by Avery Flynn
“I thought the shit assignment you got to shadow the Luca girl for intel on her brothers was over?”
“Shut your mouth, Carlin,” Ford said. “We don’t discuss business outside the squad room.”
Gina froze, trying to make sense of the words.
“And man, I thought Gallo had been exaggerating about how she looked, but he was most def not,” Kyle went on, his back to her as he poured gravy over his mashed potatoes. “Bruh, you have taken one for the entire squad. You should be getting hazard pay.”
The water glass almost slipped from her hand as realization set in. Shadowing her because of her brothers? She’d been an idiot. Again. He hadn’t wanted her. He’d wanted to nail her brothers. All of the little questions about her family he’d peppered her with and the way he’d worked the room at her grandmother’s party, it hadn’t been because he wanted to get to know her, because he was falling for her like she had fallen for him. It had been because he was working a case.
“Yeah, he should be getting hazard pay.” She barely recognizing the ragged voice as her own. “There has to be a regulation for it somewhere, I’m sure.”
Both men turned, but she didn’t bother to look at Kyle. He wasn’t the one who mattered here. Ford was. And he looked as guilty as a kid caught with an empty ice cream container and a mouth smeared with Cookies ’N Cream.
Trust me, he’d said, I see you.
She had.
Now she was done.
Inhaling a deep breath, she turned and walked out of the kitchen. The world may have finally dropped open underneath her, but she hadn’t fallen into the hole and she wasn’t about to act as if she’d been raised without manners—even if she’d been raised by criminals.
“Gina,” Ford called out. “Please, wait.”
Refusing to stop, she kept going into the living room. Kate and Fallon took one look at her and their faces darkened with concern.
“What happened?” Fallon asked, rushing over.
Kate reached out to her. “Honey, are you okay?”
Not in the least. All the time she’d spent with Ford had been a fantasy, a fairy tale. But instead of getting a happy ending, she felt like her entire insides had been scooped out and she was just a hallow shell standing in the Hartigan’s living room.
“I will be just fine,” she said, her voice so much steadier than her legs felt at the moment. “Thank you very much for everything, but I have to go.”
Not waiting for a response, because this empty feeling wouldn’t last forever and that meant her emotions were a ticking time bomb, she turned and started toward the door.
Ford stood in front of the door, all the color washed from his face. “Gina, please hear me out.”
Isn’t that what she did last time after overhearing the badge bunnies in the bathroom? She’d known they were right, that he couldn’t really be that into her, but she hadn’t wanted them to be. So she’d listened to him. And there’d been other times when that itchy feeling at the back of her neck had warned her that this wasn’t going to work out like she wanted. She’d ignored it. Listened to him instead.
After everything she’d been through, all the humiliations and embarrassments, she would have thought she had a super sense about it by now.
“Did Kyle lie about me being a job?” she asked, half-wanting to hear him deny it.
Ford opened his mouth, but nothing came out.
“Not fast enough on the cover story this time, huh? You probably should have held onto that gem of ‘I see you’ for another girl.” Pain. It was everywhere. Her chest. Her throat. Her eyes. Her stomach. They all ached like she’d been hit by a truck. The need to get out of the Hartigans’ house went from a need to a life-or-death necessity. She pressed through the bone-deep ache and walked to the door, stopping right in front of Ford, and looked him in the eye. “But believe me, now I see you, too. Please move.”
He opened his mouth as if to argue, but he must have seen in her face that she wasn’t going to listen. He stepped aside.
She walked out of the house without looking back, using all of her concentration to put one foot in front of the other until she got to the end of the block, where she called an Uber and wondered just how far away the driver would take her if she begged.
…
All of Ford’s policing skills left him the moment Gina walked out of the house, because he couldn’t detect his way out of a paper bag. First, he hesitated in the doorway, the click of her shutting it echoing in his skull, staring at it as if she was going to come back if he just stared at it long enough. When realization finally dawned, he yanked the door open with enough force that it bounced off the wall and shook the family photos lining the entryway and took off down the street. He had a fifty-fifty chance of picking the right direction and, of course, went the wrong way, correcting his mistake just in time to see Gina get in the back of a car with an Uber sticker and drive off.
You know where she’s going. You can just go home and—
But the Victorian wasn’t his home. It never had been. It was just the place that had felt like it because she was there. He forced his feet to work, to move one in front of the other, and get him back to his parents’ house so he could figure out his next move—because he had no idea what to do next.
If he could just talk to her…but that wasn’t his way. It never had been.
He didn’t charm. He didn’t emote. He followed rules and standard operating procedures. If there was a guidebook for what to do after fucking up this bad, he hadn’t read it.
Fallon was waiting for him, her hands planted on her hips, when he walked through the front door. Kyle stood just behind her. It took everything Ford had not to punch the douchebag just for the satisfaction of watching him go down. That wasn’t going to happen, though, because his mom was standing right beside the loud-mouthed dick. Faith and Finian stood right behind her, glowering at him.
“What in the hell did you do?” she asked.
Everything wrong, but he wasn’t about to admit it. “What were you thinking by bringing that asshole here?”
