by Avery Flynn
Her brothers might be idiots sometimes, but they were her brothers, and she wasn’t going to have them going to jail for assaulting an officer just because she’d been dumb enough to believe that Ford had actually wanted to sleep with her.
“Stop all of this now,” she said, standing as tall as she could. No one paid attention. “He’s not after information about you,” she tried again, her voice rising as panic made her nerves jangly. Desperate to stop this before she couldn’t, she blurted out, “He’s my boyfriend.”
“What?” Rocco bellowed.
Ford stiffened behind her. She couldn’t risk a look back at him to let him know she wasn’t stupid enough to believe what she was saying. If she did, she’d blow everything. She could fix the lie. She couldn’t fix her brothers going to jail, and she’d promised their mom that she’d watch out for them.
“Yeah,” she said in a voice that shook even on that one-syllable word. “We’ve been seeing each other for months.”
“And you’ve known the whole time that he was a cop?” Paul asked, his hand still resting inside his jacket.
Ford made a growl of a sound, and she reached behind her back without looking and grabbed his hand, squeezing it tight enough that even a completely clueless person would know it was code for “shut the fuck up.”
“Ever since I met him.” Okay, not a lie. Not the whole truth, but not a lie.
“I don’t like it,” Paul said, but he moved his hand from being half hidden beneath his jacket to totally in view at his side. “Just imagine a cop at Grandma’s ninetieth birthday party next week.”
“You don’t have to imagine, because he’ll be there.” She could brazen this out. She could. Oh my God, let the earth swallow me up at any moment, please. “I’m a grown woman, and I don’t need your permission when it comes to who I date.”
Rocco’s vein pulsed near his temple. “I don’t approve.”
“I don’t care.” She shrugged, hoping like hell that it looked natural instead of like a jerky movement brought on more by nerves than actual confidence. “Look, I’ve watched out for you two for years since Mom and Dad moved to Florida. Now it’s my turn to have a little fun.”
What she didn’t say—and her brothers didn’t call her on, because despite all the posturing, they did love her—was that she wasn’t normally the kind of person who got to have that kind of fun.
She stared at her brothers, daring them to try to argue. Making the smart choice, for once, they kept their mouths shut.
“Just be careful,” Rocco said as he took his date’s hand and led her down the hallway.
Paul and his date followed suit, with the leggy blonde giving Gina a chipper wave goodbye as they did so. Once the foursome got far enough down the hallway that they hit the end and had to turn left, disappearing from view, Gina let out a sigh of relief. She would have sank back against the wall, but the one behind her wasn’t made of sheetrock, but muscle.
“We need to talk,” Ford said.
She turned and faced her make-believe, not-even-for-a-whole-night boyfriend and shook her head. “I don’t have anything to say to you.”
Really, what could she say? Sorry I totally lied about you, but it’s because I didn’t want my idiot brothers sent up the river for punching a cop in the face because of their misguided sense of honor? Yeah, it was time to slink on home like she should have done in the first place.
“Too bad, because I do.” He pressed the hotel room door open wide, the move highlighting his ropy forearm and just how big his hands were. “And I think you do, too.”
Her dress was still partially askew, her panties were in her purse, and her nerves were all twangy, and he wanted to talk? He had to be joking. But then she looked up—way up—at his face and realized he was deadly serious. Either that or he had a resting scowl face. Her gut sank down to her toes. What in the hell had she done when she’d taken that hotel key?
…
Ford flipped the deadbolt on the hotel room door and stayed there with his back up against the wall and watched Gina take a weaving path as she paced in front of the bed. The woman should never play poker—especially not at the Hartigans’ weekly game. She was nothing but a jumbled set of tells. The way she fiddled with the handle of her purse. The way her gaze flicked from one part of the room to another, studiously avoiding him. The way her steps seemed both hesitant and speedy. The Hartigan siblings would empty her kitty of pennies before the fourth hand.
