Landon stood and grabbed his car keys, indicating it was time for them to go.
Of course he wasn’t afraid of her . . . or was he? Could she really get Cyrus Alexander out of prison? No. No way that would ever happen. But having her work on the case was digging into a wound in his psyche that was better left alone.
“You haven’t seen her since the other night?” Ricardo asked.
Landon shook his head as a rush of guilt slashed through his chest. They’d been his best friends for years. He’d never lied to them, but he’d also never talked to them about his mother’s murder or his dad’s drunkenness or any of the other crap he kept hidden away from them and everyone else. They didn’t need to know what he’d discovered about Gina’s internship or the fact that he’d confronted her the other day at Morgan’s Ladder.
It was none of their business that he was seeing Gina tonight to try to learn what he could about his mother’s death. That for the first time in years, he wasn’t trying to sleep with the hottest girl he knew.
No, those subjects were off-limits, even for his two best friends.
“Now let’s get this move over with.” He slapped Boomer on the back. “Unlike you two losers, I have a date tonight.”
CHAPTER THREE
Gina fidgeted as she sat in the passenger seat of Landon’s truck. Her right side was pressed against the door, creating as much distance between them as possible. This scene seemed too date-like. Too romantic. And her number one goal tonight was to keep it professional. To not do anything to jeopardize her job or her objectivity in the Cyrus Alexander case. Sure, she was only an intern, but she couldn’t let her feelings about a case influence the work she did. She’d come here to help Morgan’s Ladder, not complicate the issues with some schoolgirl crush on the local football hero.
Besides, the grimness of Landon’s jawline reminded her of their reason for seeing each other tonight. He now saw her as the opposition, not the woman he’d kissed on the patio of the pub just a few nights ago.
So why was she so nervous? She’d been on business dinners before. And that was all this was.
She and Landon Vista going out on a business dinner.
Making peace with each other.
And, except for official dealings with the Cyrus Alexander case, saying good-bye.
He’d arrived at her apartment right on time, in creased gray dress pants and a dark green button-down that turned the color of his eyes a couple of shades darker than they’d been when she’d seen him before. She hadn’t thought he could look any sexier than the night they’d first met, but she’d been wrong.
“You got your friend moved okay?” she asked, trying to think of anything other than what he’d looked like standing in her doorway.
He shrugged. “She’s still got a lot of unpacking to do, but we got all the big stuff in place where she wanted it.”
Gina stilled. She?
She scolded herself for the tinge of jealousy she felt. Of course he had female friends. A guy who looked like that probably had a different woman clamoring to sleep with him every night. If his lovemaking was anything like the kiss they’d shared . . . Oh, God. What was she thinking? “Maybe you should have stayed to help her unpack.”
His gaze slid to hers. He was quiet for a few seconds too long. Gina could tell he was hiding something.
“She’ll be okay.” His cool gaze returned to the road.
His mentioning that he’d helped a woman move flooded her with memories of Christopher. The way Christopher had vaguely answered her questions when they’d been dating. The way he’d sworn there was nobody else, even after one of her girlfriends had told her he’d been cheating on her. The way he’d looked when she’d flung open the bedroom door at his apartment to find him naked with that goth girl—her watermelon-size boob in his mouth and his—
She squeezed her eyes shut. She wasn’t going there. What had happened a few months ago—and hundreds of miles away—had nothing to do with tonight. What mattered now was that she get through this dinner with professionalism and grace, two traits she prided herself on. That alone was going to be tough enough. She opened her eyes and tried to ignore Landon as he drove the truck—the way the skin of his forearm looked even more tan against the dark green of his shirt. The freshly-pressed crease in his pants, so different from the way he’d looked when they first met after the volleyball game. She liked the more casual Landon—the one whose sculpted arms and shoulders were visible on the volleyball court—but this one was nice, too.
He slowed and pulled his truck into the circular drive of a two-story building with the clean, crisp lines of contemporary Asian architecture. A teenage valet moved from behind a podium to greet them as Landon opened the driver-side door. “Welcome to Indochine.” The boy’s eyes widened as he seemed to recognize Landon. The teen would have been in middle school—maybe high school—during Landon’s playing days.
“How’s it going?” Landon nodded and smiled, as if trying to put the boy at ease. He handed the teen his keys.
Gina slid from the passenger side and met Landon at the front of the truck.
“This is Thai food,” she said with surprise as they headed toward the garden of small trees that led to the front door of the restaurant.
“I keep my promises.”
So he did. She liked that in a man.
An unexpected touch startled her. She jerked, then realized it was Landon’s fingertips settling on the small of her back as they walked through the garden. She could feel their warmth through the thin fabric of her blouse. She didn’t want this to end.
He chuckled behind her. “I’m not going to hurt you,” he whispered as they reached the front door. He held it open for her.
She stopped, so close to him she could smell his freshly showered, masculine scent. The curls at the nape of his neck were still wet. “I thought this wasn’t a date.”