Kyle let out an offended squawk. “I’m not an asshole.”
Ford and Fallon turned on him as a unit. “Yes, you are.”
Kyle’s gaze went from Ford to Fallon and back again before he grumbled something that sounded a lot like crazy fucking Hartigans and stormed out of the house. The only thing better than watching Kyle walk out would have been seeing Gina stroll back in—a fact that landed like a punch to the kidneys.
“Don’t let the door hit you on the way out,” Fallon hollered after him, turning with a smile toward Ford. That moment of agreement at taking out the trash, though, disappeared faster than donuts in the break room.
“What did you do?” she asked.
He looked from his sister’s pissed-off expression to his mom’s concerned one and told them what he could. “My job.”
“How’s that?” Finian asked.
They weren’t this dense. He was a cop, for the love of Mike. They had to understand the conflict here. “You know who her brothers are.”
“So?” Faith asked, putting so much annoyance in that one word that it was like she’d just watched the best person in her life walk out the door. “That doesn’t explain what you did.”
What did he do? He tapped his thumb and finger together in a fast beat, not wanting to fess up because what he’d done was shitty—totally justified, yes—but totally shitty. Letting out a deep breath, he let the truth of just what he’d done into the light so they could all see the ugly of it all.
“I was assigned to watch her and find out if we could learn anything from the family angle.”
His mom gasped and made the sign of the cross. “You mean this whole time you’ve been pretending to date her for a case?”
“No.” He shook his head. “It was never like that—not once we started dating.”
“Then spit it out before the girls throat-punch you,” Finian said, looking like he just might deliver
a blow himself.
Their mom cut a death glare at his brother and sisters. “There will be no punching in this house, thank you very much.”
“Thanks, Mom,” he said.
She turned her angry stare to him. “Save your thanks for God, who is obviously looking out for you, since I haven’t boxed your ears yet. Now spit out the whole story.”
So he did—well, as much of it as he could, from the Kiss Cam to the cover story to get into Gina’s house to the suspension to the ice-pick-to-the-balls moment when Gina had walked into the kitchen and overheard Kyle the moron.
“You let that sweet girl believe her grandfather might have been murdered to get into her house?” his mom asked, shaking her head in disbelief.
His frustration at himself spilled out and his voice rose. “He was Big Nose Tommy, there was a high probability of it.”
“But you highly doubted from the beginning that that was the case,” Finian said.
“Yeah.” In the beginning, it hadn’t seemed like that big of a deal, but after getting to know Gina, having to admit it was like being hit with a haymaker of his own stupidity right in the nose.
Fallon shook her head. “And then after all of that was put to bed and you two got serious, you never told her?”
And there it was, the knockout punch. “No.”
Everyone gathered in the entryway wore identical expressions that roughly translated to there never was a dumber man than Ford Hartigan. He couldn’t argue the point.
The whole time, he’d figured it would be something Gina’s rule-breaking family would do that would mess everything up. Instead, he’d done it all by himself.
“Well, what are you going to do now?” Faith asked.
Ford wished like hell there was a procedure manual for this. “I have no clue.”
Chapter Eighteen
Ford had barely sat his ass in his chair Friday morning before his name rang out over the squad room.
“Hartigan,” the captain yelled. “My office.”
When he walked into the office and saw that the new task force lead, Rodriguez, was already there, he knew this wasn’t just another meeting. The captain got introductions out of the way with his usual pondering efficiency, and then he and Rodriguez sat down.
Since there wasn’t another chair, Ford remained standing. Judging by the look on their faces, having enough chairs hadn’t been simply an overlooked detail.
“I understand you have a special in with the Luca family,” Rodriguez said, her tone neutral, but there was no missing the calculating look in her eye.
“I did.” Until he’d fucked it up like an asshole.
Not a muscle moved in Rodriguez’s face, but she tightened her grip on the pen in her hand. “Love has turned to dust already,” she said with a sarcastic sigh. “What a shock.”
“As I’d suspected it would,” the captain said as he clicked open a digital report. “Even if her last name wasn’t Luca, she just didn’t look like your kind of woman, Hartigan.”
The death glare Rodriguez shot the captain could have been used in place of the electric chair. The captain, distracted by the report on his computer screen, missed it. Ford did not. It was so unexpected and vicious that a surprised snicker escaped before he could stop it and he had to cover the noise with a fake coughing fit.
The captain looked up, confusion making a V in his otherwise unlined forehead. “Do you need to recuse yourself to go get some water?”
Ford coughed once more for good measure and pounded on his chest. “No, sir. I’m fine.”
He turned his attention back to Rodriguez, whose expression had warmed by half a degree. Considering that none of the women in his life were currently talking to him—and neither were his brothers—after what happened at family lunch, that minuscule amount of warmth felt like the first day of summer.
“We have information that the Luca brothers have been busy lately,” Rodriguez said. “They’ve been boxing up a lot of stuff and taking it to a storage building on Elmherst. We can’t confirm that it has to do with the shipment tonight, but we need to find out either way.”
The Luca brothers and mystery cardboard boxes. That sounded a little too familiar. “Any idea what’s inside the boxes?”
