Chili Con Carnage Read Online Free Page B

let’s face it, when it comes to being phony, I’m not in Sylvia’s class. Truth be told, my ego had taken a beating the night before, what with ol’ Roberto being far more interested in tequila, a busty waitress, and brawling than he was in me. Call me overly sensitive. Go ahead. See if I care.
    I guess Roberto realized I wasn’t exactly happy to see him, because his smile faded and he ran a hand through his dark, short-cropped hair. “I’m looking for my phone,” he said. “I think I put it in your purse. You know, last night, before the trouble started at that bar.”
    “You mean before you started the trouble.”
    Water off a duck’s back. But then, that’s one of the things that made me decide Roberto wasn’t right for me, and it hadn’t taken more than thirty minutes or so of togetherness for the reality to sink in. When it came to other people’s feelings and needs, the guy was clueless. Otherwise, I wouldn’t have been paying for my own Miller Lites at the bar all night.
    “I put my phone in your purse,” he said. “When you were in the ladies’ room.”
    Now that I thought about it, I’d just walked out of the restroom when I saw Roberto and some big guy with a long, gray beard and bulging biceps squaring off with each other near the table where I’d left my purse and one of those I-paid-for-it lite beers.
    “What, you knew there was going to be trouble and you didn’t want your phone to get broken?”
    Roberto shrugged.
    And I gave in with a sigh.
    When I had gotten to the Palace earlier, I’d tucked my purse under the front counter, so I went around to the back of the booth, pulled open the door, and pulled my bag out. It was my favorite denim hobo bag, and unlike Sylvia who carried a tiny clutch purse with just what she considered the essentials inside it, I pretty much had my life in my bag. I guess that was another thing I’d learned in Chicago: A girl never knew when she was going to have to pick up and run. There was no sense in taking the chance of leaving anything important behind.
    I plopped the purse down on the blacktop between us, stooped down, and dug inside. “Chocolate bar,” I said, pulling it out and setting it aside. “Lighter, wallet, makeup bag, pack of cigarettes.”
    “Hey, my brand!”
    Since I was looking in my purse, I didn’t so much see as feel Roberto come closer. Automatically, I closed my hand over the pack of cigarettes.
    When I shot him a look and stood up, he backed off. “I was just going to ask for one.”
    “The pack’s not open.”
    “So you shouldn’t mind sharing. Besides . . .” As I’d learned the night before, Roberto was not the brightest bulb in the box. The effort of thinking made his eyes squinch up. “You never even came outside with me last night at the bar to smoke.”
    “That’s because I quit a month ago.”
    “Then you shouldn’t care if I take your cigarettes.”
    I was quicker than him. Before he made a move to snatch the pack out of my hand, I had already tossed it back in my purse. “Exactly why I can’t open it,” I said. I lifted the purse and slung it over my shoulder, the better to keep it out of his reach. “If I open them, I’ll be tempted to smoke them.”
    He cocked his head. “Then you should just give me the whole pack.”
    “If I did that, I wouldn’t be able to prove to myself that I can carry them around and actually not smoke.”
    Like I said, not the brightest bulb. It took him a moment to mull this over, and when he finally had, he dismissed the whole thing as nothing with a shake of his shoulders. “Okay. Keep your freakin’ cigarettes. It’s not like I can’t buy my own. Just look for my phone, okay?”
    It wasn’t okay. Nothing was okay about a guy who pretty much ignored me when we were supposed to be on a date, started a fight in a bar, and wanted to cop my cigarettes.
    I let him know it with a laser look before I dropped the purse back on the ground and took another quick peek at the