They always had been, and she tore her eyes from his hand and up to his face in a questioning glance.
Connor retracted his hand. “Sorry.” Reaching for the handle, he pushed the door open and climbed out. He ducked his head into the door and looked at her pleasantly. “Café au lait with one and a half pink sugars.”
She crinkled her brow, incredulous that he still remembered how she took her coffee. She also resisted the urge to smile at the way he still referred to the packets of no-calorie sweetener she preferred aspink sugars.“Yes, please. Thank you.”
Connor shut the door and strode into the cafe, his well-fitting jeans hugging the sharp angles of his physique, andyep. Mother Nature and Father Time had beenverybenevolent to him. Nothing about Connor’s appearance was at all worse for wear from the years that had passed. He wore a plain white t-shirt that wasn’t tight, but just fitted enough to accentuate his broad shoulders and narrow waist. He was still a tall column of stone with large muscles well-developed from jogging and work. He didn’t look like a gym rat. He’d never been a gym rat. Those muscles were the result of labor of various kinds, the majority of which were born in the United States Army.
A sigh drained from Liza’s lips as her shoulders fell, and shereally neededto start dating. Seriously. Her blatant sexual awareness of Connor had little to do with him, and more to do with the fact that he was a reminder of the last good sex she’d had. So, it was time to find a new source of it. And fortunately, since she was still planning to leave New Orleans as soon as things were in motion at the label, she had an excuse to keep things casual with whomever she might find to date.
The last thing in the world Liza needed was another heartbreaking situation in which she was prepared to spend the rest of her life with someone, only for them to change their mind on a dime.
Connor exited the café a few minutes later holding two coffees, and then expertly balanced them in one hand as he opened the door. He carefully lowered himself into the seat and placed the coffees in the cup holder. She reached for hers, and he touched her hand.
“It’s really hot,” he warned her, and why did he keep touching her like that? “Give it a minute so you don’t burn yourself.”
“Right. Thank you.” She backed up the car and pulled out of the strip center.
The atmosphere of the car descended into silence again, save for the GPS telling Liza where to turn and when. She sipped from the coffee after it had sufficiently cooled, and she lifted her eyebrows, licking her lips. It wasperfect.
That doesn’t mean anything, a voice in the back of her mind whispered.Just because he remembers how you take your coffee it doesn’t change that he hates your guts.
She frowned, and a subtle, sharp pain panged under her sternum. Setting down the coffee, she rubbed her chest first and then her lower abdomen as if the dull ache were still there.
The highway led to a bridge that stretched across a waterway she knew was an offshoot of the Mississippi. The GPS informed her that she would follow it into the Lower Ninth Ward of New Orleans, and her curiosity piqued.
“Oh,” she suddenly said, more to herself than to Connor.
“What’s up?” he answered immediately, as if he’d been waiting for the chance to jump in about anything.
“I didn’t know this is where we were going.” She peered at the waterway and tiny houses and buildings that speckled the horizon. Liza was eighteen when Hurricane Katrina had devastated the Gulf Coast, and she vividly remembered the news footage. Catastrophic flooding and chaos in parts of New Orleans. She also remembered the warning Connor had issued when they’d crossed the Louisiana-Texas state line during her first visit.
“Don’t ask anyone about the storm,”he’d said.“Don’t even bring it up.”
It had been three years after the hurricane, and she imagined the emotional wounds were still fresh. And during their visit, Connor had kept her in his neighborhood and the Quarter, so Liza hadn’t seen any of the lingering aftermath; only touristy fun and a quaint place to live.
“Yeah,” he said slowly, head turned toward the window.
Liza glanced at him nervously and then scanned their surroundings as the car rolled along North Claiborne Avenue. Mature trees and nice, normal looking houses flanked the road. She pulled to a stop at an intersection, waiting out the red light, and saw a fresh, clean pharmacy on one side and a pretty, modern church on the other. The lawns were green, and the roads were clean, and it seemed to Liza that thirteen years had been enough time for the devastated neighborhood to recover.
“Looks like a nice area,” she said conversationally, and then Connor scoffed.
“Yeah, it’srealfuckin’ nice,” he snapped, his words punctuated by a quick, cold, sarcastic laugh.
She pursed her lips and felt her expression fall into an apathetic gaze.
Ah, yes. There he was again. Angry Connor who hated her and probably thought she was dumb as a post.
“It’snota nice area,” he added. He flipped his hand at the passing houses and businesses. “Don’t be fooled by this bullshit.”
She swallowed and then muttered, “It was just an observation. Sorry.”
The silence returned, far more unpleasant this time. Liza glanced at the digital clock, mentally calculating how much longer she’d have to tolerate the stilted, painful presence of someone who resented her very existence.
The GPS continued to direct her through turns and side streets, and the landscape changed as quickly as Connor’s attitude had gone from pleasant to pissed off. Liza slowed the pace of the car as the street became ragged and broken. The houses were a hodgepodge of bright, pretty craftsman-style homes and dilapidated structures. The lawns alternated between short and tidy, and unkempt jungles of weeds and grass that stretched to the battered roofs. Turning another corner, they encountered a largely empty street with more tall weeds. A graffiti-covered, abandoned dollar store sat on a vacant, cracked parking lot. Beyond that, the streets were lined with empty lots that featured nothing but lone, concrete steps that led to nowhere, as if the homes that used to accompany them had vanished into thin air.
“See what I mean?” Connor piped up, his voice sharp and tinged with anger.
Liza said nothing and had an urge to sip the coffee as an excuse to not talk to him, but her stomach was suddenly sour. The coffee was nothing more than a reminder of his pure hatred for her masked by false politeness. Politeness he’d only started offeringaftera threat from Jimmy and a scolding from Brennan on the day she’d broached the topic of new album covers.
