by Avery Flynn
“Don’t worry, Hartigan. You’ll still be in the running to stay on the task force, but I have to tell you that bringing in some hard intel would go a long way to helping you there.”
No shit, Captain Sherlock. “Yes sir.”
And that was the little breath of hell that hung over him for the rest of the afternoon, right up until an incoming text message made his phone buzz as he and Gina were sanding down the intricately carved banisters for the main staircase. She’d been telling him some of her wedding planner horror stories—who knew ducks could shit that much—and explaining that despite the craziness of it, she was ready to start working with her newest client next week. Continuing to listen, Ford pulled out his phone and glanced down at the message.
Mom: Don’t forget to pick up the pastries from the bakery before you stop off for family lunch today.
Great. Lunch was in an hour. He rammed his fingers through his hair and tried to work out how he was going to explain to his mom that he wasn’t coming. Kate Hartigan was not going to be happy, and she wasn’t going to be shy about telling him. “Oh hell.”
“Did someone run a red light?” Gina asked.
God, didn’t he wish. “It’s my mom.”
The teasing look in her brown eyes softened. “Is everything okay?”
“Yeah, I just forgot to tell her I couldn’t make Saturday family lunch today. It’s pretty much a standing event for the entire family, and not going means you better be in the hospital.” He stared at his phone.
Gina started sanding again. “Why can’t you go?”
“I’m not leaving you here alone.” Yeah, or is it that you know your time pretending to be Mr. Fix It with Gina is almost over?
“Then I’ll come with you.”
As if it was that easy. Bringing the uninitiated to a Hartigan family event was not something to be undertaken lightly. “Trust me, that’s the last thing either of us want to do.”
She stopped sanding and looked up at him, her smile too cheerful to be real. “Don’t worry, it’s not like you have to pretend I’m your girlfriend with your family.”
And there it was, the famous Ford Hartigan charm thrilling women everywhere. Fucking A, Hartigan. Get your shit together.
“It’s not that.”
“What is it, then?” she asked.
“My family can be a lot to handle—especially all at once.” How in the hell did he explain it to her?
First, there was the sheer number of them. Then there was the whole volume aspect, because they were not a quiet family. Finally, there was the fact that his mom wouldn’t stop pestering Gina with questions about every aspect of her life from the moment she walked in the door.
The Hartigans were not for everyone.
As the family saying went, there was the red Irish, the black Irish, and the so-much-trouble-they-got-kicked-off-the-island Irish—the Hartigans were all three. Yeah, there was no way he could subject Gina to all of that.
“You really think they’re crazier than mine?” she asked, her tone so full of disbelief he would have thought he’d just told her that coffee wasn’t the best thing ever invented.
He nodded. “Yes.”
“Well, the only way to settle this is to compare.” She tapped her finger against the tip of her nose and made a series of little harrumph sounds that reminded him of being at the doctor’s office. “You’re already locked in for my grandma’s party tomorrow. I’ll meet your people today, and then we can compare tomorrow night.”
“What about your brothers, will they be there?” he asked, keeping his tone neutral.
“They’ll be there. I keep trying to schedule a bowling night with them, but they’re being cagy on dates.”
“Are they busy next Friday?” he asked, part of him hoping they weren’t, not because he particularly wanted to hang out with them but because that was the night the Espositos’ big deal was going down, according to Kapowski’s informant—and with each day he was hoping more and more that his time with Gina would be a bust for the investigation.
“No clue, but I’ll ask,” she said. “Don’t think you’re getting out of this bet, though. The one with the more normal family buys the cannoli.”
“I don’t like cannoli.” Because that was the most important thing to note about what she’d just said. Is it a wonder the woman hasn’t fallen at your feet in worship?
Gina gasped and slapped her hand over her mouth. “What a horrible thing to say. You obviously have never had Vacilli’s cannoli. Don’t worry, you’ll understand the error of your ways after you buy the cannoli tomorrow night.”
“That’s not gonna happen.” It couldn’t. There had to be an SOP about it.
