Wanted(10)

My chest tightened and I felt the beads of perspiration rise on my lip. “What’s going on?” My mind filled with images of knives and threats, of assault and rape. Oh, god, no. Surely—

“No.” Jahn’s voice was as forceful as his hand clutched around my wrist. “No,” he repeated, but this time more gently. “That’s not what I’m talking about. Nothing like that.”

Slowly, my fear ebbed. “Then what is it?”

“I’ve seen the way you look at them, Angie.”

“Them?” For the briefest of moments, I was genuinely confused. Then I got it—and my cheeks flamed with embarrassment.

“Those boys will always look out for you,” he said, ignoring my discomfiture. “They’ll watch over you until the end of time because you’re important to me. But it can’t ever go further than that. Not with any one of them.” His voice had hardened, taking on a commanding and serious tone that I rarely heard from him. “I said I’d protect you,” he said. “Even if that means protecting you from yourself.”

“I don’t know what you—” I began, but he cut me off sharply.

“They’re not the men for you,” he said firmly. He faced me straight on, his expression deadly serious. “And they know that you’re off-limits to them.”

I opened my mouth to say something, then shut it again, because what the hell was I supposed to say? This was totally freaking surreal.

My instinct was to deny, deny, deny. But curiosity got the better of me. “What’s wrong with them?” I asked.

“Not a goddamn thing.”

“Then why are we having this conversation?”

He turned his back to the window and leaned against the granite counter, his arms crossed over his chest. His eyes narrowed, and I felt my posture straightening automatically under his appraising gaze.

He glanced quickly away. “They’re too old for you.”

I almost spit out my laugh. “Seriously? That’s the problem? Daddy’s thirteen years older than Mom, and no one thought that was a big deal.”

When he looked at me, there was something almost wistful in his eyes. “Sarah is special,” he said.

“And I’m not?” I was teasing, sure, but I was also serious. “Evan’s barely six years older than me, and he’s the oldest of all three of them. Come on, Uncle J. What’s really going on here?”

Instead of answering, he grabbed a corkscrew from where it sat on the counter, and went to work on one of the bottles he’d pulled out for the evening. I watched silently, both amused and frustrated, as he poured a glass, took a sip, and then poured another. When he handed the second to me, I had to bite back an insolent smirk. Technically, I was under the drinking age.

When he finally spoke, his voice was low and even and tinged with a hint of regret. “When was the last time you’ve seen me with my wife?”

The question was so unexpected that I answered right away. “Not for years.” I hadn’t seen his most recent wife, or any of the parade of previous ones, in ages. I knew they’d all left him, but I’d never known why. And since I’d never gotten close to any of them, I hadn’t ever asked.

“Too many secrets will destroy a relationship,” he said.

“I don’t have any secrets.” Except, of course, I did.

Jahn paused, and for a moment I thought he was going to call me on my lie. But then he nodded, almost casually, as if my words were a given. “Maybe not. But he does. His own, and those he holds for others.”

He.

That one simple word rattled around in my head, making me a little dizzy. Because I knew what it meant. It meant that we weren’t really talking about the trio, but about Evan. About the fact that I wanted him—and that Jahn knew it.

I swallowed, embarrassed but also relieved in a weird way. Jahn knew me—possibly better than anyone else ever did or ever would.

But he was wrong about one thing—secrets didn’t bother me. How could they when I held so many of my own?

Now, as I stood in the open living room of Jahn’s condo and listened to Evan speak to the crowd, it was as if Jahn’s ghost had drawn me, Scrooge-like, back to the past, to see that afternoon all over again. I’d been unsure before, believing that, like his best friends, Evan thought of me like a sister.

I no longer believed that.

Jahn’s lecture that night hadn’t just been about warning me to stay away. He’d been telling me that he’d ordered Evan and Tyler and Cole away, too. And while Cole and Tyler might not find that request to be a burden, I’d seen the heat in Evan’s eyes.