by Lauren Layne
Five minutes later, Luc didn’t even bother to hide the smug grin as Ava regretfully told her cameraman that while the NYPD had every intention of cooperating as best they could, they simply couldn’t allow a camera inside a building where sensitive documents were piled high on every desk.
As it was, Ava herself had a mound of confidentiality-agreement paperwork to get through, and Brinker set her up in one of the conference rooms.
Luc decided to take his last few moments of peace to catch up on his own paperwork.
His partner had other ideas.
“Dude. You never said she was hot.”
“Who’s hot?” Luc asked.
Lopez threw a paperclip at Luc, hitting him squarely in the chest. “Don’t insult our friendship.”
Luc grunted. It was bad enough that he had to put up with Ava Sims for the next few weeks; he drew the line at discussing her almost painfully good looks with Sawyer.
Lopez was a damned good partner, but it was times like this that Luc missed Mike most acutely.
Luc had never had to worry about these sorts of things with his former partner. Mike Jensen had been happily married to a school nurse. They’d had a six-year-old son who’d had a serious case of hero worship for his dad…
Luc’s fingers clenched around his pen. The last thing he needed on his mind right now was his former partner. Not with the fucking paparazzi sitting twenty feet away with an all-sanctioned pass to pry into his life and share his secrets with the world.
Not that he had any intentions of sharing his secrets with a reporter. Especially the one currently sitting down the hall.
But Ava Sims was smart and driven as hell. His instincts told him that if she wanted to find the story—the real story—she would.
Fuck.
Luc considered himself a don’t-stress-about-it kind of guy, but from the second he’d heard the words America’s Hero and TV series, he felt like he had a ball of tension permanently lodged in his chest.
Luc’s eyes fell on his partner who was not-so-subtly doing the occasional 360 spin in his chair in hopes of catching sight of Ava when she finished up with her paperwork.
Inspiration struck, and Luc leaned back in his chair, trying to look at Lopez from Ava’s point of view. His partner was good with women. Luc already knew that. But Sawyer tended toward the bubbly cheerful kind.
Not smooth-talking career women with just a substantial layer of chill.
Still…it was worth a shot.
Luc stifled the smile, letting his former scowl resettle on his face. If Lopez thought he was being played, there was no way he’d go for it.
“Hey, so Cap said the hot reporter would be doing ride-alongs with us. That’ll be cool,” Lopez said.
“Seriously? You hate ride-alongs,” Luc said.
Lopez held up a finger. “No, I hate the dippy, I-wanna-be-a-cop-someday type of ride-alongs. Those stupid kids are always offering advice when they don’t know shit about shit. But Ms. Sims will be a nice kind of ride-along. Just sitting, observing…looking fine…”
Luc withheld the snort. If Lopez thought Ava wouldn’t be offering plenty of unsolicited advice, he had an unpleasant surprise. He doubted mind your own business was in her DNA, not to mention it was a blatant contradiction of her job description.
“Hot or not, same rules apply,” Luc said, just to set the record straight. “She can come on the tame ride-alongs. That’s it.”
“Shit, and here I was planning to bring her to a shoot-out,” Lopez mused.
Luc flung the paperclip back at his partner, nailing him in the forehead. “Hey. So, I need you to be my wingman.”
Lopez rubbed the red spot to the right of his temple with a knowing grin. “Ah, so you do want a piece of Miss Media.”
Yes.
No!
Damn it.
“Let me rephrase,” Luc said, sitting back in his chair. “I need you to be my reverse wingman. Do whatever you need to keep that plastic, nosy diva away from me.”
There was a light tap on his shoulder before a female voice spoke up. “Gonna be hard when this nosy diva is hell-bent on getting all up in your business.”
Whoops.
“Nice job, Wingman,” Luc said with a glare at Lopez, whose grin indicated that he’d definitely seen Ava approaching and had opted not to mention it.