“Nope, but we think there was at least one delivered to the sister’s house.” She paused as if to gauge his reaction. When he didn’t have one, she went on: “You don’t happen to know anything about that, do you?”
“No.” One word. One bald-faced lie to the woman who held his spot on the organized crime task force in her hand and the captain who held the rest of Ford’s career in his.
It wasn’t a great plan. It wasn’t a plan at all. It was pure gut reaction. Implicating Gina in anything that had to do with her brothers was not something he was going to do when he knew she wasn’t guilty of a thing. Damn the regulations and proper protocol.
Rodriguez continued, “Our informant has not been inside the Luca brothers’ apartment, and we can’t risk his position on the inside for answers about a couple of low-level loan sharks in case it doesn’t pan out. Still, we don’t want to miss anything, so we need to know what’s in the boxes at the storage facility or the ones possibly at Gina Luca’s residence.”
“And you want me to find out?” Well, that wasn’t going to happen because if he showed up on her door, she’d probably let him fall through the porch again and leave him there.
“That was the idea, but if you’ve lost access then we can send in someone else to poke around.” Rodriguez looked down at her notes. “She’s renovating her house, right? So maybe an inspector for a spot check, see if there’s anything suspicious. If there is, we can get a warrant for the storage unit.”
All he could picture was the box on Gina’s kitchen counter, the one her brothers had left and made her promise not to look in. This was the point in the conversation where it was standard operating procedure to offer up that pertinent information.
He said nothing.
And he couldn’t let another cop look in that box first. If there was something illegal inside and Gina was holding it, she could be facing charges even if she had no idea about the contents. After seeing how the Luca brothers were with their sister at the bowling alley, he couldn’t imagine her brothers would set her up to take a fall. Still, he had to do whatever it took to protect her in case he was wrong. If he was the one who found out whatever was inside the box, he could vouch for her, keep her safe from any fallout. There wasn’t another option.
“I can still get in.”
Rodriguez didn’t look impressed by his declaration. “Are you sure?”
It would mean burning whatever goodwill Gina might have left for him—which, face it, was pretty minimal at this point—but he could stop her from getting tangled up in her brothers’ mess. That was worth it, even if she ended up hating him for it.
…
Gina looked through the narrow leaded stained glass window next to the door again. Nope. She wasn’t dreaming—or having a nightmare. Ford was on her porch. He was holding a white box with the red Vacilli’s logo on it. He was looking a little rough around the edges. Good. He should.
“I can see you standing there,” he said.
Of course he could. She was standing in front of a window. “So?”
“Please let me in.” He held up the box in his hand. “I come bearing pastry and an apology.”
“Really?” The man was such an asshole. Did he really think she was that much of an idiot? “You brought cannoli? That move doesn’t get you in my pants anymore.”
“It’s not cannoli. It’s rum cake.”
Oh. Toasted almonds. Shut up, Regina. Dickhead alert. Stay focused. “That doesn’t get you laid either.”
He sighed and lowered the box back down. “I’m not trying to screw you, Gina.”
“Yeah, you only like to screw me over.” Which, while a clever retort, was both true and depressing—like a nature documentary where the little baby hippo ends up getting eaten
by a pack of lions.
“Please just let me in. We need to talk.”
Her natural curiosity wondering just what he was up to joined forces with that lizard brain part of herself that still responded to him with happy sighs and excited squeals. That’s how she ended up opening the door before she could stop herself. Stupid pheromones and brain.
“At least this saves me from having to decide between burning your stuff in my driveway or taking it to your house, so you might as well come in.”
Okay, so she’d binged a few days’ worth of chick-gets-revenge movies this week that had given her ideas. It wasn’t like she’d followed through on any of them.
“Thanks,” Ford said as he walked past her.
She did not take a big whiff as he got near. She did not check out his ass when she turned to close the door. She did check out his hands as they cradled the white box from Vacilli’s. He was just in her line of sight. That’s all.
“You can wait in the kitchen, I’ll bring the box down.”
“I can get it.” He started toward the stairs leading to her room.
“No.” There wasn’t any way in hell that she could let him into her bedroom again. “Uninvited guests stay downstairs.”
She got up to the third step before his voice stopped her.
“Gina, I’m sorry.” There was a raw edge to his tone that took it an octave lower, as if he was trying to keep something inside him from breaking out. “Kyle is a dickhead but he was right, I lied to get into your house. I was assigned to be here. It wasn’t by choice. I couldn’t let Gallo come watch over you, not after that night in the hotel.”
Her grip tightened on the banister, but she didn’t turn around. She couldn’t.
“I couldn’t stop thinking about you, and when the captain gave me the assignment, I took it. Even then I was afraid if I did that I’d break my biggest rule and get involved with someone that I couldn’t. You were an assignment and a Luca—and I didn’t trust myself to follow the rules when I was around you.”
This was his apology? His justification? The weak man defense?
“And after the assignment ended, it was even worse not being around you. That’s why I came back after I got suspended, because I couldn’t not see you again. I thought we could move forward without me ever having to admit what I’d done. I was wrong about that, but I wasn’t wrong about us.”