Tara smiled, and not so subtly, she nodded her head in Jack’s general direction.
“You know,” Lucy said thoughtfully. “Your brother’s kind of cute.”
Not again.
“No matter what you do,” I said, “do not let him hear you say that.”
Lucy giggled and shrugged.
I turned back to Tara. “The twins won’t … they won’t do anything to him, will they?”
Tara shook her head, her eyes filled with mirth, and then she nodded toward Jack once more. “I’ll keep an eye on them,” she promised. “I’ll even drive Noah home. You—”
This time, I nodded toward Jack before she could. “Yeah, I know. I know.”
“Think of it as going into battle,” Tara said.
“Yeah,” I muttered, thinking of the way Jack had been with Noah. “Just look how well that turned out for Brooke and Zee.”
I didn’t mean it to come off sounding flippant, but it did. Lucy didn’t seem to notice, and Tara took no offense.
“Brooke and Zee are on their way back from the spa,” Lucy said brightly.
“The spa,” I repeated, remembering the cover story. “And the … uhh …” I knew nothing about spas and was having a great deal of difficulty coming up with a code word for gunfire.
“The mud bath?” Tara suggested. “It turned out just fine.” She lowered her voice. “Brooke was wearing one of Lucy’s special bras, so there was no mud-related damage.”
I remembered the bulletproof push-up bras Lucy had gushed about my first day in the Quad and then turned back to the weapons designer in question, who was singing along with Hilary Duff, my brother and his supposed cuteness completely forgotten—out of sight, out of mind. She was smiling and bouncing and moving around like someone with more energy than she knew what to do with.
And she’d saved Brooke’s life.
“Now go.” This time, Tara actually gave me a little shove on the shoulder. “Do your thing.”
At that moment, Jack saw me looking at him, and for my benefit, he put his arm around another girl.
I snorted, ripped my belt off and dropped it on the floor, and marched over to do my thing and wipe the smirk right off his face.
CHAPTER 31
Code Word: Want
“Why, Ev, what a pleasant surprise.”
If this was his way of getting back at me for chickening out on our date, he was more delusional than I could possibly say. He was my mission, not my boyfriend, and I was not jealous.
“Guys,” Jack said, smiling at his legion of loyal fans, “this is Everybody-Knows-Toby.” He paused. “Although,” he said, looking thoughtful, “I suppose you all already knew that.”
Oh yeah. He thought he was really cute.
The girls clustered around Jack obviously thought so, too, but I remembered what Zee had said. These girls weren’t his type—Jack had Conditioned Cheerleader Aversion, and most, if not all, of the girls were either JV cheerleaders or varsity wannabes. As such, they were completely torn about what to do once I showed up. On the one hand, they would have liked to devour me whole for taking even a microscopicbit of Jack’s attention away from them. On the other hand, I was varsity, and that meant that their futures were in my hands.
“Of course,” one of the girls said, offering me a plastic smile. “Everybody knows Toby.”
Another girl tilted her head to the side. “Are you the one who’s related to Calvin Klein?”
“Those are great boots.”
“Did you really date Prince William?”