Luc pivoted around in his chair so he faced Ava. Only he was sitting, and she was standing, which put him exactly at eye level with Ava’s slim hips.
Generally speaking, Luc liked a little more curve to his women, but apparently his preferences were shifting, because he couldn’t help his sex-starved brain from thinking that Ava Sims’s hips were the perfect size for his hands to wrap around, his fingers holding her still as he prepared to plunge into her…
The fantasy dissolved into a million pieces when she opened her sassy mouth again.
“You know…” her voice was considering, her finger tapping idly against her lips. “I’d always heard that the whole man-in-uniform thing was supposed to be a turn-on. Guess it’s an acquired taste.”
Luc’s eyes narrowed just slightly. “See, here I am having a similar revelation. Always thought you TV people were supposed to be likable. Guess that’s subjective too.”
Lopez snickered behind them. “Doesn’t look like you need that reverse-wingman, Moretti. This one’s not exactly throwing herself at you, now is she?”
Just like that, Ava’s bourbon-colored eyes left Luc’s and landed on his partner. She apparently liked what she saw, because the tension around her mouth eased and she actually smiled. Not one of those forced shark smiles either. A real one.
Apparently she wasn’t so immune to the man-in-uniform thing after all.
She was just immune to Luc. Exactly as he wanted it.
Riiiiight.
Luc watched as Ava moved around Luc’s desk to Lopez’s. “Ava Sims. You’re a colleague of Luc’s?”
“Give the woman a medal,” Luc muttered. “What was it that gave it away, the uniform or the badge?”
Ava didn’t bother to turn around, but her right arm curled around behind her small waist to present him with a lone middle finger.
Nice.
Luc tried not to pay attention as Lopez and Ava chatted it up like old friends.
Just like he tried to ignore the fact that her new position meant he was free from looking at her hips, but now had her perfect ass in view.
Once again, this woman’s body sent his mind directly to the gutter, and even as he wanted her to stop yapping, he also wanted to bend her over this very desk, inch those nice-girl slacks down her thighs to reveal naughty-girl panties.
Jesus. Luc rubbed a hand over his face. Get it together, Moretti.
It didn’t help that her perfume exuded spicy and sweet at the same time.
The spice he could see. But the sweet…ha. Talk about a fucking red herring.
“Yo, Lopez, Moretti!”
Thank God. An interruption. He hoped it was something bloody and gritty as hell to free him from Ava Sims–inspired fantasies.
Both he and Lopez looked up to see Sergeant Anders standing up to get their attention. “Ten-fifty over at Chelsea Pier. You want?”
“On it,” Luc said, standing up so quickly his chair nearly tipped backward.
Lopez grumbled but stood as well.
“What’s a ten-fifty?” Ava asked.
Lopez met Luc’s eyes. “We taking her?”
“Yes,” Ava said, just as Luc said hell no.
She’d already whipped out one of those annoying little reporter notebooks with the spiral on top—really, they actually used those?—and looked up at him defiantly.
And a little bit smugly too, because she knew what he knew:
He was supposed to take her with him. The only reason she was here sending him into a daytime wet dream was because she wanted to shadow his every move and then blast his every secret to the entire country.
Luc longed to put an end to it here and n
ow. To tell Ava Sims he wasn’t going to sell out as some sort of hero because he did the same job that thousands of first-responders did every day.
He wanted to tell her to go harass one of those officers who hadn’t been unlucky enough to get caught on camera.
Anders ambled over glancing at his notes. “Mid-thirties, white male. Witness reports range from hefty to huge. Last seen at Pier thirty-one, although seems to be roaming.”
“What’s a ten-fifty?” Ava asked again.
“Disorderly conduct,” Luc said, already moving toward the door.
“Intoxicated?” Lopez asked Anders, following Luc.
Anders shrugged. “Undetermined.”
Ava was hitching her bag over her shoulder, trotting along beside them. “I’m coming.”
Luc halted and turned, putting a hand against her chest to stop her forward movement.
A mistake.
