To Die For (Page 25)

"Okay, here it is," I said steadily, still focusing on what was outside rather than in the truck with me. "How can I trust you not to hurt me again? You cut and ran instead of telling me what the problem was, instead of working on it or giving me a chance to work on it. My marriage failed because my husband, instead of telling me something was wrong and working with me to fix it, started running around on me. So I’m not real big on trying to build relationships with people who aren’t willing to put some effort into maintaining it and repairing the breakdowns. You do that for a car, right? So my standard is, a man has to care as much about me as he does about his car. You failed."

He was silent as he absorbed all of that. I expected him to start arguing, explaining how the situation looked from his side of the fence, but he didn’t. "So it’s a trust thing," he finally said. "Good. That’s something I can work with." He slanted a hard look at me. "That means you’ll be seeing a lot of me. I can’t earn your trust back if I’m not around. So from now on, we’re together. Got it?"

I blinked. Somehow I hadn’t foreseen he would take a lack of trust and make it seem as if that meant I had to be in a relationship with him so he could re-earn my trust. I’m telling you, the man is diabolical.

"You’ve had a brain fart," I pointed out as kindly as possible. "Not trusting you means I don’t want to be with you."

He snorted. "Yeah, right. That’s why we tear each other’s clothes off every time we get within touching distance."

"That’s a chemical imbalance, nothing more. A good multivitamin will take care of that."

"We’ll talk about it over dinner. Where do you want to eat?"

That’s right, distract me with food. If I hadn’t been so hungry, his ploy would never have worked. "Someplace with champion air-conditioning where I can sit down and some nice person will bring me a margarita."

"That works for me," he said.

Wrightsville Beach is actually on an island, so we drove across the bridge to Wilmington, where, in short order, he was escorting me into a crowded Mexican restaurant where the air-conditioning was cranked up on high and the menu boasted a huge margarita. I don’t know how he knew about the restaurant unless he’d been to Wilmington before, which I guess isn’t that much of a stretch. People go to beaches the way lemmings do whatever it is that lemmings do. There are a lot of beaches in North Carolina, but he’d probably been from one end of the coast to the other back in his hell-raising, college-ball-playing days. I’d been a cheerleader, and I certainly had hit almost every beach in the southeast, from North Carolina down to the Florida Keys and back up the Gulf Coast.

A young Hispanic man brought our menus and waited to take our drink orders. Wyatt ordered a beer for himself and a frozen Cuervo Gold margarita for me. I didn’t know what Cuervo Gold was, and I didn’t care. I assumed it was a special kind of tequila, but it could have been regular tequila, for all I knew about it.

The glass they brought it in wasn’t a glass. It was a vase. This thing was huge. It wasn’t actually a vase, but I wouldn’t call it a glass, either. It was more like a gigantic clear bowl perched on a skinny pedestal.

"Uh-oh," Wyatt said.

I ignored him and gripped my margarita with both hands, which I needed to lift it. The huge bowl of the glass was frosty, and salt sparkled around the rim. Two slices of lime were perched on top, and a bright red plastic straw provided access to the contents.

"We’d better order," he said.

I sucked on the straw and downed a sizable gulp of margarita. The tequila taste wasn’t very strong, which was fortunate, or I’d have been on my butt before I was halfway finished with the thing. "I like burritos rancheros. Beef."

It was amusing watching him watch me while he gave the order. I took another big sip through the straw.

"If you get drunk," he warned, "I’m going to take pictures."

"Why, thank you. I’ve been told I’m a very cute drunk." I hadn’t, but he didn’t know that. I had actually never been drunk before, which probably means I had an abnormal college experience. But I’d always had cheerleading practice, or gymnastics-or something unexpected, like an exam to take-and I didn’t think any of those would be a happy experience while suffering a hangover, so I simply stopped drinking before I got drunk.

The waiter brought a basket of hot, salty tortilla chips and two bowls of salsa, hot and mild. I resalted half the tortilla chips and dug one into the hot salsa, which was delicious and definitely hot. Three chips later I broke out into a sweat and had to reach for my margarita again.

Wyatt reached out and moved my vase-my glass-out of reach.

"Hey!" I said indignantly.

"I don’t want you getting pickled."

"I’ll get pickled if I want."

"I need to ask you some more questions, which is why I didn’t want you to leave town."

"Nice try, Lieutenant." I leaned forward and retrieved my margarita. "For one thing, the detectives are working the case, not you. For another, I didn’t see anything other than a man was with Nicole, and he left driving a dark sedan. That’s it. Nothing else."

"That you know of," he said, snatching away my margarita just as I guided the straw to my mouth for another sip. "Sometimes details will surface days later. For instance, the car’s headlights. Or the taillights. Did you see them?"

"I didn’t see the headlights," I said positively, intrigued by the question. "The taillights… hmm. Maybe." I closed my eyes and replayed the scene in my head. It was shockingly detailed and vivid. In my imagination I saw the dark car sliding past, and to my surprise my heartbeat picked up in response. "The street is at a right angle to me, remember, so anything will be a side view. The taillight is… long. It isn’t one of those round ones; it’s a long skinny one." My eyes popped open. "I think some models of Cadillac have taillights that shape."