Shadows At Sunset - Anne Stuart [49]
“Aren’t you going to stop me?” she asked him. “Lecture me?”
“If you want.”
“What if I want you to drink with me?”
He shook his head. “Now that I won’t do. Do you want to drink it, Rachel-Ann? Or do you want to leave this place?”
There was something odd about the way he said her name. Something familiar about it. She picked up the margarita, her eyes meeting his defiantly.
His eyes looked familiar, too, in a face that was weary, lined and oddly appealing. He looked like a man. She usually didn’t bother with men, just good-looking boys.
“Who are you?” she asked, still holding the salt-encrusted glass. “I know you, don’t I?”
“Do you?”
“Stop answering my questions with questions. You’re like some damned therapist. I must have run into you in my drinking days,” she said. “Or drugs. Were you also into drugs?”
“Yes.”
“But now you’re clean and sober,” she mocked him. “We probably slept together and I’ve forgotten all about it.”
He didn’t say anything, just kept looking at her out of those enigmatic dark eyes.
“Well, did we?” she demanded.
“What do you think?”
She took a deep breath, oddly shaken. She’d had a nagging sense of familiarity bothering her for days, and it seemed to reach out and touch everyone she ran into, including Coltrane. Maybe it was simply this forgotten face from the past that had triggered it.
“Well, Rico,” she said defiantly, “aren’t you going to take this drink out of my hand?”
He shook his head. “You need to put it down yourself, chica. It has to be your decision.”
Chica. No one had called her that in years, at least that she could remember. Consuelo used to called her that when she fed her chocolate chip cookies and milk.
She set the drink down, untouched. “Okay,” she said with a crooked smile. “My decision. Let’s blow this pop stand and we can relive old times. Your place or mine?”
She’d managed to startle him, a good thing. “It’s up to you,” he said finally.
She rose, tossing the car keys in front of him. “Your place,” she said. “You can drive.” And she walked out of the night club, certain he was following her.
11
Rico reached over and fastened her seat belt, then slid the driver’s seat back to accommodate his longer legs. Rachel-Ann hadn’t realized he was so tall. She leaned her head back and closed her eyes. She didn’t want to think about it. It didn’t matter. She had someone to keep the darkness away, she didn’t have to go back to La Casa and dodge the ghosts, and she might make it through one more day of sobriety. All good things, right?
So why was she closing her eyes, hiding from him as if he were the threat?
He drove smoothly, but she didn’t want to see where they were going. She knew it was a mistake—she didn’t have the best sense of direction, and when she left later she might have a hard time finding her way home.
It didn’t matter. The longer she spent driving the mean streets of East L.A. the longer it would take to get home.
Of course, she had no idea whether they were heading into East L.A. or not. It was probably just latent prejudice on her part, to assume that because the man she’d picked up was Hispanic that he’d live in East L.A. For all she knew they’d end up in a condo in Century City.
She opened her eyes a tiny bit, to glance at him in the reflected light of the dashboard and the city lights. Good profile. A strong nose, high forehead, silky black hair in a widow’s peak. Nice mouth, as well. If she tried very hard maybe she could convince herself he was dangerous. Going off with a stranger wasn’t half as effective if the stranger was safe.
“What are you thinking?” He must have realized she was watching him, but he kept his gaze on the crowded streets, driving with a casual self-assurance in the insanity of L.A. traffic.
“You’re a good driver,” she said.
“It’s a family trait. My father was a chauffeur.”
“And what do you do? Besides go to AA meetings and pick up women.”
“I don’t make a habit of picking up women,” he said calmly, avoiding a Lexus bent