A Gentleman in the Street (4 page)

He was still semihard.

Gritting his teeth, he launched himself out of his chair, pacing to the window and back. He should go running, he thought desperately. Or go work out.

He couldn’t do this anymore. He couldn’t think about those things. Especially not with her. Never with her.

There was no doubt Akira was the most beautiful woman he had ever seen, but that wasn’t the only quality that spurred his near-obsessive interest. A palpable energy hummed around her. The air crackled when she came into a room. People looked up, paid attention, became nervous. She was charismatic and engaging, dramatic and flirtatious.

Not to mention, the most sexual creature he had ever met.

He wasn’t a virgin. The sex he’d enjoyed in the past had been satisfying and pleasant, if not mind-blowing. It didn’t need to be mind-blowing, because it was safe. The women were perfectly nice human beings who didn’t threaten to make him forget every other thing in his life. He walked away from those encounters with his heart and his head intact.

If he ever became one of Akira’s conquests, he didn’t think he would be able to crawl away. He would lie at her feet, starving for even the tiniest morsel of attention.

The danger of that thought titillated him as much as it alarmed him.

There was no risk of that, though. If she genuinely found him at all desirable, he would be shocked. Teasing and flirting with him was a game to her, a way to prick his temper. He’d watched her employ the same strategies on other people for years.

Let her think he was an uptight prig. She didn’t know that every time she called him “brother” he wanted to put her over his knee and paddle her delicious bottom before he demonstrated all the unbrotherly thoughts in his head.

She had no idea he employed every defensive strategy in his arsenal to not go around on his hands and knees after her, begging for a taste.

I could start at the top and work my way down. Or maybe…maybe you’d prefer I started at the bottom
.

If she only knew.

She could never know.

The front door opened and slammed shut, and he jolted at the noise, spinning around as if he’d been caught with his hand in the cookie jar. “Jacob?” His sister’s high-pitched voice came from downstairs. “You home already?”

And that was why he didn’t have the luxury of indulging his desires. Not when the fallout could affect someone else.

Jacob yelled down, “Yeah. Be right there.”

His desire had been doused the instant he’d heard the kid’s voice, but he lingered a couple of minutes before making his way down the steep stairs.

He found his baby sister in the kitchen, rummaging in the fridge. As usual, a smile touched his lips at the sight of Kati, fondness and anxiety warring within him. When had she grown up? Sometimes he half-expected to turn the corner and have a tiny blonde six-year-old run into his knees, not this slender teenager.

Unlike her three brothers, Kati was petite. Her mother had been short too. Jacob mentally shied away, never eager to dwell on Jane. He preserved her memory for Kati and encouraged his sister to have a relationship with the woman who had left for the East Coast shortly after she was born. That was as much as he could manage without dredging up his own demons. “Hey, Kati-cat.”

She didn’t turn around, but the breath she exhaled made it clear she was probably rolling her eyes at the childhood nickname.

“How was Kristen’s?”

Kati pulled out a carton of almond milk from the fridge and slammed it shut with her hip, her short hair swinging around her pixie face. She’d gone platinum this week, which he was grateful for. The puke green had made him wince. “Great.”

“Did you go biking?”

“Yup.”

“Stay up late?”

“Yeah.”

“Break into her father’s wine cabinet and get drunk?”

This time, Kati did roll her eyes. “Jacob. Please.”

He forced a smile to hide his genuine concern. He worried about all his siblings, but Kati most of all. Not because she was the only girl, but she was so…small. And breakable.

Thankfully, she was a good kid, so he hadn’t had to deal with any huge issues beyond the occasional teenage sulks and non-responsiveness. Maddening, but not enough to inspire fear she was huffing paint.

Did kids even huff paint anymore? Jacob made a mental note to Google that later.

“Sorry I worried you on Friday. Did you get a lot of writing done this weekend?”

No. None. “Some.”

“Phew.” She wrinkled her nose. It made her look like an annoyed fairy. “I was worried when you said
that Akira
stopped by to bug you.”

