by Lauren Layne
She tilted her head. “What makes you think I don’t have a uniform?”
There was something in her voice that made Luc give her a second look, taking his eyes off her only long enough to give Helen a smile and a wink in exchange for the coffee she poured him without asking.
Helen winked back, sliding two menus on the table, more for Ava’s sake than his.
Luc didn’t order the same thing every time (he wasn’t that OCD), but he did know the menu by heart.
Ava smiled in thanks as Helen refilled her coffee mug as well, and Luc noted that this was one of her real smiles.
The type of smile that made her eyes light and nose crinkle just a little. It was a smile he’d seen her give to about everyone but him.
Damn it. He wanted that smile.
“One of your groupies?” Ava asked, nodding in the direction of Helen after she’d moved on to another table.
“Something like that,” Luc said.
Helen was special to the Morettis. Was special to Luc, especially these days. The elderly waitress was one of the only people who’d always treated Luc like a person. Not a cop. He suspected Helen was the biggest reason the Darby Diner continued to be the Morettis’ favorite Sunday brunch place. Not because the food was outstanding, or the décor was comfortable, or even because it was habit.
But because Helen Carter understood that despite the legacy, the Morettis were a family first. Cops second.
“So your uniform,” Luc continued, not wanting to explain any of this to Sims. “Is this it?”
Luc used his eyes to gesture rather than his hand.
She was wearing another button-down blouse, this one a lime green that made her eyes look almost hazel.
Don’t notice her eyes, dude.
He couldn’t see her bottom half, but considering her makeup was flawless, her hair perfectly styled, he figured it was the same tailored dress pants she’d been wearing for the past week.
High heels, almost for sure.
Damn it, now he was hungry. And not for breakfast.
“Let’s just say it’s not my day off,” she said, her eyes dropping to her coffee mug.
In spite of himself, Luc was intrigued. “What do you wear on your days off? Be descriptive.”
Right down to the bra. Or tell me you’re wearing no bra.
Yeah, actually, make that definitely on the no bra.
Ava cupped her hands around her mug, leaning toward him. “Hey, here’s an idea. How about you become a reporter, then you get to ask the questions.”
He leaned forward. “And by become a reporter, I assume you mean put on a lot of makeup and ask prying questions?”
Her head snapped back a little, and although her eyes moved down to her coffee before he could read her expression, he felt an instant surge of regret.
Just because he was frustrated didn’t mean he needed to be an ass. She was just doing her job. It occurred to him that maybe he was every bit as much in her way as she was in his.
For a second, the old Luc—the one that was good with people—returned, and he touched her hand.
“Hey,” he said softly.
Her eyes lifted, but the wariness remained.
Damn it.
“Sorry,” he said bluntly. “I may not love your career, but belittling it’s a dick move.”
To Luc’s surprise, she merely nodded in acceptance, not making a huffy drama out of it. Instead she reached for one of the vinyl-covered menus.
“What’s good here?”
“Don’t you have my favorites memorized?” he teased.
Her lips twisted into a small smile and she glanced up. “You want to know how I found out about this place, don’t you?”
“I do.”
She tapped her nails against the table, and he noticed that at least two of them were dramatically chipped. It was the only part of her incongruent with an otherwise perfectly manicured persona.
“Sawyer told me. Said your family comes here every Sunday, but that on your days off, you come alone.”
“Figures you got Lopez to talk,” Luc said, taking a sip of coffee. “How’d you get it out of him, agree to go on a date?”
“He tried. I dodged.”
Luc grunted, oddly relieved by this revelation.
“I opted for a lap dance instead,” she deadpanned.
Luc choked on his coffee.
“He even got change for a twenty,” she continued. “And let me tell you, there’s something oddly gratifying about having all those one-dollar bills slide against your skin when he tucks them into your G-string, you know?”
Luc coughed up the coffee that he’d aspirated. “That’s just…no words. I have no words.”
Helen returned to take their order.
Luc got a bacon, spinach, Swiss omelet with fruit instead of potatoes. Ava ordered the same, with the addition of mushrooms.
“Fruit, huh?” she asked when Helen had walked away.
“I like it,” Luc said with a shrug. “Not manly enough for you?”
“Yeah, because that’s what all women look for in a man. The right breakfast side-order.”
They both sipped their coffee, and Luc finally asked the crucial question. “What are you doing here, Sims?”
Ava took a deep breath, but to her credit, she met his gaze dead-on. “I wanted to get to know you.”
Well that was…blunt. And interesting.
He leaned in a little. “For the sake of the story? Or for you?”
“The story,” she said, the words coming out too quickly, despite the fact that his tone had been deliberately teasing.
Luc sat back and considered.
“Sims, we’ve spent every day of the past week together. You’re practically my second partner on the job, even if you’re in the way more often than not.”
“Hey!”
He held up a hand to stop the protest. “No. You are, and you know it.”
She huffed. “I just wanted to turn on the siren once. Just to try it.”
“Uh huh. You’re telling me it had nothing to do with the fact that it was rush hour and you had to pee?”
