She smiled and got into her car and left. I looked at her stupid business card and shoved it into the pocket of my jeans, glad the work day was over and desperate for a shower.

Chapter Twenty

Mina

I hadn’t heard back from Heather. I’d tried calling her and sent several texts to her phone – but nothing. I’d even tried hunting her down at college. Eventually, I heard she had come down with a bad case of flu. I considered driving by her house just to make sure she was okay, but in my heart I knew I was only going to pay her a visit to find out if my honey trap had been set. That would have been selfish of me, and Heather would have thought the same, too. So, I decided to leave her in peace.

My uncle and aunt left for their lakeside cabin early on Saturday morning as they had planned. I wished them both a happy anniversary and they set off, leaving me alone in the house. Knowing that I had the place to myself, and hoping that I was going to throw some kinda party, both Evelyn and Mandy called me up to see if they could come over.

Whispering in the best croaky voice I could muster, I said into the phone, “I don’t feel great. Got myself a bad case of the flu.”

“You looked fine at school yesterday,” Evelyn sighed.

“I know,” I coughed and spluttered. “Apparently it’s going around. I heard that Heather Findley has it real bad and I was only chatting to her the other day.”

“She probably passed you her germs,” Evelyn said.

“I guess,” I wheezed.

“Well go straight to bed and take some vitamin C,” she said, sounding concerned.

I felt bad for lying to my friends, but they would’ve never been able to understand why I was blowing them off so I could spend time with Jax instead of partying with them. Evelyn would’ve never been able to get her mind around that.

I hung up the phone and flounced from my bedroom, excited at the thought of seeing Jax that night. After I’d showered, and with a towel wrapped around my damp hair, I went to the wardrobes in my room and thumbed through the dresses hanging from the rails. I wanted to look nice for him, but not cheap – like I was giving myself away. Pulling dresses from the wardrobe, I held them against me, screwed up my nose and tossed them aside and onto my bed. I couldn’t find anything that I really liked and I was just about to give up when I saw the red little dress that I had brought over from England with me. It had been my favourite, but I hadn’t worn it since arriving in the U.S. and it had gradually been pushed to the back of my wardrobe. I held it up against me and looked into the mirror. It was sexy but didn’t make me look desperate or cheap. It hung just above my knees, just enough to give Jax a teasing glimpse of my tanned thighs. That was enough, I smiled to myself.

I slipped in my earphones and set about doing my hair while I listened to some Coldplay. I whacked the volume up. After drying my hair, I fixed it into two loose pigtails, which hung from either side of my head. Snatching up my iPod, I re-hung the clothes I had earlier discarded, and headed out of my room. In the kitchen, I set about fixing dinner for myself and Jax. I wasn’t a great cook, but then again, I wasn’t a bad one either. My mother hadn’t often been around when I was younger, so I was left to sort out my own meals on my arrival home from school. Microwave meals tasted of plastic, so I had soon learnt to search out recipes and download them from the Internet. I didn’t mind cooking; it was eating alone that bothered me. Most nights of the week I would sit in the kitchen back home looking at the four walls as I ate the meals I had cooked for myself. My phone was often my only source of company – but sometimes my phone could scare me. I would have to switch it off and tuck it under one of the sofa cushions.

Sometimes I still did that, even though I was older and no longer lived in the UK. Uncle Rob once caught me hiding my phone under the sofa. He asked what I had been doing.

“I’ve found it,” I had lied, gripping it in my fist.

“It looked more like you were trying to hide it,” he said with a quirky smile.

“Why would I want to hide it?” I’d frowned back at him.

He just looked back at me and shrugged his broad shoulders.

“Well, I’ve found it now,” I said, breaking his stare and heading out of the living room.

At the door, he stopped me by placing a hand gently on my arm. “You know, if you ever need to talk about anything, I’m here. It can’t be easy coming to live in another country and being so far away from your friends and mother…”

“I’m okay,” I lied again. “Thanks anyway, Uncle Rob.” I left him alone in the room and he never caught me trying to hide my phone again. But sometimes my phone could be my friend, too – it helped me a lot. I’d also come to discover more recently that laptops and cameras of any kind could be of help to me.

