Lie to Me (6 page)

“
My
parents?” His eyes widened. “Not exactly. Oh, they were adamant I finish high school, but not because they cared so much about my getting a diploma. I could have done that on an accelerated program and zipped through. They insisted I go through school at a normal pace so I could make friends and enjoy the whole school experience.” He rolled his eyes as if he found the idea tiresome. “Of course, that was back when they were still hoping I’d—” He stopped abruptly.
 

“Hoping you’d what?” She ducked her head, trying to read his expression.

His gaze shifted as if calculating how much to tell her. She knew whatever he said wouldn’t be the full story. That irritated her, when he’d been on a roll with honesty.

“Hoping I’d be more like them,” he finally said.

“Which is…?”

“Cool.” A wry grin added humor to the admission. “I have the coolest parents on the planet. My dad’s a sax player in a blues band and my mom used to wait tables on Bourbon Street. We never had much money, but our house had a revolving door for family and friends.”

“Something that would be great, if you like your family and parents’ friends. Trust me, I know that isn’t always the case.”
 

“Are you kidding? The problem wasn’t them.” His mouth twisted. “Try being the only gamer in a big, loud, Cajun family where how well you cook gumbo matters a hell of a lot more than your highest score at Legends of Zelda.”
 

“I’m sure they loved you for your specialness.” She teased.

“Actually, I’m fairly certain my cousins wanted to chop me up as gator bait.”

“Maybe they were jealous of your intellect.”

“Oh yeah, making lame jokes about my lack of athletic prowess was their way of complimenting my superior mental abilities.”

She took in his obviously toned body. “I have trouble believing you’re short on athletic skill.”

“Lifting weights doesn’t require a lot of physical coordination. A fact I wish I’d discovered earlier in life.”

“Personally, I’ve always found brains sexier than brawn.”

“You’re joking, right?” He blinked as if she’d just said the sky is green.

“You doubt me?”

“Let’s just say, I find it an unusual perspective.” His disbelief shifted to curiosity. “A refreshing one, if it’s true.”

She rolled her eyes, seeing no reason to argue the point with a man who clearly had both intelligence and a drool-worthy body. “You were about to tell me why your parents weren’t happy about you getting a job with a game company right out of high school.”

“Ah, right.” He nodded. “They didn’t like the idea of me going to work for a soul-sucking corporation that paid slave wages. They’re much more into following one’s bliss. I had a hard time explaining to them that writing code all day was following my bliss, even if I had to do it while sitting in a cubicle under fluorescent lighting. They finally shrugged and said as long as I was happy, they were happy.”

“They sound like great parents.” Envy made her sigh.

“I think so. Not everyone would agree, since their lifestyle choices meant we didn’t have much in the way of worldly goods. They have friends, music, and food out the yazoo, but not a lot else.”
 

“Worldly goods are overrated. They gave you what counts.”

“They did. But I happen to like my worldly goods.” He wiggled his brows. “Which is why I devised my master plan.”

“Sounds diabolical.”
 

“Ingenious.” His eyes gleamed.

“Emphasis on the genius?” she guessed, only half joking. The more he talked, the more she suspected his IQ scored off the charts.

“It didn’t take a genius to see that technology was advancing at an exponential rate. Extrapolate that rate, and you have a new era on the horizon. With change, opportunity abounds for entrepreneurial thinkers.” He tapped his forehead. “I put up with slave wages for years, all the while watching, learning, and building my dream list.”

“Dream list?”

He leaned closer, lowering his voice. “I scoped out the best of the best. Years ago, long before most people saw it coming, I predicted the game revolution.”

“The what?” Gazing into his eyes, she saw layers of complexity amid the shades of green.

“An era when the big corporations would no longer hold a monopoly on distribution.” The words sounded like the beginning of a futuristic fairy tale. “A time when small, rogue programmers could upload new games to a store online and sell directly to the public. The beauty of gaming in a more advanced Internet age is it doesn’t take a huge financial investment to write and upload an app. All it takes is a great idea and a willingness to work an insane number of hours. I had, however, accumulated enough money from a different type of gaming to help things along.”

“What kind of gaming?”

He shrugged. “I used to hit the casinos whenever I needed to make a little cash.”

“You gamble?” She leaned back in surprise.
 

“No, I don’t gamble.” He straightened as if she’d insulted him. “Gambling is for idiots. I play poker.”

“Poker isn’t gambling?” An unexpected thrill went through her. As much as she loathed arrogant playboys who lived flamboyant lifestyles, the notion of Lucas having a little streak of bad boy coupled with his intelligence fascinated her.

“Poker’s a numbers game. I happen to be good with numbers,” he said, as if any moron who could add two and two could win consistently at poker. “Anyway, I revealed my concept to my handpicked dream team and asked if they’d work on it during off hours for no pay in exchange for a cut of the profits.”

“What about your poker winnings? Couldn’t you afford to pay them?”

“I did better than pay them. The team needed someplace to work, and I refused to let it be the same assembly-line environment we’d all endured for years. So I bought a warehouse on the fringe of the French Quarter and turned it into a gamer’s nirvana. We have an arcade gallery, a laser tag arena, and a kicking home theater.”

“That had to cost a fortune.”

He nodded. “I staked everything I had on the venture. The team had nothing to lose but time if the game flopped, and everything to gain if Vortal hit big.”

“I take it they said yes.”

“Yep.”

“And the game hit big?”

He just smiled.

