Falling Sweetly (Starling Falls #2) (15 page)

Or else? Or else what? That’s fucking terrifying.

Me:
What do you want me to do, Aunt Deb? She’s still nervous around me. I’m giving her time to adjust to the idea of there maybe being an us.

Aunt Deb:
SCREW THAT! IF YOU LIKE HER, JUST TELL HER! THINK ABOUT MY FUTURE GRANDBABIES, JACOB.

I was about to put my phone away when it buzzed four more times consecutively.

Princess:
You and Niki are together now? Why didn’t you tell me, you ass? Way to punch above your weight!

Josh:
Damn bro, I’m shocked. You work fast. You managed to charm the little Abbott already? Nice!

Caleb:
Niki? You? Explain immediately. And don’t fuck it up with her or Liya
will
kill you.

Alex:
Did you want the last piece of apple pie? Cos I ate it. Also, Aunt Deb is losing her shit. You and Niki? Really?

With family like this, who needs enemies?

I shook my head and put my phone away when I saw Niki making her way back from the rear of the restaurant where the restrooms were.

“Thanks for not sneaking out of the window and ditching me. Me sitting here by myself eating all this food alone would have been a very sad sight.”

“Well, I tried but the window was too small,” she said with a smile as she sat down and pulled a plate of spinach and ricotta filled ravioli towards her.

Ha, look at that. She made a little joke. That’s progress, right?

God, I hope that was a joke.

I pulled the lasagne towards me, and took a breadstick from the middle of the table.

I watched as Niki speared a ravioli, put it her mouth and groaned. “This is amazing!”

For fuck’s sake, Little Jake, behave yourself.

“I know.” I reached over the table and stole one from the plate in front of her. “There’s something in that filling that makes it addictive, but I can’t figure out what it is.”

“Hm.” Niki pondered my question as she ate another bite of ravioli. “I think it might be a mixture of goat’s cheese and parmesan, chopped, toasted pine nuts and a hint of nutmeg and chilli flakes.”

I cut a ravioli in half and ate the filling.

“Holy crap. I think you’re right. I’ve been trying to figure that out for a year, and you manage to get it in two bites. What, have you got super taste buds?”

She giggled lightly, her eyes darting around the room again. “Yes. It’s my secret superpower. Tell no one. Did you have any specific ideas about your menu yet?”

“I’ve thought about a couple of ideas. I was going to try them out on Josh and Nate tonight. If you’re free, do you want to come round and taste them?”

Could you sound any more pathetically hopeful?

“I would have loved to, but I can’t. I’ve um… I’ve got a date.”

I stilled completely, the breadstick in my hand was destroyed when my fist clenched around it.

What. The. Fuck?

I felt my teeth grind together. “Date?” I managed to spit out through a gritted teeth.

Niki seemed surprise by the sudden change in mood. “Yeah. Are you okay?”

Best not to answer that question honestly. Actually, let’s ignore that question altogether.

“With who?” I barely managed to spit out through gritted teeth.

“Just some guy I was matched with on an online dating site. Seriously, Jake. Are you having an allergic reaction to something in the food? Your face has turned red.” Niki looked at me concerned.

An allergic reaction, no. A general reaction, yes. A brain imploding counts as a reaction, right?

“Online? How long have you known him? What the hell do you even know about this guy?  What does he do? Where are you meeting him?”

“Well, all the other dates I’ve met have been safe. It’s not like I gave him my address! We’re just meeting at The Whiskey Jar. What’s with the twenty-one questions?” Niki asked looking puzzled.

Son of a bitch.
All
the
other
dates? What the fuck is happening? How did I not know about this?

“You’ve been dating?” I couldn’t keep the anger out of my voice, or the awful images my wild imagination was creating of Niki in some random douchebag’s arms.

“Well, yes. Though I don’t see how it’s any of your business, Jake. We’re friends, but I don’t need to tell you my every move.” A small crease appeared between her eyebrows.

Calm down, asshole. You’re going to freak her out. Deep breaths. Just take deep breaths until you stop seeing red.

“I’m just… worried about you. I don’t want you to get hurt,” I managed to grunt again.

“I appreciate the concern, but it’s not needed,” she said, her chin lifting up stubbornly. “I’m always careful when I go on dates.”

I didn’t trust myself to speak, so just nodded and kept eating.

Well this day turned to shit pretty fucking quickly.

* * * * *

I opened the door to the house forcefully and let it slam behind me. After what had felt like the longest and most tense lunch, followed by the longest and most tense drive back to the bakery, I had decided to go straight home and have a long session with the punching bag Nate kept in the basement.

“Woah, dude. Chill. What did the door ever do to you?”

I turned towards the voice coming from the living room. Josh and Alex were sitting in front of the TV with gaming controllers in their hands.

“Not in the mood, Josh,” I spat out as I stormed into the kitchen where Nate sat in front of his laptop, working.

I heard Josh and Alex pause their game and follow me into the kitchen. “Jake, what the hell happened?” Alex asked, watching me with a concerned expression as I stalked over to the fridge. I eyed the beer that was in there.

Is 4 o’clock too early to start drinking?

I decided to not go down the ‘Let’s get shit-faced before 5 o’clock route’ and pulled out a bottle of water instead.

I turned back to face my brothers. “She’s dating!” I burst out angrily.

Josh frowned. “Who is?”

“Niki! She’s fucking dating.”

“Yeah, we know that. She was on a date with you. That’s what Aunt Deb said that Mrs. D’Angelo said,” Josh said, sounding confused.

“Josh, do you think he’d be this pissed if she were dating him?” Alex said bluntly. “That sucks, man. Who’s the guy?”

“Not guy.
Guys
. As in more than one. She’s been dating for months.
Months
.”

