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“Have you eaten?” He was starving, and he couldn’t simply shut this conversation down. He hadn’t been able to convince her not to attend the gala, but he simply had to convince her not to use the info in the dossier. He had a better chance of doing that in person, or at least with a little time to plan the discussion.
“Are you inviting me to lunch?”
“Yes, because I’m so hungry I could eat my desk. We need to talk, and I don’t want you to think I’m threatening you. Maybe that would be more convincing if we were face-to-face.”
And maybe it was an excuse to see Lenny again, because as surprising as her call was, he wanted to be close enough to touch her again. If he could make one good thing come about in all of this, it would be ensuring Lenny wasn’t tangled up with Cookie Jar’s corruption.
“Maybe? You’re a peculiar kind of con man if you don’t know the power of your own salesmanship.”
He groaned. Bad enough she thought he was a terrible person, now she thought he was inept. “Everything with you is upside down.”
She might’ve laughed at that. She named a place, Excuse My French on Orchard Street, and half an hour later he was sitting across from her in the near-empty bar having rehearsed what he needed to say and nearly forgetting it all when she aimed an arched eyebrow at him.
“I thought you might feel at home here,” she said.
It wasn’t one of those Lower East Side cool spots full of ad agency execs and fashion types. The barman was wearing a striped button-down, not a too-tight white T-shirt, and with a paunch, he likely didn’t moonlight as an underwear model.
She waved a hand. “Fake French impressionist paintings, fake book wallpaper.”
“Very funny.” He couldn’t help but smile.
“Dim lighting suitable for incognito assignations.”
“I’m not a spy.”
“No, but you do research like one.”
“We’re professionals.”
Lenny shuddered. “The less I know the better. Why can’t I use your information?”
“It would be like pulling thread on a sweater. You think you can snap it off and prevent any damage, but sometimes you just make the hole bigger. We don’t know who else at Heroes League is on Cookie Jar’s payroll. It’s not safe for you to use this data. It could alert him to having been investigated and make you a person of interest. On a more mundane level, they’re simply going to lie to you, anyway. Tell you what you need to hear, because that’s how this game works.”
She put both elbows on the table, clasped her hands, and rested her chin on them. “The more time I spend with you, the more I’m forced to wonder how much of life is rigged against me. You’re not good for my well-being, Halsey Sherwood.”
“I wish you knew how sorry I was about that.” But then she’d know the heaviness in his chest.
“That’s okay. I’m going to order the most expensive thing on the menu and because for all your sins you’re a gentleman, you’ll offer to pay.”
She ordered the goat cheese and fig tartine, not the most expensive thing on the menu. He had the Cajun chicken, and they shared a bottle of wine, and of course he’d pay; he’d invited her, after all. But between their order and their meals arriving, they literally talked about the weather, hurricanes, floods, earthquakes, and the melting polar caps because it was too awkward to talk about anything else.
Lenny wore a gray dress with a tie at the waist and sleeves that were wide at her wrists and fell down her arms when she lifted them. Her legs were encased in a pair of knee-length boots. Her hair was down about her shoulders, her lips were a soft natural color, and gold hoops bobbed at her ears.
He had no need to pay such close attention to what she was wearing, but it was a secret pleasure to catalogue her: the cheeky flip at the ends of her hair, the side part lined up with her pupil, and the way she tucked the heavier length behind her ear to stop it falling over her eyes. The watch with the enormous face, the chunky ring on the middle finger of her left hand, the fan of her thick eyelashes, the mobile arch of her brows. One tiny scar high on her cheekbone. He wanted to reach across and brush his finger over the indentation, only visible when she angled her head a certain way, and ask how it happened.
He took in her straight back and her deliberate movements. She didn’t fidget or worry the napkin or shift in her chair. She didn’t avoid his eye contact. Even though she knew he was studying her, she didn’t blush or become self-conscious as she ate. She chatted to their waitress as she removed their plates with an easy social confidence and all the intelligence to know how to use it to her advantage. It was so goddamn sexy. He admired her for being direct and driven, for being ambitious and willing to work hard.
In another life, where she didn’t define herself as a good person, and he wasn’t most people’s idea of a criminal, he’d have enjoyed having Lenny as a friend. He liked arguing with her. He’d have adored having her as a lover.
In this life she said, “Obviously I can’t give any more money to the Heroes League. What can I do about the money that was misused?”
“How open to suggestion are you?”
“Oh”—she rolled her eyes—“for a nanosecond, I forgot you played by different rules. If I can’t use your information, I can’t make a complaint. That’s incredibly frustrating.”
“I can imagine.”
“Your imagination is far more devious than that.” That line came with an arched brow, and the shock of recognizing his imagination was having fun picturing Lenny in his bed. That was hardly devious; it simply couldn’t be helped.
