He was laying the flattery on thick, but it still felt good. “You know, I don’t think anyone’s ever bought me a drink before.” I couldn’t remember it happening. Usually I was paying a pro, and there were no drinks needed. I’d gone Dutch on dates. But I hadn’t dated for a long, long time.
He leaned in close and said conspiratorially, “Now I feel compelled to give you somethingreallyinteresting to write about in that diary.” Under the table, his foot slid in between mine suggestively. “What job lets you pick up guys at a bar? Sounds like fun.”
Ah, shit. What the hell was I doing? Even if he wasn’t a plant, all this heavy flirting was exactly the kind of thing my CapothoughtI did when I came out collecting in West Hollywood, and the kind of thing I’d prided myself onneverdoing.
Work was work. Mixing work with play was never a good idea.
“You don’t wanna know about my job,” I said, but I smiled as I said it, and that was my mistake.
“True. I wanna know aboutyou. Like, what’s with the hat?”
“What do you mean, what’s with the hat?” I’d set my hat down next to me after wiping the tabletop down carefully, and those stunning hazel eyes—I’d decided now that they were hazel—had been hovering over it thoughtfully.
“Well, why do you wear it?”
The hat was useful. Covered my hair, my face, kept me in shadows when I needed them, and witnesses fixated on the hat, forgot my face. “It keeps my head warm,” I told him.
“Oh, right,” he said, nodding. “All that cold weather we get here in LA. Yeah, I can see how a hat would come in handy.” He tipped his head to one side. “Where’d you live before here?”
“Before here?” I leaned back a little, and stopped squeezing his leg so tight between mine. I couldn’t imagine anything about me that would’ve caught his interest, unless he was under orders. And now he was asking about my past. “I was born in Vegas,” I said, watching him closely. “Lived there until about a decade back.”
His hands were still wrapped around the cocktail. If he moved them at all, went for a weapon, he was close enough that I could punch him in the throat, give him something to think about while I got out of this tiny damn booth—
“Hat kept you warm out there, too?” he asked, and sucked at the straw again. He pulled out the fruit stick and licked the coconut foam off it, staring right at me.
“Kept me from getting sunstroke in Vegas,” I said. “It’s a useful hat. Does double-duty.”
“I see that.” His tongue curled around the banana chunk, pulled it off the skewer into his mouth. I watched every minute movement and while part of me wondered what that tongue would feel like curling around my nuts, the other part wondered if he was getting ready to push the skewer through my eyeball. “You seem tense,” he said—or purred, rather. “I could help out with that, if you like. You want to go somewhere more private?”
Lord help me, Idid. “I’m fine right here,” I sighed.
He took it on the chin. “As long as you know the offer’s on the table.” His leg inched higher between my own. “Or under it.”
He wasn’t a killer, this kid. He was just horny. That could make him even more difficult to deal with, though. “What doyoudo for a living?” I asked. “Or are you a trust fund brat?”
He pulled his legs away sharply. “I’m an artist,” he said after a moment.
“Yeah?”
“Yeah.”
“What kind of art?”
He stared at me a moment, then tugged a paper napkin out of the dispenser at the side of the table. He fished a pen out of his pocket and began sketching out something on the napkin, holding the paper tight as the pen dragged across it. Thirty seconds later, I was looking at a minimalist caricature of myself as a noirish villain, my hat pulled down low, squinting suspiciously out at the viewer.
After a pause, I said, “That’s not very flattering.”
He gave me a deceptively sweet smile. “Maybe not, but it’s how you’ve been treating me since the second I started talking to you.”
He was right. I’d been acting like a jerk. And besides, when was I going to have another chance to enjoy a view like he was offering?
“Let’s start over,” I said. “How about I buyyoua drink—one of those monstrosities, if you like—and you tell me all about yourself.”
The Boss always told me I had bad judgment.
CHAPTER3
JACK