Her admiration multiplied. He looked so pleased with himself, so proud, but he didn’t throw out dollar figures to impress her. He’d clearly achieved amazing success, but he didn’t flaunt it overtly. Okay, yes, he wore designer clothes and a watch that cost a bundle. She’d known so many men who did that, but in a different way. They’d used their appearance to communicate power and status. On him, the trappings were more like a costume of who he thought people—most likely women—wanted him to be. Sadly, he was right. A lot of women did like that. Yet the man sitting before her now, quietly smiling, held infinitely more appeal to her.
 

“Well?” she prompted. “Tell me about this game of yours.”

“Oh, it’s so much more than just a game. It’s a chance to step into another world,” he told her. “Whichever world you choose.”

“How can one game have different worlds?”

“Okay, imagine creating a series of complex mazes on multiple levels with trapdoors and tunnels connecting them. You can change how it feels to move through those mazes simply by changing the graphics. Like changing wallpaper. From a code-writing standpoint, the structure stays the same. Changing the graphics, though, gives the player a different experience. We have everything from knights in medieval England to special ops troops in modern day Middle East.”

“Yes, but if the layout of each world is the same, wouldn’t that get boring?”

“Not at all,” he insisted. “Because it’s not a fixed maze. How you get from one section to another changes each time you play depending on the choices you make. Plus, we keep adding new booby traps and obstacles for higher skill levels. You’re also not in this world alone. There are other characters, both combatants and allies. Whether those characters are controlled by the program or by other players depends on whether you’re playing solo or with others. That makes every quest completely unique.”

“Quest?”

“Well, yeah.” He looked at her as if she should have known that part. “You don’t just wander around, aimlessly exploring the world you chose. Each game has a quest object. From the moment the game starts, you face one adrenaline-producing, life-threatening challenge after another. It’s non-stop action from beginning to end.”

“That sounds fabulous. I can’t wait to play.”

Seeing her excitement, Luc nearly suggested they finish dinner and go back to her cottage so he could fire up Vortal on his laptop.

One thought stopped him dead.
 

The second he booted the game, she’d see the portal a player had to pass through to enter the gaming world. The portal that looked exactly like the pendant she’d found. And wasn’t that the whole reason he’d even brought up the game in the first place? To lead into the topic of the necklace?
 

Except, he hadn’t expected her to show so much interest in Vortal. Her enthusiasm had totally sucked him in, distracting him from the point of the conversation. The purpose of the evening. The entire reason for him being in Galveston. As soon as he told her about the necklace, the rest of his story wouldn’t be far behind.
 

“Well?” she prompted at his long pause. “When can I play your game?”

Looking into her eyes, he couldn’t bring himself to tell her. He didn’t want this to end. He saw the waitress heading toward them, and breathed a sigh of relief. “First, we need to eat.”

All through dinner, Chloe peppered him with questions about Vortal. Under different circumstances, he would have reveled in it. Instead, he wanted to groan in frustration.

“Which world do you think I’d enjoy most?” she asked him as she forked up a bite of fish.
 

“I have no idea,” he said, since he still couldn’t wrap his brain around her wanting to play Vortal at all. Women like Chloe were supposed to think gamers were social losers. They were not supposed to jump on the chance to become one. “Our two best sellers are Vampires in New Orleans and Pirates on the High Seas.”

“Pirates?” She brightened. “That would be perfect. Did you know we have a pirate ghost on Pearl Island? Well, privateer.”

“Yes, I read something about that online.” He welcomed the potential topic-changer. “You have two ghosts, right?”

She nodded as she swallowed. “Marguerite, an opera singer known as the Pearl of New Orleans, and Captain Jack Kingsley, our star-crossed lovers.” She sighed dramatically. “Their story is very sad, and ended tragically, but at least they’re together now, and apparently quite happy. So I guess they got to die happily ever after. If you believe in that sort of thing.”

“Ghosts?” His brows shot up. “Absolutely.”

“No.” She laughed. “Happily ever after.”

“I take it you don’t believe in happy endings?”

“That depends on how you define happiness.” She dredged a final bite of asparagus through the sauce left on her plate.
 

“How would you define it?” he asked.

“Now that is a complicated question.” She chewed thoughtfully. “I will say that falling in love is generally not the way to get there.”

Before he could ask her why, the waitress stopped at their table. “Are you finished with your dinner?”

Luc looked down and realized both their plates were empty. They’d finished eating and he still hadn’t worked up to his confession.
 

“Yes, thank you.” Chloe smiled up at the woman.

“How about dessert?” the waitress asked as she cleared away their plates. “Our bread pudding is to die for.”

“Bread pudding?” He sent Chloe an eager look, hoping to buy himself more time.
 

“Oh no, I’m too stuffed for anything that heavy.” Chloe patted her stomach.
 

“Oh.” Seeing no choice, he asked the waitress to bring the check.
 

“I’ll tell you what I could go for.” Smiling, Chloe crossed her arms over the cleared table. “How about ice cream and a stroll down the Strand?”
 

“Ice cream is lighter than bread pudding?” he asked before he could stop himself. He should be silently cheering over her suggestion since it gave him more time.
 

“Anything is lighter than the bread pudding they serve here. Plus, the stroll will help walk off dinner.”

“True,” he said. “Ice cream it is.”

~ ~ ~

How do you define happiness?
The question still played through Chloe’s mind as they stepped from the ice cream parlor a couple of blocks from the restaurant. With the long days of summer fast approaching, the sun had yet to fully set. It colored the sky over the brick and stone buildings that lined both sides of Avenue B, more commonly known as The Strand.
 

She breathed in the evening air, and thought:
This is happiness.