by Avery Flynn
Clenching her jaw tight so her chin couldn’t tremble, she focused all of her attention on her own mug. She put way more effort into carefully removing her tea bag and putting it into the trash than she had with Ford’s, all so she could have a few precious seconds to take a breath and pull herself back from the edge. Once she could trust her voice, she turned back to the man who kept bearing witness to her most humiliating moments this decade.
Keeping her gaze on his chin with its dimple in the middle, because looking him in the eyes was so not going to happen right now, she said, “This isn’t just my house. It’s my place of business.”
“We can arrange it so that only the attic is off-limits,” he said, his thumb tapping against the mug’s handle.
Her confidence coming back with each inhale, she raised her chin and her gaze. “If someone did kill my grandfather, then they’re long gone.”
His thumb sped up its rat-a-tat-tat beat. “Are you so sure of that?”
“I could just tell my brothers that I need them to help out.” Ugh. Saying it out loud sounded like a worse idea than just thinking it in her head. Still, it was better than the alternative. Ford? In her house? Nopity nope nope. “They’ll stay here.”
“Is that what you want?” Ford raised an eyebrow and took a sip of his tea. “The chance of your brothers going off half-cocked when the mail carrier rings the doorbell to drop off a package? And anyway, the only choice you have is me staying here or you at a hotel.”
The tea burned her tongue, but she didn’t care. She needed something in her mouth to stop herself from screaming NO! Because he wasn’t wrong. Rocco and Paul were beyond annoying in their attitude toward keeping her safe. They’d been like that since the first time some jerk on the block had started making fun of her. They were good brothers. They were also total idiots who would punch first and think later, which was very not good if the person who ended up with a broken nose—or, she had to face it, worse—wasn’t someone threatening her.
She put the cup down and looked around her kitchen, taking stock of the boxes of tiles, the PVC pipe and paint brushes—really anywhere but at the man in her kitchen who discombobulated her thinking.
Her brothers were the last ones she needed at her house. And while Tess was supportive in her own super-quiet way and Lucy as enthusiastic as she was impulsive, on the off chance her grandfather hadn’t just slipped into the space between the walls on his own, she didn’t want to put either of her friends in danger by having them stay here.
Finally, her gaze landed on Ford. More specifically, she zeroed in on his hands as they practically dwarfed his tea mug. They were strong hands. Capable hands. The kind that had felt so good on her skin as he—
Girl! You’re in danger!
Gina stopped that line of thought before it could go any further. “Are you any good with your hands?”
Ford set down the mug on her counter and smiled. “I’d like to think so.”
She couldn’t swallow the tea in her mouth as she stared at him and the cocky upward curl of his lips. It just sat there like hot judgment on her tongue while her body forgot how to do basic tasks.
Oh, she remembered how good he was with his hands. She’d only been remembering in vivid detail what he’d done in the hotel room every night in her own lumpy bed. Where was the hole in the floor, because she really wanted to slide down into it. No, really. There was a hole in the floor of her kitchen. Owning a Victorian in need of so many repairs really did have its privileges. Too bad she’d moved the kitchen table over it so no one would accidentally fall.
Nice move being all safety first, Regina.
At the realization that once again the embarrassing truth of the matter was written in red all over her face and that there was no escaping it, her body suddenly remembered how to move. She swallowed the tea, set down the mug on the counter, and gave Ford what she prayed was a snotty glare.
“I think this whole thing is crap, but if you’re going to stay, you’re going to have to help with renovations.”
There. That should send him running.
It should have. But he didn’t disappear.
“I worked my way through college on a construction crew.” He picked up his mug and took a drink, never looking away from her. “Home renovation is in my wheelhouse.”
Of course it was.
…
It was hours later, after the crime scene techs had left, leaving a trail of black fingerprint dust behind them and a big X of police tape across the door leading to the attic stairs, before Ford got a chance to call his captain.
He’d basically blackmailed Gina into letting him stay. He could claim it was for his job all he wanted, but it wasn’t.
Initially, it may have been to save Gina from having to deal with Gallo, but the captain was going to try to tap her for information one way or another. If Ford had said no and Gallo wasn’t an option, the captain would have gone with someone else. That didn’t make lying to her any better. It made it worse. Why? Because there were other ways to get the information they needed.
But in the kitchen, with her brothers hovering and crowding her space, she’d looked like she’d needed his help. And he wanted to keep her safe. He hadn’t lied about that. If someone had killed her grandpa, odds were they’d come back to check that they’d not left anything at the scene. And the idea had just come to him. Stay with Gina and keep her safe, keep the captain from getting anyone else to stake her out, and keep her close enough that if her bonehead brothers were getting more involved in the Esposito organization, he might be able to protect her.
He glanced around the house he’d just agreed to help renovate for a few days.
The setting sun coming in through the big bay window bathed the living room—a salon, as Gina had called it—in a warm, golden glow. The house had good bones, but there was obvious neglect everywhere the light hit.
The fact that Gina was even willing to tackle it was impressive. He wasn’t surprised she’d had trouble finding contractors and others willing to take on the specialized work to get it not only up to code but keep it true to who she was.
