by Avery Flynn
He reached up and cupped the back of her head, bringing her mouth down to his. Her body’s response was a huge hell yes when his tongue swept into her mouth in the kind of overwhelming kiss that made her think oxygen was totally superfluous.
Sensation shot through her, pleasure making every nerve in her body vibrate. All of it grew with each twist of his tongue around hers and each undulation of her hips as she rocked against him until she couldn’t take it any more. Everything inside her tightened and expanded in the same breath, and her orgasm washed like a wave over her, and she broke the the kiss and threw her head back with his name on her lips.
His hand dropped from her head to her hips again, and he gripped her tight, pumping her up and down on him in a series of short, hard thrusts before he came with a harsh groan.
Minutes, hours, days later, her brain came back online. “Wow.”
Ford’s tired chuckle brushed across her bare shoulder. “Seconded.”
They stayed like that for a moment before the realities of the situation demanded attention. After they’d both gotten up, he’d disposed of the condom, and she’d gathered up her clothes, he followed her up the stairs to her big fluffy bed, which felt a lot smaller with Ford in it.
He told her stories about being the smallest brother in his family. She told him about being the tallest girl in her class. They laughed and swapped more stories and fell asleep snuggled against each other. At o’dark hundred, she woke up to Ford kissing that spot on her neck guaranteed to make her entire body zing, and that led to a whole lot of fun before sleep overtook them again. And once the sun finally did break through the night? Ford did what she’d asked earlier and left after a sweet goodbye kiss.
And that, she figured, was that.
Chapter Eleven
Wednesday night was Paint and Sip night with the girls. With the exception of last week, when she was in virtual house arrest/protective custody/Lustville, Gina never missed it. Tonight, she almost ditched, but that would have led to more questions than she wanted to answer, so she put on her big-girl panties—not the little black lace ones—and made her way down to Evanston Avenue and the art studio that sat above the hardware store down the block from Marino’s Sports Bar. It had seemed like her best option, right up until she walked in and faced down the two women in the world who knew her best.
“You look different.” Lucy cocked her head to one side and gave her a long up-and-down look while she sipped her rosé. “What have you been up to? Was being up to your elbows in house renovations code for finally getting naked with someone tall, dark, and epically talented with his tongue?”
Gina stopped herself from looking at her reflection in the mirror behind the counter, where Larry, who owned Paint and Sip, was serving up small plastic cups of the best cheap wine money could buy. Did she really look that different? It had been two days. Surely they couldn’t see that spot at the base of her neck where Ford had nipped her.
Trying to be as subtle about it as possible, she adjusted the neckline of her T-shirt to make sure the collar hadn’t slipped. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
Lucy didn’t look convinced. In fact, she looked even more suspicious as she peered at Gina through her signature glasses with the bright red frames before turning to the third in their little trifecta. “Do you believe her, Tess? Because I don’t.”
Gina and Lucy turned to Tess.
The much shorter, auburn-haired florist didn’t hesitate. “Nope.”
“Well, sorry to ruin it for you, but there’s nothing to tell.” Okay, that was a straight-up lie to her best friends, but it wasn’t like there was a possibility of her seeing Ford again, so why bring it up? “What are we painting tonight?”
Lucy dropped her gaze down to Gina’s neckline. “Aardvarks drowning in the ocean.”
“Interesting,” Gina said and sat down in front of one of the large canvases with a few swooping lines drawn in pencil on it.
Tess and Lucy exchanged a she’s-totally-full-of-it glance and joined her.
“Liar. That’s not interesting, it’s totally preposterous. Even Larry wouldn’t have dreamed up something so ludicrous.” Lucy turned and gave their instructor a cheery wave as she sat down. “No offense, Larry.”
The balding man in the Stay Weird apron splattered with several years’ worth of dried paint just rolled his eyes. After two years of the three of them being here every Wednesday night, he’d either learned to put up with Lucy’s brash ways or how to pretend like he had.