That Akira
. He’d heard Akira’s mother use the phrase more than once. Jacob frowned, discomfort niggling through him. Nothing was wrong with it, on the surface, but he hadn’t liked it coming out of the older woman’s mouth, and he definitely didn’t like it coming out of Kati’s.

“I swear, all I said was you were writing at our cabin all weekend and didn’t have cell service, and I only told her that much because I was so surprised to see her.” Kati poured cereal into a bowl
.

“I guess you don’t need addresses when you’re as clever as Akira.” Damn, he really shouldn’t have mentioned even the general location of his cabin in interviews. Not like he expected anyone to come Misery him, but there were crazies in the world, and he had Kati to worry about.

Kati added milk and took a healthy bite. “I had no idea she would come track you out there.”

“Don’t talk with your mouth full,” he said automatically. “And that’s fine.”

Kati swallowed. “What did she want anyway?”

He leaned against the counter. For some reason, he was reluctant to discuss his dealings with Akira with anyone else, even his sister. They were his, damn it. “It was nothing. She wanted to ask me about some box she thought Mei might have given me.”

If he hadn’t been watching Kati, he would have missed the slight tensing of her body. Her eyes dropped to her bowl, studying it far more intensely than granola deserved.

He straightened. Surely Kati wouldn’t have accepted a gift from the dying woman without telling him. Mei had attempted to give them money more than once over the years. He had declined each time. This was his little family. He would provide for them.

But it was possible Mei had managed to manipulate Kati. While Mei hadn’t paid much attention to any of the kids for the short period of time she’d been a stepmother, she had shown his sister increasing warmth over the past couple of years. Kati had gone over to visit her unsupervised more than once after school during those final months.

“Akira said the box belonged to her grandmother,” he continued more slowly, watching his sister. “It holds a lot of sentimental value for her.” She hadn’t said the second part, but there had been heavy emotion in her voice when she had spoken about her grandmother. Plus, Akira, who was known as a smart and savvy negotiator, wouldn’t have essentially handed him a blank check to get the box back if she wasn’t running on feelings.

Kati hunched her shoulders. A light flush darkened her fair Irish skin. “Huh.”

“Kati.”

Vulnerable green eyes met his, and Jacob could read the truth in there. He groaned and dropped his head in his hands. “No. Tell me you don’t have it.”

“Jacob—”

“Kati.” He dug his palms into his eye sockets. “I told her I didn’t know what she was talking about. I berated her for even thinking we would be so greedy as to take something, a family heirloom, from a sick, dying woman to whom we share no legal or familial tie. Tell me you don’t have it.”

“Jacob…”

He pointed in the general direction of her room, his incredulity making him immune to her quivering lip. “Go get it. Right. Now.”

Head hanging, she turned on one blue Converse sneaker and left the room. Jacob pinched his nose, imagining the scene when he brought the box to Akira. Would she gloat? She would gloat, wouldn’t she? Maybe he deserved that, after piously informing her he wouldn’t have dared take something from Mei.

And, God. How sick was it a part of him was glad Kati had whatever thing Akira was looking for? Because now he had an excuse to see her again.

Kati returned with a wooden box decorated with beautiful inlaid geometric patterns on the sides. “Where were you keeping that?” He was in and out of her room with laundry and random chores. He would have noticed a foot-long box sitting on her desk.

She averted her eyes. “Under my bed.”

Hidden under her bed. Because she had known he would be displeased. He accepted the box and turned it over in his hand. At first glance, he had thought it was a jewelry box, but it was unlike any other one he had ever seen. Four of the six sides had odd, narrow panels on them, but there was no discernible opening.

“You can’t open it. Well, you can, but it’s like a puzzle or something,” Kati volunteered.

He glanced at her sharply. “Mei did give it to you, right? You didn’t take this?”

Kati’s eyes widened. “Jeez, of course not! I’m not a thief.”

“No, but you are a sneak.” Grimly, he laid the box on the kitchen counter. “You couldn’t tell me she gave this to you?”

“Mei told me not to.” Accurately interpreting his stormy expression, Kati quickly continued. “She said you wouldn’t accept it. That’s why she couldn’t leave us a lot of money in her will, either.”

