by Avery Flynn
“If I had one?” He scrunched up his face as if he were really pondering it. “Junk mail.”
Could he have given any more of a dude answer? No, he couldn’t. “And yet, you seem like such a normal person.”
“My hours can be unpredictable, so I do a lot of takeout.” He pushed the cart a few feet to the pineapples, giving them a suspicious once-over. “Speaking of which, the captain asked me to come in tomorrow.”
“That’s good, right?” she asked, almost sounding convincing.
His suspension was T-minus a few days away from being over. Not that she was counting the hours down. The happy home renovations while playing house time had to end at some time. The clock was always clicking down with them—something she couldn’t afford to forget.
Someone cleared his throat behind her.
“If that means you’ll be keeping better company, Gina, it sure does.”
Shit. Gina flinched. She knew that voice. She turned to see Paul standing there with a basket of Roma tomatoes, a large bulb of garlic in his hand, and a scowl on his face directed at Ford.
Her brother puffed up his chest and kept his focus on Ford even as he addressed her. “This guy bothering you, sis?”
She had officially had enough. Turning to Ford, she pasted her best please-play-along smile on her face. “Do you mind going to grab the eggs for me?”
He didn’t look happy about it, but he swallowed whatever he’d been planning to say to her brother and dipped his head down to plant a kiss on her cheek before heading off in the direction of the eggs.
She waited for him to clear the produce area and spun around, hands on her hips, to confront her brother. “Really, Paul? What is your problem?”
“I don’t trust him.”
She bristled at the unspoken reason for that. “Why, because he’s spending time with me and who in their right mind would do that?”
That got Paul’s attention. He blinked at her as if his brain was trying to catch up with her verbal left turn. “Don’t put words in my mouth.”
She snorted. “I don’t have to when they’re written all over your face.”
It was the same look of surprised disbelief, followed by an almost-verbal curiousness about how in the world she and Ford had ended up together—the sexy cop and the woman with the schnoz.
“He’s a cop,” Paul said, sputtering just enough for her to know that hadn’t been his first thought.
“Yeah, well you and Rocco are the only ones still up to your neck in the old family business, so I’m not worrying about it. Maybe being around him will get you two knuckleheads to finally see the light and move to that island you’re always talking about.”
“We’re thinking about it, but we’re both a little young for retirement.” Paul cracked a smile, the same one that had always cheered her after a bad day dealing with people saying shitty things about her.
Her anger abated enough for her own lips to curl up before the reality of what he’d said hit her. Damn it. She wasn’t going to encourage this nonsense. “Yeah, well in your line of business, there’s no guarantee you’ll get any older.”
He glared at her. She shot him a dirty look right back. Other shoppers avoided them.
Finally, Paul leaned down, a deceptively goofy look on his face as he asked, “Why are we fighting, sis?”
Dammit. Why did he have to do that? It was just disarming. Still she stuck to her guns. “Because you insulted my boyfriend.”
Paul cocked his head to one side and gave her an assessing look. “Is that what he is?”
“No.” Because as much as she’d like it to be true, she knew it couldn’t be. “But we’re something.”
“Is he good to you?” Paul’s face got a dark look to it that she’d never seen before but had heard people who’d crossed him whispering about.
“Yeah, he is.” Her heart did that fluttery thing again. “So why don’t you stop doing the overprotective thing? I can stand up for myself.”
“Old habits are hard to break.” He smiled ruefully. “Anyway, you know it’s just because we love you.”
Isn’t that what he and Rocco had always said when she’d come home, beat down after another day of being teased at school? At home with them, she was just Gina, their annoying little sister. She’d never told them the worst of it or how she’d gotten her nickname. Some humiliations couldn’t be avenged, not even by a pair of brothers willing to take on all comers.
“I love you too,” she said, giving her brother’s arm a squeeze. “But I’m not that girl barely making it through the school hallways without crying anymore.”
