A Bad Boy is Good to Find - By Jennifer Lewis Page 0,7

dreary existence and blown it open like a window thrown up in a dusty attic.

Her chest heaved under her satin dressing gown. “So when you said I was… I was beautiful…” her voice cracked. “It was all a lie?”

“No. You’re the loveliest woman I’ve ever met.” He looked right at her.

“No, I’m not.” She squirmed, suddenly conscious of her big breasts, her big thighs. “I should have known.”

“You are beautiful. You’re also a loving, passionate woman with a big heart.”

Am I?

She stared at him. So breathtakingly handsome with his dark hair tousled and his chiseled features shaded by two days’ beard. She couldn’t help the stirring of warmth—more—at the sight of him.

“You’re a special woman, Lizzie.” His hands hung by his sides and in spite of everything she found herself wishing he’d reach up and touch her. That look in his eyes—he did love her, didn’t he?

So he wasn’t a mechanical engineer or a French aristocrat. Was that the end of the world? He was smart, no doubt about that. “Your college degree, what’s it in?”

“I didn’t go to college.” Contrition in his eyes.

“What? But you said you went to… St. Swithin’s. I thought that was where you studied mechanical… mechanic—” She racked her brain, trying to remember exactly what he had told her.

“St. Swithin’s is a reform school in Natchez, Mississippi.”

Her mouth dropped and an undignified “oh” escaped.

She gasped for breath. “So you took auto shop there and I somehow translated that into a summa cum laude degree in engineering?” Her voice shook. “Why did you let me believe all those lies?”

She stared at him, unable to reconcile the seductive image before her with the ugly reality unfolding behind it’s shimmering surface.

“Oh, Lizzie. We were going to be so happy. I had it all figured out.”

“But now I don’t come with a lot of zeros in the bank, the deal is off, huh?” The room pulsed in hideous Technicolor clarity.

The sad look in Con’s eyes almost affected her.

“I don’t have anything to offer you,” he said quietly.

“Is that so? What exactly were you planning to offer me prior to this latest wrinkle in your plan?”

“Happiness. I did make you happy, didn’t I?”

Yes.

She swallowed. “An illusion. I thought I was happy because I thought you were someone else. You lied to me, maybe not in so many words, but in the things you didn’t say. And maybe you lied to me another way with all those gentle touches and long, heartfelt kisses I’m apparently such a sucker for. I loved you.”

Her words hung in the air, ringing with raw pain and already in past tense. Everything had changed irrevocably. Totally. The happiness of the last few weeks—the life-transforming joy—lay in ruins.

Conroy Beale—whoever he really was—didn’t say a word.

“What a freaking joke. I’ve been skipping around in my own world of delusion, happy little Lizzie, while everyone who supposedly loved me was coming up with some way to milk me like a cash cow. What was I thinking? Why would anyone actually love me? As my father so kindly said, I’m just a fat little nobody.”

“You are not fat.” He looked her in the eye. “Don’t let anyone ever tell you that. You’re perfect.”

His voice dropped as he spoke. Like he meant it. For a second she felt a prick of warmth, a surge of the loving support that transformed her from a shuffling caterpillar into the beautiful butterfly she’d become.

Or thought she’d become before her wings were rudely snapped off again. Right now she’d like to climb back into her chrysalis and hide forever.

All those warnings from her parents about being “careful” and avoiding “the wrong sort of people.” She’d scoffed at their small-minded cynicism—

And fallen headlong into the trap of a scheming con artist.

“You never did say you loved me, did you?” She stared at him through narrowed eyes. Trying to ignore the perfect features of his noble-looking face. “I said it over and over, like a freaking parrot, but you never did say it back to me.” A panicked laugh rattled her chest. “Tell me, Con, with no bullshit or beating about the bush. Did you ever, just for one moment, love me too?”

He blinked and a muscle twitched in his arm.

“Come on. The truth for once.” She held her breath. Horrible hope bloomed in her chest. Did his hesitation mean…

He hung his head and his silence deflated the last of her ego like a rapier.

Tears sprang to her eyes. She dove for the living room and slammed