The compliment sounded forced to him, but she didn’t seem to mind. She batted her droopy eyelids at him. It was a look he hadn’t seen in a long time, but he knew what it meant.
“You want to hang out?” he asked. “Maybe get some food? Are you hungry?”
She rolled her eyes. “I’m starving. And it’s too loud in here. You want to go?”
He nodded and held out a hand to steady her as she slid off her barstool and landed unsteadily on her heels.
Declan set his half-finished drink on the bar and led Lyndsey through the crowd outside. His ears rang in the relative silence.
“Wow, it was loud in there.” His phone dinged and he pulled it from his pocket. It was a text from Charlotte.
It said, That took all of 2 minutes followed by a smiley face blowing heart kisses. He smiled.
“Who’s that?” asked Lyndsey.
Declan shrugged. “My buddy letting me know he won’t be coming back for me.”
“He scored, huh?” said Lyndsey, fishing in her clutch. She pulled out a lipstick, reapplied, and then pulled out her keys. “I have a car.”
Oh hell no. Getting into a car with Lyndsey would be the most dangerous thing he’d ever done and he’d been in wars.
She wandered towards the parking lot and he followed to the back of a small teal Miata. Declan gaped at it, wondering if he could even fit inside.
She was going to drive that deathtrap home?
“That is a tiny car.”
“Yep. It was my mother’s.”
“Maybe I should drive?” he suggested. “I mean if you don’t mind. I didn’t really have much to drink.”
Lyndsey flashed him an open-mouth smile. “I had a lot to drink.”
No. Really?
“You don’t want to wrap this thing around a tree.”
She held out the keys and he took them.
That was easy.
“Where do you want to go? What’s open?”
She giggled. “My other option was the barn truck and that’s just not sexy,” she said, ignoring his questions, her mind still stuck on her car.
“Barn?”
“That’s where I live. Above a barn. I work with horses.”
“That sounds cool.”
She nodded. “But I won’t be living there much longer.”
“No? Why not?” He helped her into the passenger side and then folded himself into the driver seat, pushing it as far back as it would go, which wasn’t far.
Lyndsey’s head lolled towards him and she grinned dopily.
“Did you ask me something?”
“Why won’t you be living over the barn anymore?”
“Oh. Because I’m rich now.”
“You don’t say. Did you win the lottery?”
“In a way. Come on, let’s go!”
He wanted to encourage her to talk about her inheritance, but she seemed insistent they leave. Hopefully, the breeze created by the convertible would wake her up long enough for him to get more information out of her.
“So where to, m’lady?” he asked, putting the key in the ignition.
She stared at him, the whites of her eyes glowing in the parking lot light. “You’re really handsome.”
“Thank you. You too. I mean pretty.”
She scrunched herself closer to him and he smelled the booze on her breath. Some sort of coconut rum, if he had to guess. She put out her hand and rubbed his chest. His hand jumped off the wheel to block her paw before she felt the tiny recorder taped between his pecs. Between the petting and her coconut rum breath, he felt as if he were being groped by a handsy tropical octopus.
“Oh my god, feel your chest,” she mumbled. “It’s like rock.”
Blocked from reaching the opposite side of him, her hand swept down his stomach to the inside of his thigh.
“Oop.” He jumped and reached to catch her wrist. “Whoa.” He gently eased her back to her side of the car. “You’re going to make it impossible to drive,” he said as friskily as possible. She flopped back and slapped her hand on his knee.
“Take me home, James!” she shouted, raising her other hand before letting it fall to her lap.
“Home? I thought you were hungry. Want to hit a diner?”
She scowled. “There’s no place open now, silly. You like eggs?”
Declan looked at his watch. It was getting close to one a.m. She was probably right.
“Huh? Sure.”
“I’ll make you eggs if you take me home.”
He nodded. “Okay. Deal. Where do you live?”
“You know that big house out on route two-sixteen with all the horse pastures?”
Declan nodded. He did, because Charlotte had prepped him for this very moment. At the time, he hadn’t thought for a second Lyndsey would be asking him home, but now he was glad he’d paid attention.
“Sure. Didn’t someone just die there? It was in the news.”
“Kimber Miller.”
“Yeah, that’s it,” said Declan pulling from the lot. “Some rich guy. You’re related to him?”
“He was my dad.”
“Really?”
She giggled and nodded in large exaggerated sweeps as he pulled onto the road and headed for her home.
“I’m sorry to hear that.”
She shrugged. “It happens.”
“How did he die?”
Lyndsey sniffed and looked out the passenger window. “He fell and hit his head.”
Something about her tone made it feel as if the conversation had ended, and Declan’s mind raced for a way to keep her talking about Miller’s death.
He heard a heavy breath and glanced over in time to see Lyndsey’s head drop forward. She took another loud inhalation.
Asleep. He wasn’t going to learn much with her in that state.
Declan decided he wasn’t great at covert missions. He preferred to be more direct.
He saw the mansion in the distance and pulled on to the crunchy stone drive.
Did she tell me she lived over the barn? He was starting to get confused between the things Charlotte told him and the things Lyndsey had shared.
I’m pretty sure she told