Of course, that wasn’t the only reason why he couldn’t bring her to play poker. The wedding planner, with her cute blushes and awkward nervousness, was Gina fucking Luca. Sister to Rocco and Paul Luca, two neighborhood loan sharks with delusions of grandeur. That her name had never come up in the task force’s briefings wasn’t a surprise. The Lucas were bottom feeders, no matter how well-informed they were about the Esposito organization.
So why had he brought her back into his room? It sure wasn’t because it gelled with standard operating procedure to invite a relative of known crime associates into his hotel room while he was wearing only a sheet. If internal affairs knew, his ass would be missing several bite-sized chunks out of it.
Finally, she stopped, crossed her arms in front of her stomach, and lifted her chin a few inches before her gaze dropped from his. “Well, what did you want?”
“You’re Gina Luca.” The words came out because he had no idea what else to say.
She shrugged. “And?”
“Your brothers are Paul and Rocco Luca.”
The tip of her nose turned red, and a splotch of color appeared at the base of her throat. “This is what you wanted to talk about? My family tree?” She tightened her arms around her midsection. “Well, my mom’s Barbara, my dad’s Sal, and my grandfather is Big Nose Tommy, well, was is probably a more accurate description. He disappeared twenty years ago.”
Disappeared. Yeah, that was one way to put probably wearing cement shoes at the bottom of the harbor.
“You need a date to Grandma’s birthday party, and you just told your brothers that I’m your boyfriend.” Okay, not the smoothest of lines or a smart move according to regulations, but he’d never claimed to be the suavest Hartigan in Waterbury.
She snorted. “That was because I didn’t want to have to bail my brothers out of jail because they figured knocking you out cold was the honorable thing to do. Now if that’s all, I’ve got to go.”
So she had idiot brothers, too. He could identify. He needed to step to the side, open the door, and let her go back to whatever life she led. Instead, he stood there like a stump—useless and in the way.
“I’ve been where you’re at,” he said out of fucking nowhere.
One side of her mouth kicked up into an almost smile. “Standing in a hotel room with your panties in your purse?”
He chuckled unexpectedly. “Not quite.” He shoved his hand through his hair. Where in the hell was this coming from? He didn’t talk about this shit. What was next? A look into his feelings about fighting for every case that came his way because everyone on the force seemed to live under the same misconception as his brothers that he should have been a firefighter, like every other Hartigan male since his great-great-whatever got off the boat? Even the idea of doing that made him want to hurl. “I’ve been the one who didn’t quite fit in with my family.”
She rolled her eyes and got some of the same attitude she’d had when she was telling her brothers to take a flying leap. “I have a hard time believing that.”
“Trust me, it’s true.” If she only knew.
Gina just gave him a look that screamed whatever and started toward the door. “Look, I’m sure you’re Poor Mr. Misunderstood, but I’ve got two overprotective brothers who are going to be watching me like hawks after this disaster, a business I’m fighting to get off the ground, and a Victorian that I thought would be a simple renovation, which it would be, if I could keep a damn handyman for longer than a week. I don’t have the time or emotional energy to take a fake date to
my grandmother’s party. Thank you but no.”
She stopped in front of him, just outside of arm’s reach, her gaze direct. Her look was the equivalent of a shy-but-still-doing-it-anyway fuck you, and he couldn’t help but grin at her. What could he say, he was an asshole, and her unconscious comfort level with her own vulnerability was endearing.
In his own family, bluster and bravado came in equal, mega-sized servings. To acknowledge weakness was to admit defeat. But with Gina, it didn’t come off that way. She was, as his mom would say, plucky. Sure, she was totally in over her head, but she was plucky—and that turned him on.
“So, this is it?” he asked, his gaze dropping to her mouth.
Her full lips disappeared, pressed into a thin line before she said, “Yeah, I’m sure you’re not used to hearing that.”
