“I’m hungry,” I say in my soft, persuasive voice. “We should go get some food. Are you hungry?”
His eyes glaze over a little, and he leans nearer. “Yes, I’m hungry.” His voice has gone vague and distant, and his upper lip hitches slightly. Were his canines always that distinctive? They give him a feral look.
He’s coming even closer. Oh crap, is he going to kiss me?
If he kisses me, I’m going to kiss him back, and I won’t be able to hide how much I want him.
“Jay!” I snap my fingers in front of his face.
He blinks. “Yeah?”
“Come on.” I slip past him, beyond the magnetic pull of his body in an attempt to wrestle back control. “Let’s head back to the shelter and eat.”
He frowns, as if he’s a little confused, but a second later he’s back to himself—already on board with my plan, as coolly casual as if he hadn’t been begging my forgiveness and almost kissing me just seconds before. His long legs take such big strides that I have to half jog to keep up. He hails the other two guys eagerly, a broad smile on his face. “Let’s eat, lads!”
“Lads?” I giggle, settling back into familiar grooves. This Jay I know how to handle. “What, are you British now?”
“He’s not,” says Cody in a crisp accent. “But I am.”
Nick grins at me with such obvious triumph and delight that I have to laugh. He has always loved British accents. To find a guy as hot as Cody with a sexy accent, too… It’s like Nick’s own personal kryptonite.
“So, you two are friends?” I gesture from Cody to Jay. When they exchange a glance full of secrets, my stomach clenches.
“I was Jay’s temporary guardian until he turned eighteen,” says Cody. “And we share the house.”
“Cody’s like a mentor to me,” says Jay.
Mentor? Cody only looks maybe a year or two older, and not necessarily any wiser, but sure. Why not? As if that’s not strange enough, both Jay and Cody are wearing the thick bracelets the cleaning lady warned me about.
I’m sure it’s nothing sinister. The bracelets are probably just some fitness band or smart device I haven’t heard about yet. Still, it’s enough to kick me into caution mode again. Jay is an old friend, but we haven’t been close in a very long time. I need to remember that.
“Nick, did you get a chance to ask Cody about that thing the other night?” I raise my eyebrows significantly at him. You know that thing where Cody maybe drugged you?
“It’s fine, Daisy.” Nick gives me a pointed stare. “I must have picked up someone else’s drink. Or had more cocktails than I realized. Cody took care of me that night, made sure I got safely into a quiet room.”
Cody’s mouth curls at the corner, and the look he shoots me is both a challenge and a question. Are you going to push this, or let it go?
“Let’s not have drama,” Jay says cheerfully. “Have a sandwich instead.” He’s reaching for one when his phone trills a series of notes. “Excuse me. Work.” He stalks away to the edge of the shelter to take the call.
Work, huh? What kind of work does a twenty-four-year-old rich guy do? And how did he get so rich, so fast, anyway? My ears strain to catch his half of the conversation, though I pretend to be listening to Cody and Nick banter about sandwiches.
Snatches of Jay’s voice filter to my ears under the thrumming of the rain. He’s speaking in a low, intense tone. “He has to pay. He doesn’t get special treatment because of that.” He listens for a moment, then says, more harshly, “If he doesn’t pay, he doesn’t get it. Money first, in full. He’s got to have faith in the process. That’s all I’m asking for. A little faith, and the full sum up front. Make sure he understands—” Another pause. “He can threaten all he wants. You think anyone will believe him? Tell him if he keeps this up, the deal’s off. I’m starting to think I don’t want his money. Who needs him around for that long, anyway? No, I can’t right now. I said I can’t, Cheadle. You handle it.”
What the hell is Gatsby involved in? I really hope he’s not a drug dealer. Maybe a hacker? He was always decent with computers—he used to collect other people’s cast-off tech and get it working again, or sell the bits of precious metal from the insides. For a while, that money was all he and his mom had to live on. His other skill was chemistry. He and my dad used to mess around with chemicals on an old workbench in the back corner of the apartment complex parking lot. I joined them sometimes, but whenever I tried to help, things tended to explode, so I usually ended up riding my bike while they experimented.
If Jay is a hacker or some kind of genius rogue chemist, I can live with that. Drug dealing, counterfeiting, human trafficking, or weapons dealing—nope. Honestly, the drug thing is most likely. How else could a guy his age make this much money in less than a decade? But Jay always swore he would never drink or do drugs. Not after what substance abuse did to his family. I don’t want to imagine him dealing that stuff to other people. I don’t want whatever he’s been doing to ruin my image of him, my memory of what we had.
Jay finishes with his call and strides into my peripheral vision, and though I can feel him looking at me, I don’t turn. I’m still watching Nick, with a smile fixed on my face, while Cody feeds him a bite of egg salad sandwich. I used to love egg salad. Haven’t had it in ages. I wonder if Jay ordered egg salad sandwiches for this picnic because he remembers I like them.
As if he can read my mind, Jay sets a sandwich on a plate and offers it to me. The plates are fine china, white and wafer-thin, with gold tracery along the edges. Totally wrong for a lakeside lunch.
“The egg salad isn’t quite right,” he says, taking a sandwich for himself as well. “I had several chefs make it, and I tested the batches. This one’s as close to your grandma’s recipe as I could find.”
The thoughtfulness of it, the time it must have taken… I look up into his face, struggling for words. His skin is so much clearer than it used to be. He used to have terrible acne along his temples and between his eyebrows. He scratched, so some of the pimples left scars, tiny pockmarks. I couldn’t have cared less because the glow inside him was the important thing. But I can’t help noticing that his skin is absolutely flawless now, and nearly poreless. I’ve got to find out what skin-care regimen he uses.
“What?” he asks. “Do I have something on my face?” He bats at his cheek, nearly drops the plate, and does a swervy juggling thing to keep it balanced. “Sorry. Um—sandwich?”
I rescue the plate from him. “This is weird, right? I mean we used to talk all the time, and now…it’s strange. I’m a little nervous around you.”
He lifts his eyebrows. “You? You’re nervous?”
“Very. In fact, I’m a little jealous of those two.” I nod at Cody and Nick, who are pelting each other with bits of crust and laughing like idiots. “They make it look so easy.”
“They do seem to be getting along well. But”—Jay’s voice lowers—“you should tell Nick that Cody is distractable. He doesn’t stick with one person for long. I wouldn’t want to see Nick hurt.”
“I think they’re just having fun.” I savor a bite of the sandwich. “Oh my gosh, this is amazing.”
“Yeah?” He grins, brilliant and joyful.
“It’s absolute perfection.” I take another bite, and he does the same. For a second we chew companionably, and then our eyes meet and we both chuckle, dissolving a little more of the tension.
“So tell me, what do you do?” I steal another sandwich. “For work, I mean? All this—the money, the house, is it Cody’s? He said he’s your guardian, right? Or he was until you turned eighteen?”
“Yes, but all this technically belongs to me. Cody lives here for now, but he has his own house in Knoxville.”
I hold his gaze, lifting one of my eyebrows slightly to remind him that he didn’t answer my other question.
“As for work… Well, Cody gave me some money to help me get started, and I invested it well. That’s all there is to it.”