Nate looked up briefly from his laptop. “She’s single. She’s allowed to date whoever she wants.”

Really? He barely ever talks and when he does,
that
is his contribution?

“Thanks for that, Captain Obvious,” I told him while dropping myself onto a chair opposite him.

“Well, you know what you have to do?” Josh said in an obvious tone.

“Find the guy, poison him and make it look like an accident?” I said, while going through a list in my head of known plants found in the surrounding woods which were toxic.

Josh chuckled and I glared at him as I failed to see what was funny in what I’d said. “No. Not murder. You need to get to know your enemy.”

“Enemy? He’s not going into battle,” Alex said, sounding amused.

“Learn your enemy’s weaknesses, and then when he’s least suspecting it, make your move. It’s the art of war, brother.”

“You been watching the History channel again, Josh?” Alex asked as he walked around the table and returned with box of cold pizza from the fridge.

Josh reached into the box and took out a slice. “Mock all you want, but it’s a solid plan.”

“There’s nothing solid about that plan,” Nate said, sounding very unimpressed as he went back to typing on his laptop.

“I still think my idea involving homicide sounds better,” I told them, wondering how long my brothers could get in prison for aiding and abetting in a manslaughter charge.

“Did she tell you where they were meeting?” Josh asked, looking oddly thoughtful.

Puzzled by his expression, I nodded tersely. “Yeah, at The Whiskey Jar,
tonight.”

Josh grinned slyly. “Well, I don’t know about you, but I’m feeling pretty thirsty…”

CHAPTER 13

Jacob

“You going to play a game of pool? Or are you just going to sit here and stew while watching Niki and her date like some sort of creeper?” Josh asked as he returned to the table we occupied and slid another beer across the table.

“Sit and stew,” I told him as I pushed the beer back to him, gesturing towards my half-full bottle.

Josh sighed heavily and shook his head in disapproval. We had arrived at the bar about an hour ago, and I’d been nursing the same beer since Niki had walked in looking beautiful with that fuckwit in a suit next to her.

She hadn’t seen either me or Josh who were sitting a table at the back of the bar, and the asshole part of me wanted nothing more than to go over and interrupt their date, but I managed to control myself.

“This is stupid. You’re not following the plan at all,” he said taking a long pull from his own bottle, his eyes tracking a redhead who walked past our table and threw him a flirtatious look, which he automatically returned.

“Your plan was to turn up and do nothing. I turned up, and am doing nothing.”

“I didn’t mean that you should just sit here staring at them like some creepy stalker. I meant that you should actually try and have a good time tonight, and when their date goes south, invite her to join us, idiot.”

“That’s just technicalities. This way works too,” I cracked open a peanut, and threw the shells on the table.

Josh was about to respond when he was interrupted by our friend Jim walking over to our table.

Jim Miller ran The Whiskey Jar with his younger brother Johnnie. Their older brother J.D. Miller co-owned Nate’s private investigation agency. We had all attended the same school and Jim, J. D. and Johnnie had been a frequent presence in our house over the years.

Their parents ran a different bar in town, where Uncle Jeremy and his friends often spent their time. The Millers occupation and odd sense of humour had somehow led to them naming their sons after their favourites whiskeys; Jim Beam, Johnnie Walker and Jack Daniels.

Jim’s stared at me with unusual blue-grey eyes, which all the Miller brothers had. His brown hair had grown longer since the last time I’d seen him, the ends were curling into his eyes and around his stubbled jaw.

“Johnnie’s started a pool on how long it’s going to take for us to have to call Sherriff Turner to arrest you, because you’ve finally gone over to that table you’ve been staring at for the last thirty minutes and punched that guy in the face.”

He turned and grinned at Josh. “You want in?”

“Sure. I’ll put ten down on Mr Preppy getting decked in the next ten minutes.”

Traitorous asshole.

I looked over at the bar, and saw Johnnie lift his chin in our direction, before he turned to serve two women, with a playful smile. Johnnie’s shoulder length hair was tied in a bun at the nape of his neck.

His body was covered in tattoos and piercings. It wasn’t hard to see why he and Alex had become good friends over the years. They seemed to be involved in a competition to see who could get the most ink on their skin.

“Fuck all of you,” I muttered, while cracking open more peanuts.

Jim laughed, as he cleared the table of the empty bottles. “So, who’s the guy with Niki?”

“Who gives a shit?” I asked sourly, as I watched Niki try to say something, but the asshole kept talking over her.

Does he not need to stop for air?

Josh raised an eyebrow as he spoke to Jim, “You have to excuse my brother. He’s a little touchy when it comes to the subject of Annika Abbott.”

“She is a cute little piece,” Jim said, and then backed away from the table when I glared angrily at him.

“Woah. Calm down, Jake. I thought you were supposed to be the calm one in your family? I’ve got no interest in Niki. Just stating a fact.”

“Keep your facts to yourself, unless you’re looking to get punched in the face too.”

Jim snorted at me. “And on that note, I’m going.” He turned to walk away, but stopped suddenly.

“Next time you see Caleb, tell him I’m pissed at him. Ever since he and Liya got engaged, it’s all I ever hear about from my mother, along with never ending questions about why none of her boys have settled down yet.”

“He’s started a freaking epidemic. Aunt Deb was always loopy, but she’s off the charts loopy now,” Josh agreed with a nod, “She seems hell-bent on getting us all hitched and producing offspring, and that just doesn’t work for me.”

I didn’t pay any attention to Jim’s reply since I was engrossed by what was happening across the bar at Niki’s table.

I sat up straighter when I saw that she looked unusually pissed off. Grabbing her bag from the table, Niki left the bar abruptly, leaving the dipshit sitting at the table. He took a couple of seconds to react, but soon followed her out of the bar.