Chapter 16
SIXTEEN
The rest of the weekend was painful. Having a major artist grace Hawthorne House with her presence should have been an occasion for celebration and excitement. Instead, once Hélène left, the entire family descended into a funk that stuck around until Monday. The family was usually each other’s best friends, but once the picnic lunch was cleaned up, everyone buggered off to their own activities, leaving a sense of disquiet over Hawthorne House.
Rafe and Jake headed back to the hot shop to clean up, but they didn’t speak. The silence alone was enough to throw Rafe so far off his game that he didn’t stick around after they had everything back in order. Without a word, he headed back up to the house to shower, have a tea, and sit on the couch, staring mindlessly at the telly for an hour to try to settle. Even that didn’t feel right.
“Have you seen Jake?” he asked when he headed downstairs close to supper time, looking for someone, anyone, to talk to.
He ran into Nally, who looked like he was still hungover or exhausted. “No,” he said curtly. “And frankly, the more time that passes before I see him the better.”
Rafe sighed and rubbed his hands over his face. He hated tension in the best of times, and it felt like the whole house was flooded with it now. The weird thing was that it didn’t feel like it was Jake’s fault, even though he was sure the rest of his family would think it was.
“Do you have any idea where Jake went?” he asked instead of giving up and going back to his flat to sulk.
Nally frowned at him, like it was strange Rafe didn’t know the whereabouts of his fake fiancé. “He said he was going sightseeing in London,” he said. “He called an Uber hours ago.”
“And he’s not back yet?”
Nally held out his arms and looked around peevishly instead of answering with words, then let his arms flop to his sides before sulking off.
Rafe shook his head and did the only thing he could think to do when he was that upset, he headed down to the hot shop to blow goblets for the next Renaissance Faire.
He didn’t catch Jake whenever he made it home, and he didn’t see him on Sunday either. It was strange and frustrating, like they’d been talking and Jake had been whisked away before he’d finished saying something important. And there wasn’t a single thing Rafe could do about it.
He almost cried with joy when Jake appeared at the hot shop on Monday morning, while Rafe was setting up for his first class.
“Mind if I work while you teach?” Jake asked, mumbling a little and not ever meeting Rafe’s eyes directly.
“Sure,” Rafe said, barely breaking stride as he continued with set-up.
That was as far as their conversation got. Both of them went to work, doing what they needed to do, without speaking. It felt so wrong. Rafe would have given just about anything for Jake to say a single word. He missed the elaborate stories Jake usually told, even though he knew most of them were completely made up now. He missed Jake being Jake.
Once his students showed up, there wasn’t time to miss anything. It was chaos as usual right from the start, even though it was one of his adult classes.
“What are we supposed to do with leftover frit?” Stewart, one of the guys in his twenties, asked after portioning out too much frit for the project he was working on.
“Set it aside and I’ll sort it later,” Rafe said, trying not to be curt.
“Is there room for it?” Stewart asked.
Rafe glanced around. It was a particularly full class and Jake was there working, too, which meant space was at a premium. The only table with any clean area was the one where his and Jake’s English countryside work sat.
“Over here will do,” he said, gesturing for Stewart to follow him to the table.
Once he reached it, he cleared some of the English countryside glass over to the side, stacking a few pieces as he did. A few pieces were missing, but he assumed Jake had moved them on Saturday, when they’d cleaned up, or maybe before that. He would ask when he got a chance.
That chance didn’t come anytime soon. His class was working with optic molds for the first time, which meant he had to pay close attention to six different people to make certain they didn’t end up with molten glass on the floor or stuck in the molds. It was lucky for him that Jake was there to lend a hand, but that wasn’t the same as the two of them having a chance to talk.
He wasn’t certain what he would have said even if they were on good terms. His pride was still smarting. But that was the problem. The more time that passed, the more Rafe began to worry that pride in having Hélène Rénard eager to see his hot shop and watch him work had blinkered him to why she had been so quick to come, and then so eager to leave. He hadn’t heard a word from her since Saturday, not even a text to thank him for the visit.
That faint worry turned into a persistent niggle that wouldn’t let him go. Maybe Jake was starting to get to him, but as Monday bled into Tuesday and then Wednesday without a peep from Hélène, Rafe questioned the entire visit more and more. Things didn’t add up. Every one of the questions Hélène had asked as she watched him and Jake work took on a new significance. The more he thought about it, the more worried he was that he’d given an artist with a larger and louder platform than his a tutorial on how to accomplish his and Jake’s unique, potentially groundbreaking technique.
It was exactly what Jake had warned him about, but he’d been too full of himself and wary of Jake’s past lies to listen.
