The Art of Deception

Winning the Yes

“I owe you,” LaMoia called out from behind the roar of his kitchen blender and a batch of LaMoia’s original-recipe margaritas. Blue patrolled the kitchen floor licking up spills. LaMoia drizzled tequila through an open hole in the lid. A plate of raw salt awaited to his left.

“Damn right you do.” She wore a sling on her left arm, some bandages he couldn’t see. She sat on a padded stool at his kitchen counter. Even her bottom was sore.

He wore a series of serious bruises on his face and arms like medals of honor. He caught her looking. “You could kiss them to make them better.”

“Are we flirting?” she asked. Not wanting to be in the houseboat where Walker had watched her so closely, she’d been living as LaMoia’s houseguest for the past week. As friends. But on this night romance simmered beneath the surface, and both felt it.

He delivered the drinks. “Get over it.”

“Delicious,” she said, sampling the concoction.

“More where that came from.”

“Indeed.”

He raised his glass. “To forgetting.”

She knew he meant well by such a toast, but it only served to remind her of all the forgetting she had yet to do. Ferrell Walker wouldn’t be forgotten-at least not by a legal system hungry to prosecute him. The man had months, years, of waiting to do-first in the hospital, then a prison in the eastern part of the state. His rescue from the debris of the cave-in had come nearly twenty minutes after LaMoia’s. His oxygen-starved brain had failed to recover following resuscitation. The guards called him “a drooler.” LaMoia called him pitiful. Matthews called him a casualty. She wouldn’t soon forget Margaret either, or the little baby girl the doctors had saved postmortem. Inquiries had been made: Margaret’s mother and stepfather, her only living family, had refused the child.

An honors memorial service had been held that same afternoon for Deputy Sheriff Nathan Prair. Neither Matthews nor LaMoia had attended.

She sloshed the tangy ice around her mouth, taking a big gulp. “I could have about five of these.”

“Now that’s more like it,” LaMoia said.

“You want to get me drunk, John?”

“It was your idea, not mine. Besides, you’re not exactly drinking alone here, in case you hadn’t noticed.” He considered this. “Have I ever seen you drunk, Matthews? I don’t think so.

You see? That’s another thing about you: You’re always in such total control-of you, and everyone around you.”

She drank too fast and froze her throat. LaMoia brought the mixer’s pitcher over and refilled her glass halfway. He fully topped off his own.

“More, please.” When he failed to accommodate her, she reached for the pitcher with her good hand, but LaMoia caught her gently by her wrist.

LaMoia said, “No more for you. You don’t get any excuses.”

“Excuses for what?” she asked, bewildered by his refusal.

For a moment, the room held perfectly still-the ferries out on the bay stopped moving; the rivulets of margarita froze on the side of the mixer-the only sound in the room the steady thumping of Blue’s tail against one of the stools and the high octane drumming in her ears.

He reached over, took hold of her shirt, and carefully drew her to him. She reached out for balance with her good hand as he planted his lips onto hers and drew the wind out of her, drew her eyelids down, her head spinning, her toes dancing in her shoes. She felt everything inside tense like she’d grabbed hold of a live wire, and then her muscles melted into a steadily increasing warmth that rose into her chest and flooded her thighs.

Her free hand laced into his curly hair and she kissed him back.

His bar stool nearly went over.

She wanted to get naked. She wanted him inside her, right here on the kitchen counter.

He whispered, “No excuses for that.”

“You make a mean margarita.”

“Practice makes perfect.”

“In all sorts of things.” Where had that come from? She added, “I may be a little rusty.”

“You don’t feel rusty.” His hand was inside the back of her shirt. Her head tingled.

“No excuses,” she said.

“None.”

She whispered, “Listen, John, either we stop right now, or … we don’t.” It sounded stupid, once she heard it replay in her head.

“Whatever happens, happens,” he said, still kissing her. “And we give it the best chance it has. No excuses, no fear.”

She said, “Who’da thought?”

“There’s a lot you don’t know about me, Matthews.”

“I imagine so.” She added, “What are the chances you might call me by my first name, Romeo?”

“None.” He opened his arms and embraced her. Peace and excitement washed through her.

“Take me to bed,” she whispered into his ear.

“Mind reader.”

She sputtered a nervous laugh.

He grabbed her hand.

Easing off the stool and into his arms, she said softly, “What are we doing?”

“Living. What’s so wrong with that?”