Doppelgangster - Laura Resnick [2]
Unfortunately, it turned out to be a bad night for me. Also for my love life. And things soon got worse. Before long, someone was trying to kill me. And Lopez.
So maybe he’d have been better off if he’d never asked me out a third time.
1
The good-looking man standing in my doorway wanted to have sex with me.
That much was apparent just from the way he was dressed. I wasn’t born yesterday. (In point of fact, I was born twenty-seven years ago.) A man who goes to that much trouble to look sexy has got definite plans in mind when he arrives at a woman’s door.
Lopez wore a sophisticated, well-cut black jacket and trousers with a black silk shirt. Open at the neck, the shirt exposed the smooth, dark golden skin of his throat. Even in my current state of panic and depression, I noticed how tempting this was. But only briefly.
The dim light in the hallway glinted off his straight black hair as he held out a single red rose to me.
I frowned. “What are you doing here?”
He looked a little surprised by this reception, but quickly regrouped. “We have a date tonight.”
“We do?”
“Yes, Esther.” The hand holding the rose dropped to his side. “Sunday night. Dinner. I wanted to . . .” Thick black lashes lowered over blue eyes as his gaze flickered over me. “You’re not exactly dressed for celebrating,” he noted.
“Celebrating?” I snapped. “Celebrating? Are you insane?”
He blinked. “Did something happen?”
“Ohmigod!” I suddenly realized what he was doing there. “We have a date tonight!”
He lifted one brow. “Do you want to close the door? I could knock on it, and we could start all over again.”
“You look nice,” I said, hoping to make up for my earlier behavior.
“Can I come in?” he asked patiently.
“Oh! Of course.” I moved aside and gestured for him to enter my home.
I live in a good apartment for a struggling actress in New York City. It’s a second-floor walk-up in the West Thirties, near Ninth Avenue. The neighborhood is about as elegant as the floor of a public bathroom, and the apartment is old and falling apart. But my place is spacious (by Manhattan standards) and rent-controlled, and I have it all to myself.
However, even with rent control, I was currently worried about how I’d keep a roof over my head.
I closed the door behind Lopez and turned to face him as he stood in my living room. I realized he looked better than nice, he looked traffic-stopping. I suddenly regretted that I was greeting him with messy, unwashed hair, wearing old sweatpants and a T-shirt from the Actor’s Studio, with a half-eaten pint of Ben and Jerry’s ice cream in my hand.
Prince Charming meets the Bag Lady.
Except that Detective Connor Lopez didn’t look innocuous enough to be Prince Charming. (He also didn’t look like a Connor.) Thirty-one years old, he had inherited exotic dark looks from his Cuban father and lively blue eyes from his Irish American mother. Average height, with a slim, athletic build, he looked like a man who’d want more than a chaste kiss in exchange for rescuing the sleeping princess. Especially dressed the way he was tonight.
I’m 5 foot 6 and in decent enough condition to do eight performances of a song-and-dance musical in skimpy clothes every week, but I’m not skinny enough to work in Hollywood. I’ve got brown eyes, brown shoulder-length hair, and fair skin. My looks are versatile, and I can play heroines onstage, but my face, like my figure, doesn’t meet Hollywood leading-lady standards. However, when he chose, Lopez had a way of looking at me that made me feel like a sexy movie-star vamp.
That wasn’t the look he was giving me right now, though.
Eyeing my not-ready-for-dinner appearance, he said, “I can wait while you change. Er, shower and change.”
“I can’t go out!” Seeing his expression, I said more calmly, “I’m sorry. I just can’t. Not tonight.”
Now he looked concerned. “Are you okay?”
“No.” My stomach roiled. “I think I’m going to be sick.