“Morning.”
She looked up and saw Dana standing beside the table.
“Hi. Cruz, you remember my friend Dana.”
He rose and shook her hand. “Deputy.”
Dana grinned. “Admit it. The uniform intimidates you.”
“Not even close.” He looked relaxed as he spoke. “You finish your investigation of me yet?”
“What makes you think I bothered?” Dana asked.
“Lexi’s your friend, you don’t know me. You have motive and means.”
Dana shrugged. “I know what I need to know.” She pulled up an extra chair and sat down. Cruz settled back in his seat.
Lexi looked between them. “Are you going to arm wrestle for dominance?”
“I know who would win,” Dana said.
“Me, too.” Cruz winked at Lexi. “But I’d let her think it was her, until the end.”
“Keep telling yourself that.” Dana turned to Lexi. “I read about your dad. What’s up with that?”
“I don’t know.”
“Jed may not be my favorite person on the planet, but he wouldn’t do anything illegal. Not that obvious anyway. It’s strange.”
“We were just talking about that. I want to talk to my dad, but I doubt he’d be willing to have a conversation right now.” Jed would only see her as a distraction.
“It’ll get figured out,” Dana said as she stood. “Try not to worry.” She patted her gun, then looked at Cruz. “Don’t make me have to use this.”
“You’re not subtle.”
“I know. Part of my charm. Bye.”
Cruz watched her go. “Interesting woman.”
“Yes, she is. And a good friend. If you know any great guys, I’d love to fix her up with someone.”
Cruz looked uncomfortable. “Guys don’t do that. Fix up people. It always ends badly.”
“Dana dates mild-mannered men she can push around and the relationships always end when she gets bored. She needs a challenge.”
“Let her get her own guy.”
“Chicken.”
“I’m comfortable admitting I don’t want to be responsible for fixing up your best friend. Success is about knowing one’s strengths and weaknesses.”
She grinned. “Dana appears to be one of yours.”
“Not in the way you are.”
Lexi did her best not to blush. “Yes, well, that’s um…Let’s change the subject.”
“Why?”
“People are eating breakfast.”
“So?”
“We can’t talk about that.”
He leaned toward her. “Why not? Are you embarrassed about what we do in bed?”
“No. Of course not.” She was far more sophisticated than that. Sort of. “It’s just…I don’t usually…It’s fine.”
“Lexi?”
She glanced around to make sure no one was hovering, then lowered her voice. “That first time, ten years ago? You couldn’t get away fast enough. You thought it was terrible.”
He looked confused. “I thought it was great and wanted to come back for more, right up until I realized it was your first time. I wasn’t expecting that. It implied more responsibility than I wanted to take on.”
Responsibility? “I was expecting you to have sex with me, not pay for my college education. I was feeling all warm and fuzzy and you were scrambling for the door.”
She still remembered the humiliation of that morning. Cruz’s look of panic was burned into her brain.
“You recovered fast enough,” he told her. “You were very clear that I wasn’t anyone you wanted to be with.”
“After you rejected me,” she snapped. “I was nineteen years old, I just had sex for the first time and the guy in question was leaving skid marks on the floor in his effort to get away from me. I said what I had to say to protect myself.”
Cruz touched her hand. “I’m sorry. I didn’t get that. I wanted to see you again, Lexi. Who wouldn’t? But you scared the hell out of me. You were out of my league and we both knew it.”
Back then, she thought. Now-not so much.
“I was covering my ass,” he continued. He stared into her eyes, as if determined to let her see the truth. “I couldn’t be what you needed and I didn’t want to let you down. So I left.”
Had that been it? An overreaction on both their parts?
She stared at the table. “I thought I was bad in bed,” she whispered. “I thought that’s what was wrong, so I was scared to sleep with anyone else. When I finally did, I couldn’t relax. It was horrible. Everyone said I was cold and inhibited.”
“Bullshit.”
Involuntarily, she looked up. Cruz looked more annoyed than sympathetic.
“I can’t believe guys fed you that line just because they didn’t know what to do. There’s nothing wrong with you.”
She blinked at him. “Excuse me?”
“You’re not cold. You’re sexy and responsive and a hell of a ride.”
She wanted to ask him to say the words again so she could bask in the warm, squishy feelings they generated.
“Really?” she asked, her voice a squeak.
He gave her a look that spoke of male need so explicitly, she wanted to rip off her clothes and do it right there on the calico-covered table. “Yeah.”
“But I wasn’t like that with them. I couldn’t let go. I couldn’t stop thinking.”
“Their problem, not yours.”
“It felt like mine.”
He looked into her eyes. “Was Andrew one of them?”
This time she did blush. She also straightened, so she could lean back in her chair. If there had been a way to pull down a physical barrier, she would have done it.
She didn’t want to talk about him, about what had happened. She didn’t want to have to think about it. But Cruz wasn’t the type to be put off.
“How do you know about Andrew?” she asked.
“Jed mentioned him. At the cocktail party. He said he wanted you to marry him, but you refused and that you were right.”
Everyone had a past, she reminded herself. If only she could have a good one. One that was exciting and involved pirates or space creatures. But no-she’d taken a more traditional route, falling for a total jerk who nearly managed to convince her he was an actual person.
“I met Andrew about three years ago, through friends. He was in finance. We seemed to have similar backgrounds and interests. He was charming and friendly and very interested in me. He made it clear our relationship was serious for him, that he wasn’t playing around.”
“He was.” Cruz hadn’t asked a question.
Lexi nodded. “Or at least playing me. He’d gone to the prep school he claimed and to Yale, but on scholarship. I’m not saying that’s bad. The problem is he implied he came from money. He lied about his parents, his background. When I found out and confronted him, he said it was because he was afraid I would think less of him.”
“Did you?”
“Not for growing up like a regular person, but I didn’t like that he lied. I started seeing more things that made