“Southern boys always open doors for a lady.” His voice was low. Intimate. Like they were the only two who were supposed to hear it.
She swallowed, suddenly wishing they could be alone together. So what if they shared a little quiet conversation. Maybe a little playful banter. As long as she kept their relationship professional, she wouldn’t violate her commitment to her job.
Landon checked in with the hostess, who led them to the opposite side of the restaurant and up an open staircase.
The second-story loft held several tables, a few of them occupied by couples and foursomes. A candle in an amber-colored glass sat in the center of each, creating little islands of light in an otherwise dimly lit area. The hostess led them to a teak two-top by the silver railing, overlooking the diners below. Landon pulled out Gina’s chair for her. She smiled at his gesture and sat down.
One corner of his mouth quirked upward as soon as the hostess handed them each a menu and returned down the staircase. “I don’t suppose they have a rib eye and some fries?”
“You’re a good sport to bring me here.” Her gaze slid to a table on the other side of the loft. Some of the couples around them were openly watching, but likely couldn’t overhear their conversation. “Though I do think this is good payback for yelling at me in my office the other day.”
Landon smirked and returned his gaze to his menu. Gina glanced at the patrons on the level below, some of whom had their heads turned upward, watching Landon.
The server arrived and took their drink orders—a glass of cabernet for Gina and a sweet tea for Landon.
“So my boss asked me to be on a task force,” Gina said, ignoring the other diners.
He fiddled with his silverware. “Oh, yeah? What kind of a task force?”
“Its purpose is to bring people together to find common ground on the death penalty issues. Someone from your office is supposed to be on it. Somebody named Scott something?”
“Scott Meredith. The chief of staff.”
<
br /> “You work closely with him?”
“He’s my boss.” Landon glanced to the diners below.
“He’s a good guy?”
His gaze returned to her. “He’s probably not going to agree with you on death penalty issues, if that’s what you mean.”
So there it was again—the difference in values that had separated her and Landon from the beginning. But it was too early in the dinner to talk politics. “I thought it was pretty cool that Suzanne’s letting me be on the task force. It’ll be a great experience for my internship.”
The server returned with their drinks and then took each of their dinner orders.
“Maybe we should get those to go.” Gina said to him as soon as they’d both ordered pad Thai.
Landon glanced from her to the server and back again. “Why?”
Gina shrugged. “You don’t seem comfortable here.” She loved the decor and the buzz of this place, but his unease seemed to be getting worse.
“To go, then,” he said to the server. She nodded and left.
He leaned toward Gina. “Is it that bad being seen with me?”
“People are staring at you. I figured you might like to go somewhere else.”
“How do you know they’re not staring at you?”
Sure, people gawked at her height, but this was different. She’d been seated for several minutes and even newly arrived diners turned to ogle Landon. “I’m not nearly as interesting as you are,” she said.
“I guess that’s a matter of opinion.” His green eyes bored into hers, like they’d done the night they’d first met. Like they’d done right before they’d kissed.
She held his gaze for several seconds, then forced herself to look away. Maybe the rest of Tallahassee was enamored with him, but she wasn’t. Her job had to come first.
Landon took Gina’s empty plate from the opposite side of his breakfast bar and rinsed it off in the sink. The Thai food had actually been not that bad. And she’d pretty much nailed how uncomfortable he’d been in that restaurant.
He watched her as she wandered around his living room. Every other woman he’d ever taken out to dinner had been flattered by the attention, soaking it up like they were proud to be seen with him. Like he was some new piece of jewelry they needed to show off in public. Which was why he rarely took women out to dinner.
Only Gina had sensed his unease and suggested they get out of there.
She leaned over to look at the contents of his coffee table, giving him a moment to admire her strong, sexy build. She wasn’t one of those women who felt like they needed to eat so little their ribs showed. No, she was athletic and muscular . . . but soft in all the right places. He’d felt some of those places when they’d kissed. And he wished he could feel all the others, too.
He wondered what she’d deduce from the items laying on his coffee table. That he liked to read, based on the Harlan Coben paperback. That he liked sports—big surprise there—based on the Sports Illustrated. And that he needed to pay his cable bill. Besides that, his condo was pretty generic. Even the furniture had come with the place.
“So when do you go back to law school?” he asked, trying to make conversation.
“A few weeks.” She picked up the novel off the coffee table and turned it over to read the back. “Classes start August seventeenth.”
“Wouldn’t you make a ton more money going into corporate law?” He couldn’t imagine someone like her wanting to deal in the seediness of criminal law. “Or becoming a partner in a big firm or something like that?”
She returned the paperback to the coffee table. “Sometimes it’s not about the money.”
He scoffed. “It’s always about the money.”
She straightened and cocked her head to look at him. “That’s a pretty jaded view of the world for someone as young as you.”
“I work in politics.” He set the salt and pepper back to where he kept them next to the oven. “It’s always about the money.”