Tess sat down at the canvas next to Gina’s, putting her plastic cup of wine down near her paint brushes and a second cup next to the last canvas in their row. She was too distracted wondering why the normally one-glass-and-done Tess was double fisting it to realize she was under attack until it was too late.
Lucy snagged her shirt, pulled the collar just enough to reveal the hickey Ford had left, and cried out in triumph. “I knew it wasn’t just home renovations last week. You were shacked up with a dude. Finally!”
Gina force herself to take a measured sip of her rosé, even though she just wanted to chug the bottle. Paint and Sip night was not the place she wanted to have this discussion.
“It was the wedding guy,” Tess said with a gasp.
“Oh my God, say yes. Say it was the wedding guy, because he sounded so flippin’ hot.”
“Who sounded hot?” asked a woman from behind her.
Gina turned to see who was moving in on their conversation and almost fell off her stool. The plastic cup slipped in her grip, but she managed not to drop it. Some of the pink wine did slosh over the side and landed smack dab in the middle of her shirt, because why only be humiliated once when you could get a second helping for free? It was the universe’s version of an embarrassment buy-one-get-one-free sale.
“There you are, Fallon,” Tess said, grinning at Ford’s sister. “Lucy and Gina, this is Fallon Hartigan. She’s the emergency room nurse I was telling you about who helped me out when I couldn’t find my way around the hospital during deliveries the other day. We started talking about the total dumpster fire of dating in the modern age and trust me, she is one of us—totally single and slaying it.”
Gina didn’t even bother wishing that the ground would open up and end her misery now. It was too late for that. Disaster was bearing down on her like a midtown bus with busted breaks. There was no way she was gonna get out of the way in time. She was about to be a bug on the windshield of life.
“Nice to meet you, Lucy. Hey Gina,” Fallon said as she sat down. “So, tell me about the hottie.”
Oh hell. Gina downed her rosé. She was gonna need it.
“Oh, it was at this guy at a wedding Gina planned the other weekend,” Tess said, her face taking on an excited glow. “She got put on a kiss cam with a total babe of a cop in front of everyone. I swear I would have died, but she ended up kissing him. What was his name, Gina? It was a car name, wasn’t it?”
“Ford,” Gina and Fallon said at the same time. Of course, Gina said it with resignation and Fallon with more than a hint of surprise.
A heavy hush fell over their little group as Tess and Lucy looked from Gina to Fallon and back again. Then, they scooted their stools closer. They must have spotted something in her face because Tess handed Gina her still-full cup of rosé without a word.
Lucy zeroed in on Fallon. “You know him?”
“He’s my brother,” she said, giving Gina an assessing look that all but screamed they’d be talking about this later.
Tess gasped. Gina took a big drink of the second cup of wine, wondering if maybe she’d get lucky and it would be poisoned. This was so not how she expected tonight to go. Come on out to Paint and Sip night, it’ll be fun, they said. Yeah, sure. More like total mortification. At least she hadn’t told her besties that she’d slept with Ford this week—although sleeping was pretty much the last thing they’d done. She had muscles she’d never known about that were still a little sore.
Lucy let out a
loud laugh and clapped her hands together with joy. “You banged her hot brother?”
And that earned them a glare from Larry and some curious looks from the other women at Paint and Sip night.
“What? Ugh. No. Tell me no more,” Fallon said, slapping her hands over her ears. “Hearing uptight Ford get called hot is bad enough, please do not let me hear about what he’s like in bed.”
“If they even made it to a bed,” Lucy said in her version of a whisper that to almost everyone else in the known world was a normal volume.
Twin dots of fire zapped Gina’s cheeks. They had. Eventually. But she wasn’t just going to announce that in the middle of Paint and Sip. Not that this whole thing wasn’t awkward enough as it was, because it very much was.
Fallon fake gagged. “I need a time machine so I can leave myself a note at the door to warn me not to come in.”
If she figured out how to do that, Gina so wanted in on it. “Don’t worry, I’m not commenting on what happened.”
