A Bad Boy is Good to Find - By Jennifer Lewis Page 0,72
edge into an explosive climax. She heard her startled cry followed by Con’s groan as he followed her into a post orgasmic realm of breathless silence.
Afterward they lay there, her fingers in his hair as his head rested between her breasts. His hands, one on either side of her torso, held her as if she might try to wriggle away.
“I’ve missed you, Lizzie,” he said, after a long, peaceful silence.
“Missed me? We’ve been together every minute.”
He looked up, hair dipping to his shiny dark eyes. “I’ve missed being close, being intimate. Affectionate.”
She tousled his hair. “Me too.”
Something inside her pulled sharply. A tug of warning.
“Con, why did you come after me? I mean, if you really never loved me. Why didn’t you write the whole thing off as a deal gone south?”
How could she have been so sure he loved her if all the time he was just acting? No one was that good an actor.
A funny fluttering in her stomach accompanied the thought.
Con hesitated. Licked his lips. He slid sideways off her chest and moved up the bed until his head was level with hers.
He ran his thumb lightly over her lips, then pulled his hand back and shifted up onto his elbow. She heard him inhale.
“My father got my mom started drinking. She didn’t drink at all until she met him. He used to brag about it. How she used to be such a prim and perfect little lady until he…” His expression darkened and he looked away.
When he looked back at her, the fierce expression in his eyes made her flinch. “I’ve always prided myself on being nothing like my father. Anything he’d have done, I’ll do the exact opposite. You’ll not see me gambling, drinking myself under a table, starting fights. Never. I’ve never laid a hand on a woman and never will.”
He combed his fingertips through her hair, gentle. “But I did give you those first sips of champagne.”
Lizzie bristled. She wasn’t the naïve innocent he assumed. “You think I never tried alcohol before? I’ve been dragged along to cocktail parties since I was eight. I probably had my first spiked Shirley Temple before I turned ten. My mother started cocktail hour at four p.m. every day.”
“But you didn’t. You didn’t want to be like her. You were quite happy with a tall cool glass of chocolate milk—” he hesitated, and the corner of his mouth lifted into a smile.
She stiffened, gritted her teeth.
“And I loved that about you. A woman who knows her own mind! You didn’t try and impress me with pomegranate martinis and champagne with gold bits floating in it. I’d never met anyone like you, Lizzie. You far exceeded my wildest expectations.”
Lizzie’s mind raced, trying to process all this information, most specifically the exact usage of the word loved in this context. “Loved” as in “I loved her like no other woman” or as in “I loved her Mary-Jane shoes.” Her graduate-level classes in English Literature had not provided her with adequate interpretive skills.
“But,” he looked sheepish. “You were hard to get close to. Suspicious.” He raised an eyebrow. “Wary as a tiger someone’s just thrown a fresh, thick juicy steak at. Like, where’s the catch?”
“Little did I know,” she said coolly.
“Well, exactly.” Con shrugged and smiled. “You’re a smart cookie.”
“Not smart enough, apparently.”
“Hey, I had more tricks up my sleeve. Champagne being one of them. A glass here, a glass there, and soon you were bubbling over into my affectionate arms.”
His smile threatened to break into a grin.
“You know, you really piss me off, Conroy Beale.”
“I’m just being honest. I guess that’s new for both of us, but I think it’s the best way to go, don’t you?”
His wary glance, suddenly shy and boyish, snuck under her skin.
“I guess I do. So you felt guilty about getting me started drinking when your father did exactly the same to your mother.”
The whole concept gave her a chill. She was nothing like Con’s mother! Some poor downtrodden woman getting beaten senseless by a brutish husband. Goose bumps pricked her arms at the comparison.
“I didn’t want to see you going down the wrong road, making poor choices—”
“I hardly think I’d have ended up like her.”
“I don’t expect she did either. But there was nothing I could do to help her. I could help you.”
“You know, you make yourself sound almost heroic,” she said, trying to squelch the weird warm sensation growing inside her.
Con’s eyes looked distant for a moment. “She always used to