“Only because I don’t give up easily.” Still, he turned the doorknob and held the hotel room door for her.
“Goodbye, Detective Hartigan,” she said, her voice breathy.
Nope. He didn’t like the finality of that.
“Good night, Gina Luca.”
That telltale splotch of blush of hers bloomed even brighter at the base of her throat, and she hustled down the hall to the elevators. Unlucky for him, the doors opened as soon as she hit the down button. He watched until the doors closed and then went back inside before someone reported a perv in the hall wearing only a sheet.
The door clicked shut behind him, leaving him alone, surrounded by the scent of Gina’s perfume. Too bad that’s all of her he’d ever get. A Luca and a detective on the organized crime task force went together like bulletproof vests and yoga.
After tonight, he wouldn’t be seeing her again. And he refused to examine the tightness growing in his chest at that thought.
Chapter Four
One Week Later…
Gina had a sledgehammer, and she knew what to do with it. Okay, she didn’t really know what to do with it, but she’d watched enough home renovation shows to look like it as she hefted the damn thing up and took aim at the half wall dividing the attic of her historical—fine, desperately in need of serious love—Victorian home into two rooms and cutting the flow of the space. The metal head of the sledgehammer made a satisfying thunk as it bashed through the poorly-constructed half wall for what felt like the millionth time that morning.
Arms aching from the effort of swinging the fifteen-pound hammer, she took a step back and set it down to admire her work. The half wall was toast.
Sure, there were still odds and ends she’d have to yank out of the floorboards, but the sun pouring in from the stained glass window on the east wall into the large open space left dots of color across the dusty hardwood floor that made her smile despite the mess.
The attic would be perfect for the new headquarters of Consider It Done Wedding Planning. She’d meet clients downstairs in the salon with its own door to the wide front porch, but this is where the magic would happen. The planning, the plotting, the everything coming together—that would be done here. If only she could take care of her other problems so easily.
Yeah, so she was doing a little home renovation therapy. Who would blame her? It had been seven days since she’d hightailed it through that hotel lobby, and she could still hear the cackling laughter from those asshole cops at the bar chasing after her.
Instead of thinking about it, though, she’d taken the DIY approach and pictured the cops’ faces on every piece of drywall she’d smashed through. Okay, she might have a little of her brothers’ Sicilian temper and lust for blood herself, she’d just figured out how to channel it better.
Now she no longer saw the jerks’ jeering faces in her dreams. Instead, she only saw Ford’s—and that was kind of worse, because she also heard his clit-whistle of a throaty groan every damn time she collapsed in bed at night. That was just unfair.
Had he been in on the whole humiliating charade and just played it off as being a total surprise to him? Possible, but she couldn’t get herself to believe it.
Anyway, it was nicer to pretend he hadn’t been. A girl like her needed the fantasy of a good man who didn’t lie or use people, who wanted her just because he did. All she had to do to make that happen was to bring her late-night fantasies to a grinding halt the moment before he told her he hadn’t left his hotel room key for her.
Kinda depressing thinking there, Regina.
Her inner voice wasn’t wrong. She swiped her water bottle off the floor and took a long drink. Time to keep moving forward and fixing up the home she’d inherited from her grandfather. The courts had declared a few months ago that the man she’d adored growing up and had been missing for twenty years was now officially deceased. And thinking about that was just going further down the rabbit hole that only led to sniffles and tubs of Rocky Road, which she wasn’t going to do because her life had been sad enough up until now. Things were finally going to change for her. She refused to let her looks or her family or her perpetual spinsterhood—hello, too much Austen on the bookshelf—stop her from doing what she wanted any longer.
It was time to make a new life for herself, and it started with renovating her grandfather’s home that had been sitting vacant for umpteen years by getting rid of the random boards still left standing after her spin with the sledgehammer. Her grandfather would have been proud of his girl finishing the renovations that he’d started so long ago. It may not be the usual tribute to a grandparent, but it was one he would have appreciated.