“Grandpa would be proud of you.” Paul looked over at the cantaloupe she and Ford had been checking out earlier. “He always told me and Rocco you’d be the one in the family to make the best choices. He wasn’t wrong. Look at you. I’m proud of you, sis.”
And this had officially gone to a place her conversations with Paul didn’t usually go. It made her stomach hurt. “Everything okay?”
“Always.” He smiled at her, and it almost reached his eyes. “Who knows, maybe Rocco and I are getting ready to follow in your footsteps.”
“You two want to be wedding planners?” She grinned. She couldn’t even imagine what that would be like. “Or dating a cop?”
His laugh was all the answer she got, because that’s when they both spotted Ford coming their way with a blue carton of extra-large eggs. “Talk to you later, sis.”
“When are we going to have that bowling night?”
“How about Thursday? Bring your boy,” he said. “Rocco’ll be by before that, though. We’ve got a surprise for you.”
That did not bode well. “You know I hate surprises.”
“Not from us. Ours are always good.” He gave her a quick kiss on the cheek. “See ya, sis.”
Then he walked away, clearing the produce area before Ford made his way to her side.
“Everything okay?” Ford asked.
“Yeah, fine.” She watched the back of Paul’s head until he turned down the cereal aisle.
Something was off, but she couldn’t put her finger on it.
She was rolling it over in her head when Ford handed her a cantaloupe with the worst thunk sound possible, and she turned her attention back to teaching him the correct cantaloupe tapping technique.
…
Losing had never been as hard as it was right now as Ford tossed his bright yellow bowling ball into the gutter with enough skill to make it look like an accident when it was anything but. Growing up Hartigan pretty much equalled competitive to a fault. However, if he wanted to make some sort of connection with his thick-necked opponents, kicking their asses wasn’t the way to make that happen.
“You’re so far back, Hartigan, that you need to go find you a St. Christopher’s medal,” Rocco said from his spot closest to the overflowing plate of nachos and pitcher of cheap beer.
“Stop trying to stir up shit,” Gina said as she walked up to the line, her hot pink ball at chin level, and chewed her bottom lip raw, staring at the pins at the end of the alley like this time she was going to get a strike. “Silence, please. I’m gonna do it this time.”
The woman had a lot of positives—the sweet curve of her ass, the sound of her laugh, the way her smile made her eyes twinkle—but amazing bowling skills weren’t among them. Gina was straight up awful. Her brothers were even worse. That meant that Ford was trying not to eat his tongue in an effort to play as badly as possible in order to not sop up the spilled beer on the floor with them.
Gina threw her bowling ball down the waxed alley. Oh, some people rolled their balls—not Gina. The hot pink ball landed with a thunk a few feet in front of her and did its drunken wobble down the alley toward the pins that were not shaking in fear. The ball smacked into five of them, knocking them over. It was pretty close to her high roll of the game. She did a little shimmy dance move, threw her arms in the air, and turned to face her brothers and Ford at the table with a smile that lit up her who
le face.
Maybe there was some asshole out there who could look at her and not return her grin. Ford was a dickhead, but he couldn’t stop the ends of his lips from curling upward. Her no-good brothers did the same.
“I told you this was going to be my game,” she said, seemingly forgetting that she had a second turn in this frame and making her way back to their table. “And you guys thought I was crazy for insisting Ford join us for our monthly game. He’s my lucky charm.”
The look Paul cut at Ford behind his sister’s back would be enough to kill a weaker man. For all Ford knew, that was the loan shark’s favored glare when it came to collecting past-due debts.
“That may be so,” Rocco said from his spot in the booth overlooking the lanes. “But you have another turn.”
She swiped her mug off the table and took a quick drink. “Having the game of my life really worked up a thirst.”
Then she took off back to the bowling ball return.
“This Friday’s a go,” Paul said in a low voice to his brother.
“You sure?” Rocco asked.
