Get Lucky. Suzanne Brockmann

by casually showing up with a drop-dead gorgeous, blond beauty queen on his arm.

      He also wanted to make sure there was no doubt left lingering in her nosy reporter’s brain that there was something going on between him and Blue McCoy’s wife.

      Just the thought of such a betrayal made him feel ill.

      Of course, maybe it was Heather’s constant, mindless prattle that was making the tuna steak he’d had for dinner do a queasy somersault in his stomach.

      Still he got a brief moment of satisfaction as Syd turned and saw him. As she saw Heather.

      For a fraction of a second, her eyes widened. He was glad he’d been watching her, because she quickly covered her surprise with that slightly bored, single-raised-eyebrow half-smirk she had down pat.

      The smirk had stretched into a bonafide half smile of lofty amusement by the time Lucky and Heather reached their table.

      Lucy’s smile was far more genuine. “Right on time.”

      “You’re early,” he countered. He met Syd’s gaze. “And you’re here.”

      “I got off work thirty minutes early,” Lucy told him. “I tried calling you, but I guess you’d already left.”

      Syd silently stirred the ice in her drink with a straw. She was wearing the same baggy pants she’d had on that afternoon, but she’d exchanged the man-size, long-sleeved, button-down shirt for a plain white T-shirt, her single concession to the relentless heat. She hadn’t put on any makeup for the occasion, and her short dark hair looked as if she’d done little more than run her fingers through it.

      She looked tired. And nineteen times more real and warm than perfect, plastic Heather.

      As Lucky watched, Syd lifted her drink and took a sip through the straw. With lips like that, she didn’t need makeup. They were moist and soft and warm and perfect. He knew that firsthand after kissing her.

      That one kiss they’d shared had been far more real and meaningful than Lucky’s entire six month off-and-on, whenever-he-was-in-town, non-relationship with Heather. And yet, after kissing him as if the world were coming to an end, Syd had pushed him away.

      “Heather and I had dinner at Smokey Joe’s,” Lucky told them. “Heather Seeley, this is Lucy McCoy and Sydney Jameson.”

      But Heather was already looking away, her MTV-length attention span caught by the mirrors on the wall and her distant but gorgeous reflection…

      Syd finally spoke. “Gee, I had no idea we could bring a date to a task-force meeting.”

      “Heather’s got some phone calls to make,” Lucky explained. “I figured this wasn’t going to take too long, and after…” He shrugged.

      After, he could return to his evening with Heather, bring her home, go for a swim in the moonlight, lose himself in her perfect body. “You don’t mind giving us some privacy, right, babe?” He pulled Heather close and brushed her silicon-enhanced lips with his. Her perfect, plastic body…

      Sydney sharply looked away from them, suddenly completely absorbed by the circles of moisture her glass had made on the table.

      And Lucky felt stupid. As Heather headed for the bar, already dialing her cell phone, he sat down next to Lucy and across from Syd and felt like a complete jackass.

      He’d brought Heather here tonight to show Syd…what? That he was a jackass? Mission accomplished.

      Okay, yes, he had taken Syd into his arms on his deck earlier this evening in an effort to win her alliance. But somehow, some way, in the middle of that giddy, free-fallinducing kiss, his strictly business motives had changed. He thought it had probably happened when her mouth had opened so warmly and willingly beneath his. Or it might’ve been before that. It might’ve been the very instant his lips touched hers.

      Whenever it had happened, all at once it had become very, very clear to him that he kept on kissing her purely because he wanted to.

      Desperately.

      Yes, there was that word again. As he ordered a beer from the bored cocktail waitress, as he pointed out Heather and told the waitress to get her whatever she wanted—on him—he tried desperately not to sound as if he were reeling from his own ego-induced stupidity in bringing Heather here. He knew Syd was listening. She was still pretending to be enthralled with the condensation on the table, but she was