of broken plastic, bent metal, and a dangling circuit board.
Fair enough. There had been plenty of times in Jane’s life when she hadn’t wanted to be found.
This wasn’t one of them.
She sure as heck hadn’t wanted to be found the morning she’d met him at Duffy’s in her pretty summer skirt. She’d been a princess that morning, Princess Jane with little black bows around the waistband of her skirt and those gorgeous pink-and-white striped leggings. That she’d worn the outfit with her old tennis shoes hadn’t even mattered once she’d sat down …
Nervous, but trying not to show it, Jane sat perfectly still with her hands folded in her lap while J.T. ordered croissants, scrambled eggs and bacon, and fresh berries and cream, real cream, for their breakfast. For a minute, she wasn’t sure what she was more excited about, the food or him. Her confusion didn’t last long, not past the grin he gave her when he looked up from the menu.
“And a mocha latte?”
Geez, he was beautiful. The thrill of it went straight through her, right down her middle.
“Sure,” she said. She loved mocha lattes, and she was damned afraid she was going to end up loving him. She needed someone strong in her life, someone she could count on, someone stable, and he was like a rock, solid from the get-go. But in her experience, what she needed and what she got were usually two different things.
Breakfast, though, she could count on, and the more she ate and the more lattes she drank, the more comfortable she got and the more she talked about this and that and the other.
He listened to it all, her whole sad little story. Light-fingered mother who’d gotten sent up, a sweet woman with a penchant for bad company who now lived in a small town in southern Wyoming, absent father, family somewhere, maybe Kansas, maybe not, her crew of eight kids she seemed to spend her life trying to feed and keep out of Lieutenant Loretta’s clutches, and Sandman.
“Tell me about him,” he asked. “About Sandman.”
Sandman, hell. What could she say about a best friend she didn’t seem to have much in common with anymore. They used to be inseparable, and lately she’d found herself avoiding him.
“He’s tall, skinny, a good scrounger.” One of the best, for what it was worth. Surprisingly, lately, that hadn’t been as much as she’d always thought.
“Is he your boyfriend?”
“No.” She shook her head. No way. “We’ve been through a lot of hard times together, that’s all, a lot of years. Our moms were friends. He’s got a girl. They talk about getting married.”
“What about you?” He seemed genuinely curious, leaning a little closer over the table, holding her gaze. “Do you have someone you think about marrying?”
Oh, yeah—she felt a sigh building in her chest and squelched it.
“No.” She shifted her attention from him to her plate. “No. I keep thinking …” Her voice trailed off.
“Thinking what?”
“Keep thinking there has to be something more.” She picked up her croissant, then put it back down and met his gaze. “I’m not stupid, J.T. I can see what’s going on around me, and I see people with real jobs, and bags of groceries, and cars that work. It’s right there in front of me every day, like right here in Duffy’s, the people at all these tables, but I can’t seem to see how to get from where I’m at to where they are.”
Sandman thought that was crazy talk. He had everything all figured out. They were the good guys, the Robin Hoods, the Robin Rulz, taking from the rich to give to the poor, which was mainly themselves.
But J. T. Chronopolous was no Sandman. Instead of dismissing her, he understood.
“I remember thinking the same thing once when I was stealing a BMW.”
“A Beemer?” Hell, she’d never stolen anything as big as a car, let alone a BMW.
“Yeah.” He hunkered in closer. “I was over by the Denver Country Club, trying to jack this guy’s 535i in a blizzard, and I was thinking what in the hell was I doing freezing my butt off trying to steal some guy’s car, when he was all cozy inside this big damn house I was looking at. And I was thinking I’d rather be him than me right about then. I’d rather be paying for the Beemer and getting it stolen and collecting on the insurance than outside being the schmuck stealing it for pennies on the dollar.”