Blown (The Art of Love #5)

Chapter 1

ONE

Rafe Hawthorne gripped the steering wheel of his Skoda with white knuckles, his brow knit in a frown and his jaw clenched as he stared out the windshield at morning traffic on the M25. He couldn’t believe he was doing this. He really couldn’t believe he was doing this. Picking up someone from Heathrow in the middle of the morning rush was an act worthy of sainthood, as far as he was concerned, but welcoming his worst enemy to his home and giving him a place to stay while he hatched some new harebrained scheme to steal focus qualified him for divinity. Or the asylum.

“Come on!” he shouted at the slowing traffic in front of him. He pressed hard on his horn, causing the driver in the car next to him to turn his head and stare with offended, British pride. Honking was a habit he’d picked up in his days in America, and it was one he needed to drop.

He needed to drop it like his misplaced sense of hospitality and his trust in his colleagues in the art world to treat him fairly. He needed to turn his back on Jake.

Jake Mathers had done anything but treat him fairly, and being kind to the man had cost him more than a few chances for professional development. They’d both had residencies at the Corning Museum of Glass the year before. Corning was one of the most prestigious places in the world that a glass artist could enjoy a residency. It was the sort of thing that rocketed someone from blowing glass along with all the other production artists and hobbyists to making a name for themselves in the larger world of art.

It was supposed to be Rafe’s step up in the world, but Jake Mathers had come along with his Midwestern charm, his tight arse, and his winning smile and undercut him at every turn. Worse still, Jake was one of the most brilliant glass artists Rafe had ever witnessed.

How dare the wanker be better than him?

“Watch it!” Rafe shouted and honked again as some nob in a BMW cut in front of him just as traffic started to move. He glared straight at the woman’s rearview mirror on the off chance she might look behind her and see his strong disapproval of her driving style.

It was ridiculous, really. He shouldn’t have been in such a mood. Things had been going well since he’d returned to the UK and his family’s ancestral home, Hawthorne House. Part of him wanted to roll his eyes at himself for even having an ancestral home. He wasn’t living in the nineteenth century, even if he was the eldest son of the ninth Earl of Felcourt and probably had some frivolous subsidiary title that should have gone extinct decades ago.

Hawthorne House had been turned into a community arts center at the beginning of the twenty-first century, which was more than could be said for most of the old estates that had once held aristocratic families with their stiff upper lips and closets full of family secrets. Everyone in his wildly eccentric, extended family, for the most part, had gone into the arts and now taught at the Hawthorne Community Arts Center. He had just started teaching glassblowing again himself.

But it wasn’t enough. It wasn’t what he’d wanted. His jaunt to Corning was supposed to gain him recognition in the glass world. He didn’t need to be the next Dale Chihuly or Toots Zynsky, but he wouldn’t have said no to gaining the fame and fortune that those two and others had gained. It was certainly better than making glass goblets and Christmas ornaments for his family’s online gift shop and for the Renaissance Faire held on the grounds of Hawthorne House a few times during the summer.

Jake Mathers was five years younger than him, and he had already had solo shows, not only at Corning, but across Europe and the UK as well. He had bragged about them incessantly throughout their time together.

Rafe clenched his jaw again and let that frustration roll around in him as traffic inched on. Jake’s plane had probably already landed. It would serve him right if he had to wait in Heathrow’s noisy arrivals area until he could be fetched. Rafe imagined Jake standing in the middle of the foot traffic, his outlandishly American good looks being ignored by travelers with business of their own and places to go. That was what Jake needed, a good, honest dose of being ignored for a while.

Rafe had just started to smile at the fantasy when his phone rang. He wouldn’t have answered it, but the number that showed up on his car’s central console was his dad’s. It didn’t matter that he was a grown man well into his thirties, he answered when his dad called.

He tapped the display, then leaned back and said, “Dad,” eyes on the road again.

“Rafe,” his dad answered in his usual cheery voice. “Where are you? It sounds like you’re in the car.”