After covering the fish cakes I had made with breadcrumbs, I looked up at the wall, and could see that Jax would soon be knocking on the door and there was other stuff I needed to do before he arrived. Brushing breadcrumbs from my fingers, I went into my uncle’s study and picked up his laptop. I took it back to the kitchen. Standing by the table where I knew Jax and I would be eating dinner, I looked up across the kitchen. Perfect, I thought, heading back across the room with the laptop in my hands. I lifted the lid and switched on the video web camera and hit record. I went back and sat at the table where Jax would be eating. Sitting down, I glanced over at the laptop. I sat there for a few short minutes, then got back up and viewed what I had just recorded. I could clearly see myself sitting at the kitchen table where Jax would be seated in half an hour or so. I dimmed the screen so the laptop looked to be switched off.

Heading out of the kitchen, I went to the living room. My aunt kept a small digital video camera in one of the drawers there. I took it out and switched it on. The camera was easily concealed in my hand, but I couldn’t get away with holding a camera all night long in front of Jax. He’d already grown suspicious of my phone. I knelt down in front of the TV where the Blu-ray player sat. The camera had a little light on the front, which glowed red when it was in record mode. I tucked the camera down beside the Blu-ray player. Should Jax notice the red light, he would think it was a standby light and not a camera secretly recording him. With the camera in place and aimed at the sofa where we might be sitting later, I left the room.

Chapter Twenty-One

Jax

I was halfway to Mina’s house for dinner, when Buck Cherry’s screaming ringtone broke me out of my thoughts. I looked for the phone on the seat and answered.

“Hello?”

“Dude. Meet us at Rowdy’s tonight,” said Trent.

I shook my head. “No, can’t. Have a date.”

He laughed. “With that hot blonde?”

I went to respond when I realized something. “What blonde?” I asked, testing him.

“Damn, dude, how many blondes you got? Hello… that British chick with the nice ass.”

“You sure you don’t mean little miss platinum blonde Playboy bunny you sent into my shop?” There was silence on the other end so I continued, “I mean, you should have just kept her for yourself. She’s not my type.”

Trent finally spoke. “What are you talking about, man? I didn’t send no chick to your shop.”

“What? Yes you did, her name was Heather something or other. Blonde, drives a gold Lexus, total ditz. I kept expecting to see a little Chihuahua dog pop out of her purse.”

“Seriously, bro. I didn’t send no girl to your shop. Girls like that don’t talk to me.”

I huffed, still not sure I believed him. “She said you were in her History class or something.”

He laughed. “Well there you go. I don’t take History. I’m done with all those undergraduate bullshit classes. My degree is gonna be in Sports and Wellness so all my classes are those types of things. Don’t you listen to a word I tell you?” he joked.

“Huh. All right then… anyway, got a date, yes, with the hot British girl. So have fun at Rowdy’s and tell Gabe I said hey.”

“Catch ya later, man,” Trent said, then hung up.

I realized I was now sitting in front of Mina’s house. I was trying to think of where I put that damned business card that bimbo gave me, because I was so going to call her and ask her again who the hell sent her to my shop. It was just weird. I remember at the time getting the odd feeling like the girl was setting me up for something, but I couldn’t put my finger on it. After she had drove off in her shiny little car, I had chalked it up to Trent playing a joke on me. Trent’s a practical joker, but he always owns up to his jokes, so I believed him when he said he didn’t send her over. Maybe there was another Trent or maybe I heard her wrong. Did I care enough? Not sure. I’d decide later if, and when, I found that damn card.

I reached over and grabbed not only a bouquet of flowers, but a bottle of red wine, too. I liked to think I was becoming less of a Neanderthal.

I rang her doorbell, balancing the flowers in the crook of my tattooed arm, the bottle of wine in the fist of the same hand. Mina answered the door almost immediately, her big blue eyes smiling up at me.

She had on a short red dress and her straight blonde hair was in two low ponytails on either side of her head. She was barefoot and looked sexy as hell.

“For you,” I said, handing her the flowers.

She smiled wide and sniffed them. “Lovely, just lovely. Thank you, Jax.” She leaned up on her tiptoes and kissed me softly on the mouth and I almost dropped the wine. I wanted to kiss her back with everything I had, but that would be for later.

I stepped inside, and following her through to the kitchen, I said, “I brought you some wine. I don’t drink the shit myself, but the woman in the store said it was a good vintage or something.”

She took the bottle from me and set it on the kitchen counter. Then she began fussing with the flowers, filling a vase up with water and arranging them in it carefully. She looked very intent on her task, a small crease furrowing between her pretty eyes and I wondered what she was thinking about.