Unknown (Unknown Identity #1) (7 page)

She glanced down the bar and noticed the handsome stranger from earlier was still there, a few glasses around him, one bottle of beer, and a single glass of what looked like bourbon with a mint leaf in it sitting in front of him.

Now that’s a sight I can work with. Just the glasses
. That was enough for her to start an entire story—an entire narrative. Who was this guy and who broke his heart? She grinned slightly and looked up at the man’s face and froze.

Those cheekbones, that jaw line, those incredible lips, and that unspeakably handsome chin. All of it was so familiar that she felt like she was looking at a picture she’d memorized a long time ago. He was familiar, but she couldn’t place it. His short hair was spiked in the front, not in a harsh way, but a soft, fluffy wave of hair. He was making a weak attempt at hiding his identity, which didn’t make sense since there were like a dozen other more famous people in this bar and restaurant right now, mingling by the starlight overhead and the dim lighting that filled the room and the pool.

Oh shit!

She knew exactly who the beautiful man was.

S
he had never thought she would meet Conrad Dane in the flesh, but right here, sitting at the bar a few seats from her, clearly nursing the wound of his lost ex, sat the gorgeous hunk of flesh. She could feel a tingling in the air, something electric.

It was one of those intersections of fate that seemed way too coincidental to trust. She glanced at her image in the mirror behind the bar and absently brushed a lock of hair behind her ear. She thought about Amber, who was probably sticking her tongue down the throat of some sexy German while Josie was grinding up against some ridiculously rich and young stockbroker. They were out there living life and doing what they wanted to hunt down the thrilling excitement of love and adventure while she was letting yet another opportunity slip by. She should get off this stool and actually do something that was bold and daring.

After she finished her drink, she would do it.

Or maybe after the next.

Nope.

She stayed put on the stool.

Eventually, the rich and the famous along with their entourage of guests, friends, and partners made their way out of the bar, the hours dwindling away, and it was later than Leslie thought as she polished off her third or fourth gin and tonic—now with a lemon slice.

She glanced around behind her, realizing she was now alone with Conrad and the bartender.

“It’s my break,” the bartender said to her with a charming smile. “You need anything before I step out?”

“I’m good,” Leslie said, completely put off by the clichéd and tacky nature of this walking stereotype. It was like he’d watched a bunch of noir movies and applied for this job. What could they possibly have seen in him to think that he was a good fit to the job? It made her question this whole establishment, but as she watched him go she knew that this was the moment where she could act and she wouldn’t actually be judged. If she wanted to talk to Conrad, then she needed to do it now.
Liquid courage.
She looked over at him and felt a sinking feeling in her gut that was sour and vengeful, probably from mixing fish tacos with gin and tonics.

“I watch your TV show,” she blurted out. The words felt hollow and almost disappointed, like she wasn’t excited to see him at all.

He looked at her through his mirrored aviators, like he was some really cool guy who was hiding. It was almost laughable. He smiled and let out a short little laugh that was so sarcastic it stung when she heard it. “Yeah, a lot of people watch that crap,” he said with a shrug. “But it’s a paycheck, you know?”

“The writing’s terrible,” Leslie said after a moment. “Not to mention that none of it makes any sense.”

“Yeah?” he chuckled, turning and looking at her. “Maybe I should tell the writers they should look you up.”

It was funny, almost in an ironic sense, but there was no way that he could have known that he was talking to one of the top producing writers in the entire country.
Heck, I’m one of the greatest in the world
. There was a moment where Leslie was smiling to herself. She wasn’t a screenwriter, but she was fairly certain she could come up with a better plot than a love triangle with a new character every four episodes.

Conrad took a drink from his glass of amber liquid and let out a very satisfied-sounding sigh as he glanced back over at her. “What do you do?” he asked after a moment, clearly tired of sitting inside his own head and stewing over the breakup that was so clearly and obviously known around the world.

“I write some stuff,” she said with a shrug.

“Write some stuff?” he repeated, taking another drink, clearly not satisfied with the answer she’d given him.

Leslie didn’t care. The fact that she was talking to him was one of the things on her bucket list she had no clue that she’d actually had. It was like she was marking off something on a fantasy list, like visiting Mars or riding a unicorn.