“That’s because I am in my car,” he said, gripping the steering wheel as he shifted to the lane marked as the exit for Heathrow. “I’m on my way to pick up a…colleague.” He refused to refer to Jake as a friend.

“Oh! Jake Mathers. I remember now,” his dad said with far too much glee.

Rafe huffed a breath through his nose. “Don’t use that tone with me, Dad.”

“What tone? I don’t have a tone,” his dad said.

“You’re insinuating,” Rafe said. “I go away for one year, and everyone in the family gets relationship fever. I’m not interested in falling prey to your matchmaking machinations. If you want to see someone else in the family settle down with a partner, why don’t you tell Rebecca to move in with the rest of her polycule.”

His dad chuckled. “Who said anything about relationships? Jake is a fellow artist is all. I’m overjoyed to be hosting him at Hawthorne House for as long as he wants to stay here. You can’t stop talking about him or his work, so your mother and I are eager to meet him for ourselves.”

Rafe’s face flushed hot as his dad spoke. He hadn’t been talking about Jake that much, had he? He’d needed to mention him a little, since Jake had more or less invited himself to Hawthorne House so it could serve as his base for the mad immigration scheme he thought he could pull off. And yes, he might have talked to his brothers and sister about Jake’s astounding artistic skill a time or two when the family got together for supper, but he could stop talking about him when he wanted to.

“Jake Mathers is a parasite and a cheat,” he growled, throwing on his blinker and moving into the second exit lane. “I can’t believe I’ve agreed to let him impose on us all this way.”

“Now I really want to meet him,” his dad said. “Anyone who can impose on my firstborn and heir is someone I want to meet.”

“Dad,” Rafe said in his flattest voice. He didn’t appreciate being made fun of, by his dad or by Jake.

“No, no, I mean it,” his dad went on. “I haven’t seen you so passionate about anyone in ages. Maybe ever.”

“Sod off,” he grumbled, which only made his dad laugh harder. Rudeness was a form of affection in a family as close as the Hawthornes. “Jake is a deceptive, sycophantic, lying bastard.”

“Oh, so you do like him,” Dad continued to tease.

Rafe huffed and made a turn at the end of the ramp that would take him to the Arrivals parking garage. “Does this call have a point?” he asked. “I’ve just reached Heathrow, and I need to concentrate now.”

“No point,” his dad said happily. “I just wanted to hear the dulcet tones of your voice. And to let you know Early has the new class schedule for the fall session, and they wanted your opinion on whether you wanted to split your Intro to Glassblowing class into two sections, since so many people signed up.”

Rafe let out a breath and forced himself to relax. He supposed it was encouraging to know that people were eager to learn from him. It wasn’t exactly the kind of renown he wanted, but it was something.

“I’ll talk to them when I get back,” he said.

“Good,” his dad said. “Give me a ring when you’re back, if I don’t see you first. We’ll greet your American friend in true Hawthorne style.”

“Oh, God,” Rafe muttered.

“It’s ‘Goddess’ now,” his dad said, bright humor in his voice. “Bax converted us all to Paganism, remember?”

“How could I forget?” Rafe said, then went right into, “I’m hanging up now.”

“Bye, son. I love you.”

“Love you, too.”

His dad’s affection eased Rafe’s tension a little as he ended the call. He really was blessed to come from such a wild and eccentric family. They were as bohemian as families got, but that meant he and his siblings had all been raised with more freedom to explore themselves and their desires than most people had in a lifetime. That was probably why every last one of them was as queer as a clockwork orange.

Rafe’s fond and frustrated feelings about his family continued to bounce around his insides as he made his way into the parking garage, grumbling at the extortionate amount he had to pay just to pick someone up. At least his family’s eccentricities took his mind off the burning, twisted emotions he had surrounding Jake.

The rest of the Hawthorne family thought Jake was popping over to the UK for the rest of the summer to spend some time blowing glass in Hawthorne House’s hot shop, which Rafe had spent the entire spring remodeling to a higher standard than it had ever seen before. They thought Jake was coming to do an informal residency because his home hot shop was temporarily out of commission.