“We’ll see,” she said with a grin that lit up her whole face, giving her a kind of gleeful radiance. “Now get a move on, we don’t want to keep your mom waiting.”
She dropped her sandpaper onto the table where all their supplies were laid out and bounded up the stairs, while Ford stood there watching with his mouth hanging open. Had he agreed to take her to the Hartigan family lunch? He didn’t think so, but there she went to change.
Maybe she’d do just fine dropped into the pushy, loud-mouthed, crazy mix that was his family.
Or not.
Chapter Nine
Ford hadn’t been lying about his family. They were even more of a cliché than hers. Huge Irish family, far too loud and friendly, and firefighters. Well, except Ford. He was the odd man out in this craziness. More quiet but no less affectionate. And a cop. Which his brothers teased him about incessantly.
His family was totally overwhelming, but in a good way. It reminded Gina of the last Luca family christening—loud voices, lots of food, and too many people crushed into a space that would always seem too small no matter how big because the personalities of those inside were just that large.
Ford had introduced her to his parents first, Kate and Frank Sr. He was a bear of a man with a shock of orange hair that was probably visible from space, and she was an Amazon of a woman who was so pretty it was kind of hard to look her in the face and remember what to say.
Thinking of what to say wasn’t a problem with the oldest Hartigan, Frankie, because the towering ginger firefighter rarely stopped talking, so Gina didn’t have to think about what to talk about. It wasn’t like he rambled, it was just that he was so charming that people couldn’t help but hang on what he was saying and encourage him to offer up more. Frankie’s twin brother, Finian, had dark hair instead of red, but otherwise he looked almost exactly like Frankie. He talked almost as much, too.
Maybe being a firefighter just made them chatty—especially compared to Ford. That was her working theory, anyway, right up until she met the Hartigan sisters.
Fiona was ten minutes older than Ford, and Faith six and a half minutes younger. She found that out because Kate had taken her by the arm almost as soon as Gina had walked through the door and was delivering the best introductions that veered right up to the edge of the TMI line and then fell right over it.
“So, the doctors told us we wouldn’t have any more kids after the terrors over there.” She nodded at Frankie and Finian, who just grinned at their mom’s description of them. “I’d always wanted a big family, though, and boy did that fertility treatment take.”
“Mom,” Ford groaned. “She doesn’t want to know that.”
Gina fought to keep a straight face at Ford’s obvious discomfort while his mom was giving up all the goods.
“What?” Kate said, waving a hand at her youngest son. “It’s not like I told her about the injections and the timing of certain things and the little cup your father had to carry around with him.”
“Mooooooooom!” That from all of the Hartigan siblings at once.
And that was it for Gina. She couldn’t stop the giggles at the matching looks of horror on the siblings’ faces. Okay, the Hartigan crazy was definitely strong, but it was a different brand than the Lucas’. Theirs was heavier and a little darker, for obvious
criminal-enterprise reasons. But the Hartigans? They were just the best kind of a mess, and she was enjoying the hell of it.
Kate lifted her shoulders in a nonchalant shrug and rolled her eyes at her children. Frank Sr, who was watching a hockey game on TV with one eye and the goings-on in the kitchen with the other, raised his glass—thankfully not the cup—in mock toast.
“Anyway, we weren’t expecting any more after our triple helping of trouble, but then came our sweet Fallon.”
Ford’s next-to-youngest sister, an emergency room nurse whose resting facial expression promised she would put up with exactly zero amount of bullshit, shook her head at her mother’s description. Someone near the stove, it was too crowded in the kitchen to know for sure who, mumbled something about Fallon being sweet as long as she got her way. Kate either didn’t hear it or decided to ignore it, because she kept going.
“Then the Lord blessed us with Felicia and—”
“I was so small, they knew it was time to stop,” Felicia said as she walked around the massive kitchen table, putting down plates while her fiancé, Hudson, followed a step behind, laying down the napkins.
