Envy - 2 by Robin Wasserman Page B

getting a little ahead of himself.”
    “Exactly my point—I don’t like waiting, and I didn’t think you did either. Isn’t that why we’re in this thing?”
    “Okay,” she conceded. “So we’ve got the setup, Adam’s already jealous—”
    “And soon it wil start to fester—,” Kane added.
    “Especial y if we help it along a bit,” Harper concluded. So not a problem. If there was one thing she could handle, it was feeding the flames of jealousy—hadn’t she proved that wel enough over the weekend? “But we need something else, something more dramatic, with a little flair.”
    “I couldn’t agree more. But what?” Kane asked. They were right back to where they’d started. “That’s the mil ion-dol ar question. And it has to be done right, with finesse—we don’t want this to backfire.”
    “Are you thinking of something specific?”
    “I’m just trying to ensure that we both get what we want,” Kane explained, winking, “since, never let it be said I think only of myself…” Harper raised both eyebrows this time.
    “Okay, usual y I do,” he admitted. “But in this case, we’re in it together—one for al , al for one, et cetera.”
    “Whatever, I’l believe it when I see it. I’ve known you for too long.”
    “Oh, you wound me!” he exclaimed. Mrs. Martin, the ancient and evil-eyed librarian, walked by and gave them a nasty look. The shut-up-or-get-out kind of look. Harper lowered her eyes and tried to muster a chaste and innocent smile. But Mrs. Martin, immune to the act, just scuttled on by.
    “I’m supposed to trust you?” Harper asked, lowering her voice to a whisper. “When you’re trying to steal your best friend’s girlfriend?” Al traces of a smirk vanished from Kane’s face, and he glared at her with hooded eyes.
    “First of al , Grace, I don’t believe in trust—which is why I don’t believe in best friends. It’s easier that way. And second of al , as for stealing his girlfriend …” Harper leaned forward eagerly. She’d been wondering how Kane could justify his scheming, especial y when he seemed to have no particular motivation for choosing Beth, of al the girls he could have pursued.
    “… lets just say—karma’s a bitch.”
    “Care to elaborate?” Harper asked.
    “No.”
    They stared at each other in silence for a moment, each daring the other to speak. Harper broke first.
    “Fine—just get back to what you were saying,” Harper urged him. “What kind of backfiring are you afraid of?”
    “Wel , we could pin something on Adam, like, say, he slept with someone else—believable enough, I guess,” Kane said, his smirk returning. “Deep down, al guys are pigs.” Harper opened her mouth—then closed it again. She couldn’t betray Adam’s confidence. At least not until she heard al of what Kane had to say.
    “That could work,” she mused.
    He shook his head slowly but surely. “Not so much—think about it. Beth breaks up with Adam in a fit of anger, and Adam spends the rest of his life trying to win her back. And I don’t think either of us wants to deal with that.”
    “Agreed,” Harper said, her heart sinking. He was right—and she had nothing. Nothing that wouldn’t turn Harper and Adam’s potential relationship into col ateral damage. “In fact, I think Adam needs to be the one to break it off,” she concluded in spite of herself. “He feels betrayed, she feels unjustly wronged, they both want nothing to do with each other and go running into our arms.”
    “Sounds like the perfect plan. Except …” Kane sighed in exasperation. “We stil need to figure out how to get from point A to point B.”
    “We’l figure it out,” she comforted him. “In the meantime we continue to drive Adam out of his mind with jealousy?”
    “You got it. And, hey, never underestimate the power of the Kane Geary charisma. For al I know, a couple more of these study ‘dates’ and she’l be begging me to hit the bedroom.”
    Harper bal ed