set, and dark eyes confident. “There could be clues like that littered throughout his e-mails. Did you save any of them? How long have you been talking to him?”
“About two months. But I didn’t save any of them. I do remember he said he lived in Tremont, but he never gave a street.”
“Well, what do you usually talk about?”
“Anything. Everything.” Sex. She was eternally grateful she’d just dumped the trash in her e-mail.
Laurel jammed her other arm through her coat sleeve and fished in her pink purse for her keys. She wanted to leave in the worst way, get away from Russ Evans and his reminder that she was kidding herself, that her life was never meant to be wild and exciting. She was destined to shrivel up like dried fruit, to fossilize into old age never touched by human hands.
Russ Evans just wanted to capture his man, and she felt the need to lock herself in her room and write bad poetry.
“Like what? Can you give me specifics?” Russ seemed oblivious to her discomfort, picking up the wrong coffee cup and idly taking a sip from it, obviously unaware it wasn’t his.
Seeing his mouth on her cup, right where her lips had just been, made her snap. She wanted to shock him, to make him really look at her and see more than just the deaf girl who fell for the sweet-talking con. She wanted him to see her as a woman. Just once, she wanted the gorgeous guy to look at her, really see her.
“Sex. We talked about sex.”
Russ choked on the frothy sweet coffee, feeling it rise into his nose and sting like hell. Somehow he hadn’t expected Laurel to say that. She seemed so sweet, so naive, so elevated, that he wouldn’t have imagined she would want to talk dirty. The image rose in his head of Laurel whispering in his ear what she’d like him to do to her, and with what, and Russ went hard.
That was professional.
He recovered himself. At least the part above the table. “I see. I don’t suppose there are any clues in that, then.”
“Not unless you want to know what his sex fantasies are.”
Oh, God, just shoot him instead. “I’ll pass.”
Now if she wanted to tell him her fantasies, he’d be willing to listen.
They both sat silent for a minute, Russ thinking, his mind a mix of perverted thoughts and puzzlement over what Dean was planning.
“Are you sure he’s a con man?” Laurel asked.
Because she looked wistful, Russ gave her a harsh answer. He did not want her to do something stupid like hook up with Dean after all. “Yes. Four women, that we know of, have had over a hundred thousand dollars stolen from them by Dean, before their beds were even cold. Got any money, Laurel?”
“Sort of. I have a small trust fund and even though I live with my mother, technically the house is mine.”
“Where?”
“Edgewater Drive.”
“Lakefront property.” Nice. Big money. Dean must be trying to step up in the world.
“Yes.” Laurel wrapped her scarf around her neck. “Well, there are other fish in the sea, I guess. Or online.”
His head snapped up. He didn’t like the sound of that. “Hold it. What do you mean?”
But she wasn’t looking at him. She was buttoning her coat. He tapped her arm impatiently. She looked up in surprise.
“Don’t meet men online, Laurel. It’s not safe. They could be anybody, say anything to you.”
“So could people you meet in person.”
Damn it, she had him there. But he just couldn’t let Laurel leave without understanding the importance of what he was saying. Letting her cruise the Internet alone talking to people would be like sending a bunny out to try and cross an eight-lane highway.
He kind of liked bunnies.
Especially this bunny. Laurel smiled at him. He sighed. He did not want to get involved with her and whatever she was looking for—God knows, he had enough to worry about keeping Sean out of trouble. He couldn’t be looking after this woman, too, but he had to extract some kind of promise from her that she’d be smart. He really didn’t want to read about her in a future police report.
“Look, there’s got to be a better way to meet people. At work, someone your friends know, church or something. There are plenty of nice guys out there looking for a relationship. Just be smart, safe, use protection.” And Jesus Christ, he sounded like a squeamish father handing his car keys off to his teenager.
Laurel’s jaw had locked, her cheeks pink. It was either from the heat since she had bundled up in her coat, or she was irritated with him.
“I don’t want a relationship. I just want to have sex.”
Oh, man, that wasn’t what he’d wanted her to say. “Laurel!” he blurted out, shocked in a way he hadn’t imagined was still possible.
“What? It’s true.” She looked down at the table, the lapels of her coat swallowing the sides of her face. “My whole life I’ve done what other people have wanted me to do. I’ve been good, polite, considerate, and most of the time I don’t mind that. I mean, I don’t want to be not nice or good or considerate, but for once I want to be selfish. Wild.”
Laurel didn’t look wild. She looked cute and fuzzy in her fleece, like the woman you’d take home to your mother, set up on a pedestal and admire from afar as an icon of female perfection. She didn’t look like a woman you should get down and dirty with.
Which didn’t explain his hard-on.
“Well,” he hedged. “How old are you? Twenty?”
Laurel watched his lips intently as he spoke. He thought it was pretty amazing that she knew what he was saying just from reading his lips. But it also meant a lot of times her eyes were on his mouth, not meeting his gaze. Which gave him the sneaky ability to watch her more closely than he could anyone else, without her thinking he was staring.
He liked looking at her, all pretty and pink, a woman very different from any he’d ever dated. Russ dated bold and brassy women because they were good at accepting what he had to offer at face value. They understood what it meant, having a little fun, and leaving it at that. He was committed to Sean first, his job second, and if a woman didn’t get that from day one, he wasn’t going to touch her with a ten-foot pole, no matter how hot her body was or how interesting she seemed.
At his question, her nose wrinkled in indignation. “I’m twenty-five! Almost twenty-six. And except for one year at college, I’ve never lived anywhere but with my parents.” Laurel’s voice was rising, and in his peripheral vision Russ could see the coffee clerk and a plain brunette glance their way. “I don’t date, I don’t do anything even remotely exciting, I don’t have sex.”
Whoa, hello, just grab a megaphone and announce that. “Uh, Laurel…your voice is getting kind of loud.”
“What? Oh, sorry.” She peered around him
