Jake didn’t wake Nicole, he merely scooped her up and carried her out of the kitchen to the bedroom. But by the time he set her on the bed she was stirring.
“Hi,” he said softly when she opened her eyes as he straightened.
“Hi.” She smiled uncertainly.
“We had to vacate the kitchen. Workers were about to invade,” Jake explained.
“Workers?” Nicole asked, sitting up and peering around with a frown. “Where are my jeans?”
“Oh, crap. Hang on,” he muttered and hurried back to the kitchen to retrieve her jeans and panties from the kitchen floor. Men were just coming into sight on the stairs as he hurried back through the living room. Jake slipped back into the master bedroom and then paused. Nicole wasn’t on the bed anymore. He relaxed when he heard the water turn on in the bathroom, and then set her jeans and panties on the bed and slid out of the room again to head to the bathroom outside his own room.
Jake quickly relieved himself and washed his face and hands, then headed out to investigate what had been done in the house so far. He nodded in passing at the men working in the loft living room and then hurried down the large, open winding staircase to the main floor. Dante and Tomasso were settled one on each of the couches in this larger living room, working on two large pizzas that lay open on the coffee table between them. An action movie was playing on the big-screen TV at the end of the room.
“Pizza?” Dante offered, lifting the box closest to him for Jake to consider its contents.
“No. Thanks,” Jake murmured, his gaze moving to the sliding glass doors next to the big screen. Through it he could see a man standing beside the hot tub, watching a pump spit water out into a large open barrel.
“Did you remind him that the water’s poisonous?” Jake asked, eyeing the man. He’d warned him when he’d called, but people sometimes didn’t listen.
“Yeah. He’s wearing protective gear and that’s why it’s going in the barrel. He brought several of them to take the water away. He said it probably wasn’t a good thing just to pump it out onto the grass and let the ground soak it up,” Dante told him and then asked, “When the hell did you call these guys? I thought you were so busy with Nicole you wouldn’t think of it. I was going to make the calls myself.”
“While I was making coffee when Joey and his girlfriend were here,” Jake answered. He’d put the coffee on and quickly made the calls. Quick as he’d been, Jake had barely finished when he’d heard Melly announcing that she wanted to leave. He glanced to Dante and Tomasso now. “She was something else, huh?”
“A bitch,” Tomasso rumbled.
“Couldn’t get away from her quick enough,” Dante said dryly. “Nicole’s brother is an idiot to put up with her. She doesn’t care about him. All she’s thinking about is what he can give her.”
“Yeah.” Jake grimaced, but then shrugged. “He’ll figure it out soon enough.
“You don’t think we should give him a heads-up?” Tomasso asked.
“I don’t think he’d appreciate it,” Jake said mildly, recalling his own resentment when they’d given him much the same message about his fiancée years ago. “Besides, how would you explain knowing?”
Dante and Tomasso both merely nodded, and then glanced past him and smiled.
Glancing over his shoulder, Jake found himself smiling as well. Nicole was coming down the stairs. She’d changed her clothes, put on some makeup, and her hair now flowed in soft golden waves around her shoulders. She was also carrying her purse.
“Where are we going?” he asked with a grin, moving to meet her at the foot of the stairs.
“I’m going shopping,” she answered lightly and then blushed and added, “For skirts and dresses.”
“Sounds great,” Jake said with a grin, and turned to lead the way to the coat closet. And it did sound great. The skirts and dresses had been his suggestion after all and he was thinking about how much easier things would be if she were wearing them instead of jeans. All he’d have to do was lift her skirt and—
“You don’t want to come with me,” Nicole protested as she followed him to the closet. “You’d be bored to tears.”
Pausing, Jake turned to face her and said quietly, “You can’t go alone, Nicole. Remember? Your—”
“Oh, right, right,” she said with annoyance. “Someone’s trying to kill me.”
Jake frowned. It seemed while she would now admit someone was out to kill her, Nicole still wouldn’t admit it was her soon to be ex-husband. Did that mean she still loved him? She’d claimed she didn’t, but then why was she so resistant to acknowledging that he was the only one who would benefit?
“Do you want us to come with you?” Dante asked. “Follow at a distance, maybe, reconnoiter the area and see if anyone follows the two of you?”
“Oh, this is ridiculous,” Nicole said with frustration, turning to head for the stairs. “Never mind. I won’t go shopping.”
“No, wait.” Jake hurried after her, grabbing her arm to stop her at the foot of the stairs. “We’ll go, just the two of us. It’s fine. Besides, I want to help you pick them out . . . and change in and out of them,” he added, his voice deepening.
Nicole hesitated, but then smiled crookedly and shook her head. “You’re a pervert.”
“I am,” he acknowledged. “For you.”
“Yeah.” She sighed. “And the sad thing is, I’m a pervert for you right now too.” Shaking her head, she moved past him and back toward the closet again.
Jake grinned at winning the mini battle, and then turned to Dante and Tomasso. Smile fading, he nodded solemnly.
Both men nodded back, equally solemnly, and Jake followed Nicole to the closet to get his coat. The twins would follow at a distance and keep an eye out while ensuring Nicole had no idea. What she didn’t know wouldn’t hurt her . . . and might just save her life.
Fourteen
“Are you hungry?”
Nicole pulled her gaze from the passing lights going by outside the car window and glanced to Jake as she considered that question. She didn’t have to consider it long. Now that he’d asked, she was suddenly aware that her stomach seemed to be trying to eat itself. “Actually, I am.”
“Yeah, me too,” Jake murmured, his gaze on the road ahead. “We never did get to eat that chocolate cake.”
Nicole bit her lip and turned her head out the window again, trying to hide a blush as she recalled why they’d not eaten the cake. They’d had a snack at the food court when they’d first got there, so whether they’d eaten the cake was irrelevant. He’d only brought it up to tease her, she was sure, and she didn’t want to give him the reaction he was looking for and let him see she was blushing. With the average guy, Nicole wouldn’t have worried he could see her blush in the dark light of dusk, but Jake wasn’t your average guy. He’d said immortals had better night vision. How much better, she didn’t know.
“Want to order pizza when we get back?” Jake asked now and she could hear the smile in his voice and knew from that, that he was aware that he’d succeeded at making her blush.