Conflict of Interest - By Allyson Lindt Page 0,23
care? The sincerity in his eyes said yes. The revelation added to her lilting mood. “Older by five minutes.”
“Twins.” He raised an eyebrow. “Identical?”
“Physically.”
“Right.” His attention was completely on her, his lunch untouched. “So she’s the one who usually picks up strangers, does the one-night-stand thing, the irresponsible stuff.”
“I—” She paused, not sure if she was about to defend herself or Riley. “As you’re so fond of pointing out, I approached you.”
He stared back in disbelief, his familiar crooked smile in place. “And you’ve also confessed it was completely out of character for you.”
“Does it matter if I’d ever done it before?”
“It does to me.” He picked at his vegetables. “I like thinking I was your first for something. It’s good for a guy’s ego, right?”
How did he always manage to make conversation so easy? She laughed at the teasing. “Like your ego needs help.”
“Sometimes it does.” His eyes grew wide, his feigned hurt ruined by the twitch of his mouth. “I’m a delicate flower.”
“Why are you always so direct?” She had asked him the question once before, but she wanted more of an answer.
His gaze raked over her face as if he was trying to peer into her thoughts. “Chicks dig honesty, right?”
“No,” she corrected him. “Chicks only think they dig honesty until it includes something they don’t want to hear.”
“It worked on you.”
Arrogant ass. The thought didn’t have any malice in it. “You got lucky.”
He snorted. “Damn straight. And I wouldn’t mind getting lucky again.”
She rolled her eyes and shook her head, but couldn’t lose her smile. “Seriously, it has to be counterproductive most the time.”
“I’ll answer your question if you tell me something. Where do you usually meet guys?”
She stared back, confused about the gentle curve in the conversation. “Why?”
He pushed his barely touched plate aside. “Let’s see … probably not business meetings, that would be inappropriate. And I can’t see you spending much time in bars. We can add coffee shops to the list.”
“You were the only one.”
His grin spread. “I knew it.”
She slapped his hand playfully. “Yes, fine. You were a first. Happy?”
“Immensely.” He meant it. “Where did you meet your last boyfriend? The bookstore or something?”
Heat flooded her cheeks, and she ducked her head. It had been a lucky guess, that was all.
He laughed. “I was kidding. I’m right, seriously?”
“Yes, I met my last boyfriend at the bookstore.”
“The relationship section?”
She twisted her mouth in irritation and just glared at him. “Fiction and literature.”
“Bronte?” he asked.
“Vonnegut.”
He raised an eyebrow. “So what was the first thing he said to you?”
Why were they having this conversation? Not that she minded, but she was still trying to figure out his random tangents. “I don’t remember.”
“You’re lying.” There was no accusation in the words, it was a simple statement.
She looked at him, eyes wide. How had he known that? “It was something about how Vonnegut had nothing on William Gibson when it came to the cynical but not completely fatalistic future of the planet. And I told him that wasn’t a fair comparison because Kurt Vonnegut was absolutely a fatalistic literary genius and William Gibson was some sciency guy.”
His jaw dropped. “You called the father of cyber punk a sciency guy? I mean, I guess technically you’re right, but you said that?”
Finally she had caught him off-guard. “And his reaction was a lot like yours. Don’t get me wrong, William Gibson is fantastic, but it’s still like comparing Apples and Windows.”
She wasn’t sure why she’d tossed the reference in to mangle the cliché. It wasn’t like she cared if he knew she had any sort of geek cred.
“Nice.” His shock faded back into amusement. “And you went out with him after that.”
“For a while.” She didn’t want to get into the details. She was over the guy, but there was no reason to divulge she’d dumped him because he was boring in bed.
“So, last guy you didn’t go out with—the most recent one you’ve turned down. What was the first thing he said to you?”
“Like I remember. Maybe, do those legs go all the way up?” The background noise had faded as the lunchtime crowd thinned, and she was grateful she didn’t have anywhere else to be.
“But you let the guy who asked you about your honeyed walls give you a lift home.”
And she realized what he was doing—trying to point out to her why it was wrong to try and change him for the sake of appearance. He seemed fond of the object lesson rather than the direct