“I should probably stick with Noah for a while,” I said.

“You know, just until I’m sure that—”

“We’ll take care of your brother.” Tara nudged Brittany, who nudged Tiffany.

“Hey, Noah,” the twins called in unison, and moments later, an arm around each twin, Noah left me behind in the dust.

I buried my head in my hands. “He’ll be impossible to live with now.”

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 microscopic bit 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?”

They were on a roll now.

“Actually,” I said, lowering my voice, “I didn’t date Prince William, but…”

Jack watched, bemused, as all of the girls leaned toward me, eyes wide.

“…but I heard that Jack did.”

Two of the girls frowned at me. One cast a suspicious look at Jack. The fourth was a little behind on processing and just stood there, smiling and nodding.

Jack grabbed me by the elbow. “Excuse us, ladies,” he said. “Toby”—he emphasized his use of my actual name—“and I were going to go grab some punch.”

With a great deal of expertise, he steered me away from the girls before I could suggest that he’d dated any more of the world’s most eligible bachelors. Smart boy.

I didn’t know where he was taking me until we ended up outside on a veranda. Alone.

Uh-oh. Not good, I thought. We were supposed to end up alone, but not here. Somehow, I had to get him to take me to his dad’s office. I was also unsure as to his state of mind. Some guys—okay, most guys—would probably greatly resent the insinuation that they’d dated the heir to the throne of England.

I tensed my body slightly. If Jack was feeling like lashing out at me, I wanted to be ready to lash back. Actually, I wanted my foot to be ready to lash back. The rest of me would just go along for the ride.

Jack opened his mouth, and I waited for him to yell. “Did you see their faces?” he asked quietly. “I can’t believe you…and they…”

I shrugged. He didn’t sound particularly murderous.

“Ev, you told them that Prince William and I were an item.”

I scuffed my foot into the ground. “Better you than me.”

“Better me than you,” he repeated, and then he laughed, loud and long. “You’re…”

“Clever?” I suggested.

“You’re something,” he finished. “When I figure out what it is, I’ll tell you.”

I had to remind myself that this was Brooke’s ex. Chloe’s ex. He had a substance abuse problem, and the substance was cheerleaders. He hadn’t even known who I was pre-Squad. He was my mission, and I was not the girl who fell for a guy just because he had a really contagious laugh.

“So what are we going to do out here?” I asked. I meant to sound somewhat seductive, but it came out sounding confused. What was I doing? More to the point, who was watching me make a fool of myself through the handy-dandy necklace camera?

“What do you want to do out here?” Jack didn’t move toward me at all with the words. I appreciated the respect for my personal space.

“Why don’t we race?” It was a stab in the dark, but I never claimed to be good at this.

“Race to where?” Jack asked. It was a pretty small veranda.

“To the car,” I said. “Winner decides where we go from there.”

Given the fact that I was almost positive that I could beat him in a fair race, it was a stroke of genius.

“Race to the car,” Jack tried the idea out by saying it out loud.

I nodded.

“This thing really isn’t your deal, is it?” he asked.

“What thing? The party?” I asked, planning to press the whole “race to the car” thing.

“The party,” Jack confirmed. “The squad, the whole popularity thing.” He paused. “You’d rather those girls think that I dated Prince William than that you did.”

“Your point?”

“Why are you a cheerleader?”

He sounded suspicious. Darned Cheerleader Aversion.

“If I tell you, can we race?”

He nodded. “Why the hell not.”

I mulled the question over, trying to come up with an answer that was at least partially true. “I like to do things that people tell me I can’t,” I said finally. “And nobody ever thought I’d make the Squad.”

Least of all me.

“Huh,” Jack said. And then, without another word, he bolted off the veranda and back into the party. It took me a couple of seconds to figure out that he was headed to the car.