She returned to the breakfast bar and studied his face for a few seconds. “You don’t strike me as someone who’d want to work in politics.”
There she was, weaseling her way into his psyche again, uncovering things about him that no one else had ever noticed. “Yeah? And why’s that?”
She shrugged. “I don’t know. It just seems like you wouldn’t want to make all the compromises you’d have to make to keep everyone happy in a job like that. You seem too . . . principled.”
There’d been a time when he’d felt more principled. Before he’d sold himself out by letting the senator capitalize on his history and his notoriety. “I was about to take a job with an accounting firm, then I met Scott Meredith at a cocktail party. He asked me to hold off a week or so before I made a decision. And they ended up offering me a job.”
“What’s your title?”
“Statistical analyst.” He was fairly certain they’d created the job just for him—or rather, his football notoriety—but she didn’t need to know that.
She wrinkled her nose. “Sounds like a lot of numbers.”
“That’s the best part.” People used numbers, not the other way around. And he’d found he was pretty damn good at finding trends, predicting outcomes, using data to find correlations between two seemingly unrelated factors. “Besides, how does a twentysomething decide on a career they could have for the rest of their life?” He didn’t have the answer. Maybe she did.
“It shouldn’t be based on how much money you’ll make.”
People with money always said that, but he knew different. Mama probably wouldn’t have been murdered had she not been working in that run-down country store in the middle of nowhere. And he’d never forget the other kids making fun of him for wearing the same pair of jeans to elementary school every day during the one cold month of winter. People with money always downplayed its importance.
Gina seemed to sense his silence. “I wanted to be a jockey growing up. But I was five foot eight by the time I was twelve, so I had to find a new career.”
He liked the way her laughter snuck into her sentences. “You had horses?”
She picked up her glass and walked into the kitchen. “No, but my friend Julie did. We used to ride them all the time.” She filled her cup with water from the dispenser on the front of the fridge, then turned to face him. “So tell me what you were like growing up.”
He shrugged. “There’s not much to tell.” That sounded lame, even to him. He was still the only person he’d ever known whose mom had been murdered.
“When did you realize you were good enough to play college ball?”
“The scouts started paying attention my sophomore year. My high school was a football powerhouse, so they were there every year anyway.” He leaned against the counter and stuck his hands in his pockets. “It didn’t hurt that we won the state championship when I was a senior.” That’s about the time his dad had started hanging around for the first time in years, but Gina didn’t need to know that.
“No, I guess not.” She took a sip of her water. “So it’s going to be kind of odd, interviewing you for the Cyrus Alexander case,” she said, to fill the awkward silence.
Landon’s jaw tightened. “It’s the Barbara Landon case.” His voice was rougher than he’d expected it to be. “She’s the one who was murdered.”
Gina’s stomach clenched at the pain in Landon’s eyes. Of course he would see it as his mother’s case. It was. She shouldn’t have referred to it the way she did. “I didn’t mean to—”
“There are a lot of guys who’ve killed someone.” His voice cracked at the word killed. “How do you choose which convictions you’re going to fight?”
“It depends on what’s presented to us.” Good. A general answer didn’t sacrifice the details of the case. “Sometimes it’s prosecutorial misconduct. Sometimes a witness recants their testim
ony. Usually it’s witness misidentification.”
“You think I didn’t really see him running away?” He bent toward her, inches from her face.
“We’ll want to interview you.” She resisted the urge to lean away from him. “Confirm your testimony.”
He gave a humorless laugh as he straightened. “It was fifteen years ago.”
But a day she was sure he remembered well. A day he’d probably repeated in his mind like a horror movie that wouldn’t end. “We’ll talk to everybody involved,” she said.
“If you can find them.”
“One of the policemen was killed in the line of duty a couple of years ago.”
He stood motionless, his hands clutching the counter behind him on either side of his body. “And the old guy who owned the sawmill next door was already about sixty years old when it happened.”
“We’re studying their original testimony.”
“And eventually you test the DNA.”
“Yes.” She held her breath, wondering where he’d take the conversation next. Silence filled the room.
“So there’s”—he looked away for a few seconds—“there’s a box with her clothes in it? What she was wearing that day?”
Gina nodded, thinking about how she’d gone into her brother Tommy’s room after everyone had left on the day of his funeral. Sat on his bed until late in the evening. Smelled the pillow where he’d rested his head the night before he died.
But Barbara Landon’s clothes were packed in evidence bags. Tagged and labeled like lab specimens—brittle with dried blood instead of infused with a mother’s special scent and softness.
She wondered if Landon had ever had an opportunity to go through his mother’s other belongings. To select items that might have had special meaning to him.
His voice cut into her thoughts. “And her clothes have someone else’s DNA on them?”
“Some blood.” She wondered if this was new information to him. “Not her type.”
He scrubbed a hand over his face. Inhaled, then exhaled a huge breath.
The Truth About Love Page 4