He dialed the captain’s office and pulled gently on the torn wallpaper hanging on one wall, so he could get a peek at what was underneath while the phone rang.
“Tell me you have good news,” Captain Grant said in greeting.
“I’ve made up the couch, if that tells you anything.” Gina had given him a pillow, a sheet, and a thick Go Ice Knights Hockey blanket before disappearing into another part of the creaky house.
“I don’t need to go over the rules with you, do I?”
“No sir.”
“Let’s just summarize it into two, then,” the captain said. “One, get the information from the Luca brothers we’re after. Two, Ms. Luca is not a target, but she is off-limits—not that there’s really any reason to worry about that, considering what Gallo and Ruggiero are telling the squad about her.” The captain paused. “So how bad is she?”
Well, there was no missing the family resemblance with Big Nose Tommy, and her eyes didn’t quite fit her face, but it wasn’t like she was some kind of snaggletooth troll with poisonous drool. She definitely didn’t look like the women he normally dated, which made the fact that he’d gotten hard almost every time he’d thought about her during the past week more than a little interesting. So how bad was she? He heard her voice in his head talking about the fact she didn’t wear glasses and therefore couldn’t take them off and be suddenly beautiful like in the movies. His gut flopped.
“It’s not pertinent to this investigation,” he said without inflection.
“That’s what I like about you, Hartigan.” The captain chuckled. “You’re always by the book. I don’t have to worry about you going off the deep end.”
“No, sir.” He was the guy who double tied his shoes, kept his receipts, and waited for the walk signal before crossing the street—at the fully-marked crosswalk.
“Any word from the ME?” the captain asked.
; “Confirming Big Nose Tommy’s identity is a formality.” Okay, Dr. Dev had told him she’d need to get dental records, but considering the circumstantial evidence of where the body was found, the ring, and the body’s physical stature, she was putting a positive ID at 96.8 percent. That was the kind of specificity that he could appreciate. After that it was just confirming cause of death.
“Foul play?”
“The good doc says not according to initial indications.” She’d gone into detail about the whys and the hows of that, but he wasn’t even going to try to repeat it to the captain.
“Where’s the lady now?”
Ford turned toward the closed pocket doors that blocked off the room he was in from the large foyer and staircase that led up to the next floor. “Her room for the night.”
“And she bought your story about why you need to be in the house?”
He pictured her as she handed him the blankets. She hadn’t said anything, but there was no missing the suspicion written all over her face. The woman really should never consider a job as a spy.
“For a limited time.”
“Then you should consider the clock ticking, Hartigan. Act accordingly.”
His grip tightened on his phone. “I’ll do my best.”
“I’m counting on it, because the chief talked to me about shaking up the task force. This is a great opportunity to either prove you’ve got what it takes or that everyone who says you should have joined the fire department like the rest of your family was right.”
So, minor stakes, then, for a shot in the dark assignment. Great.
Chapter Six
Ford woke up the next morning on the couch and felt like shit. No. He felt old. And achy. And like someone had grabbed a pair of putters and taken a few whacks to his neck. The pleather couch might be good for watching a game—if the room had a TV—but it sucked to sleep on.
Blanket around his hips, he searched for the T-shirt he’d tossed off in the middle of the night, and a sharp pain shot from right behind his ear down his shoulder.
Fucking A.
He reached up and rubbed the aching spot between his neck and shoulder blade. The knot was just starting to ease when a woman’s squawk of a scream echoed through the drafty house, coming from the direction of the kitchen. Ford grabbed his gun and sprinted toward the sound, sliding to a stop in his bare feet in the doorway of the kitchen.
Gina stood in front of the sink with part of the faucet in one hand and her other hand pressed to where the water came out. What must have been one helluva water spray had plastered her brown hair to her head, and one long wet strand was stuck to her nose, running down the length of it, coming to a stop at the tip. As she looked at him, her eyes wide with surprise, a big drop of water hanging from the end of her nose fell. Of course, that just took his attention south over her chest—her nearly see-through tank top was so wet that it must have been in the direct line of the spray zone—and then farther down to the soft pink cotton sleep shorts that ended just below the round curve of her ass. His morning wood woke up again.
“Having a little bit of a problem?” he asked, letting his gun arm relax.
She huffed out a breath, no doubt aimed at the wet hair glued to her nose, and gave him a death stare. “Please tell me you weren’t lying about knowing home renovation stuff and that you can actually turn off the water.”
“That I most definitely can do.” He walked into the kitchen and put his gun down on the table before crossing over to her in front of the sink. “If you can just move over, I can open the cabinet doors and get to the valve.”
“If I could move, don’t you think I would have? One inch and the water cannon goes off again. My seal on this thing is tenuous.”
Great. She stood, feet planted shoulder-width apart, directly in front of the cabinet. “Can you pivot the lower half of your body?”
She turned in toward the cabinet.
“No.” He squatted down beside her, grabbed her hips, and rotated her the other way. “Like that.”
