THIS CHAPTER IS A PREQUEL TO THE EVENTS OF M.O.T.D.. Remember... Lara is bi-sexual, and has not gone to Hawaii yet.
OKINAWA, JAPAN - THREE DAYS LATER
Alone again... naturally. Yet it felt right. The rest had their families to go to, she had a family fortune sitting in escrow by her uncle till she came home and took it over. Well, that and her prizes, and new friend... Lara Croft - death dealer. But dancing into the dark recesses of her mind as she lay alone on the bed of her hotel suite was as bad as the events that brought her to the place.
She tried turning on the tv, but got nothing on it to distract her. All of it meaningless to her now. She checked her scars, re-bandaged some, then stared into her own eyes, and saw not the madness she was sure would be staring back, but something else... something her, and yet not.
She failed to see sorrow for the innocent women slaughtered; nor glimpsed self recrimination, disgust, for the sheer ecstasy she took in killing their murderers... the Solari. All she saw was her own eyes looking coldly back. What was wrong with her? Was she simply in shock? Or was she simply a killer, plain and simple, and all that had happened on Yamatai was she was simply permitted to be 'herself' without penalty?
The memories of it all, all she had done, sent no shivers through her body...THAT fact made her uneasy. She decided to get out of the room before she started to think any further on this unsettling calm pervading her. She pulled off her torn outer shirt and cut her jeans at mid-thigh evenly to look like denim shorts, and went down to the hotel bar.
The place was almost vacant, a fact that made her happy, but as man after man started filing in, having caught a glimpse of her as they passed through the lobby, she began feeling more at ease with her homicidal impulse.
She was sitting in front of five different drinks, all the wrong one, bought for her by five different men, none of whom were even remotely her type... the type who understood a woman's moods and respected her wish for privacy. She was about to just walk out... until HE walked in. Something inside her, beyond her will, stopped her, and she went with it.
He stood six feet two inches tall, lean at the waist, broad at the shoulders and chest, what a genetic melding of Sean Connery and Pierce Brosnan would look like if it were twenty-five and mothered by Kelly Brooke. He was dressed in a black, silk dress jacket, matching slacks and a white silk dress shirt, open to his clavicle. HE was astonishingly HER type... physically. Still, he was a mirage, married, gay(most likely) or would see her as just one more of no doubt many conquests. She would soon find out, as he approached.
She steeled herself as he sat on the stool next to her and smiled politely before turning to the bartender.
"Fosters, my good man," he all but commanded in a confident, easy tone, his soothing deep voice carrying his English accent was almost calming, "Pint glass, fill to about four fingers shy of the lip, and switch that telly to BBC Sports and I'll handle the hecklers. There is three thousand Yen in it for you if you do it three minutes ago... three hundred if you do it now."
The balls on this joker! She glared at him in the mirror as he stared up at the HD screen with his light blue eyes, and stray strands of his short black hair falling over his eyebrows.
He looked at her reflection.
She turned away quickly as her pupils dilated.
He smirked as the bartender placed the beer in front of him and he slid the three hundred across.
She forced herself to look away as he suddenly turned to her. She didn't like to be rude to a complete stranger, but she wasn't about to let herself become a drunken buddy confession... "I like girls," she said directly without looking him in the eyes."
"And you hate straight Jager," he said, taking one of the shots from in front of her, "TWO things we have in common already." He dropped the shot into the beer, and swallowed half of it in a matter of seconds
In spite of herself, she turned and smiled at him, as he finished and leaned back looking at the ceiling, "Jager Bomb, oh my God... you are extraordinary, and foolish."
He smiled at her, "Where am I...?"
She giggled, "Heaven? Paradise? What cheesy line do you have for me mad man?"
"Line? Wha!? I am insulted that you would insinuate such shenanigans on my part... I am hurt, hurt and... well hurt and deeply, deeply insulted... You need to make it up to me."
"OH, Do I? How, pray tell, shall I do that?" She found herself leaning into him... What was she thinking?
"Kiss that girl over there," he said with a mischievous grin that she found captivating.
She turned and looked at the woman he was pointing at. She was all of twenty-three, beautiful, blond, blue-eyed, and staring at her in such a way that was all too familiar to her... lustful, predatory, too much like Amanda.
"She looks like my ex," Lara sighed sadly, then smirked playfully at him, "But you don't."
He looked at her mildly bewildered, "You... go..."
"Yes," she interjected, "I like both men and women. I'm just a little more choosy about men... and careful about women. I had a bad experience with my last lover."
"Sorry to hear that... the fantasies running through my head were, well,FUCK!," he suddenly screamed and glared angrily at the tv,"CAN'T YOU GUARD A NET?!"
She burst out laughing as he blushed bright red.
"Well, at least that bloke scored... ,"
Lara touched his shoulder, "I didn't say game over."
He leaned back and looked her over, his expression even, calculating.
"Should I pose?" she said playfully, "Are you about to tell me you're a world famous photographer?"
"You've heard that one too often," he said, his voice soft, his eyes gentle, "You don't strike me as the kind who fall for cons of any sort.. do you?"
"I've been through a lot," she said as softly, "but you seem nice, funny, safe."
He smiled, genuinely, "I would say the same thing about you, but in my case I would be telling only half the truth. You are formidable, and I don't just mean in terms of your beauty."
"Well," she sighed, "I can play a mean game of Battlefield. But let's keep talking about my beauty."
He smiled, and giggled slightly, then took a sip of his beer.
"When you walked up, I thought you were going to order a Vodka Martini, shaken, not stirred."
He nearly coughed up his beer, "Why?," he choked, "Because I look like a meshed clone of three of the actors who played Bond?"
"I see only Connery and Brosnan, whose the third?"
"They say I look like a taller Danny Craig... shirtless, from the neck down."
Lara leaned forward, placed her arms on the bar, then hooked her ankles into her stool legs, placed her weight on her arms, lifted the stool from the floor, and using her hips, moved her stool closer to his.
He blushed.
"So," she said smiling playfully at him, pulling her leather strap from her hair and letting it fall across her shoulders, "What part of England are you from?"
"Canterbury, originally."
"Surrey," she said softly, "Abbingdon to be precise, originally."
He stared into her eyes and smiled at her sweetly, "Evan Carter," he finally said, and extended his hand.
"Lara Croft... Very pleased to meet you Evan. You are very pleasant company."
"Well," he said calmly as he raised his pint, "It helps to have such equally pleasant company...guess I'm just an old softy."
"Hope not," Lara muttered as she sipped from one of the four other drinks in front of her.
He smirked at her as she turned beet red.
"I... I... finish your beer." She motioned to the bar tender, "One more of these please... make it a double."