Paul nodded.
“What’s on Friday?” Ford asked, his attention caught by the date they were talking about.
“None of your fucking business,” Paul retorted.
Ford shrugged and took a drink. He could have pushed more. The Luca brothers were in it up to their necks, and all he needed was for them to get comfortable enough with him over beer and bowling to make a couple of slips.
Sure, as he told his boss, the likelihood of that actually happening was about as good as a vegan voluntarily eating at a Brazilian steakhouse, but if there was even a chance he was taking it. After all, he was in it to win the war against the Espositos, taking the entire organization down, not just win the battle of the Luca brothers. But judging by the men’s body language and fuck-you stare in his direction, he wasn’t going to get anywhere with a direct attack. He’d just take this intel back to the task force and let Kapowski run it by his informant for more detail. He could take another run at the brothers if needed after that. Until then, he’d do what he could to protect Gina from any fallout that may rain down on her because of her brothers.
At least that’s what he was telling himself as he ignored his targets and zeroed his attention onto the way Gina filled out her jeans, to the point that he didn’t see Paul move at all, let alone with enough time to dodge the man’s palm before he smacked it against the back of Ford’s head. The other man hadn’t used a lot of force, just enough to send his message.
“Gina might like you, Hartigan,” Rocco said, his attention focused on his sister and his body language deceptively relaxed. “But don’t think I won’t smack that look off your face, cop or not.”
“What look?” Ford asked, as if he had any hope of selling that level of bullshit.
Paul glared at him. “The one that says you are having particular thoughts about her.”
All true, but it wasn’t like he was creeping on her. Gina liked him. He liked her. It wasn’t like anything could happen between them. Not really. There might be fun, but that was it. He was an investigator. She was a Luca. It didn’t get any simpler than that, which was part of the appeal. Letting go and living in the moment with her wasn’t a problem because there’d never be any more to it than that. Still, the way her brothers treated her as if she wasn’t able to take care of herself rankled.
“She is her own woman,” he said before adding more quietly, “and she doesn’t seem to mind my thoughts.”
Rocco snorted his obvious disagreement. “She also thinks she’s having a great game and that the three of us aren’t throwing it.”
The shock at that announcement must have shown on his face, because both brothers started laughing and Rocco poured beer into a mug and pushed it across the table to Ford. And here he thought he’d been the only one purposefully playing like shit. Now this put the Luca brothers in a different light—one that seemed all too familiar. The Hartigans were competitive, loud, and stubborn, but they always looked out for each other, even if that meant pretending that Felicia’s banana bread was edible.
“She’s our sister,” Paul said. “But she sucks at bowling.”
“So, you roll gutters once a month?” Was it wrong that he wanted them to say no, to stay in the total-asshole-criminal lane and not the older-brothers-determined-to-put-a-smile-on-their-sister’s-face lane?
“It actually helps on league night,” Paul said with a shrug. “It takes more control than you’d think to miss.”
Giving into that brother solidarity bond, Ford raised his glass in a toast. “Now, I can believe that about playing on league night.”
Rocco and Paul clinked their glasses against his. How often had he seen similar behavior between one Hartigan sibling or another? A million would be on the low count. They loved Gina, and there was no doubting how she felt about her brothers. So for an instant he put away his badge.
“Since you guys gave me a warning,” Ford said. “Now it’s my turn to give you one.”
“Oh yeah, what’s that?” Rocco asked.
“She’d be brokenhearted if you two got caught up in something that’s way above your pay grade.” Ford shot a hard look at the brothers, hoping like hell they’d understand his veiled words. “Life in your line of business always ends up in one of two ways: jail or an unmarked grave. I’d hate for her to spend decades wondering if your bodies would ever be recovered. Why don’t you guys spend this Friday looking for a new line of business and make your sister happy.”