His hand was high enough to keep his fingers out of reach from her more interesting parts, but he could still feel her heart hammering against his palm all the same.
It was…
Shit, she really couldn’t come with them. He couldn’t be near her and think straight.
Luc jerked his hand back. “You. Stay.”
“Which would defeat the purpose of me being here, wouldn’t it? I’m your shadow.” She pushed his wrist aside. “Learn how to deal with it.”
“I need to do my job, Sims,” he said as she moved past him to follow.
Her spine straighter. “And I need to do mine.”
“Luc, we need to move,” Lopez called from the door. “She can wait in the car if the guy’s out of hand.”
Luc opened his mouth to protest, when Anders broke in with one more detail. “There are also reports of ID.”
Luc and Lopez groaned at the same time, both heading toward the door.
Ava followed, and this time Luc let her. Maybe he could use her nosiness against her.
It was time to let Sims see just how unsexy this job could be.
CHAPTER SEVEN
So, apparently, there was a naked man running up and down Chelsea Pier.
Well, not a totally naked man. Ava had overheard Lopez questioning an elderly couple, and according to them, the perp still wore his too-small white tank top and beat-up leather sandals.
But the crucial, um, bits of him were apparently flopping out there for all to see.
And judging by the old lady’s hand motions, flopping was unfortunately literal.
Ava stood near the car where Luc had curtly told her to stay put. She didn’t see what the big deal was. Not like she hadn’t seen a naked man before.
Well okay, it had been a while.
Her eyes found Officer Moretti as he interviewed a couple of runners, her eyes taking in wide shoulders and tapered waist.
He was taller than average, but there was nothing lanky or gangly about him. His standard-issue uniform did little to disguise the clench and release of muscles when he moved, and her mouth went dry as she imagined her fingers unbuttoning his shirt, sliding it off sculpted shoulders to reveal what she was about 90 percent sure would be a flawless six-pack…
Ava shook her head to clear it.
Okay, so maybe it had been a long while since she’d seen a naked man.
But she hated it was Moretti who made her remember that her last date had been…
When exactly?
Three months? Six?
Why couldn’t it be Officer Lopez who made her a little crazy? Luc’s partner was drop-dead gorgeous, and a hell of a lot more charming than Moretti.
So why did it have to be Luc who reminded her that she’d been celibate for way longer than she’d like?
It’s not like Ava was one of those hyper-independent women who was determined to remain single at all costs.
Ava loved to date. Or at least she liked the idea of dating. That giddy anticipation of whether she’d feel it—that spark of, yes, maybe this could work!
Okay, so, admittedly, as far as expectations went, the bar was pretty low.
But Ava was no naive twenty-two-year-old college grad who thought the right guy was just around the corner. She’d kissed a lot of toads.
A lot.
She wasn’t at all sure her happily ever after was out there, so when it came to first dates, Ava was just fine settling for a maybe and decent conversation.
But even the maybes had been few and far between. For a city with several million people you’d think there’d be at least one guy she found attractive who didn’t bore her silly.
Ava sighed and readjusted her pony.
After this story, she’d put more effort into the dating scene. She loved her career—sometimes—but she didn’t want to be married to it.
Actually, she didn’t want to be married at all. Ever. To anyone.
As though sensing her gaze on his back—okay, his butt—Luc whipped his head around and his eyes clamped on hers.
Embarrassed to be caught staring, Ava jerked her gaze away. This was so not the time to be playing sexy-eyes with a grumpy cop.
Part of Ava’s job was knowing when people were at their limits, and Luc Moretti had been at his when they’d first arrived at the pier and he caught her taking notes while he interviewed a witness.
Whoopsie.
She’d been banished to the car.
But hey, bright side…at least now she knew what an ID was in cop-speak:
Indecent exposure.
It also explained why Luc Moretti had changed his mind about letting her tag along. He thought she’d be scared off.
Please. It would take a hell of a lot more than a flaccid penis on a disorderly drunk to scare her off the story.
