by Lauren Layne
The door opened, a pair of blue cat eyes and a cloud of orange curls glaring back at Ava. “Are you trying to give me a heart attack?”
An arm shot out and Ava handed her the champagne glass before the door closed again.
“You pick the next dress,” Beth grumbled from inside the room. “That way when it makes me look like a church bell I can blame you.”
“Try this one,” Ava said, picking up a mermaid gown that she’d spotted earlier. She set it over the dressing room door and waited for the protest she knew was coming.
“It’s mermaid style.”
“Which will look fabulous on you.”
The door opened again, and her tiny friend stood unabashed in green bikini panties and the nude-colored strapless bra she’d dubbed her “Saturday uniform” for the past few weeks.
“I said no mermaid style. I’ll look like Ariel.”
“There are worse things than resembling an adorable Disney princess.”
Beth scowled and pointed at another puffy-skirted dress on a mannequin. “I’ll try on that one. I like the pearls on the hem.”
“Sure. After the mermaid one,” Ava pressed.
“But—”
Ava reached into the dressing room and snatched the yellow sundress that Beth had worn into the shop. “Fine then. You can walk out of here naked.”
With an exasperated sound her friend shut the door. “I knew I should have asked my cousin to be maid of honor.”
“Tonya’s a pushover and a total girly-girl. You want to not look like a cupcake on your wedding day, you’ve gotta stick with me.”
“How’s she doing?” asked the saleswoman who’d wisely given them some privacy after Beth had thrown a tantrum over her tenth dress. And that was eight dresses ago.
“Really getting somewhere,” Ava said with a smile. “Nearly there, I think.”
“If by nearly there you mean I’m going to look like a sea creature!” Beth called over the door.
Ava caught the salesperson’s eye and held up her empty champagne class, and the woman nodded in understanding.
Sitting on one of the aqua-cushioned benches meant for enthusiastic mothers and exhausted bridesmaids, Ava waited for her friend to emerge with her umpteenth dress of the day.
Ava didn’t need any reason to doubt the appeal of marriage, but if she did, the proof was right here. Beth Salvers’s impending wedding had turned Ava’s best friend into a temperamental stress ball.
Granted Beth had always been a little high strung, but since being engaged, she was about one bad cake tasting away from an aneurysm. Lucky for Beth, her fiancé Christian found her short-lived tantrums adorable.
So did Ava…with the help of a glass of champagne. Or three.
Still, Beth could turn into the worst sort of Bridezilla imaginable, and Ava would give up all her Saturdays to help her find the perfect dress. It was what best friends did. Especially when it was the gold standard of best friends, which Beth Salvers definitely was.
The salesgirl returned with the champagne bottle, topping off Ava’s glass before offering to leave the bottle for Beth, should she also need a refill.
Judging from the prolonged silence inside the dressing room, Beth was definitely going to need it.
“Hon, you okay?” Ava asked, standing and going to the door.
There was a beat of silence, before her friend opened the door a tiny crack. “If I come out, you can’t say one word.”
“Oh, come on, if you don’t like it, you don’t have to come out.” She handed her friend’s sundress back. “Here, I won’t even hold your clothes hostage.”
And then the door opened and Ava understood exactly what words she wasn’t supposed to say.
I told you so.
Beth held up a finger. “Remember. Not one word.”
Ava pressed her lips together. But oh, she had been so right it was almost painful not to point it out.
The dress was perfect.
It was the dress.
Rare was the woman who could pull off a mermaid dress, but Beth’s tiny curves absolutely could.
But it was more than the exact right fit and the perfect shade of ecru to complement Beth’s coloring that made the gown perfect.
It was all about the enraptured look on Beth’s face when she saw herself in the mirror. All of the other dresses hadn’t worked, because they hadn’t been Beth. But this dress—the right dress—made Beth look like the best version of herself.
Ava was a little surprised to feel wetness gathering in the corner of her eyes. Ava wasn’t much of a crier, and she certainly wasn’t prone to happy tears, but there was no other way to explain how she felt, sharing this moment with her best friend.
Happy.
But there was something else warring with the happiness, just below the surface. Something that felt like the tiniest seed of doubt.
That morning at the diner, Ava had meant it when she’d told Luc Moretti that she didn’t want to get married.
But every now and then, a moment slipped past her defenses. Moments like this one.
And sometimes, only sometimes, she thought maybe.
CHAPTER TEN
No. No damn makeup,” Luc said, wrenching his head away from the black-haired woman who kept trying to come at him with a variety of weird brushes.
The makeup artist, Carly something or other, merely chomped her pink bubble gum and shot a look over her shoulder in a way that signaled she’d dealt with this kind of resistance before, and it wasn’t her problem to solve.
Ava was talking with the photographer, but she held up a finger to halt the conversation when she saw Carly’s look.
“Hey, Luc!” she said, coming closer to where he sat perched awkwardly on a stool.
He rolled his eyes at her tone.