“What kind of stuff?”

“Books mostly.” Leslie shrugged again. “It’s not that interesting.”

He nodded, clearly not sure what he was supposed to do with that.

Leslie kicked herself, knowing that there was really nothing that anyone could have done with that. She had practically lobbed him a grenade and told him to catch it, hoping that he wouldn’t fumble it and blow himself halfway to boredom.
Nice going, Leslie.
“So what brings you here?” she asked him, suddenly realizing how obvious that answer was. She was going to look like she lived under a rock by asking him that question. What was she, some kind of backwoods hillbilly who never got to see the internet or television? Or was she just some kind of spiteful person who takes a great interest in jabbing someone who had just gone through a painful breakup? Leslie knew all about that.

Having lost Michael, she totally knew what it was like for someone to flop down next to her with a big, beaming smile and ask her how her life’s going. It was almost a cliché and everyone practiced their lie that they would feed with practiced precision as they growled through their teeth at whoever their new and fresh tormentor was. It was something that she regretted instantly. What was she doing? It was like some little idiot had hijacked her mind and was now subjecting everyone and everything to its will. With a deep breath, she waited for his inevitable lie.

He grimaced and took a deep breath before he let it out with an exhausted-sounding sigh, like he’d been wrestling with an alligator that just wouldn’t stop. “Kind of going through a breakup right now,” he confessed honestly as he looked at her. His eyes quickly went back to his drink that was getting dangerously low and no doubt starting to bother him. When everything was going terribly in a person’s life, alcohol was usually the one thing that they found to be the most comforting. It let your mind wander without getting caught up and sucked down certain whirlpools that were going to just leave everything too bitter and too painful to relive. So alcohol was the grease that let the wheels move freely, slipping away and down the tubes.

“I’m sorry,” Leslie said to him, looking back at her own empty glass. Where did the bartender go? How long was his break? Four hours! She drummed her fingers nervously on the bar, expecting something to fill the silence. Turning and looking at him, she decided that it was time for her to be open, too. Maybe that was how you got people to open up and actually talk to you. In hindsight, this might seem like a horrible idea, but she was going for it. She was all in at this point. “My husband died a year ago,” she said with a shrug, like it was no big deal. It was like kicking around a nuclear bomb. No biggie or anything.

He turned and looked at her, suddenly getting some perspective on everything that was no doubt going to make him feel like he was being a little bit of a baby right now. The thought of having to go through life without your spouse rather than your girlfriend might seem like a bigger struggle, but that wasn’t what Leslie wanted. “I need to buy you a drink,” he said with a grin. Maybe it was the comfort that might have come with the unspoken promise that Leslie wasn’t here to explicitly hit on him or to gush over his fame and popularity. That might have had something to do with why he decided to open up. But she watched as he stood up from his stool and closed the gap between the two of them.

Dropping down on the stool next to her, he raised his glass and presented it to Leslie, clearing his throat and trying to figure out how to craft the words properly in his intoxicated and foggy mind. “To the people we have lost from our lives,” he said after a moment.

It kind of bothered Leslie that he was comparing his cheating girlfriend to the fact that she had just lost her husband a year ago, but she let it go. In the end, pain was pain and no one needed to measure dicks over it. “To the people we have lost,” Leslie repeated, lifting her empty glass that had once contained gin but was now nothing more than ice and sad-looking lemon slices.

The glasses clicked together and made the most satisfying sound of ice rattling. It was one of the sounds that made Leslie smile, no matter where she was. She took a drink of watered-down gin and watched as Conrad drained the last of his bourbon.

“Where’d that guy go?” he asked, fighting against the burn of the liquor as he looked around for the bartender.

“I think we scared him off,” Leslie whispered as she leaned toward him. Gin got you drunk from the legs up. Your head seemed perfectly fine until you realized your brain had no control over your body.

“Coward.” Conrad shook his head. “So what if we sit around and nurse a few drinks… What’s wrong with that?”

“We’re in paradise,” Leslie said with a cute little shrug. “Expensive paradise. Bought and paid for by our hard-earned dollars.” She giggled. “I mean, we’re probably bringing down the excitement level of this place a few marks. Maybe he just got sick of us.”

