Fast & Loose by Elizabeth Bevarly (best classic books to read txt) 📗

sweet did she suddenly feel. She sensed please wasn’t a word he used often, but he’d used it twice for her, and somehow, it sounded heartfelt. The fact that a man she’d thought so arrogant and ostentatious before could be so solicitous and diffident now made her do something she told herself she really should know better than to do.

She stopped walking and turned to look at him fully, having to crane her neck back to meet his gaze. Man, he was tall. His green eyes reminded her of the deepest part of the ocean, where it was dark, mysterious, and intense, and her heart hammered hard in her chest the same way it would had she just fallen overboard into them and was drowning in their depths.

She inhaled a deep breath, hoping the extra oxygen might slow her heart rate. Instead, it only filled her nose and lungs with the scent of him, that work-play, inside-outside, business-pleasure smell that made her heart beat faster still. “There’s a Heine Brothers Coffee shop a couple of blocks down Bardstown Road in the opposite direction we’re walking in now,” she said, blaming her breathlessness on the fast pace she’d been trying to keep as she walked. “I should be done at work by around seven. Meet me there at eight. We can talk then.”

“Eight o’clock,” he echoed. He jutted a thumb over his shoulder. “Coffee shop back that way. I’ll see you then.”

Yeah, he would, Lulu thought as she started walking forward again—alone this time. More to the point, though, she would see him. Looking gorgeous, sexy, and tempting. And way, way out of her league.

COLE TAPPED HIS FINGERS RESTLESSLY ON THE SIDE of his cardboard coffee cup and glanced at his watch again. Two minutes ’til eight. She wasn’t late, he told himself. So why was he so anxious?

He blamed it on the day he’d had. After he’d made the date with Lulu—ah, agreed to meet Lulu, he hastily corrected himself—this morning, he’d had to meet Susannah and a handful of local Thoroughbred owners and trainers for breakfast. Then he and Susannah had attended a meeting with some of the Kentucky Derby Festival officials to see about their participation in—or, at the very least, presence at—some of the local events. He’d spent the rest of the day at Churchill Downs working with Silk, Esteban, and Jason. He’d barely had time to wolf down bad fast food from a drive-thru before heading back to his rented neighborhood—whose traffic at rush hour, he’d discovered, was brutal—to shower and change into a fresh suit, this one as coordinated in shades of tobacco as the other had been blue.

In spite of all that, he’d arrived at the coffee shop ten minutes early and had immediately begun checking his watch. Like he did just now. Again. And this last time—like all the other times he’d checked his watch in the past nine and a quarter minutes—wasn’t because of the day he’d had, either, he made himself admit. It was because he was afraid Lulu wasn’t going to show.

Unbelievable, he thought. He was never afraid of something like that. People always wanted to see him. No one ever tried to avoid him. But Lulu Flannery had been uncomfortable around him since day one. Uncomfortable enough that she might very well stand him up. And then where would he be?

He still hadn’t reconciled the fact that she was the woman he’d come to think of as Delilah over the last week, still couldn’t imagine her doing or saying any of those things she’d said or written about doing in her journal. He still couldn’t imagine her wearing the brightly colored clothes or the glittery cosmetics. Hell, he couldn’t even imagine her executing any of the artwork he’d seen in the house. The more he’d thought about her, the more intrigued he’d become. And the more determined he’d been to prick the surface of Lulu and release her inner Delilah. He just wished he knew how to do that.

Before he had time to ponder that further, she was coming through the coffee shop entrance, the last of the evening sun streaming in behind her like some cosmic goddess whose celestial aura traveled perpetually in her wake. Cole smiled at the uncharacteristically whimsical thought. Or maybe it was just seeing Lulu again that made him do that.

She scanned the crowded room and found him quickly, then held up a finger in one of those I’ll-be-right-there gestures, and went to the counter to order something to drink. By the time she picked up her cup, a table by the window had opened up, so Cole grabbed it. When she joined him, she was blowing on her beverage, some kind of tea that was the color of weak beer. She was still dressed in her attire of that morning, something he’d thought reminiscent of a construction worker. But she’d added an accessory to the mix, a faded blue bandanna that was tied over her head, pirate style, something that only enhanced the deep blue of her eyes. The previously tidy overalls and tank top were grimy and stained, and her face was pink with the remnants of hot labor. Even that, though, couldn’t detract from her beauty.

Prettiness, he corrected himself. She was too wholesome and girl-next-door for beauty. Still, the look suited her somehow. Another puzzle, he thought, because it wouldn’t suit Delilah at all.

“Hey,” she said as she took her seat across from him. She sounded a little winded, though, as if she’d run from the bus stop. She took in his fresh suit and necktie and ran a hand self-consciously over an especially nasty streak of dirt on the bib of her overalls. Apologetically, she added, “I didn’t have time to stop by Bree’s and clean up. I’m sorry.”

She concluded the statement by lifting her hand to a stray curl that had escaped onto her forehead and tucking it back beneath the bandanna. It was a gesture that was totally