See Jane Fall (18 page)

Did she just say
Minnesota
? His brain
felt like scrambled eggs as he glanced at her. It was really,
really hard not to keep glancing over at her. He needed to try
harder to keep his eyes on the road, or they’d all be in trouble.
At least her voice wasn’t distracting.
Just concentrate on her
voice and stop looking at her.

“Um. There aren’t any lions in
Montana
. Not like the kind in Africa. I mean, there are
mountain
lions, but we call them cougars.”

“Cougars! Oh, my God! That’s
so
funny!”

“Why’s that?”

“Because…that’s what you call…” That tinkly
giggle again, accompanied by the clinking sound of her bracelets as
she gestured to him. “You know…um, oh, never mind. This is
fascinating
. Keep talking.”

“Well, uh, cougars are the biggest cats in
Yellowstone. And yes, Miss Amaya, there are bears—”

“No more
Miss Amaya
!” she scolded,
reaching over to caress the muscles on his bare forearm from the
elbow to his wrist then back again. “
Samara.
We’re going to
be
good
friends, remember?”

A shiver went down his back and goose bumps
rose up on his arm under her fingers. His pulse sped up, and he
couldn’t help imagining her in bed, under him, writhing, arching
up, moaning as her gorgeous tits—
NO! Stop! You were talking
about wildlife. Focus!

“Ahem, there
are
bears, Samara.
Grizzly, brown, black…”

“You’re so big and brave. Promise you’ll
keep me safe?”

“We’re very careful with the talent that
comes through.”

“Well,” she murmured, “I am a
very
talented girl.”

He glanced at her and she giggled again,
reaching into her bag for something. Suddenly her head snapped up
and she bellowed, staring straight ahead: “JANE! WATER!”

Lars jumped in surprise and turned his head
sharply to Samara, thrown off by the sudden change in her tone. A
bottle of water appeared on the bolster between Lars and Samara, as
if by magic. Samara grabbed it and unscrewed the top, taking a big
gulp before turning back to Lars.

“My throat is just
so dry
from that
flight.” She tilted her head to the side, coyly, and grinned,
wetting her lips with her tongue and lowering her eyes. “Now, tell
me more about the cougars in Minnesota. Then maybe I’ll tell
you
about the ones in New York.”

He nodded, not really understanding her
meaning, wishing he could quit staring at her, and trying to ignore
the funny feeling that things might not be completely what they
seemed.

***

Jane tried not to look up front at them. She
could hear a low buzz of chit-chat, but Samara had purposely turned
up the music to muffle their conversation. She hated ’60s music, so
there was no other reason she would have wanted it louder. Samara
touched Lars’s arm and Jane fought the deep, screaming instinct to
leap over the seat and grab a handful of her cousin’s perfect black
hair and slam her pretty face into the dashboard.

Samara was an accomplished flirt, very good
at showing men the side of her that they most wanted to see, and
hiding the real—immature, demanding, selfish—person that Jane knew
her to be. But the reality was that men wanted Samara when she
wasn’t
flirting; they still wanted her when she was being
disgusting, being impossible. When she turned on the charm, they
were putty, and Lars was no different. Jane looked out the window
despondently.

Buzz, buzz. She reached for the phone in her
back pocket.

Don’t let it get to u, girl.

Ray was texting her from the seat beside
her.

Jane glanced at him, but he was still, as if
quietly enthralled by something he was reading on his phone, his
body mostly turned away from her toward the window.

She wrote back:
Can’t help it.
Hurts.

Now, I know u didn’t fall for him that
hard.

Might have.

Jane. Have u lost ur ever-loving mind?

Yes. Clearly.

U gonna let her have him?

Like I have a choice.

Always a choice, sugar.

Jane breathed deeply and leaned her head
against the window, putting her phone under her leg where it buzzed
twice more in quick succession. She ignored it.

She’d be lying if she said that she didn’t
look for the words
I’m not that guy
in her head, but they
were getting softer and softer now. It was just a matter of
time.

Well, Jane, at least you didn’t sleep with
him this time. At least there’s that. A few kisses will be easier
to forget.