She waved this away. “Look, I know that I’ve been…annoying. But I’m just trying to do my job.”
He groaned. “Enough with that. We both want to do our jobs without the other getting in our way, but that’s not going to happen, is it? In order for me to do my job well, I need you to go away. For you to do your job well, you need me to kiss your ass.”
She leaned forward, her eyes as intense as he’d seen them. “You don’t have to kiss my ass, Moretti. Truly. I just need you to talk to me.”
“I do talk to you.”
“No, you grunt, growl, and lecture.”
Luc took a sip of coffee to hide his surprise at the accusation.
Luc was not the grunting, growling type.
Not to toot his own horn or anything, but truth be told, Luc had always thought of himself as being fairly, well…likable.
Of all the Moretti clan, Luc was the quickest to smile and according to his mother, the easiest to talk to.
That last one, of course, could have been due to his mother buttering him up so he’d come over and help her move her recipes from ragged index cards to “the cloud” on the new laptop his dad had bought.
But with or without his mother’s praise, Luc was sure of one thing:
This was the first time a woman had ever accused him of being an irritable prick.
And although he was tempted to snap back that it was only her that drew out this grumpy, unlikable version of himself, the truth was he felt a little ashamed of himself.
Like those assholes who disdained all law enforcement for life because of one “undeserved” speeding ticket when they were seventeen, Luc had been making similar stereotypes about the media based on his own desire for privacy.
Ava was right. She was just doing her job.
And he may not like it, but that didn’t authorize being a complete dick.
&nbs
p; After Helen had delivered their breakfast, Luc picked up his fork and made a decision. He wasn’t going to bend over backward for her.
He still thought this story was bullshit.
But…
“All right, Sims. I’ll talk.”
She was about to take a bite of egg, but her fork paused halfway to her mouth. “Seriously?”
“Today only,” he said, liberally adding pepper to his dish. “Don’t be expecting the welcome mat at the precinct on Monday, and this isn’t a free pass to turn on the siren whenever you get hungry, and you still have to pay that parking ticket. But I respect that you have three hours of stupid television to put together. So for today…shoot.”
He half expected her to go all rabid on him, pulling out a notebook or worse, a recorder, and firing question after question, but she merely chewed her omelet and looked thoughtful.
“Thank you,” she said finally.
“You’re welcome.”
She smiled. “We’re having a moment, aren’t we?”
“Sims, if this is your idea of a moment, your social life must be seriously up a creek.”
“Speaking of social life,” she said, plopping a piece of cantaloupe in her mouth.
Here we go…
“Do you have a girlfriend?”
The question was more direct than he’d expected, and Luc had to remind himself she was asking as a reporter, not as an interested party.
“Nope.”
“Ex?”
“I’m twenty-eight. I should hope I had a couple exes under my belt by now.”
“But anyone serious?” She took a sip of coffee.
“I don’t do serious, Sims.”
She cocked her head to the side. “Ever?”
Luc shrugged. “Lots of cops don’t.”
“Because of the frequent brush-with-death thing?”
He was silent for a moment as he pictured Mike. And Mike’s funeral. Then he remembered Mike’s widow and son sobbing silently in the front row of the church…
His fingers clenched into a fist beneath the table, and he forced himself to take a long, slow breath. This was why Ava Sims was dangerous to him. It would only take a few well-placed questions, and the entire world would know that their hero-cop was so far from a hero it wasn’t even funny.
“Let’s just say I know a few too many cop widows—and widowers, for that matter—to ever put a woman I cared about through that.”
“But your entire family is cops. Surely they don’t all feel that way.”
“No,” he granted. “My parents have been happily married for over three decades. And my brother Marco is halfway to the altar already. The other two…hell, I doubt they could pay a woman to put up with them for life, so it doesn’t really matter.”
She opened her mouth as though to argue, but Luc beat her to it.
“Cops don’t make good husbands, Sims.” He softened the statement with a smile.
It was hardly the first time he’d had this conversation with a woman. Luc was always careful to set expectations upfront, but some women seemed to think they were the exception to the rule.
But Luc’s commitment to non-marriage was one rule he had no intention of breaking.
Ava surprised him. “No judgment here. Marriage is…” she paused, as though searching for the right word. “Crap,” she finished.
Luc washed a bite of bacon down with a sip of water, surprised by her succinct dismissal of marriage.
It wasn’t that he thought all women were secretly trying on wedding dresses in their spare time, but in his experience it was rare to run into a woman who was so openly anti.
And though he was tempted to ask why…to know what made her tick, he took the easy path instead.
“Sims.” He let his eyes go wide in bafflement. “Did we just have something in common?”
She smiled, and it was a pretty thing, this genuine smile instead of the knee-jerk smile he was used to seeing from her. “I won’t tell if you won’t.”
“Deal. So what else do you have for me? You’ve got until I clean my plate to pick my brain, because once I’m on duty, chitchat is off-limits.”
“Hold on there, cowboy, we’re not done with the prior topic just yet,” she said, nipping a corner of her toast with her perfect white teeth. “So you’re not looking to march down the aisle. I get it. But what does a bachelor cop’s love life look like?”
