Sweet Liar Read online

  “I guess you got better things to do than sit here with the likes of me.” His voice was a self-pitying whine. “Maybe you got somebody at home waiting for you.” The implication was that Nelson didn’t have anyone and that’s why he was so unhappy and had to drink and make those marks shooting whatever it was into the inside of his arm.

  “Yeah, I got somebody,” Mike said, and thought of Samantha, of the pure cleanliness of her, and right now he very much wanted to be at home with her. Jeanne should be finished with her apartment by now, and Mike wanted to show it to Sam, to see her face when she saw it. Maybe, when she saw the rooms, she’d be so happy that she’d turn to him, throw her arms around him, he’d kiss her, then—

  Nelson was snapping his fingers in front of Mike’s face. “You leavin’ me, boy? My God, but I think she’s comin’ this way. You gotta see her. Real Classy. And a body like I’ve never seen before.”

  At one time Mike might have been interested in seeing this woman, at least in looking, if in nothing else, but he wasn’t interested in anything that patronized this dive.

  “One of you boys have a light?” came a deep, sultry voice from Mike’s left. With a grimace, he picked up a book of matches from the ashtray, struck one, and turned to light the woman’s cigarette.

  What he saw made him freeze. Samantha, sweet, perfect, innocent little Samantha, was dressed in a red-sequined tank top that was cut so low in the front that he could see nearly all of her breasts, and she wore a tight red skirt that, as far as he could tell, covered nothing whatsoever. All eight or so feet of her legs were showing beneath the “skirt.”

  When she bent forward, he could see the deep, exquisite cleavage made by her large, round, beautiful breasts—the same cleavage that all the bums in this place could see. Samantha put her hand over Mike’s to hold the tip of the cigarette to the match flame. Lighting it, she stood, her hips thrust out, and looked down at him, fluttering her lashes a bit. “Mind if I sit down?”

  Too intent on gawking at her to pay attention to the flame, Mike dropped the match when it burned down to his fingertips.

  “Sit by me, baby,” Nelson said eagerly. “You’re new in here, aren’t you? Who you work for?”

  Holding the cigarette between her two fingers, her elbow resting on her hip, Samantha looked down at Mike. “You going to invite me to sit down or not?”

  “I’m going to kill you,” he said under his breath, but he moved over on the seat so she could sit by him.

  When she was seated she tried to take a draw on the cigarette, but since she’d never smoked in her life, she gave a couple of very unseductresslike coughs.

  Angrily, Mike took the cigarette from her. “Just what do you think you’re playing at?” He started to stub the cigarette out in the ashtray, but on second thought, he put it to his lips and took a very deep draw, a draw that burned the cigarette halfway down to his lips.

  “Mike, I didn’t know you smoked.”

  “I don’t,” he said tightly, letting out the smoke slowly. “I quit two years ago, but then there’s a lot you don’t know about me. A few more weeks around you and I may take up drinking.”

  “Ditto,” she said, looking him in the eyes.

  “Mike,” Nelson said, “looks like you two know each other. You wanta introduce me or you gonna keep her all night? You can’t keep her all night, can you?”

  “You hear that, Samantha? Nelson thinks you’re a prostitute.”

  Leaning toward Mike, she let her lips come near his. “And what do you think I am?” she practically purred.

  “All show,” he said, drinking the last of his beer. “Let’s get out of here.”

  Samantha was not going to leave yet. If she went home with him now, nothing would have changed. For whatever reason he was angry at her, he was still angry. Signaling the waitress to come to the table, she ordered a double shot of tequila gold. “And a quartered lime and a Dos Equis if you have it, and do you have some salsa and chips?”

  Before Mike could say another word, a man came to the table and asked Samantha to dance with him. “I’d love to,” she said, starting to get up, but Mike put his hand on her shoulder, holding her on the seat. “I guess not,” Samantha said to the man apologetically.

  When her drinks came, she turned to Nelson. “So what do you know about my grandmother? I assume you are Nelson, aren’t you?” Well aware of Mike’s eyes on her, Samantha knew that he realized she had to have looked inside his wallet to have seen the note.

  “Not as much as I’d like to know about you, baby,” Nelson answered in what was meant to be a provocative manner.

  Mike was still looking at Samantha, waiting for her to turn to him, but she didn’t. Instead, with all the ostentation, all the sexiness she could manage, she made a fist of her left hand, slowly licked the web of it, poured salt on the wet place, sensually licked the salt away, then lustily tossed back the tequila in one shot, after which she juicily bit into a lime wedge.

  “Lord help us,” Nelson whispered, but Mike didn’t say a word, just kept looking at her profile.

  Picking up a chip, she reached out to the bowl of salsa.

  “Careful of that!” Nelson warned. “Paddy’s stuff is lava.”

  Samantha scooped a lot of the salsa on the chip and ate it while Nelson watched in awe. “In Santa Fe we’d feed this to the babies,” she drawled as she drank some of the dark brown Mexican beer. “Let me give you some advice, Nelson. If someone in Santa Fe warns you that something is hot, be careful, but if a New Yorker says it’s hot, laugh.”

  “That’s enough,” Mike said, grabbing her upper arm and pulling her out of the bench. Leading her onto the dance floor, he surrounded her in his arms and began a slow dance. “What are you trying to do? Out-macho the guys? If that’s your goal, you’ve done it.”

  Rubbing her hips against his, a very serious look on her rather heavily made up face, Samantha said, “Do you think Nelson is the type of person who really cares about the South American rain forests?”

  “What’s wrong with you? And who gave you that getup you have on?”

  “Don’t you like it?”

  “Not on you.”

  “Want to take it off?”

  Holding her at arm’s length, he looked into her eyes “How much have you had to drink?”

  “Not much.” She put her head back down on his shoulder. “Mike, why have you been angry at me today?”

  Her words made him soften, or maybe it was the feel of her in his arms, with her hips moving with his, her breasts rubbing against his chest, or maybe it was the sight of her in this outfit that wouldn’t have adequately covered a three-year-old, but he couldn’t remember why he’d been angry at her. “Ahhh, sweetheart.”

  She seemed to melt into him further. “You haven’t called me anything but Samantha all day. No Sam-Sam or anything else.”

  “You’re killing me, you know that? You’re driving me insane. I think we ought to talk about where we stand with each other.”

  “Isn’t that what the female is supposed to say? Then you’re supposed to say that you don’t want to commit, then I say—”

  “Why don’t you shut up?” He was becoming involved in the slow undulations of the dance now, his hands moving up and down her back, fingers edging down over her buttocks. For all that either of them were aware of the other people in the bar, they may as well have been alone.

  “Do you have any idea how much I want you?”

  “I feel some of it right now.”

  “Don’t laugh at me, Samantha.”

  “Oh, Mike, I’m sorry, it’s just that…”

  “What?” he said rather sharply. “What is it? Tell me!”

  Pulling away from him, she went back to the table, downed the last of her beer, and turned to leave. It had been a mistake dressing up like a tart and trying to entice Mike, because under the sexy clothes, she was still plain ol’ Samantha Elliot, not a femme fatale. She may have been able to turn herself into a chanteuse while wearing Maxie