She closed her eyes, her fingers reaching up
on their own to touch her lips gingerly, rubbing them like she was
putting on lip gloss. It had only been a few hours ago that she
woke up beside him and he leaned over to kiss her lips good
morning.

Always a choice, sugar.

Jane looked up to the front seat in time to
see Samara clutch his arm again, playfully, and then she said
something and they both laughed.

No. No there isn’t.
The only choice
had been to let him go. She comforted herself that at least she’d
gotten that right.

***

By the time Lars pulled up in front of the
cottage, he was starting to feel very, very confused. Aside from
the time she had barked the word “water” at Jane, Samara was
nothing but stunning beauty, charm and good humor. He hadn’t seen a
glimmer of the shrew Jane had alluded to. And Samara gave new
meaning to the word “hot”…no man could sit next to Samara Amaya for
an hour and a half without thinking about that face and that body
and specifically, what it would be like to watch that face
thrashing on a pillow as he gave that body pleasure.

He tried to shake off the thought, but it
was already taking on a life of its own; Samara straddling him, her
perfect neck thrown back in passion, nipples taut, like little pink
pebbles, hot raspy sounds coming from the back of her throat
while—

Raspy? Wait. Samara’s voice wasn’t—

“Lars? Lars!” He looked in the rearview
mirror, taking the keys out of the ignition.

Jane had been explaining the accommodations
to Samara, Sebastian and Ray, and Lars was so lost in his daydream,
he didn’t realize she had finished speaking and was waiting for him
to open the doors and help with the luggage. He nodded at her and
jumped out of the car, slamming the door behind him, angry with
himself.

He walked around the back of the van to open
the sliding door first. Sebastian stepped out, stretching, then
Ray, then Jane. Jane stood half-crouched in the doorway and Lars
looked up at her. She didn’t smile when he met her mossy eyes.

Lars put out his hand and Jane hesitated
before taking it, accepting his help. He couldn’t help but flash
back to last night when she had taken his hand as the first chords
of “Woman” played in her hotel room and his heart clenched with
longing for her as he stared at her small, white hand in his tough,
tanned one once again. When he looked back up at her face, he saw
the confusion there, and something else too: compassion.

He dropped her hand like it was on fire.
I don’t need your goddamned pity, Jane.

“Janie, darling! We don’t have all day!”
Samara called from the front seat.

Lars turned his back on Jane and moved to
open Samara’s door. She swung her legs out of the door in one
elegant, pivoting move, reaching out her hand. Lars took it,
squeezing it and offering her a wide smile.

“Thanks,” Samara winked at him, lacing her
fingers through his. She was holding her phone in her other hand,
looking at it with delicately furrowed brows. “Jane. Janie! How
strange! My cell phone has
four bars
here. Didn’t you say
there was no service here?”

“Oh, well, like I told you, we got that
fixed. I’ll, um, I’ll have to call the governor and thank him.”
Jane answered, glancing at their laced hands before turning away
quickly. “When I told him Samara Amaya was coming to Minnesota, he
said he would
move mountains
to get cell service here in
time. I think he literally may have too! Lars, did you hear?
Gardiner has cell phone service now.”

Without thinking, he smiled at Jane and
exclaimed, “Go, Minnesota!”

When he turned back to Samara, she looked
back and forth meaningfully between him and her cousin with
narrowed eyes, uncertainty and annoyance passing over her pretty
face, but she quickly covered her expression by smiling brightly at
him and shrugging.

“What a relief that you were able to take
care of it, Jane. So capable. What would I do without you?”

Lars noticed that Samara didn’t say much as
Jane showed her around the cottage. She nodded, her face unreadable
but for the occasional tight smile she offered Lars as Jane pointed
out the improvements that had been made in time for her arrival.
Now, Samara wasn’t exactly jumping up and down with delight, but
she certainly wasn’t yelling or screaming or carrying on in protest
either as Jane had led him to expect.

