Lie to Me (Pearl Island Trilogy #4)(17)
Oh God, he thought, please don’t let her say something kind. He could hear it coming, though, some gently delivered apology for her rejection followed by an assurance that it really was good to see him again after all these years. She’d probably end the evening with a handshake at her front door while she said they should keep in touch, as old schoolmates and all. A suggestion that would never happen.
As far as brush-off speeches went, it-was-good-to-see-you had to rank right up there with let’s-be-friends.
“Come on,” he said brusquely, before she figured out how to start her speech. “I’ll take you home.”
Chapter 5
Chloe closed the car door a bit more forcefully than necessary. Disappointment bubbled through her at the way Luc had cut her off before she could tell him she really didn’t care what he had looked like in school. That was a decade ago, for crying out loud. She did care, however, that he had deceived her.
To her relief, Luc turned on the stereo the minute he started the engine, drowning out the need to talk as he drove back toward Pearl Island. Staring out the side window at the lights of the boats bobbing in the inky black harbor, she frantically tried to remember everything she’d told him about her family that evening. She recalled saying that her father hadn’t come to her graduation because he “traveled a lot.” Since Luc had been pretending not to know her, he’d let it slide, instead of laughing in her face. Not that anyone ever had, but she suspected plenty of her schoolmates had laughed behind her back.
Everyone had known her father was too busy jet-setting around the world to be bothered with anything as trivial as coming to see his daughter lead the girls’ soccer team to victory. Or heaven forbid he care enough to join the Newman Dads Club, like other dads did. Normal, caring dads.
Her eyes prickled with stupid tears so she kept her face averted.
God, how humiliating. All evening, she’d been talking away with someone who knew how little she’d mattered to her father. Not that her mother was much better, but at least Diane didn’t ignore her daughter’s existence. Actually, Diane had become overly attentive recently, since Chloe had told her about finding the necklace. Unfortunately, Diane’s sudden interest in Chloe’s life had nothing to do with motherly affection, and everything to do with Diane’s obsession over the necklace belonging in LeRoche family hands, not in a museum.
Normally, Chloe could handle dealing with people who knew who her family was, as long as she was prepared. Tonight, she hadn’t been on guard against ulterior motives, which ranged from social suck-ups wanting entrée to her parents’ party world to ambitious parasites wanting an introduction to her grandfather. Oh yes, her grandfather. The great and powerful John LeRoche, owner of LeRoche Shipping.
In New Orleans, when women befriended her or men came on to her, they always had a reason. What was Luc’s reason? He had to have one, otherwise he wouldn’t have pretended not to know her. Had he come to Galveston specifically to use her? She’d asked him what he was doing in town, and he’d dodged the question.
She went back through the evening, looking for hints to some devious strategy. To her confusion, she found none. She couldn’t remember a single moment when he’d subtly steered the conversation toward her family. Oh, he’d asked about them. Don’t you still have plenty of family in New Orleans? But when she’d said that was why she didn’t miss living there, he’d let it drop.
Mostly, he’d seemed surprised by the scraps of her past she’d shared. Genuine surprise. Not the fake affront on her behalf that morphed into empathy intended to win a greater confidence. She’d developed a finely tuned meter for detecting that sort of user over the years.
Why would he be surprised to hear about her father’s neglect, though? All the kids at Newman knew the truth. All the cool kids, she amended.
Luc hadn’t been part of that group. Actually, he hadn’t been part of any group, she remembered with sudden clarity. Whenever she’d noticed him around campus, he’d always been alone and completely absorbed in whatever he was doing, usually sketching or scribbling in that notepad he carried with him everywhere. He’d seemed to exist in his own bubble, immune to all the drama that filled most people’s lives.
Could he have been so absorbed in whatever occupied his mind—which she now realized had been scripting his game—that he hadn’t paid attention to school gossip?
If that was true, his whole perspective of her had to be skewed.
Had he really seen her as the popular girl with the ultra-rich granddaddy living the charmed life, rather than the desperate kid battling to find safety in a world where no one seemed to care what happened to her? Uncle Scott, who’d walked away from the family to make his own way, even changing his last name to Lawrence to distance himself from the LeRoches, had been her one calm port throughout the upheaval of her youth.
Could Luc really not know that?
She glanced sideways, not sure what to think of him. They’d left downtown, casting the interior of the car into darkness. Only the lights from the dashboard showed the hard line of his mouth. That tempting mouth she’d wanted to kiss all evening. He looked so different now than he had back in school, she had trouble believing this attractive man with the sculpted face and killer body had been that pudgy boy with the too-short haircut and horn-rimmed glasses.