Everyone chuckled at what had to be a long-told family joke, because unlike the rest of the towering Hartigans, Felicia was pocket-sized.
“Don’t listen to them, Matches,” Hudson said. “You’re the perfect size.”
A mournful cat wail sounded from the cat carrier in the corner at the sound of Hudson’s voice. He laid down the last napkin and squatted down to the carrier. She couldn’t hear what he said to the kitty inside, but it must have done the trick because the yowling stopped.
“Now, Gina,” Kate said, steering her toward the table. “Why don’t you tell us about yourself. Do you have any siblings?”
Ford stiffened beside her, and Fallon gave her an appraising look that said without words that she knew exactly who Gina’s family was, but Gina was saved from answering that question by the calming, computerized voice of Alexa announcing the first timer was up.
“Oh, dinner’s done. Everyone sit down.”
What happened next was a prime example of controlled chaos as people crowded into the kitchen and sat down at the table. She ended up next to Ford as the beaming Kate looked on. Everyone was pretty much elbow-to-elbow but no one complained, instead everyone just got to passing the platter of ham, a huge bowl of garlic mashed potatoes, trays of veggies, and more around the table.
“So, Gina darling, when did you two start dating?” Kate asked.
Embarrassed at being singled out, Gina lowered her gaze to her plate. “We’re not.”
“I knew it,” Frankie said with a teasing laugh as he poured gravy on his potatoes. “She’s way too normal for Ford.”
Okay, well, in the realm of descriptors that had been used to describe her looks, normal was one of the nicer ones. She pushed the peas around her plate and concentrated on keeping the expression on her “normal” face neutral.
“Remember Olive?” Finian asked.
Fallon cocked her head to one side and squished up her mouth for a second. “Is that the one who corrected everyone’s grammar?”
A collective groan filled the room. Frank Sr let out a disgusted snort mid-drink, which made the milk go down the wrong pipe. He started coughing hard enough that everyone was hollering at him to hold up his arms while Kate whacked him on the back until he told her that he wasn’t going into the dirt today and she could just calm down already.
“No, that was Patrice with the grammar,” Felicia said from her spot at the end of the table next to Hudson. “Olive was the one who hated hockey.”
“Better to hate hockey than to root against the Ice Knights,” Fiona said.
Gina turned to Ford. The tips of his ears were red, but he continued on eating his peas and potatoes as if he wasn’t getting the business from his family. It was good-natured, yeah, but still it had her tensing up on his behalf.
“Oh, like what’s-her-name who had a Cajun Rage tattoo?” Faith asked with a sneer.
Gina almost dropped her fork. A Rage tattoo? This was Waterbury. They were Ice Knights fans. The Rage were the Knights’s biggest rivals. For hockey fans in and around Harbor City, rooting for the Rage was like declaring you hated indoor plumbing.
“You dated a Rage fan?” she asked, looking at Ford like he’d grown a second head. “That’s just wrong.”
She thought back to the Ice Knights blanket she’d given him. That wasn’t just a blanket, it was a promise of loyalty. Ford turned to her, a chagrined expression on his face because he must have known that he’d done wrong by dating a Rage fan.
“It wasn’t my finest moment,” he agreed with a good-natured chuckle and then turned to his family. “But I’m not the only one here who’s had some crazy dates.” He looked at Finian. “Remember the woman who kept showing up at the firehouse in nothing but a trench coat?” His attention moved down to his sisters, who were giggling at how red Finian’s ears had turned. “Or the guy who told Fallon he didn’t believe in women having college degrees? Then there was the guy who took Fiona on a very romantic date to Chuck E. Cheese’s?”
By the time he got that last bit out, everyone at the table was laughing. Then the stories really started. Faith recounted how she thought she was going on a date and it turned out to be a vacation timeshare pitch. Frankie told a story about a woman who spent an entire dinner date talking about her love of sloths. Felicia and Hudson tag-teamed the retelling of how they’d gotten together because he was helping her land another man.
“How about you, Gina?” Frankie asked. “What’s your worst date?”