Hmmm.
Would Jane have purposely
misled him about Samara? Lars wondered how much of Jane’s
complicated relationship with Samara was based on pure and simple
jealousy. Samara was strikingly lovely, confident and charming.
Surely the plain cousin of a supermodel was going to have some
bitter feelings about being an average girl next to her drop-dead
beautiful cousin. Lars started to wonder if Jane had purposely
implied Samara was difficult just to put her at a disadvantage.
Maybe he would have gotten a different version of the story if he
had met Samara first, and it made him look at Jane a little
differently. It made him feel a little disappointed in her, and a
little protective toward Samara.

None of what Jane had implied was true:
Samara seemed like a genuinely nice person, especially for a
celebrity. Lars couldn’t account for the disconnect, and there were
really only two reasons: either Jane was jealous of Samara and had
misrepresented her, or Samara was hiding her true nature. But,
Lars, who had just spent two hours in her company, didn’t see how
that was possible, which meant that he had to consider the
possibility that Jane, whom he had liked so much based on
who
she was, wasn’t really who he thought she was at
all.

***

Jane watched out the window as Lars pulled
away to take Ray and Sebastian to the Best Western. After that,
he’d go back up to Bozeman to pick up the rest of Samara’s team who
were coming in on a later flight. It was unlikely Jane would see
him again today. Her shoulders slumped with exhaustion and
sorrow.

She could already feel the change in him,
the confusion, the migration from liking her to liking Samara. The
way he had pulled back from her after offering her his hand,
running to do Samara’s bidding. He was still angry at her, but he
was backing away from her too. She could also read the puzzlement
in his eyes, and she was sorry for that. The thoughts he must be
having and the feelings he was trying to process would be difficult
and conflicting for him, but she had seen it all before, and she
knew that he would resolve them in Samara’s favor. She was a
modern-day siren, and no man would believe the spell Samara could
cast until she was before him, until it was too late.

Jane sighed as the van drove out of sight, a
cloud of dust the only visible reminder that he’d even been there
at all.

“Are. You. Fucking. Crazy?” A glass flew by
Jane’s head and smashed into the wall beside her. She jumped, her
heart thumping with shock.

Jane knew it was coming. She had noticed
Samara’s tight-lipped assessment of the little cottage with dread.
She turned to face her cousin, who stood with her hands on her
hips, pretty face red and snarling.

“I WILL
NOT
stay here, Jane, in this
fucking rickrack hovel. FIX THIS.”

Jane faced Samara calmly. “I can’t. We’re in
the middle of nowhere. There’s nowhere else unless you want a room
at one of the motels in town.”

Jane heard his words in her head:
We
don’t exactly have six-bedroom, million-dollar houses lying around
Gardiner waiting for someone to come rent for a week.

She turned and squatted down, picking up the
larger shards of glass first, then the littler ones. She’d need to
see if there was a vacuum hidden somewhere in the small
cottage.

“I don’t stay in FUCKING motels, and I WON’T
stay in this, this, Kozy Kabin SHITHOLE.” She pointed at Jane. “You
are ENJOYING this.”

“I assure you…I’m not.” Jane crossed to the
kitchen, opened the garbage can, and threw the pieces in.
Rise
above it, Jane. Rise above it.

“You fucking are if I say you are, you
WORTHLESS piece of—” She changed course quickly, hands on her hips,
lips curled in a snarl. “Tell me this, Jane: What the FUCK were you
doing out here for three days if
this
is what you have to
show for it?” Samara leaned over the kitchen counter, eyes bulging
and nostrils flared.

Not so pretty now.
“Unpacking your
bags, taking photos of your locations, getting groceries for you.”
Falling for Lars, seeing fireworks, feeling fireworks…

Jane turned to rinse her hands in the sink,
but Samara had already seen her face. She sidled up alongside Jane,
and Jane felt Samara’s eyes boring into her head. Samara leaned
forward until Jane could feel her breath on her ear.

“You can’t have him, Janie. You know that,
don’t you?”

Jane stared at the water running over her
hands. She didn’t feel any physical pain, but she must have nicked
herself on some glass because she saw some pink swirl down the
drain.

Samara whispered close to her ear. “How do
you
like it?”

Jane turned off the water and turned,
standing with her hip against the sink, regarding her cousin. This
was familiar territory, if not often visited. It had been a while
since Samara had taken this tack. Jane looked down, feeling tired
and beaten.