He knew that tone.
When Luc had been a kid, before Anthony was old enough to babysit the rest of them, a high school girl who’d lived next door to the Morettis had sometimes come over to babysit.
His parents had thought it was hilarious to tell poor Kimmy that the kids had to eat their vegetables.
The poor girl had spent hours trying everything from choo-choo train with broccoli to trying to sneak a green bean in with a Cheetos.
Ava’s voice right now had the exact same tone as Kimmy when she thought she could get him to eat a steamed Brussels sprout just by using her “nice voice.”
“Don’t even, Sims,” he said.
“Don’t what?”
“Try to sweet-talk me into wearing makeup.”
“Now, I know it’s not manly,” she said, quietly taking a bottle of some beige-covered fluid and one of the brushes from Carly. “But look, all the guys that come in here wear it. And nobody who looks at the picture will ever know.”
“Let me get this straight. You want me to wear makeup, even though nobody will know I’m wearing makeup?”
“Look, Moretti,” she said, her voice turning bossy. “You’re gorgeous as you are, you really, really are, but when it comes to headshots you’ll notice every shadow, every dark spot, and—”
She’d lifted her hand to dab something under his eyes but he grabbed her wrist. “No flattery, Sims.”
Kimmy had tried flattery too.
Oh my gosh, you’re turning into such a strong handsome boy. You know what would make you look even better…
Please. He saw right through that shit.
Ava’s eyes went big and limpid as she met his gaze, and her voice went low and imploring. “I know it sucks, but it’s just for a few minutes, and then we’ll get you out of here.”
Yup. Kimmy had tried pleading too.
Hadn’t worked then, wouldn’t work now.
“Will I get an ice cream cone?” he asked, his voice full of fake excitement.
Ava frowned in confusion. “Well sure, if you want—”
His fingers tightened meaningfully on her wrist. “No makeup, Sims. That’s final.”
She huffed, throwing her hands in
the air with such exasperation he was forced to release her wrist. Ava shoved the makeup back at Carly before turning to scowl at him.
She was wearing a dress today, a knee-length blue number that seemed to somehow wrap around her, belting at her waist. The shoes were matching, and almost lethal in their height.
Even as he kept one eye on Carly and her evil makeup weapons, the other was on Ava. Things had been easier between them since that day at the diner, friendly even, when she wasn’t getting in his way.
But that didn’t mean he didn’t have some very pesky thoughts about how to undo that wrap-dress…
“All right, Carly, let’s back off,” she said, stepping back and folding her arms across her chest. “Guess we’ll have to go with haggard cop for the photos.”
“I thought you said I was gorgeous,” he said, shifting his weight on the stool.
“Oh, she says that to everyone,” Carly said, moving toward her black box of doom and putting the makeup away.
Luc caught himself before he could frown, but it annoyed him, just a little, that Ava didn’t seem to find him as attractive as he found her.
Sometimes, when their eyes caught, it was like fireworks.
But other times—most times—she seemed to prefer Lopez to him. Hell, she seemed to like everyone better.
And Ava actually touched Lopez. A teasing brush of the shoulder there, a slap on the arm here.
She never touched Luc. Not if she could help it.
But then, as though reading his thoughts, Ava proved him wrong. She moved before Luc could react, stepping forward so she was directly in front of him, her fingers lifting upward to rustle through his hair.
He let out a growl of protest, but she leaped back before he could grab her and darted across the room behind the photographer.
“It looks better mussed,” she called to Luc before gesturing at the photographer to do his thing.
That was not what he’d had in mind when he’d thought about Ava Sims’s hands on him.
Luc started to lift a hand to smooth his now tousled hair, but then the photographer was all up in his face, clicking an enormous camera as he turned it this way and that, and Luc could do little more than sit there and silently bemoan that this was what his life had become.
Up until this point, most of CBC’s interference in his life had come in the form of Ava following him around, and when it was NYPD sanctioned, having her cameraman tag along as well. He’d almost gotten used to them. Almost.
But this short bald man wasn’t Mihail, and Luc was really not enjoying the way the guy looked at him like he was a bowl of fruit in a still life.
The photographer—Bob? Ben? Bill?—paused his rapid-fire clicking so that he and Ava could have a quick pow-wow in the corner, talking in hushed tones as they reviewed the pictures they had so far.
Ava chewed on her bottom lip.
Not a good sign.
Whatever was in those pictures, she didn’t like.
Well tough shit. Luc was a cop, not a model, and he wasn’t about to preen.
“Officer, can I be blunt?” Ava asked, moving toward him.
He put a hand over his heart. “What I wouldn’t give to go back in time and have you ask that three years ago when you were chewing my balls out for that parking ticket.”
She ignored this. He liked that about her; she was damned good at not getting sucked into conversations and situations she didn’t want to be.
Ava was always in control, and the more he watched her boss her way through life, the more he wanted to find her trigger of self-control.
