfway before placing the bottle behind him.
He raises the glass to his lips and takes a long, large gulp, not wincing at all as he swallows it. How do people do that? I’ve never understood it. He does the same thing twice more before I can’t take any more.
“I understand you’re angry, Jake,” I start, sitting forward. “I understand that how I dealt with what happened between us was completely different from how you did, and that it hurts you to think about me with someone else. And I regret it. It was a stupid thing to do—and it didn’t work, not even a little.”
He stares at me for a long time. “In Sussex, you said you were coping, that you’d been moving on. Is that what you meant?” He takes another deep sip.
“I lied. I wanted you to think that.”
“You lied.”
“Yes.”
“And how often do you lie to me, Alex?” Jake asks, and my breath falters. The words I said to him that day in my kitchen. He doesn’t wait for me to respond, sighing for what feels like the hundredth time tonight. “I don’t know how to fix this, baby.”