By Thursday, worry was beginning to affect Rafe’s concentration to the point where he couldn’t work. He only had a morning class on Thursdays, so after lunch, it was just him and Jake in the studio. The two of them should have been working on their joint project, but instead, Rafe was blowing more mindless, generic vases for his family to sell and Jake appeared to be drilling himself in basic techniques by constructing half a dozen identical goblets.
So much needed to be said. They still hadn’t worked things out between themselves. Now, with each minute that ticked by, Rafe felt like the chasm between the two of them was widening, and that was the last thing he wanted.
It all came to a head when he dropped the vase he’d just finished making as he stood to take it to the annealer. The whole thing shattered on the floor, and instead of shrugging it off as another sacrifice to the glass gods, Rafe let out a frustrated shout that had Jake flinching.
“You wanna talk about it?” Jake asked as he put the pipe he was about to gather with down.
He probably meant it to be flippant or confrontational, but Rafe was so grateful for the opening that he nearly shouted again.
“I think you might be right,” he said, as if it was still Saturday morning and Hélène was still there in the shop with them. “I think Hélène was up to no good somehow.”
Jake blew out a breath and let his shoulders drop. Only then did Rafe realize how tense Jake had been for days now.
“She was taking mental notes,” Jake said, striding across the room to stand by Rafe, ignoring the field of shattered class he stood in. “I don’t think she filmed anything or wrote anything down, but she was definitely studying everything we did. We should expect something rotten from her. It wouldn’t be the first time a big-name artist stole an idea from the little people.”
“You’re hardly the little people,” Rafe said. “You’re one of the most talented glassblowers I know.”
Jake huffed and shook his head. “Don’t go buttering me up just because you’re finally sensing the same thing I sensed.”
Rafe’s eyes went wide. Just like that, he was back to seething with anger again, although admittedly, most of it was at himself.
“What do you want from me?” he asked, torn between reining it in and letting his anger vent so they could deal with it. “I don’t know how to be around you anymore.”
“I don’t know!” Jake said with just as much frustration. “I’m trying to be who you want me to be, but I don’t have a clue what I’m doing.”
“I don’t want you to try to be someone for me,” Rafe said, pulling off his gloves and tossing them and his goggles aside. “I want you to be yourself.”
“Nobody wants me to be myself,” Jake protested. “Nobody in the history of ever has wanted that.”
“What are you talking about?” Rafe crunched his way over the broken glass to stand so close to Jake that he could feel the heat of his body as if he were standing next to the furnace. “You’re the guy everybody loves.”
“Yeah, and how has that worked out for me?”
Rafe clenched his jaw and just stared at him. He could see Jake’s point, in a way, but the trouble he’d gotten himself into wasn’t because he didn’t have a great personality, with or without the lies.
He rubbed a hand over his face then stared at Jake again. “I don’t want you to try to be someone you’re not because you think that would please me,” he said. “That’s as much of a lie as making up stories about being best friends with Dale Chihuly or…or Hélène Rénard.”
Jake looked away quickly. The stung look broke Rafe’s heart. None of this was how he wanted things to be between the two of them. They were so much better as a team, not as adversaries.
He couldn’t think of any way to make things better between them, though. Nothing he could say felt like it would have any impact. The only thing that made any sense to him to do was to grab Jake’s face with both hands, turn his head back to look at him again, and to slant his mouth over Jake’s.
The kiss took Jake completely by surprise. He flailed for a moment as Rafe deepened their kiss and stepped closer to him, their bodies almost flush. As soon as Jake accepted Rafe wasn’t going to let him go, he moaned softly and slipped his arms around Rafe’s sides.
Finally, for the first time in a week, something felt right. Rafe moved his hands away from Jake’s face and embraced him instead. This was what he wanted. This was what made him happy and whole. He didn’t need the attention of a world-renowned artist or even his family’s approval. He just needed the feel of Jake’s body against his, leaning into him and letting him support him for a second.
“There,” he said when they both came up for air. “That’s better.”
“That’s definitely better,” Jake said, his smile flashing for the first time in days.
Rafe smiled with him for a moment, then turned serious. “We can’t go on like this, not talking,” he said, taking a half step back so he could think more clearly. “You staying in the UK depends on the two of us getting along well enough to convince whatever authority we need to that ours is a genuine marriage.”
A dozen emotions splashed across Jake’s face within the space of a second. “You still want to marry me?”
“You still want to stay here?” Rafe fired back in return. “I’m your only shot, you know. I realize now why you can’t apply for a Global Talent visa.”
“I don’t have the industry connections I would need to get the letters of recommendation,” Jake said, lowering his head and taking another step back.
It was the admission Rafe would have liked to have heard from him from the start. He wasn’t the dazzling wunderkind that he’d made himself out to be in Corning, or during the rest of his career. He couldn’t get what he really wanted, the visa, by lying, he could only get it by reaching out to someone who cared about him enough to go along with a risky plan.