“How could he get sick of us?” Conrad furrowed his brow. “We’re delightful. We’re a freakin’ riot!”

Leslie laughed. It felt good. Really good. “I still don’t know why you’re here,” Leslie said after a moment, playing with the ice in her glass.

“I’m kind of a vacation regular here,” Conrad said, shrugging, taking off his sunglasses. “My dad was actually a pretty popular producer in Hollywood before he died, and he always used to talk about this place. I think I understand why now, and I’m not sure that it’s something that I wanted to know about him.”

Leslie smiled at that. There were plenty of things that people never wanted to know about their parents. The fact that Conrad’s dad probably came here and hit on attractive young hopefuls trying to be the perfect secret screw from the millionaire wives club, was something no one wanted to know about their parent, but she figured there was a lot of that around here. Again, she felt the little writer inside of her brain taking notes in a panicked flurry before the alcohol scrubbed it all away.

When the bartender appeared again behind the bar, Leslie ordered another drink for them.

He insisted that he was buying.

“It’s the platinum lounge, sir,” the bartender said with a confused look on his face.

Conrad stared at him for a moment, blinking until it all made sense to him and everything started firing off inside his brain. “Okay, well, get this lady her drink please, and act like it’s from me.” He shrugged and gave Leslie a what-the-hell-is-his-problem kind of look.

Leslie laughed and watched as the bartender nodded before going to his business, making Conrad an Old Fashioned, something that Leslie could never, ever hope to master. “That’s a rough drink,” Leslie said, clearly impressed. Michael used to drink those.

“I try to be classy,” Conrad said after a moment. “Honestly, I don’t get alcohol. You’re supposed to have one cocktail that you can stomach or like at parties to impress people or just to blend in. But who decided that it was important to drink alcohol? I mean, it’s the worst-tasting stuff on the planet, and it makes you feel good, but is it worth it?”

“It takes some getting used to,” Leslie shrugged. She’d always liked the way alcohol made her feel, especially when she was alone and knew that her husband was on the way out. There was something comforting about the warm embrace of a nice drink, unless it started to turn on her and get some revenge. “Beer, though,” she said with a shrug, “that one I’ll give you. That’s the most abhorrent liquid ever created.”

“I hate wine, too,” Conrad said out of the corner of his mouth before the two of them burst out laughing. “That makes me sound like a four-year-old, but seriously, I can’t stand it. It tastes like really evil grape juice.”

“You’re kind of a freak,” Leslie laughed at him. “Not that I’m judging you or anything.”

“You totally are,” Conrad shook his head and ran his hand over his face as the bartender set the drinks down in front of them.

“Ma’am, the gentleman wanted to get you a drink.” Then he disappeared once more to pretend like there was something extremely important at the end of the bar that demanded his attention.

Leslie wasn’t a fool. She knew that there was nothing down there for him to do but listen in on the intoxicated conversation between the two people who were sitting together now after miserably stewing alone for hours.

“Well, here’s that drink I owe you,” Conrad chuckled, sliding the tall glass with the clear contents toward her. Leslie took it and looked at it, playing along with the little masquerade. “I’ve spent a fortune on it,” Conrad continued, “and I heard that it’s completely palatable, for your very fancy tastes.”

“Why thank you,” Leslie smiled, taking it from him.

“I’m sorry to hear about your husband,” Conrad said to her, swallowing heavily and suddenly feeling the weight of what it was that he was doing. It was something that clearly hit him, bringing up the wounds that both of them were trying to hide from the world. It wasn’t like she was overly eager to talk about it, but it was the common thread that had brought them together after all. She blinked a few times and took a drink, feeling the burn that hit her after a second.

She watched as he took a drink from the Old Fashioned that he’d been so intent on drinking. Leslie never understood why anyone drank alcohol that didn’t taste absolutely fabulous, but she wondered even more why someone who hated alcohol would order something that was nothing more than pure alcohol. Maybe he was just a masochist by nature. She laughed at the grimace that cracked across his face, spreading like wildfire that made him shiver and swallow the drink quickly, only spreading the incendiary taste all down his throat before he started coughing.