A Bad Boy is Good to Find(12)

“Have some personal experience in that area, do you?”

“I learned everything the hard way. I just want to help you out so you don’t have to do the same.” His frank gaze threatened her defenses.

She steeled herself against it. “What makes you think I need help?”

“The stories I read about you on the Internet and in the papers.”

“You searched for me on the Internet?” She ignored the funny fluttery sensation that gave her. “I told you, they make up lies.”

“Do they? When I found you, you were drunk in the morning and living on Cheetos. That’s actually worse than what I read.”

“If we’re going to be blunt, let’s be blunt. No one gives a crap about me. I was just an easy pocket to pick, for my parents as well as you. It’s empty. So who cares what I do with my life?”

She expected him to protest, to say he cared. He didn’t. He just looked at her. A look so filled with pity it knocked her right off balance. She grabbed her glass and drank water and looked anywhere but at Con while the waitress put her fruit salad in front of her.

Canned, with slippery radioactive peaches and a Dayglo cherry on top.

The waitress returned with two steaming plates loaded high with eggs, bacon, sausage and pancakes. She moved the fruit salad to the side and set one of the plates right in front of Lizzie with no prompting from Con. She returned with two plates of toast, butter and jam.

“God I’m starving.” Her confession was a relief.

Con smiled. “Good. Eat up.” He buttered some toast and took a bite.

She loaded a fork with eggs and sausage and almost had an oral orgasm as she chewed it. “I’d forgotten what actual food tastes like,” she murmured through her mouthful. Con beamed and took another bite of toast. “At Zen Mind it was either tofu teriyaki with wheatgrass juice, or contraband Cheetos and champagne. Hey, why are you eating toast when there’s all this other good stuff?”

“I like toast.” He took another neat bite. Chewed it with his lips closed. Dark lashes a girl would kill for hid his eyes.

“You know, it’s a damn shame you aren’t a moneyed aristocrat. As far as I’m concerned, you’ve got everything it takes: You drive with the roof down at eighty miles an hour and don’t have a hair out of place; you hang around in custom-made Italian suits like you’re wearing sweats; and, last and most important, you’re an arrogant SOB who’s out to get his and screw everyone else. Maybe you were switched at birth or something? Where were you born, anyway?”

“Nowhere you’d know.” He popped the last of the toast triangle in his mouth and dusted his fingers over the plate.

“No, really, I want to know. You don’t have a Southern accent, now that I think about it.”

“We don’t all talk the same, you know.”

“Your accent almost does sound a little French. Maybe that’s why I cottoned onto the French aristocracy thing so easily. What’s the name of the town?”

“Like I said, you wouldn’t know it.” He picked up a jug of syrup and poured some on his pancakes.

“So what’s the harm in telling me?”

“You’ll laugh.”

“Good, I could use a laugh,” she muttered through a mouthful of eggs.

He hesitated. “Mudbug Flats, Louisiana.”

A snorting laugh did escape. “You’re kidding, right?”

“Nope.” He kept a pleasant poker face. “Heart of Cajun country.”

“It sounds…lovely.” She snorted again. “I’m guessing it’s known mostly for mud and mosquitoes.”

“Ah, but that’s where you’re wrong.” He picked up another toast triangle and buttered it with deliberate elegance. “Mudbug is another word for crawdad.”

“Crayfish.”

“That’s right. Best eatin’ in the state of Louisiana. Millions of the little critters right there at your feet.” He winked, a gesture to match the phony backwoods accent. Took a bite of toast.

“This gets better all the time. Let me guess, you grew up in a trailer?”

Con held her gaze. “We couldn’t afford that kind of modern luxury, I’m afraid. Just the old shack, the flat-bottomed boat and the one hog.”

She couldn’t help smiling. Didn’t believe a word he said, but she was getting curious all the same. “Do you still have family back there?”

“Hell if I know.” He finally picked up his fork, speared some pancake and put it in his mouth.

“How long have you been gone?”

“A long, long, long, long, long time. Now stop dredging up the distant past and let me enjoy my meal.”

Lizzie watched the man across the table from her eat with careful precision. The more she learned about him, the less she knew.

She’d learned a lot about herself, though. She’d never trust her instincts again. He’d stolen something precious from her: trust, faith.

Hope.

He took a sip of his freshly topped-up coffee. Met her eyes for a minute with a cautious glance that made her catch her breath and look away.

What kind of heart really beat behind that carefully polished exterior?

And how could she drive a stake through it?



Tempted as she was to destroy Con’s most cherished possession, she let him drive the car after breakfast. She figured she’d play along with whatever he had planned, let him get relaxed, then as soon as they got to a decent-sized town she’d give him the slip and head… Where would she head?

Her head hurt.

“Scenic overlook. Let’s go do some sightseeing.” Con beamed with goodwill. Probably thought he was a knight in shining armor rescuing her from the dragon of strong drink.

Shame he was the one who’d thrown her to the dragon in the first place. She’d gotten pretty cozy with it too. Maybe those maidens in the old days didn’t want to be rescued either.

“I’ve never been to the Southwest before,” he said cheerily, downshifting as they approached what appeared to be the rim of a vast canyon. They were in the middle of nowhere, not a single person or car in sight.

“I have. It all looks the same. Lots of flat, treeless land and a mountain in the distance. There’s always a mountain in the distance.”

“A very metaphorical landscape.”

They climbed out of the car and approached the edge of the Canyon. Lizzie got a shiver of vertigo peering down at the dry river bed a hundred feet or more below.

“If you didn’t go to college, and spent your teen years in a reform school, then how come you sound so educated?”

“Books.” Con peered over the rim too. A breeze flicked his hair. “Always been a big reader. You can learn pretty much anything from books.”

“You’re smart too. I guess that’s how you managed to trick me.”

He didn’t try to defend himself.

“So if you’re so smart and you love books, then why didn’t you just go to college and get a high-paying job?”