Still giggling a little, she went over her very limited dating history for some small disaster nugget she could share, and her gut dropped—because in that instant, she realized that she was probably the nightmare part of the date. Her smile froze, and her lungs stopped working. Then, she felt Ford’s hand on her thigh. He gave her a squeeze. It wasn’t sexual, it wasn’t a come on—it was reassuring, as weird as that seemed. The tension seeped out of her, but she still didn’t have any dating horror stories to share.
She was saved from the moment of exquisite awkwardness by an ear-piercing yowl, a loud clatter, and a flash of orange sprinting across the crowded kitchen table, headed straight for Felicia and Hudson.
“Honeypot!” Felicia yelled.
Hudson made a grab for the one-eyed cat, but it juked and avoided him, landing one paw in the bowl of mashed potatoes before sprinting onward. After that it was just total chaos.
Food went flying. Chairs fell over backward as everyone jumped up and tried to catch the crazed feline. Frankie reached for the furball, but the kitty blasted past him, taking a detour through the gravy boat, knocking it over and sending the brown liquid splashing across the table.
By the time Hudson managed to capture Honeypot, it looked like a tornado had landed in the Hartigan kitchen.
A piece of ham had somehow ended up hanging from the ceiling fan, Finian had applesauce splattered across his shirt, and Ford had a glob of mashed potatoes on his cheek. It wasn’t until she reached up to wipe it off that she realized quite how close she was to him. Really close. Like feel-the-heat-of-him-against-her-nipples kind of close. Then he gave her that super hot half-smile and all forebrain function ceased and she gave in to the wonderful want of it, as he started to lean down and she raised herself to her tiptoes to bring her right in line with his mouth. Her eyes started to flutter closed, she tilted her head, and—
Kate Hartigan’s voice cut through the lusty haze surrounding them. “So, you two aren’t dating?”
Gina leapt back like Ford was kryptonite, which—let’s face it—he was starting to feel like. “No ma’am,” she said, unable to meet the matriarch’s eyes.
“Huh.” Kate said in a tone that translated to that’s a bunch of B.S. “We’ll see about that.”
Mortified to infinity not only at Kate’s misunderstanding but at her own behavior, Gina prayed for what felt like the billionth t
ime this week that the earth’s crust would open up and suck her into its bowels of molten magma.
When that didn’t happen, she followed Honeypot’s example and hustled across the room. She picked up the empty cat carrier and took the long way around the table to avoid Ford as she carried it to where Hudson and Felicia stood with the cat.
It was always a better choice to deal with a demon cat than her own personal horndog demons.
…
Getting stuck with kitchen duty was best avoided at all costs—especially when his mother was looking at him like that. He knew that look on Kate Hartigan’s face. He’d seen it every time he tried to get away with something and she managed to pull the truth out of him with the skill of a senior interrogator. That she was focused on him right now instead of the potato paw prints covering the counter meant there was no escape.
“So,” she started, her voice light, as if she wasn’t about to deliver a punch. “You and Gina, you’re just friends?”
“In a way.” His fingers were tapping against his thumb, and the tips of his ears burned.
“What way is that?” she asked.
“It’s complicated.” Understatement of the year right there.
“Yeah, so much so that he’s not sleeping at his apartment,” Fallon said as she loaded another stack of plates into the dishwasher.
He shot his sister a dirty look. She just grinned back at him, no doubt all too aware of how she was stirring the pot.
The thing was, no matter what his family thought, there was no way he could tell them everything about the situation with Gina—in no small part because he couldn’t understand it himself. Watching her may be his job, but it didn’t feel like one, and that was messing with him in all of the ways he never wanted.
“You’re living with her but she’s not your girlfriend?” his mom asked.
“I’m not living with her.” No, he was spying on her, a fact that was burning a hole in his gut, even if it was better that it was him than Gallo. He hated lying to her.
His mom crossed her arms and leaned back against the kitchen counter. “Where are you sleeping?”