“But something did happen,” Lucy pressed.
What was the use in denying it at this point? Lucy and Tess would see right through any lame attempts at lying. And Fallon? She’d been at that Hartigan family lunch, so if she hadn’t seen the almost-kiss herself then she’d probably heard about it. No one in that family—besides Ford—struck Gina as the kind to keep any tidbit of gossip to themselves. So she might as well fast forward from the fun stuff to the reality of the situation now.
“But it’s not going to happen again,” she said, her tone more cheerful than she actually felt about the whole thing.
Tess gave her a sympathetic shoulder squeeze. “Oh, I hate that.”
“It doesn’t matter.” And if she said that enough, it would become a reality. “I’m fine with my life the way it is. I don’t need a man to make me happy.”
That last part wasn’t a lie. She didn’t. She had a home that would—eventually—be exactly how she wanted it. She owned her own business helping people celebrate their own happily ever afters. She had friends who, despite their nosy ways, were the best she’d ever had. She had family—okay, they were more than a little strange, but they were still her family and they loved her. Really, what more could she ask for? Sure, having someone to share her life with on a more intimate basis would be nice, but she didn’t need it. She was fine just the way she was.
“No, you don’t,” Lucy said with a nod of agreement. “But it does help if you want to keep your feet warm at night.”
“I can get socks for that,” she retorted.
So what if she was picturing big thick ones that smelled of warm cedar, just like Ford did.
“Ladies,” Larry said, his unexpectedly deep voice cutting through their giggles. He stood in front of the room, paint brush at the ready. “Class is starting.” That was their usual Wednesday night cue to shut the hell up. “Tonight’s painting subject is the naked mole rat sunning itself on a settee.”
“Okay, I take it back,” Lucy whispered in her totally loud way. “Painting a drowning aardvark wouldn’t be that weird for him.”
…
By Tuesday, the box of supposedly bleach-enhanced Chapstick left on Ford’s desk in the squad room had been swapped with a new kind of supposed gift. There, on his stack of case files, was a brown paper bag with eyeholes cut out. Ford stared down at it. The fuckers had even done a half-assed job of drawing a pair of women’s open lips below the eyes, with an opening cut into the middle. Fury, hot and immediate, rushed up from his toes, and his gaze locked in on Gallo and Ruggiero, who were watching him.
“You two don’t know who happened to leave that, do you?” Ford didn’t bother to try to hide the anger burning in his gut as he grabbed the latest anonymous so-called gag gift from the stack of case files on his desk and crumpled it into a tight ball that he flung into his trash can.
Gallo just grinned his shit-eating grin and shook his head. “Nah, but it looks like someone hit a sore spot, huh, Johnnie?”
“Probably a PTSD reaction to his last assignment,” Ruggiero said, his voice thick with fake sincerity. “You’d think for that kind of hazard duty he would have at least brought back some useful information.”
“Sure,” Gallo said. “But you can’t be too hard on him. Hartigan probably barely made it out of there with his virtue intact.”
He knew what they were doing. The dipshit duo had gotten yanked into the captain’s office a few hours ago for a reaming loud enough that everyone in the squad could have written direct quotes. The pressure was building for results, and the organized crime task force had gotten almost nothing beyond the date of the heroin delivery. Without a time and location, that bit of news was worthless.
Ford had spent the last two days interviewing CIs, tracing down warehouse owners on the waterfront, and every other idea he could think of to actually use some detective skills to uncover the information they needed. Gallo and Ruggiero had been hitting the streets as well.
They’d all turned up shit.
So yeah, it’s possible the two detectives were just taking out their frustration on him any way they could. But that didn’t mean he wasn’t pissed off regardless.
“What’s wrong?” he asked, closing the distance between his desk and where Gallo sat on the corner of Ruggiero’s desk. “Did the captain chew you a new one for the task force’s lack of results? I mean, sure, you might wish that was because of one operation that didn’t pan out, but you’ve been in charge for months and working the Espositos for years.”