“Alexa,” she called out to the electronic hockey puck plugged into the wall near the stairs. “Play my renovation playlist.”
Instead of her normal happy, female singer-songwriter tunes, the alto growl of chicks done wrong who weren’t gonna take it anymore boomed through the speakers. Now this she could get her hammer swinging to.
Chin high, shoulders back—and gait lopsided because the sledgehammer was heavy—she marched back over to the half wall. In the movies, this is where she would have gone to town on what was left of that wall, smashing it to smithereens and turning in a circle triumphantly to view her accomplishment. Her life was a different kind of movie, though, because instead of the hammer coming down and taking out the two-by-four, it went flying out of her hands—thanks to a mixture of palm sweat and condensation from the water bottle—and sailed across the room, landing with a thud on the floor on the unfinished side of the attic.
“And you wonder why you don’t have your own home reno show,” she muttered to herself as she crossed the room to see the damage she’d inflicted.
Stepping carefully because there weren’t any floorboards laid across the insulation on this side of the attic, she held her arms out for balance and tiptoed across the crossbeams to the east wall where the sledgehammer lay in a puff of pink-wrapped insulation. The light coming in through the stained glass window danced across the insulation like mini-rainbows on a pink sky. It would have been pretty if it hadn’t been another reminder of the amount of work she still had to do on the house.
As she was reaching for the hammer, a glimmer caught her eye. It was different than the other colored spots from the window, more solid and golden. She leaned forward. The sparkle was coming from a spot under the bent corner of the insulation. A tool dropped into the space between the beams?
She moved the hammer over and pulled back the insulation, careful not to tear the wrapping so she wouldn’t inhale the probably poisonous strands inside, and revealed a narrow strip of open space that, though dark, seemed to go on down to the basement, judging by the cool, still air wafting up from it. The space had to be the top of one of the walls, which were built with tight crawl spaces inside them. She’d learned about that the smelly way, when a squirrel who’d been squatting in the attic found its way into one and couldn’t get back out. The exterminator had given her all the gory details.
Did squirrels collect shiny objects? Maybe it had left behind some doodads? She grabbed her phone from her back pocket, slid her thumb across the screen to turn on its
flashlight, and shined the piercing beam into the darkness.
Four spindly sticks lay in a line, one with a gold ring around one of them. That’s weird—
Realization slammed into her, knocking her back onto her ass. She didn’t care, she just did the crab walk on her hands and feet in her rush to get away from the crevice between the walls, because it hadn’t been four sticks. They’d been bones. Finger bones. And the ring? It had been her grandfather’s.
…
“Hartigan,” Captain Grant hollered across the Waterbury detectives’ bullpen as he stood in the door of his office. “In here. Now.”
Ford’s shoulders jerked closer to his ears before he could stop the reflexive reaction. This wasn’t good. Not being called into the captain’s office, but that bark of an order usually meant a shit assignment was incoming.
The last time he’d gotten that, it was after the deputy chief’s son had gotten picked up on a pot bust. That case had been radioactive. They’d given it to Ford because he wasn’t the kind of cop who gave a rat’s ass about whose kid a perp was. Rules were rules, and they were meant to be followed.
He got up from his desk, shoving aside a box of Chapstick with the word bleach scrawled in Sharpie across the label. No doubt they were from Ruggiero and Gallo. The way they were describing what happened at the wedding to the rest of the squad was that they’d set him up with a life-sized Troll Doll who happened to have mob connections for that Kiss Cam stunt. Everyone had gotten a good laugh about that. Assholes.
At least the idiot duo hadn’t gone on to tell everyone about them giving Gina his hotel room key. That meant either the two of them finally discovered they didn’t have to be dicks all the time, or they were just holding onto that little tidbit until the worst possible moment—like when he got called into the captain’s office, so they could watch as the captain dialed up internal affairs and informed them of a possible compromised detective on the task force.