Free The Debt 4 by Kelly Favor Page B

dinner?” Raven said.
    “We’ll just go out for one drink
beforehand,” Jake told her.
    “Not me,” Danny said.   “I never go out to the local bars.   The people in this town suck.”
    Raven kind of felt the same way, but she
also figured that at this time of day the chances of anyone she knew being out
drinking was slim to none.   And she
wanted to spend some time with Jake.   Getting a drink or two, loosening up, sounded quite right about then.
    “I’ll get a drink with you,” she told
Jake.   “There’s a pub less than a
mile from here, we could walk there and have a drink and then come back in time
for dinner.”
    “Now you’re talking,” Jake said, putting
his arm around her waist.
    Her entire body felt like it had been
zapped with electricity.
    Danny just shook his head.   “Okay, but don’t say I didn’t warn the
two of you.”
     
    ***
     
    Someone had told at least a few members
of the paparazzi of their whereabouts, because not five minutes into their
walk, there were a couple of men following them a few yards back, with
cameras.   They hadn’t begun
screaming insults or questions yet—in fact, they seemed content to merely
snap photos.
    Raven turned to Jake.   “How the heck did the paparazzi find
us?”
    He shrugged.   “Could’ve been anybody.   Someone spots us and tips off a friend
of a friend, or maybe someone leaked it.   Hell, Kurt might’ve leaked it on purpose.”
    “Why?” she said, horrified.
    Jake grabbed her hand and held it tight
as he answered.   “Why?” he
laughed.   “We want these pictures to get out, baby.   We want the story out there.   That’s why we’re here.”
    “I hate this,” she muttered.   The truth was, she hated it because she
also liked it way, way too much.   Walking with Jake in the fading sunlight of a beautiful day in her hometown,
seeing the shadows play on the sidewalk, listening to the trees as the wind
blew across the leaves.  
    Jake next to her, feeling so solid, so
real, his hand warm and strong, his body seemed made to protect her.
    How could it feel so natural to walk like
this together?
    Even the way he’d handled her
brother.   Danny could be so
difficult, so rude and condescending, and yet Jake had kept cool and never
batted an eyelash.
    It was sexy.
    Jake Novak was beyond sexy and that was
the problem.
    “You should try and enjoy this more,”
Jake said, grinning.   His brown eyes
looked at her with knowing affection.
    “The problem might be that I enjoy it
plenty,” she said.
    He laughed.   “That’s not a problem unless you make it
into one.”   And that’s when he
stopped dead in the middle of the street and laid a beautiful, perfect,
romantic kiss on her lips.
    Faintly, Raven could hear the cameras
clicking as the lucky paparazzi got some pictures that would likely sell for
quite a bit of money.
    She put her hand up and felt the scruff on
Jake’s cheek, and it made her smile.   Her eyes had been half-closed, but now she made sure to look at him.
    When they made eye contact, she felt her whole
body flush with warmth, as Jake’s liquid eyes seemed to melt her when she
looked into them for too long.  
    He
feels it too.
    I
know he does.   There’s no way all of
this is just for show, I don’t care what he says.   His eyes tell a different story.
    But then the kiss ended, and Jake cleared
his throat, taking her by the hand and starting to walk again.   “That was interesting,” he told her.
    “How so?”
    “Let’s just leave it at that,” he replied
mysteriously.
    By that time, they’d arrived at The
Drunken Monkey, a neighborhood dive bar that Raven had
often seen the older crowd go to after returning home from college.
    But her memories of its clientele were
from years past, she had no idea what the place was like now.
    When they walked inside, the bar was
relatively empty, with a few older men playing darts, a woman drinking a beer
as she looked through the jukebox, and a couple of