“You do now…”
“Erica. Erica Watson,” she says and immediately hiccups.
Too easy. This girl is a private detective’s wet dream, and a privacy nut’s worst nightmare. Drunk and giving out her full name. We’re going to have to have a talk about this.
Later.
Once we get home.
“Where do you live, Erica Watson?”
“I live off-campus, but my roommate is boinking her boyfriend so I can’t go there until…” Reaching her hand in her pocket she pulls out the phone and her thumb presses on the button a few times. “Oh yeah. The battery stopped.”
The first thing I notice, other than the fact that she forgot her phone wasn’t working in less than a minute is that it’s an Android and it’s cracked. The iPhone is ubiquitous in L.A., and who in their show-off mind like ninety-nine percent of this city would go out, for their twenty-first birthday no less, with a cracked screen? No one…except me.
It’s as if fate is looking down at me, shining a light on me. But I need to put distance between that body and me. Fast.
“We can go somewhere. Kill a couple hours.”
“You’re not a bad guy are you?”
“Do I look like a bad guy?”
“Isn’t that exactly what a bad guy would say?”
I laugh at the irony and she laughs at my reception to her joke.
“Let’s go,” she says, extending her arm like the elegant young woman she is. Wrapping my arm in hers I lead her into a waiting cab, announcing my address.
I told her we could go somewhere and kill a couple of hours.
It didn’t tell her where, and exactly what kind of killing we’d be doing.
2
Erica
Wow, is this guy gorgeous…and it’s not the beer goggles.
He’s the definition of tall, dark and handsome.
Bronzed skin? Check.
Dark hair with contrasting light eyes? Check.
Muscles and a sultry look warn me that when my back hits the mattress tonight it just might not be in my own bed from too much drinking, but instead in an entirely new place for an entirely different reason. Checkmate.
“Here we are,” he says as the cab rolls to a stop in front of what looks like a small residential building. “This isn’t another bar?”
“No it’s not,” he says, stuffing his hand in his pants, pulling out the fare and handing it over to the driver.
Stepping out of the cab his hand is quickly back inside, his palm right there for me to take. He wiggles his fingers, almost daring me to put my hand in his.
The reality of the situation sobers me up in an instant. It’s not like I had much to drink in the first place, but a single Long Island Iced tea for a first-time drinker should be considered cruel and unusual punishment, albeit self-inflicted.
This is my chance to tell the taxi to take off, to leave this guy behind. I can be home soon, sleep this off, and forget it ever happened.
My fingertips cascade over my bare knee, reminding me just how much skin I’m showing and what this guy might be thinking in regard to exactly that.