Free Million Dollar Road by Amy Connor Page B

determination.
    â€œSummer job, huh? Home from college?”
    â€œI’m not in college,” Lireinne Hooten said, her voice flat and bordering on antagonistic. “I’ve been working at the farm, like, six months. You just never saw me ’cause you’re front office, but I’m there most of the freaking day, five days a week.”
    â€œWell, I sure wouldn’t have forgotten if I had seen you.” Heavy as a chunk of firewood, Con’s attempt at flattery fell into the conversation with a dead thud. And did he sound creepy? He must have, because now she looked uncomfortable. One long-fingered hand tightened on the door handle.
    â€œThere! It’s just up ahead, there on the right,” she said suddenly, pointing. Reluctant to let the girl out of his sight, Con nonetheless pulled the Lexus onto a potholed, weedy shell drive.
    â€œThanks for the ride.” The hoser—Lireinne, her name was Lireinne, it could almost be “Lorraine,” but wasn’t—opened the door and collected her plastic bags. She swung those incredible legs out of the car, her red flip-flops coming to rest on the white shells as she glanced back at him. “And thanks for, like, not killing me back there, I guess.”
    â€œYou’re welcome, Lireinne.” She seemed awfully young to Con, now that he thought about it. “Say, uh . . . how old are you, anyway?”
    There was an unfamiliar, previously unimaginable note in his voice that sounded an awful lot like pleading for crumbs, but Con was on fire. He had to know more about her; he couldn’t wait until he got to the office today to pull up her employment forms.
    â€œEighteen.” She got out of the car.
    Only eighteen.
    Jesus.
    â€œSee you around the alligator farm, then,” Con said, feeling ineffectual, and worse, old .
    With a toss of her hair over her shoulder, Lireinne looked him straight in the eye with a wry-mouthed assurance.
    â€œNo, you won’t. Nobody does.” She shut the car door in a thunk of finality.
    And then she was swaying up the shell road with her Dollar General bags and Con still had to go buy a damned trampoline for his wife. He’d gotten nowhere with this girl, worse than nowhere, and that was more humiliating than a glass of champagne in the kisser. He hadn’t struck out so thoroughly in a very, very long time. Obi-Wan sure needed to put more effort into this girl.
    But he’d see her again. By God, he would. She worked at the farm, didn’t she? Hell, a girl like this one must hate being a hoser.
    Maybe . . . Con mused as the car idled. Maybe if he brought Lireinne out of the barns and into the office? He could give her a promotion. What position he could promote her to was a good question, but that way he’d see her every day. That might work.
    It was definitely worth a shot, Con decided, watching Lireinne’s graceful back receding into the trees. In fact, it might be the only shot he was going to get: he couldn’t very well try to make time with this girl while she was hosing the barns.
    Lireinne disappeared, hidden by the dense brush and live oaks around the bend in the road. Help me, Obi-Wan Kenobe, Con thought.
    You’re my only hope.

C HAPTER 6
    G reat . After Mr. Costello had dropped her off, Lireinne opened the door to the trailer, stopped dead in the entrance, and was instantly aggravated by the scene inside the front room.
    How freaking great.
    Her younger brother, Wolf, was hanging out with his lame-ass friend Bolt. Both of them were camped in front of the TV, wired like idiots into that lame-ass EverQuest video game they were always playing on Wolf’s lame-ass Xbox.
    Disgusted, Lireinne dropped the Dollar General bags of toilet tissue, laundry detergent, and paper towels on the worn sectional sofa and planted her hands on her hips. When Wolf and Bolt were hooked into that stupid sword-and-sorcery crap, it was like they were buried alive, deep