Except like that was bad. Very bad. Her sleep shorts were as thin as they looked, meaning not only could he feel the heat from her body where his palms cupped her hips, he could see the dark outline of the panties she wore under the shorts. His thumb started tapping a beat against her hip, and she inhaled a sharp breath. He looked up, took in how her nipples had pebbled against her tank top, and the desire turning her brown eyes to a dark walnut.
All of the air in his lungs came out in a rush. It wasn’t a frustrated groan, it was an exhale. So what if that was a Pyrrhic victory, he’d take any victory at all at this moment.
“Sorry about that,” he mumbled and opened the cabinet.
“No problem,” she said, her voice breathy.
Trying his best to ignore the woman with the mile-long legs next to him, he peered under the sink and located the valve. Finally, something going right this morning. He grasped the knob and turned his wrist. The knob didn’t move, though. Lucky him, he had some built-up frustration that he could pour into it like WD-40. He gripped the valve tight and tried again. This time the damn thing, which probably hadn’t been touched in fifty years, gave way.
“Try now,” he said.
A half second later, cold water was everywhere and Gina was screaming curses again. By the time he’d stood up, though, she had her hand pressed against the half of the faucet that had been gushing water. A fresh river was dripping off her nose, and now her shirt was just wet and clinging to her tits in a way that made his mouth go dry.
Off-limits, Hartigan. She’s very off-limits.
That reminder was enough to move his gaze up to see the very-not-amused expression on her face. “Let me go check the main valve.”
“Good plan,” she said through clenched teeth.
“You know where it is?”
She closed her eyes and let out a sigh that would translate in any language to idiot. “Basement.”
He’d never been so glad to get out of a kitchen in his life. Not even when he was growing up at home and the rule was last one in the kitchen with Mom after Sunday family dinner had to do the dishes. He had six siblings, and at six foot two he was considered one of the short ones, so there were a lot of dishes after feeding a lot of big people.
The basement was at the end of rickety stairs in a dark room that had a single lightbulb with a pull string hanging from the ceiling. In other words, it was a basement he would have fully expected to get called to for work. Despite the atmosphere and the fact that the basement used to belong to Big Nose Tommy Luca, he didn’t find a body—at least not another one—but did find the main water valve behind a stack of boxes that looked like they’d been in the basement for the past century. He turned the main water valve off and hustled upstairs to the kitchen, where he almost had a heart attack.
Gina was sitting at the kitchen table—still more wet than dry—breaking down his service weapon like a pro.
“What in the hell are you doing?”
“I don’t allow guns in my house.”
She grabbed a flat-head screwdriver and pushed down on the black collar around the exposed portion of the firing pin while simultaneously sliding the back plate back. A rookie would have let go of the firing pin and the big steel safety pin and sent them flying across the room, but not Gina. She kept ahold of both and then removed them and sat them on the table beside his nine millimeter’s magazine.
He’d never gotten turned on by a woman who knew her way around a gun before. Watching her changed that.
What in the hell was wrong with him? Forbidden fruit really wasn’t normally his kink. He went for the future soccer mom type who followed the rules and kept to a schedule. This detail was just messing with his head—both of them.
“You do remember I’m here on official business?” he said, striding into the kitchen and stopping on the opposite side of the table, leaning forward for emphasis. “There may be someone waiting for the perfect moment to clean up any details they’d overlooked bef
ore with your grandfather.”
She kept on with what she was doing, not even bothering to look up. “You do remember I pay the mortgage, so you have to follow my rules and I don’t allow firearms in my house.”
“This is ridiculous.”
She shrugged. “Then leave.”
“That’s not gonna happen.” Not with her other option being Gallo at her kitchen table to find out what he could from the Luca brothers’ totally off-limits—remember that part, Hartigan—sister. “And neither is me giving up my gun.”
…
Gina tried her hardest to ignore the way Ford’s forearms looked when he pressed his palms to the kitchen table and leaned forward. She totally failed.
Before, she’d never really gotten why some women raved about arm porn. Now she did. She shifted in her seat and sat the flat-head screwdriver down next to the nine millimeter’s slide and spring.
“If you’re in this house, it’s without your gun.” That was her line in the sand, and no one got to cross it.
She didn’t believe this cock-and-bull story about someone out there lurking to clean up a mess left behind after they’d offed her grandfather twenty years ago. That meant only one thing. Her brothers were up to something more poorly thought out than usual and it had gotten the attention of Waterbury’s finest. Playing along with this nonsense was her best option to find out what Paul and Rocco were doing, which was the only reason she’d agreed to let Ford stay. Really. That was it.
“No gun?” He stood straight and crossed his arms over his bare chest. “That’s total nonsense.”
“I don’t like guns.” Brilliant comeback, Regina.
She could have come up with something better if she had gotten to make the pot of coffee she’d been starting when the damn faucet she was trying to tighten at the base came off and sent water everywhere. That’s all it was. It sure wasn’t because she was distracted by his biceps or his washboard abs or the dark happy trail that started right below his belly button and disappeared beneath the waistband of his low-slung jeans.
“Well you sure are comfortable with them.” He jerked his chin at the separated pieces that made up his nine millimeter that were spread out over her kitchen table.