Deadly Promises (Tracers #2.5)(7)

Which meant no dating right now. Surely Jeremy would give her another chance in a few weeks.

She flicked quick glances around them, watching for any sign of an aggressive Italian male built for championship wrestling heading their way. Jeremy was just as beefed up as Vinny, but she doubted he could take on all three brothers, which was exactly what would happen if Vinny, the attorney in the family, sent out a call to arms.

“That’s okay.” Jeremy’s face eased back into happy as if he accepted her ridiculous excuse for acting like a Chihuahua on acid. “I’ll have to get tomorrow’s paper.”

Idiot that she was around him, she just smiled, happy to see him. He had a rugged outdoorsy look, like a buff surfer with that white-blond hair falling to his collar. But she’d grown up around a pack of alpha males and knew when she entered the heat zone of one.

When Jeremy wasn’t joking around, he had a powerful aura about him that warned others not to step into his arena unless they were up to the task. Some women might miss what hid behind the charming window dressing.

The wind stirred his hair in a loose and free way that made her wonder how he’d look in the morning after a night of hot sex.

With a body like that she’d bet on an endless night.

“You’ll be famous,” he added.

Reminding her about the photo brought her back from mental wandering. “I don’t think so. How famous can someone made up to look like a statue be?”

“I’d know it was you even under all that makeup.”

A tingle of regret over the picture and article inched up her spine. She didn’t want fame and her family might not be happy that she’d talked to a reporter. Stop obsessing and don’t overreact. Besides, it would probably just be a dinky article buried under weekend events. Her identity had been hidden under layers of caked-on makeup. And layers of Vinny’s expert paperwork.

CeCe picked up the baby doll. When she turned back to her fiberglass base, Jeremy was studying it.

“You’ve got a crack in this thing,” he muttered.

“Someone backed into my stand at my last event.”

He lifted the sculpted base, not seeming to mind the white powder he’d gotten on his hands from her body makeup. “Where’s your truck?”

“I have a hand cart to move that with,” she protested, then took in his arched eyebrow and unrelenting expression to mean he only wanted directions to her truck. She finally pointed. “Over there near the theater. Last spot before the railroad tracks.”

This was the first time he’d spoken to her since she’d given him a lame brush-off for his dinner invitation. The look of disappointment in his face had eaten a hole in her stomach.

Was a normal life too much to ask for?

One not built around lies.

CeCe walked companionably beside Jeremy, sneaking peeks at his confident stride and casual manner.

He almost seemed… shy? No way. Just laid back today.

Why couldn’t she have a man like him in her life?

Because her family wouldn’t accept a clean-cut upstanding citizen like Jeremy and she wouldn’t accept a man they approved of, so she couldn’t win either way.

Didn’t mean she had to live like a monk, did it?

Jeremy placed her fiberglass base in the truck bed then dusted the powder from his hands. When he turned to her this time his smile made her swallow hard.

She craved this man.

A long horn blast from the railroad tracks entering Marietta warned everyone a freight train was approaching and would pass through downtown not fifty feet behind them.

“Look, CeCe, maybe we could…” Jeremy hesitated as if the words in his head were waiting for a sign of encouragement.

Long white guardrails lowered into place with warning bells clanging at a deafening level. Automobiles stopped on each side of the crossing. The ground vibrated as the lead engine raced by dragging a string of loaded railcars. Loud rumbling prevented any conversation for a few minutes.

Her heart jumped at the desire pulsing through Jeremy’s eyes, the male interest he didn’t try to hide. But if she let him finish that sentence they’d both be disappointed with her answer.

After a minute of metal-on-metal pounding the caboose blew past, sucking the noise down the tracks with it.

Jeremy opened his mouth to finish his sentence.

“Ah, gee!” CeCe snapped her fingers.

“What?” Jeremy looked as alarmed as she sounded.

“I just realized I’m going to be late.”

“For what?”

Answering that question was going to give her nightmares, but she had no choice. “Drinks at a friend’s house. She wants me to meet—” Just say it! Use the one line that would put Jeremy off for a couple weeks, because she couldn’t keep doing this over and over. Say I have a girlfriend who wants me to meet a guy she thinks would be a good match for me. CeCe had been raised around lies. Why were these so difficult to tell?

Jeremy waited, expectantly. “She wants you to meet… who?”

CeCe opened her mouth to give the right answer, but instead said, “Her friends… she, uh, wants me to meet her girlfriends.”

His face relaxed.

She accepted the stab of guilt that cut her in half over leading him on but couldn’t bring herself to completely destroy the light of interest in his gaze. Not after three weeks of getting to know Jeremy. Three weeks of heaven.