The entire squad room went silent. Even the precinct’s admin assistant stopped typing. Gallo got red enough in the face that Ford wondered if the portly detective was about to have a heart attack.
“You don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about, Hartigan.” He stood up and took what he probably thought was a threatening step forward. “Maybe if little pukes like you did their jobs right, we’d have something to nail those bastards on. Instead, we just got some weak-ass story about how the brown-bagger doesn’t know anything about what her brothers are up to.”
For as quiet as the squad room was before, it totally disappeared at that moment. “What did you just call Gina?”
“A brown-bagger.” Gallo puffed up his chest and put a swagger in his step as he took the last two steps before stopping just inside Ford’s personal bubble. “Why, would you prefer grenade?”
“You need to shut the fuck up, Gallo.” And he needed to mentally remind himself grown men did not lose their shit on their superiors at work. Besides, Ford wasn’t the hot-headed stereotypical kind of Irish. He liked rules and order. He was just about to turn and walk away when Gallo jabbed his finger into Ford’s chest.
“Why, what are you gonna do about it? I’m point on this task force, so you need to remember that, sit your ass down, and do what I tell you, unless you want to be stuck with Butterface duty again.”
Ford’s fist connected with Gallo’s nose before Ford had even realized he was taking a swing at the other man. Gallo stumbled back, but like the bull of a cop that he was, he kept his feet planted. He let loose a roar of fury and came right at Ford.
The older detective may have been putting perps behind bars since before Ford even dreamed about the academy, but the donuts and the laziness had done their job. Ford easily sidestepped Gallo, spun on the ball of his foot, and followed up with a right hook that landed on the sweet spot of the older cop’s jaw, leaving him wobbly on his size ten rubber-soled shoes.
Gallo raised his right fist, but Ruggiero grabbed his partner before he could throw a punch. No one grabbed Ford. There wasn’t a need. The sight of Gallo with the look of murder on his face as his partner held him back was enough to bring him back reality. He’d lost it and slugged a superior officer—definitely a violation of a dozen regulations. Ford never lost it. But this time he had, and in doing so he’d tried to knock his direct supervisor’s head off.
And surprisingly, he didn’t regret a single action.
“Ford. Gallo.
” The captain’s yell cut through the chaos of the moment. “My office right the fuck now.”
Chapter Twelve
Ford accepted the beer Frankie handed him as he paced the length of his brother’s deck. Anger and adrenaline were still pumping through his veins, making his steps jerky as he moved from one end to the other while Frankie watched, an amused look on his face.
“Damn. Mr. By the Book got suspended.” Frankie took his phone out and started thumb typing. “I’m gonna have to put this information in our family group chat.”
Annoyance eating away at his stomach lining, Ford whirled around and shot his brother a glare. “That’s what you’re taking away from this, that I’m suspended with pay for the next week? Not that the moron who was leaving all of that shit on my desk and being a disrespectful asshole only got a three-day suspension?”
“No, I got that part,” his brother said as he sat down in one of the Adirondack chairs that Frankie had been forced to paint lime green with yellow polka dots after losing a bet with Finian. “And I also got the part about how you’ve got it bad for this chick.”
“Did you inhale too much smoke at the last fire you responded to? Because your thinking is messed up.” Got it bad. That was fucking ridiculous. Gina was funny, smart, and yeah, being around her pretty much turned him into a horny teenager, but that didn’t mean he wanted any more than the one-night-only sex—which had been pretty damn phenomenal—that they’d both enjoyed. “I don’t have it bad for her.”
“Uh huh.” Frankie started typing again. “Sure you don’t.”
Ford’s phone buzzed, but he sure as hell wasn’t going to look at it. He had the jackass texting right in front of him, grinning at him like he was some TV shrink about to solve all of Ford’s problems.
Pissy? Me? Not at all since I walked out of Gina’s house at the crack of dawn, thank you very much.
“What does that mean?” Ford asked, taking a seat in the other obnoxiously painted deck chair and taking a long drink from his beer.