She would, however, be omitting this particular cop-experience from her prime-time coverage.
And the story would be prime time. That had been the only reason Ava had agreed to do something so…scripted.
The network had been hard up for the type of feel-good story for the summer evenings after the featured farm in their farm-to-table, organic food series had gotten nailed on animal cruelty charges.
The higher-ups had been in a panic, and Ava had (stupidly, in hindsight) mentioned the local coverage of a hero cop video gone viral. Her boss had gone crazy for the story.
And as a reward, Ava had gotten first shot at it. This was it. Her make-or-break story. She knew it, Mihail knew it, her bosses knew it…
But Luc Moretti didn’t know it. Or perhaps more accurately, Luc Moretti didn’t care.
Ava slumped back against the car for a second before realizing it would probably get dirt all over her suit, and she jumped back before turning around and frantically trying to check out her own ass for smudges. Anchorwomen were supposed to care about these things.
Thank God Mihail wasn’t here. He’d be armed with another comment about how Gwen Garrison could wear a white gown at rush hour on the J train and walk away without so much as a speck of dirt on her.
Well Ava Sims wasn’t Gwen Garrison, and this whole fancy, polished thing was hard.
But she was determined to get used to it.
After confirming that she didn’t have brown streaks on her butt from the patrol car, Ava turned back around to see if Luc and his quick-with-a-line partner were wrapping up their 10-50-whatever so she could get in a few interview questions.
She wondered how long Lopez and Luc had been working together. She made a note in her spiral to find out.
Sawyer Lopez shared Luc’s same dramatic coloring, with dark hair and blue eyes, and she imagined the pair of them were like heartbreak on a plate for those women who liked the men in uniform thing.
Which Ava didn’t. So she kept telling herself.
She bit her nail, then jerked her hand away as she tried not to get impatient. Sitting still and waiting were so not her favorite activities. Ava pulled out her cell phone. A missed call from her sister, several Instagram updates from her brother in what looked like Vienna, and a text from Beth beginning with
SOS.
Ava scanned the text from Beth. As expected, it was wedding related. All of Beth’s texts were wedding related these days, and at least half of them were SOS. Not that Ava minded. What were best friends for if not to make the appropriate soothing noises when the videographer you’d been hoping for was already booked.
Dutifully, Ava responded that the videographer was mediocre anyway, they’d find a way better one, and why don’t they meet up for happy hour tonight to discuss it?
Beth was definitely toeing the line on Bridezilla territory, but luckily Ava had found the cure: wine.
Maid of honor duty done for the time being, she put her phone away, and to prevent herself from staring—and drooling—over the way Luc Moretti looked in his uniform, Ava began running through the structure of the America’s Hero footage.
It would probably take hours of following Luc around to get even five minutes of footage. That’s how it was with stuff like this. Nobody wanted to see that cops sometimes got stuck in traffic too, so they’d resort to a montage.
Likely with a voice-over about “the side of a cop’s day-to-day you never see in the movies.”
Which was really just reporter talk for boring stuff.
Her fingernail crept up to the corner of her mouth, and she nibbled at the edge of her ring-finger nail.
It was a horrible habit. One she was determined to break. Eventually. Mihail was a champ about always batting her hand away when she got the nervous nail-biting urge, but he was nowhere to be seen today.
Ava groaned and dropped her hand as she remembered her friend. Mihail. Why hadn’t she thought to call him? How was she going to get even five minutes of footage when she’d gone and forgotten her cameraman?
It was Luc Moretti’s fault. Those damn blue eyes were distracting.
Her eyes searched for Lopez, but she didn’t see him anywhere. Then she looked for Luc and found him almost immediately. It was like he was a damned beacon for her gaze.
Her eyes narrowed just slightly. What made him tick? What caused that compelling combination of easy charm, effortless competence, and guarded mystery?
Because regardless of how boring her opening voice-over was, the real grit of the story would come from interviews.