But she had to.
She was Sage Marie Evans now, a blonde—thanks to L’Oreal and bi-weekly bleach jobs—slightly naive small town girl, who’d moved to New Orleans looking for excitement and ended up like so many others as a cocktail waitress at a bar on Bourbon Street. It was such a clichéd back-story in The Big Easy nobody bothered to check into it further, which was exactly what she’d been aiming for. Last thing she needed was for an employer to run a thorough background check and discover the real Sage Evans had been fifty-three years old when she died last fall of heart disease.
Of course those two nerve-wracking men headed directly to the back corner booth that had just opened up. The one in her section.
Oh joy.
She plastered on a smile and mentally slipped into Sage Evans’s skin as she walked over. “Gentlemen. Can I get you anything?” She gave her voice the lightest hint of a sweet Southern drawl, and the blond man grinned as he eyed her up and down.
“You certainly can, cher,” he said, and there was no mistaking the Cajun accent.
“Oh, a local?”
“Oui, caught me. Born and bred.”
She propped a hand on her hip. “What’s a local doing here? I thought you all avoided Bourbon Street in February.”
“Not me. This my home away from home.” He tilted his head toward his friend. “And it’s his first Mardi Gras.”
“Oh, yeah?” She studied the other man and, yes, he looked like an outsider. Even in February, he had a deep tan and wore a fedora over his dark, curly hair. His sense of style all but screamed SoCal, and her stomach clenched. What if…
No.
She shoved the thought away. Just her well-developed sense of paranoia talking. Really, what were the chances he was from LA? And even if he was, it was a big city. They couldn’t possibly know the same people. “What’s your name?”
He tipped the brim of the fedora. “Marcus.”
“In that case, Marcus…” She drummed up her flirtiest smile for him, because if he was from SoCal, he had money to burn, and God knew she could use the tips. She took one of the sets of beads from around her neck and looped it over his head. “Your first beads.”
“And I didn’t have to flash anyone to get them.” His smile was a gleam of white against his tanned skin and all panty-melting charm. “Maybe you’d want to earn them back…?”
“Nice try, but it’s against policy, and I need to keep my job.” She patted his muscled arm. “Don’t worry, you’ll find plenty of ladies outside willing to take them off your hands.”
“None as gorgeous as you.”
“Again, nice try.” This Marcus guy was exactly the kind of guy she’d fallen for in her other life—a tall, dark, and handsome-as-sin smooth talker who used his charm to conceal a deadly edge.
Actually, who was she kidding? That was still the kind of guy she fell for, because the description also fit Vaughn Wilde to a T. Well, except for the charm. Marcus had more of it in his pinky than Vaughn had in his whole hard body.
Would she never learn?
She straightened and returned her attention to the Cajun. “What are you having?”
“What you offering, cher?”
Marcus none-to-subtly elbowed his friend in the ribs and gave a slight shake of the head. Then his smile returned as he shifted his attention back to her. “What do you recommend?”
She sighed inwardly. If Marcus was warning his Cajun buddy off because he thought he had a chance with her, he was going to be disappointed. Her track record with men was scarily bad, and it was safer all around if she just stayed away from them. “Hurricane. Start off strong before the party gets rolling.”
“Sounds good. We’ll have that.”
She winked at him—because tips!—and gave her walk a little extra sway as she turned to go punch their orders into the computer.
Marcus called after her, “I didn’t catch your name.”
She glanced over her shoulder to answer, but she hesitated because she’d been about to call herself Lark, and that would have blown a hole in this new life of hers. God, she was so sick of moving, sick of new cities and new names and new crappy apartments. “I’m Sage.”
“Nice to meet you, Sage.” He held her gaze and smiled again, and a chill of dread scraped down her spine.
He knew. Somehow, he knew she was lying.
Oh, shit.
…
“This obsession with finding Lark is not healthy,” Cam said the moment Vaughn stepped through the door of Wilde Security.
Well, fuck. He’d hoped Cam would be distracted from the subject by the time he arrived. Should have known better. And everyone always accused him of being the relentless twin.
He shook off the cold and stomped over to his desk where his laptop sat, still humming through the search he’d initiated two hours ago. “I haven’t been healthy in months. Why start now?”