“You’re one of the most talented glass artists I’ve ever known,” Rafe repeated, resting a hand on the side of Jake’s face. “And you’re one of the cleverest people, too. You’re caring and strong, but you haven’t had anyone to care for or be strong for before.”
“I was just trying to help,” Jake said. “Every step of the way since I got here, I’ve only been trying to help.”
“I know,” Rafe said, and then, because he didn’t want anything else, he stepped back into Jake, pulling him in for another kiss.
That was right. Finally, after days and weeks of everything feeling off-kilter and painful, something fit right into place. He wanted Jake, whether he was a liar or not. He wanted him in his arms and more, whether he was on his way to a stellar career in glass or not. He’d found the place he wanted to be.
“What do you say we go up to the house and?—”
His naughty suggestion was cut short by Jake’s phone buzzing in his pocket.
“Ignore it,” Jake said, pulling Rafe to him for another kiss.
Rafe did just that, diving in to another kiss as he threaded his fingers through Jake’s hair and grabbed his backside. He wanted to spend the rest of the afternoon tangling his sheets and getting sweaty with Jake.
Jake’s phone buzzed again, twice in quick succession. It completely killed the mood.
“I’ll just check it and turn it off,” Jake said breathlessly.
He pulled his phone from his pocket, sending Rafe a sultry look, then glanced at his phone.
Jake’s expression immediately tightened, and as he tapped on his phone and started scrolling, his color started to drain. “Shit,” he hissed. “Shit, shit, shit.”
“What?” Rafe asked.
“Exactly what I was afraid of,” Jake said.
Rafe pivoted to stand where he could look at Jake’s phone with him. What he saw was like a fist in his gut. Jake had a social media post pulled up on his phone. It was Hélène’s account, but the picture was a plate and a vase from his and Jake’s English countryside collection.
“I knew she was here to steal ideas,” Jake said, raising his voice as he continued to scroll. “It looks like she stole some of our work, too. Shit!”
“Send that to me,” Rafe said, pulling out his own phone.
He didn’t need to wait for Jake’s text to come through. He did a quick search for Hélène Rénard, and within seconds, it was all over his phone.
“‘Hélène Rénard unveils her newest collection of innovative glass design in a social media post,’” Rafe read out from the art website his search linked to. “‘The teaser posted earlier contains a few select pieces from the collection entitled French Countryside, but Rénard states there will be more coming within the next few weeks.’”
“She’s copied our techniques and made a few new pieces of her own,” Jake said, showing him his phone.
“She’ll take credit for the whole thing,” Rafe hissed, a whole new kind of anger boiling in him.
“Did you see her take that vase and plate?” Jake asked, lowering his phone and starting toward the table.
“No,” Rafe said. “I noticed the pieces were missing on Monday, but I thought you’d moved them when we were cleaning up on Saturday. Things got too busy for me to ask you about them.” Really, things had been too tense between the two of them.
They made their way to the table and checked all the pieces they’d made, trying to figure out if Hélène had taken anything else.
“She can’t just steal our work,” Rafe said once they had the rest of the pieces laid out. “We have proof that the concept is our idea. We have more pieces.”
“She’s just posted these pics,” Jake said. “What’s to say she couldn’t claim we were copying her when we saw her post?”
“Other people have seen the pieces,” Rafe argued. “Dozens of other people.”
“People with any clout in the art world?” Jake asked.
Rafe wanted to argue, but he could see the way Jake was thinking. If it came down to it, who would believe the word of two middling artists over that of one of the greatest glass artists of their generation?
Which begged another point.
“Why would Hélène even need to steal our concept and techniques? She’s already famous,” he said.
Jake shrugged. “It’s harder to stay at the top than it is to climb there. And who’s to say she hasn’t done this before?”
It was a sobering thought.
“We can’t just stand by and let her get away with this,” he said, heading away from the table so he could find a broom to clean up his earlier broken glass. “There has to be something we can do, some way we can prove she stole our idea.”
“There are no phone records,” Jake said, eyes widening as he moved to help Rafe. “We spoke to her in person in London, and she never called or texted to say she was coming here on Saturday. There’s no proof she was ever here.”
“Of course there’s proof,” Rafe said, more upset by the minute. “My entire family saw her here.”
“They’re your family,” Jake said as he tidied up his workbench. “In the eyes of the people who matter, they’ll seem biased.”
“Rubbish,” Rafe growled, rejecting the idea.
He was worried that Jake had a point, though. The art world was fickle at best. Plenty of people would see his family backing any claim he and Jake made against Hélène as self-serving and unreliable.
“We have to get this sorted immediately,” he said once he and Jake had tidied the hot shop enough to leave it. “That was our work she posted online, our concept she’s poaching. We worked hard for that, and I’m not letting anyone else take it from us.”