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Renee chose that exact moment to bustle through the kitchen door. “Who was cuddling on the footpath? What did I miss?”
Realising where Mary’s “boyfriend” comment came from—and more than a little curious why her mother wasn’t more upset by the development—Jane blushed and ducked her head, avoided Renee’s questioning stare and her mum’s knowing gaze.
“I should go,” she said, before Mary could make any other potentially embarrassing observations. She didn’t move quickly enough.
“You’ve always been drawn to him,” Mary said quietly, more to herself than Jane. “Even when you were little.” Then she lifted her head and smiled. “And him to you.”
I guess that answers that question.
Mary tilted her chin at the door. “Go on. Get out of here.”
With another kiss on her mum’s cheek, Jane returned to the shop floor and found Rafe waiting for her, leaning against the service counter with his arms folded over his chest and his ankles crossed, glaring at table four.
If looks could kill.
“I’m ready to go home now,” she said, trying to keep her voice light enough so as to not let the women know they’d gotten under her skin, yet firm enough to jolt Rafe out of his silent crusade to defend her honour.
He relented when she laid her hand on his arm, and they turned to leave. But just as they made it to the door, she caught another snippet of amused, hateful twittering.
“… next generation of Bennett whores.”
And before she could stop him, Rafe turned on his heel and confronted the spandex-clad harpies, fury dancing in his eyes. “Don’t youeverspeak about Jane that way again.”
Patricia Leighton smiled, smug. Like a toad. “And what are going to do about it if I do, hmm?” she said, raking a disdainful look over Jane from top to bottom as she did, making her feel crumpled and worn.
Rafe’s answering smile would have made the Devil himself shit his pants, and as the silly woman finally realised her error, she visibly recoiled from him.
His voice was soft when he spoke, and deadly calm. “Until quite recently, Mrs Leighton, I worked for the law firm that handled your latest divorce. Remind me. What’s that old saying about people who live in glass houses?”
Her face drained of colour and she dropped her gaze. “Come on, Steph, Liz,” she said to her cohorts as she grabbed her handbag and got to her feet. “Their food tastes like shit anyway.”
“You are what you eat,” Jane said as they walked past her, flashing the brightest, fakest smile she owned.
The woman named Steph stopped and glared at her. “What did you say?”
“Bon appétit,” Jane replied, her smile not faltering for even a moment.
The women shoved their way through the door, throwing complaints over their shoulders as they did.
“You are what you eat, huh?” Rafe grinned, then leaned down to whisper in her ear. “Are you calling me a pussy?”
Jane burst out laughing, her smile finally real, and the tension she didn’t realise she’d been hanging on to eased from her body.
“You’re an arsehole.”
His grin didn’t falter. “Hmm, kinky.”
Shaking her head at him, a little baffled and a lot turned on by his uncharacteristically public playfulness, she said, “Let’s go. You’re driving me home.”
Rafe followed Jane inside her parents’ house and shut the door behind them. The house was quiet, and he scanned each room they passed with a watchful eye.
“Where’s Alec?”
Jane’s father was a semi-retired GP and split his time between working at the doctor’s surgery and restoring wooden boats for the wealthy elite living along the Sunshine Coast. Mostly for people who had zero idea about how to actually sail the damned things.
He had a long-standing rivalry with Rafe’s own father, though Rafe had no idea why, and Alec hated Rafe for something he didn’t do, no matter how often or vehemently he protested his innocence.
To say they didn’t get along would be a gross understatement, and Rafe took pains to avoid the man whenever possible, hence his question.