“What’s it look like? Lots of curvy blondes, mostly. Often naked,” he replied.
“Sounds very Beverly Hills brothel.”
He smiled at her tart tongue as he took his last bite of omelet. “Probably could make room for a skinny brunette who talks too much though.”
Ava pulled her napkin off her lap and began fanning herself. “Wow. With moves like these, how do you ever find time to sleep?”
“Seriously though, Sims, leave my love life out of the story, would ya?”
“But—”
“Look, I get it,” he said, his voice gentle. “People want to see that stuff. They want to know I’m half-smitten with a childhood sweetheart or ‘waiting for the right one,’ but I can’t give you that.”
She threw up her hands. “Well I can’t just say you’re a bed-hopping commitment-phobe.”
He frowned. “Why not? It’s the truth.”
“Which usually is what I’m after, but—”
His head snapped up at that little slip. “What do you mean that’s usually what you’re after? What’s different about this story?”
She lifted her hand and nibbled on her thumbnail before tucking it into her fist and putting her hand back in her lap. “I just mean that this is a big story. A lot of people will be looking at it.”
“Isn’t that the point of network television? Lots of people looking at it?”
“No, I mean, a lot of network people will be looking at it. My bosses.”
He searched her face, surprised to see the conflict there, even though he didn’t understand it. “And they’re expecting to hear about my love life?”
She chewed her lip, the nervous gesture at odds with her polished appearance. “Let’s just say a little romance wouldn’t hurt the story. They want something that’ll make the audience melt, you know?”
Too damn bad. The only secrets Luc had were the kind to make the audience hate him.
He reached across the table to pat her arm. “You’re a good reporter, Sims. You’ll find a way to romance it.”
“Maybe I’ll stick with the ‘currently married to his job’ thing. They don’t need to know that currently is actually indefinitely.”
“There you go. What else?” He held up his last piece of toast. My plate is nearly clean.”
“Tell me about college.”
“What about it?”
“Cops don’t have to go, and yet you and all of your brothers did. Sister too.”
Luc paused in his chewing, torn between admiration and annoyance. “You know, your tenacity is bordering on creepy.”
“Are you deflecting?”
He shrugged. “Of course not. There’s just not much to say. It was college. Dorms. Dorm food. Professors. Exams. Finals. Cute girls. I mean, I’d tell you that I was a decent student, but you’ve probably already tracked down and memorized my transcript.”
“Three point nine two; major in Econ. Not bad, Officer.”
He smiled in thanks at Helen as she cleared their plates. “But you want to know why I’d go if I didn’t have to.”
Her lips tilted. “Sort of.”
Luc leaned back in the booth. “Well, I’d like to tell you I was an incredibly driven eighteen-year-old, desperate to pursue my education, but the truth is it was all my mom.”
“She made you go?”
“Sort of. I mean, being the youngest, I sort of knew it was coming, and it never occurred to me to resist. But even as she was my dad’s biggest supporter as he climbed the ranks, Mom never wanted her children to think they had to follow in his footsteps. College was her way of
giving us a chance to know something other than the cop life.”
“But you’re all cops.”
“The guys, yeah. My sister, no.” Luc pulled out his wallet as Helen dropped off the check, but Ava was too quick. “I’ve got it.”
He considered for a second and then put his wallet away. “Because you ruined my solitude on my only day off this week, sure.”
Luc was a little surprised at the flash of guilt on her face. Ava might be tenacious but she wasn’t without a conscience.
That little flash of humanity bothered him.
He couldn’t afford to like her. Not when there was so much to lose.
“One more question?” she said as he moved to the edge of his booth.
“No guarantee there’ll be an answer, but sure.”
“When you did those things…jumped into the river and gave the homeless guy a jacket. Did you know there was a camera on you?”
All friendly thoughts he’d had toward her dried up.
Instead of replying, he lifted his coffee mug, draining the last sip before standing.
He met her eyes with a silent fuck off before he walked away.
There were some idiotic questions just not worth answering.
CHAPTER NINE
For the last time, the dress does not make your butt look big,” Ava said.
“I look bottom heavy. I know I do.”
Ava slowly rotated around her best friend, taking a sip of champagne as she did. “Okay, you’re right. The dress doesn’t work. You’re too tiny, the ballroom gown style overwhelms you.”
Beth scowled down at her from the podium in the center of the shop’s dressing room. “How dare you. I look like a princess.”
Ava chewed on the inside of her cheek. “You just said you looked bottom heavy. Now you’re a princess?”
Beth’s scowl grew. “Princesses can be bottom heavy.”
Ava wordlessly plucked Beth’s champagne flute off a side table and handed it to her. “So get the dress then.”
“But I don’t like this one.” Beth took a sip of her drink before handing it back and holding out a hand to be helped down from the podium.
“You’ve got to pick one soon, sweetie,” Ava said as Beth moved back toward her dressing room, barely fitting through the door in her huge dress. “You’re five one and negative twenty pounds, so whatever you pick is likely going to need to be tailored.”
