Free Assuming Names: a con artist's masquerade (Criminal Mischief Book 1) by Tanya Thompson

easily with the staff, ordering for us both, before returning to fractured English to converse with me.
    Three hours later he pulled back from our conversation to look me over with surprise. “This is first time I see you like this. You very …” he went looking for the word he knew in four languages but I didn’t understand any of them. He asked the server for the word in English and the server asked another and pretty soon every employee was looking for the English equivalent of a Spanish compliment.
    No one knew it. But the table behind us had started bickering. It escalated until the Texan slammed down his beer, plunked on his cowboy hat, and stalked out the door. The Mexican woman was finally free to talk and came around to speak to me. “You are very charming. This is what the gentleman wants to say.”
    And the staff confirmed, “Sí, sí, es charming,” offering again to Sergiu, “charming.”
    But he wasn’t listening, instead we were both watching the woman from the adjoining table. She had the first hint of gray in her hair, but it looked premature. She wasn’t happy. She was leaving but needed to explain, “I never wanted to be the couple that sat silent in a restaurant with nothing to say. It was a mistake learning English. We had more to say when we couldn’t say it.”
     
    ~~~~~~
     
    It was just before midnight when Sergiu and I returned to the house. Daniel was working hard to seduce Tricia, so, to give him space, Sergiu offered to let me drive the sports car.
    Now this was a real mistake.
    No one in Texas had seen how quickly my personality could flip. Sergiu now knew I could be charming, but he assumed this was merely an extension of my demure character. He didn’t know I liked to charge horses. I’d race them, mad to frothing, into goats, people, and tobacco fields, and then laugh when scolded. I loved the rush and my favorite horse wanted to be let loose without reigns.
    Nothing about my reserved demeanor had prepared Sergiu for what was about to happen.
    But the moment I popped the Corvette into first gear, I was certain the engine was screaming to be unbridled, and I was manic to set it free.
    The car could charge, and I was racing around the narrow neighborhood streets trying to reach eighty with Sergiu shouting, “Stop! Constanzia, stop! This is not my car. My friends be very mad if you hurt it.”
    And the car already seemed to be in pain. I’d never driven a manual but I’d watched Sergiu and the process looked simple. He made it seem like a fluid exchange of gas and clutch, but my attempts to emulate him just ground against the gears. I handled it by going faster, revving the RPMs into red and then lunging the car forward so both Sergiu and I were slammed back.
    Thinking to halt the insanity, he grabbed my right wrist as I shifted down to second, squealing into a turn, but I accelerated regardless, taking my other hand off the wheel to lurch the car into third. Pressing hard on the gas, and about to use my left hand again for fourth, he released my right hoping I’d keep control, but it scarcely made a difference; I kept us on the edge of wrecking.
    The nose was too long and, unlike a horse, it couldn’t direct itself. Twice I nearly put the headlights into a parked car while skidding around a corner, Sergiu exclaiming, “ Oddio !”
    Then I shot us across a dark lawn, bottoming out with horrific noise on the curb, while he shrieked, “ Madonna mia !”
    And in between it all was a string of language I only partially understood, but I knew he was calling me crazy, was swearing and begging, threatening and bargaining, never realizing there was nothing he could offer that could compare to the power under my foot. It was truly the most fun I had ever had.
    He wanted to take the wheel from my hands but didn’t dare at the speeds I was reaching, and the interior of the car was too tight for him to get his foot across the gearbox and onto the brake. With one hand on the back of my