Rocco and Paul didn’t flinch. They just continued to look at him with that dead, mile-long stare that those connected with the Espositos had mastered. It gave nothing away. Then, as if they were mirror images, they each grabbed their beer mugs and downed the contents in one long swallow. Then, they turned without a word and watched Gina’s bowling ball swerve down the alley before ending up in the gutter just shy of the pins.
After that, they went through the lineup with each of them rolling total crap until it was Gina’s turn again. If she knew they were letting her win, she didn’t let on. She just wiggled that perfect ass of hers, smiled as if she didn’t have a care in the world, and had the time of her life—which was way better to observe than Ford had imagined.
“They’ll never find your body, you know,” Rocco said, falling back into his mob-connected loan shark persona.
Ford puffed out his chest and scowled at the brothers. “Excuse me?”
“Fuck with Gina…” Rocco paused as he turned to look at Ford straight-on and laid his meaty forearms on the table, then leaned forward on them. “And they’ll never find you. It doesn’t matter where we are at the time, we’ll come back and hunt you down.”
Out of all of that, there was only one thing Ford needed to address. “I’m not fucking with her.”
One of Paul’s eyebrows went up. “You’re going with that, instead of the fact that we just threatened a police officer?”
“Yeah.” Why that put a radioactive turn in the pit of his stomach, he had no idea. They were just playing it for the moment, nothing more.
“Why?” Rocco asked.
“What does it matter?” Defensive? Him? Yeah, he sure the hell was.
Rocco sat back in his chair, his face settled into a you-owe-us-five-Gs glower. “She likes you.”
“Yeah.” Ford took a gulp of beer.
“You like her?” Paul asked.
He downed another drink but refused to think about his answer before the truth came out. “Yeah.”
The Luca brothers turned to each other. Something passed between them, one of those silent conversations a person could only have with someone they’d known forever. Finally, Paul shrugged and Rocco shook his head.
“Don’t fuck it up, then,” Paul said. “And everything will be fine.”
“Your turn, Ford,” Gina called out from her spot by the ball return, close enough to watch them with curiosity but not so near that she could overhear what they were say
ing as the balls crashed into pins on the other lanes.
Without a word to her brothers, he got up and went over to retrieve his ball.
“Are they giving you a hard time?” she asked, giving him a soft hip check.
Yeah, that wasn’t something someone with any testosterone would ever admit. “Why would you say that?”
“Because my brothers are as overprotective as they are predictable,” she said, amusement giving her words a light lilt. “Take throwing this game, for instance. They’ve been doing it for years, as if I didn’t realize they play in a league and could wipe the floor with me.”
And so much for Gina not realizing what he and her brothers were up to. Really, he should have known better. “So why do you go along with it?”
“It makes them happy.” She shrugged. “We do weird things when we care about people. You know?”
Yeah, he did.
And this time when his ball landed in the gutter, it wasn’t on purpose. It was because he glanced over at Gina before letting go and she pursed those pink lips of hers and blew him a kiss, punctuated with a wink.
Turns out it was easy to send a bowling ball into the gutter when his mind was already there.
…
Almost a week after his suspension, Ford walked into the squad room. Everything looked the same—the burned coffee, the surly suspect handcuffed to a desk, the tower of paperwork in his inbox—except for Gallo’s face with its large purple bruise that was the same size as Ford’s fist.
Gallo gave his version of the stink eye as Ford walked by on his way to the captain’s office. What was he supposed to do? Fall down on his knees and beg for forgiveness? Not fucking likely. He stopped at the corner of Gallo’s desk, picked up the crumpled paper towel sitting next to the detective’s coffee mug, and handed it to him.
“You got a little something right there.” Ford made a wiping motion on his own chin right where Gallo’s bruise was.
Gallo dropped the paper towel and flipped him off.
He slapped his palm over his heart. “Oh man, does that mean we’re not forever besties anymore?”
Ignoring the curious looks and occasional glares from the others in the squad, he walked over to the captain’s office and knocked on the door.