A Gentleman in the Street Read Online Free PDF

to Google that later.
    “Sorry I worried you on Friday. Did you get a lot of writing done this weekend?”
    No. None. “Some.”
    “Phew.” She wrinkled her nose. It made her look like an annoyed fairy. “I was worried when you said that Akira stopped by to bug you.”
    That Akira . He’d heard Akira’s mother use the phrase more than once. Jacob frowned, discomfort niggling through him. Nothing was wrong with it, on the surface, but he hadn’t liked it coming out of the older woman’s mouth, and he definitely didn’t like it coming out of Kati’s.
    “I swear, all I said was you were writing at our cabin all weekend and didn’t have cell service, and I only told her that much because I was so surprised to see her.” Kati poured cereal into a bowl .
    “I guess you don’t need addresses when you’re as clever as Akira.” Damn, he really shouldn’t have mentioned even the general location of his cabin in interviews. Not like he expected anyone to come Misery him, but there were crazies in the world, and he had Kati to worry about.
    Kati added milk and took a healthy bite. “I had no idea she would come track you out there.”
    “Don’t talk with your mouth full,” he said automatically. “And that’s fine.”
    Kati swallowed. “What did she want anyway?”
    He leaned against the counter. For some reason, he was reluctant to discuss his dealings with Akira with anyone else, even his sister. They were his, damn it. “It was nothing. She wanted to ask me about some box she thought Mei might have given me.”
    If he hadn’t been watching Kati, he would have missed the slight tensing of her body. Her eyes dropped to her bowl, studying it far more intensely than granola deserved.
    He straightened. Surely Kati wouldn’t have accepted a gift from the dying woman without telling him. Mei had attempted to give them money more than once over the years. He had declined each time. This was his little family. He would provide for them.
    But it was possible Mei had managed to manipulate Kati. While Mei hadn’t paid much attention to any of the kids for the short period of time she’d been a stepmother, she had shown his sister increasing warmth over the past couple of years. Kati had gone over to visit her unsupervised more than once after school during those final months.
    “Akira said the box belonged to her grandmother,” he continued more slowly, watching his sister. “It holds a lot of sentimental value for her.” She hadn’t said the second part, but there had been heavy emotion in her voice when she had spoken about her grandmother. Plus, Akira, who was known as a smart and savvy negotiator, wouldn’t have essentially handed him a blank check to get the box back if she wasn’t running on feelings.
    Kati hunched her shoulders. A light flush darkened her fair Irish skin. “Huh.”
    “Kati.”
    Vulnerable green eyes met his, and Jacob could read the truth in there. He groaned and dropped his head in his hands. “No. Tell me you don’t have it.”
    “Jacob—”
    “Kati.” He dug his palms into his eye sockets. “I told her I didn’t know what she was talking about. I berated her for even thinking we would be so greedy as to take something, a family heirloom, from a sick, dying woman to whom we share no legal or familial tie. Tell me you don’t have it.”
    “Jacob…”
    He pointed in the general direction of her room, his incredulity making him immune to her quivering lip. “Go get it. Right. Now.”
    Head hanging, she turned on one blue Converse sneaker and left the room. Jacob pinched his nose, imagining the scene when he brought the box to Akira. Would she gloat? She would gloat, wouldn’t she? Maybe he deserved that, after piously informing her he wouldn’t have dared take something from Mei.
    And, God. How sick was it a part of him was glad Kati had whatever thing Akira was looking for? Because now he had an excuse to see her again.
    Kati returned with a wooden box decorated with