“If you knew I wouldn’t take it, why would you take it?”

She tucked her hands into the sleeves of her sweater. “Mei said there was probably something expensive inside. Once I broke it open, I could use it to make sure my college tuition was taken care of.”

“Jesus, Kati. Between your scholarships and what I earn, we have college covered.” He didn’t want any of his siblings burdened with student-loan debt. His brothers had both gone to state schools with scholarships, but Kati had her heart set on Stanford, and she’d been accepted. She’d have it, even if he had to work around the clock to make it happen.

Kati laid her hand on his sleeve. “Mei was tired of seeing you work so hard. So am I.”

He placed his hand over hers, struggling not to get sucked into her beseeching eyes. “Kid, don’t get me wrong. I would love to win the lottery someday. But this isn’t how we do things. This isn’t right.”

Her rounded chin came up. “I don’t see what’s so wrong about it, I guess.
That Akira
has more money than she knows what to do with, and it’s not like she didn’t inherit every other thing her mom owned. Even if this thing has gold bars inside, it’s nothing compared to all her other money.”

Patience. For all her posturing, Kati was still little more than a child. “I told you, it was her grandmother’s. Even if it weren’t, it doesn’t matter. It’s wrong for us to have this because we’re not Mei’s family. Akira is.”

“Mei said if she and Dad had been married when he died, we would have been her stepkids. She would have raised me, not you.”

Jacob raised an eyebrow. Was that why Mei had been so kind to them over the years? Had she felt guilt over the timing of his father’s death? As if it had cheated them out of some sort of life of wealth and privilege?

His dad had been a firmly middle-class physician before he met Mei at a charity fundraiser and recklessly married her a month later. At that point, Jacob had already been out of the house, so he hadn’t experienced living in Mei’s world the way the three younger Campbells had.

The marriage hadn’t lasted long, a surprise to no one who was familiar with Harvey Campbell’s flightiness. Jacob hadn’t thought Ben, Connor or Kati had particularly hungered for luxury after it was over, but maybe they had.

Privately, Jacob doubted anything would have changed, even if Mei and his dad had been married when the old man had died of a sudden heart attack. While Ben and Connor had been older at the time—fifteen and sixteen respectively—Kati had been a baby who Jacob had sheltered since she was born. He wouldn’t have been able to tolerate someone else raising her, especially since he had barely known Mei. He wasn’t his father, ready to entrust his charges to a relative stranger.

“That’s possible, but it’s not what happened. As her daughter, family heirlooms belong to Akira.”

Kati’s lower lip pouted. “Mei didn’t even like Akira, and Akira never visited her like we did. Did you see what she wore to Mei’s funeral? That slutty dress didn’t scream mourning to me.”

Jacob’s eyebrows snapped together. He didn’t recall what Akira had been wearing at her mother’s funeral, because he’d been too busy searching her face for a sign of life. For the first time since he had known her, there had been no sarcastic quip on the tip of her tongue, no mocking tilt to her head as she skewered him. She had looked pale and muted, limply taking his hand and staring right through him as if she barely noticed him.

She had looked grief-stricken.

And why not? He had been heartbroken when his mother died not long after Ben was born. He’d had his differences with his flighty father, but Jacob had been sorrowful at Harvey’s death. Akira’s strange and antagonistic relationship with her parents didn’t preclude the possibility she loved them. That she could love someone, other than herself.

She’s not a monster.

No. But she was…alone. An island. An entity unto herself.

At the funeral, the sexual tug he always felt toward her had been subsumed by something larger. Something strange and frightening had urged him to pull her close and get her away from the conservatively decorated service and the nosy mourners.

Instead, he had mumbled his condolences and sat in the back of the church with his family. Leaving her in the front row on her own, her profile stony.

Maybe he should have elbowed in and made sure she was okay. If it had been someone else, he might have. But he was certain she didn’t particularly like him, so inflicting himself on her would probably have been the last thing she wanted. That was what he’d continued to tell himself when he occasionally considered seeking her out after the funeral, to ensure she was holding up okay. The Akira he had thought he knew would have been fine…but the Akira he had seen at the funeral? She had needed someone.