In fact, there was much more to it than that. As Rafe locked his car and made his way to the International Arrivals area, he pulled out his phone and scanned through Jake’s messages. Ostensibly, he was checking Jake’s flight information, which was the most recent text sent. Once he confirmed that, he scrolled up through their conversations for the last few weeks to the start of the thread.

“ I’m serious. Will you marry me? ”

Just looking at those words sent Rafe’s stomach roiling. The obvious answer was “No.” He despised Jake after what he’d done in Corning. Why should he help his enemy with something as monumental as immigration? That’s what he wanted, as the phone conversation that had followed the text spelled out. Jake was through with America and its increasingly dangerous climate. He’d always been an Anglophile, and he wanted to move permanently to the UK. But first, he needed a British national to marry him.

That was all it was, no matter what his dad thought. Jake wanted to use him, and Rafe was foolish enough to agree to Jake coming to Hawthorne House so they could discuss a deal in more detail.

Love had nothing to do with it.

“Rafe!”

Rafe snapped his head up moments after walking through the Arrivals Hall door. He quickly shoved his phone back in his pocket, like he’d been looking at something he shouldn’t, and glanced around for Jake.

Jake was hard to miss. The man was just so glaringly American, what with his blond hair, deep blue eyes, and perfect physique. He wore jeans and a T-shirt with a stylized flame, glassblowing pipe, and glass balls on it with the words “Blowing is my Job” emblazoned on the front. Most American of all, he stood tall and waved one arm exuberantly, an open smile on his face, to get Rafe’s attention.

“God,” Rafe hissed to himself as he shifted directions and headed toward him. “Or maybe Goddess.”

“Rafe! It’s so good to see you!” Jake greeted him, stepping away from his large suitcase. He wore a backpack that bulged with belongings, and when he threw his arms around Rafe in greeting, Rafe could only barely touch him in return because of its bulk.

“Jake,” Rafe said, stepping back as quickly as he could, although it was already too late. He breathed in the spicy scent of Jake’s cologne, and his face and body heated. “Did you have a good flight?” he asked as politely as possible. “Do you need me to carry anything?”

“Nah, I’ve got it,” Jake said, still beaming like a torch. “The flight was okay. I upgraded to Premium Economy at the last minute, but I still didn’t sleep much. The food was better than Economy, though, and the flight attendant assigned to my section was hot as sin. We spent the whole time flirting. He gave me his number, but I doubt I’ll have time to call him.”

Rafe nearly slammed into a foreign businessman striding in the other direction while on his phone. His whole body tensed. “More’s the pity,” he mumbled, though really, the idea of Jake hooking up with a flight attendant had him breaking out in hives.

Which was ridiculous. Jake could do whatever the hell he wanted. Rafe didn’t care.

“There was a little bit of turbulence over Ireland,” Jake went on as they headed through the glass doors and across to where Rafe had parked, though Rafe hadn’t asked for more. “But there’s always turbulence over Ireland. There’s always turbulence when you go from water to land or vice versa. But I suppose you already knew that, since you travel so much.”

“I take the train when I travel,” Rafe lied just to contradict Jake.

Jake wasn’t deterred in the least. “See? That’s what I love so much about the UK and Europe. You can just get on a train and go anywhere. You have no idea how lucky you all are to be able to travel like that. That’s one of the reasons I’m so desperate to get out of the US. I mean, draconian laws against women and hatred of the LGBTQ community aside, things over here are so much more cosmopolitan. It’s better for the arts, too.”

Rafe glanced quickly at him and nodded, then pointed in the direction of his car.

Jake didn’t stop, even when they reached his car. He walked to the driver’s side first, then recognized his mistake and laughed.

“It weirds me out every time I come over here and drive somewhere,” he said, walking around to the other side as Rafe opened the boot so he could load his suitcase. “I know I’m getting into the passenger’s seat, but this is the driver’s seat where I’m from. I suppose I’ll have to get used to driving on the wrong side of the road, too, although you don’t really need a car to live over here.”

