Trust Me on This - Jennifer Crusie [11]
“Aw, now, really.” He slid onto the bar seat next to her and smiled at her like Walter when she picked up the treat can. Gee, gosh, ma’am. “I bet that smile gets you just about anything you want. Like dinner. It sure would get you dinner with me tonight.”
The bartender had drifted back. Dennie caught her grinning and fought the urge to grin back. “No, thank you. As I mentioned to you earlier, you have nothing I want. I would like to be alone now, please.” Dennie tried to turn her back on him.
“Pretty lady like you, alone? Aw, c’mon.” He ducked his head in front of her, goofily confident.
Dennie reassessed her position on tension as she clenched her teeth. “No, never, not in this lifetime, absolutely not,” she said, enunciating each word clearly, and the bartender bit her lip.
His eyes widened slightly, and he drew back. “Gee, usually that smile bit is a great line for me.” He blinked at her. “But, hey, I’m adaptable. Okay. Your smile is really bad.”
Dennie swung around on her stool to walk away from him before she killed him.
“And you’re ugly too.”
Dennie froze, and the bartender blinked.
“How am I doing?” the doofus asked, his puppy smile still in place. “Better?”
Dennie shook her head, dumbstruck by his cheerfulness. “I’m ugly?”
He nodded, his head bobbing like a fishing float. “You probably walk funny too. That’s why I asked you to dinner. At least you’d be sitting down.”
Dennie folded her arms. “My smile is bad, I’m ugly, and I walk funny.”
He nodded again. “That’s about it. So how about dinner?”
This guy made Walter look like Cary Grant. “As I said, not in this lifetime,” Dennie said, and turned to walk out the door.
“Gee, and my aunt Trella seemed to like you so much.”
Dennie swung back around to him. “Trella is your aunt?”
“Well, not really.” He leaned back on the bar, looking dumb as dirt. “She’s a friend of my aunt Victoria’s.”
“Victoria,” Dennie said.
“Yep.”
“Victoria’s your aunt.” Dennie came back to the bar and sat down, thinking fast. Not even Janice Meredith could have her arrested for talking to Victoria while she dated her nephew. She looked at him again, and he smiled, all teeth. Dear God.
Pretend he’s Walter, she told herself. All she had to do was be sweet to this twit, meet his aunt, be nice to the aunt, and she’d be in. She could do it. He wasn’t bad looking or lecherous or evil, he was just dumb as a rock, which in this case was a plus. Maybe this was Fate apologizing. Dennie smiled at the twit. “I’d love to have dinner with you.”
“Because of my aunt?” He looked confused. “Gee, I don’t know.”
Great, now he was playing hard to get. “Okay, then,” Dennie said. “You’re ugly.”
His eyes locked on hers, and he grinned suddenly, and she was stunned. Humor leaped in his eyes, and a quick, sharp intelligence that disappeared as quickly as it came, replaced his blank childlike stare. Hello, she thought. What’s this?
He aimed his Walter grin at her. “Well, if you’re going to sweet-talk me, I’ll consider it.” He held out his hand. “I’m Alec Prentice.”
She took it. “Dennie Banks.” She looked in his eyes and saw nothing but blank affability. You’re up to something, sonny, she thought, but all she said was, “I’ll meet you here at seven, Alec Prentice.”
“All right, Dennie Banks.” Alec ducked his head again, doofus style. “You want dinner in the restaurant or in my room?”
“The restaurant,” Dennie said. “You’re not that ugly.”
She dropped his hand and walked out of the bar, knowing he was watching.
For this, she’d left Walter. You’d better be worth it, Alec Prentice, she thought. You’d better come across with everything I need.
Then she went upstairs and changed into something Walter wouldn’t have approved of.
“She’s in it with him,” Alec told Harry on the phone fifteen minutes later, trying not to gloat that he’d been right again and feeling vaguely depressed that he was.
“You found out already?”
“I tried to pick her up but