A Bad Boy is Good to Find - By Jennifer Lewis Page 0,6
oblivious to the fact that he was completely naked.
An icy trickle of fear crept along Lizzie’s spine.
“You’re a mechanical engineer, right?” She didn’t like the ugly suspicion in her voice.
Con licked his lips awkwardly and ran his hand through his hair again. He picked up his black pants off the floor and put them on. No underwear.
“Why are you getting dressed? It’s two a.m.”
He walked back to her, took her hand and lifted her from the desk chair opposite the bed. Guided her to the middle of the room and pushed a stray curl out of her eyes.
“Lizzie. My lovely Lizzie.” He squeezed her hands and reassuring warmth rose through her. Then he shook his head, and a pained smile flashed across his face. “I’m not a mechanical engineer. I never said I was.”
“I don’t understand… I thought…” She searched his face.
“I said my expertise is mechanical, and you guessed what you wanted to believe.”
She racked her mind to remember the conversation. “So what did you mean?”
“I’m a mechanic.” He looked at her, soft apology in his brown eyes. “I work on cars.”
She blinked rapidly and felt her forehead crease. “But that time we tried to meet for lunch—Wheelock Engineering LLC, the sign said. Isn’t that where you work?” She still remembered waiting for him outside the glass-fronted high-rise just off Lexington. Waiting and waiting, until she’d finally given up. Caught in a meeting, he’d said later. They’d never actually made the rain date for that lunch.
He rubbed his upper arm. The desk light highlighted a taut bicep. “I don’t work at Wheelock Engineering. I do some work in the garage across the street. That’s where I’d meant to meet you.”
What? “There’s a garage on that street?” She racked her brain and couldn’t even picture it. As far as she could remember, all the other buildings were brownstones. That’s why she’d assumed…
“Yes. Maybe you never noticed it. It’s a small place.” He shrugged, his expression guarded.
None of this makes sense. Lizzie shook her head. She’d never doubted for a second that he was successful, well-off, educated…
“But aren’t your family Louisiana landowners, descended from French aristocracy?”
He hung his head for a second, hair falling into his eyes. He lifted his chin and met her gaze again. “I’m from Louisiana alright. And my family’s been sitting on the same patch of swamp for as long as anyone can remember, but I’m about as aristocratic as that cockroach there.” He nodded his head at the wall behind her.
She wheeled around and saw a small roach scaling the striped wallpaper. On sudden instinct she picked up a slipper and threw it, left a brown smear on the wall.
Her breath came in heaving gulps. “I don’t understand… You said…”
“I didn’t say all that much.” He wiped a hand over his face and looked at her, his eyes so sad. “I let you do most of the talking. I love listening to you talk. When I’m with you I really do feel like some old-money Creole aristo with an avenue of live oaks back home.” He lifted his hand and stroked her cheek.
His soft touch felt as good as ever.
She recoiled from it. “Who are you?”
“I’m Conroy Beale.”
“That’s your real name?”
“Yes.”
She stared at him. “But you’re not wealthy.”
He paused, then shook his head. “No.”
“What about that Range Rover you were driving when we met? Those don’t come cheap.”
“It belonged to a friend.” He hung his head a little. “I never said it was mine. I helped you get your car going that first time we met, remember? I never said I was anyone but who I am.”
The hero who’d saved the day by putting Evian in her empty radiator. She’d broken down on Third Avenue on her way back from the Island. Her rescuer had been dressed in Armani and driving a Range Rover—what was she supposed to think?
“I just made all this stuff up in my head?” Her head spun in all directions, trying to make sense of the cataclysm of information it couldn’t quite process. One minute she was a wealthy woman with a charming, successful, fiancé, the next she was—
She didn’t know what the hell she was.
A dupe.
He looked apologetic. “I guess you did make it up, a little bit. Believed what you wanted to believe.”
Her heart contracted at the sight of his kind brown eyes. He looked like Con. The wonderful man who’d brought her out of her protective shell and turned her into a self-confident, sensual, loving woman. Who’d taken her