“It’s the correct side,” Rafe muttered, closing the boot harder than he needed to, then getting in to drive. “We drive on the correct side over here.”

It was probably the most irritatingly British thing he could say in the moment, not that Jake noticed.

“I know what everyone says about how expensive trains are getting and how they’re not on time as much as they should be,” he went on, no regard for how Rafe needed to concentrate as he started the car then navigated out of the parking garage and back onto the M25, “but it still beats the need to have a car and pay for gas and repairs and insurance and all that in the states.”

“That’s why you want to move over here?” Rafe asked, settling back in his seat once they were on the highway. “To avoid paying for car insurance?”

Jake laughed like Rafe was joking. “No, I want to move over here because the UK feels like home.”

Rafe peeked at him before concentrating on navigating traffic again. “You were born and raised in the US.”

“And I feel more at home in the UK,” Jake said with a nod. “I can’t explain it. Maybe it has something to do with reincarnation. My soul has always been British, I just had the misfortune of being born on the wrong continent in this lifetime.”

Rafe made a noncommittal sound. He didn’t know if he believed in reincarnation, or life after death, or anything spiritual. He wondered what he was supposed to believe, now that he was Pagan by default.

“Or maybe it has something to do with politics,” Jake went on with a shrug. “So many people in the queer community want out right now, and I don’t blame them. But I’ve always loved the UK. I used to daydream about running away to England when I was a kid.” He grinned bashfully out the front window then said, “When I was in third grade, we had to get up in front of the class and do a report on what we did over the summer. I made up a whole story about how I’d gone to England, seen the Tower of London, gone to Buckingham Palace, all sorts of stuff. The teacher loved it, and it wasn’t until a few weeks later, during a parent-teacher night, when she asked my mom and dad about our trip, that I was caught in the lie.”

Jake laughed, but he was suddenly tense. It was subtle, but Rafe had spent enough time around him in Corning to know when his moods shifted.

“What happened to you?” he asked, peeking at Jake.

Jake shrugged. “Nothing. My parents thought it was funny. Mrs. Applegren was impressed with how much detail I included in my story. Everybody loved it.”

Rafe hummed. “That doesn’t exactly set a good precedent.”

“No,” Jake agreed hesitantly. “But it was just a white lie told by a kid.”

Again, Jake tensed. He wriggled in his seat for a second, then glanced out the window and changed the subject.

“I tell you what, though. The US has a better road system than the UK. The roads over here are all so narrow and winding. It takes forever to drive anywhere.”

“I thought you weren’t going to drive, you were going to take trains,” Rafe said in a wry voice. “Even if they’re always late.”

Jake laughed loudly. “You got me there. How close is the nearest train station to Hawthorne House?”

“Miles,” Rafe said dryly.

Their conversation continued like that for the hour it took to navigate around to the other side of the M25 and on into Kent. Jake was right about it taking forever to get anywhere by car in the UK. Rafe felt like the journey took years.

There was something electric about being alone in a car with a clearly delirious and jetlagged Jake. It was probably annoyance, but in the back of Rafe’s mind, a heap of other emotions he didn’t want to think about gnawed at him.

He would be lying if he said he didn’t find Jake attractive. When they’d first met, he’d come within inches of inviting Jake back to the flat where he was staying for a drink and some bedroom gymnastics. Even after Jake started deliberately outshining him to gain the attention of the big names everyone doing a residency wanted to impress, he’d wank in the shower while remembering the sight of Jake peeling his soaked shirt off his chiseled body at the end of a long day in the hot shop.

It wasn’t fair that someone who had turned out to be such a snake was so hot. It was horrifically unfair that Jake still had free rent in his head, even after causing him to lose a chance at an apprenticeship with Hero Yoshito that would have guaranteed him a spot in the upper echelon of glass artists.

Worst of all, as they pulled into the family parking lot of Hawthorne House and he cut his car’s engine, it was bitterly unfair that his stomach fluttered and his cock pulsed when Jake turned to him and said, “So. When do we get married?”