He wanted to unravel Ava Sims, just like he wanted to unwind that curve-hugging dress.
“Moretti, are you listening to me?”
“Not really.”
She sighed. “The pictures are fine, but quite honestly, you look pissed. Like you don’t want to be here.”
“What?” He faked a scandalized look. “I’ve been dreaming about this moment for years!”
She pressed her lips together as though she wanted to smile but couldn’t bear to give him the satisfaction.
Instead, she went to her purse and came back with her phone, poking around the touch screen until she found what she wanted, and turned the screen to him.
It was a picture of the Moretti males on Luc’s graduation from the police academy.
There’d been a minor story about them in the paper that week.
Something about New York’s “police royalty” completing their reign, or some shit like that.
But he didn’t recognize the picture she showed him.
If memory served him correctly, the one that had been printed in the paper was a posed, forced-smile shot.
But this was a candid one.
Vincent appeared to be about to sock Luc in the gut, and they were all laughing, even Police Commissioner Moretti. As always, Luc’s father had that perfect combination of authority-figure and paternal-approachability.
Despite his bad mood, Luc smiled. Moments like the one in the picture were part of the reason he became a cop. That sense of belonging to something…belonging to something decent and good.
“Where’d you get this?” he asked.
“Sources, Moretti. Sources. But my point is, this is the Luc I want people to see.”
“The twenty-three-year-old version?”
“The happy version. Where do I find him?”
Luc rubbed his chin with his palm as he pretended to consider. “I think he bailed right about the time he saw you in Brinker’s office.”
She stepped closer, getting in his face, and his hands lifted instinctively to reach for her hips, but he clenched them into fists instead.
It wasn’t the urge to touch her that bothered him; it was the naturalness of the urge. As though Ava Sims were his to touch whenever he wanted.
“If you cooperate…just the tiniest smile, I’ll buy you a drink after,” she said.
“You’re bribing an officer of the law? Or just really desperate to spend time with me, Sims?”
Ava sighed. “Two questions, Moretti. What exactly is up your ass? And how the hell do we remove it?”
He ran a hand through his hair, answering honestly, because honesty was what Morettis did best. “Sexual frustration. As far as how to fix it…”
His eyes fell on her mouth.
Her eyes narrowed before she took a tiny step backward.
She huffed in frustration and Luc grinned, because the only thing better than getting into Sims’s pants was getting under her skin.
“Coward,” he said, leaning forward and grinning.
“Ass,” she shot back.
Click.
Click.
There were three more rapid-fire clicks before Luc finally tore his gaze away from Ava to realize that the cameraman had been dancing around them, taking pictures as they’d argued.
“I think we’ve got something, Ava,” the photographer said, looking at the most recent shots.
Ava shot Luc one last warning glare before she walked to the photographer and looked at the camera. In seconds, her face transformed from frustrated to elated.
She shot him a cheeky grin as she moved closer. “Well whadya know, Moretti. I make you smile.”
He grunted in irritation, and she twirled her hair around a finger flirtatiously before winking.
“Okay, that’s enough with the seated headshots. Let’s get a few with him standing.”
Luc groaned.
“Don’t worry, baby,” she said in a sugary voice, “you can scowl for these ones.”
“Much as I’d love to be your boy toy for all day, I’ve got things to do—”
“I know, I know, puppies to save, tickets to write, et cetera, et cetera. But really, Moretti, is this so different from your regular life? You’re just posing for a big camera now, instead of a tourist’s iPhone.”
He didn’t realize he’d moved until his fingers were wrapped around her bicep, pulling her around to face him before she could move away
.
Her look of surprise turned to one of nervousness, and Luc knew exactly what she was seeing in his face.
Anger.
“You want to hold on to your jaded little fantasy that I’ve intentionally brought all of this on myself, go right ahead, but you damn well better keep it to yourself. I’m doing this because it’s my orders, and that means something to me. And I jumped into that river because it’s my job, and that means something to me too. All the cameras in the world could self-destruct, and I’ll do it all over again. You got that?”
The formerly bustling room had grown dead quiet, and though Luc hadn’t raised his voice, it was immediately clear that everyone had overheard everything. Or at least caught the gist.
Ava’s cheeks were pink, and at first he thought it was embarrassment, but then her fingers found his where they gripped her hand, the cool pads of her fingertips lightly touching his knuckles. “Luc—Officer—”
He jerked his hand back, releasing her as suddenly as he’d grabbed her, annoyed with himself for losing his cool.
“Forget it, Sims.”
“No, wait, I—”
“Ava?”
Ava froze, her entire body seeming to stiffen before turning toward the sound of the voice.
Luc, too, turned, watching in interest as an attractive brunette in black slacks and a striped top walked toward Ava, arms outstretched.
“Miranda.”
The woman’s arms went around Ava, although there was a definite pause before Ava returned the hug.
The woman—Miranda—pulled back slightly to look Ava over. “Sweetie, you look adorable.”
Luc’s eyes narrowed slightly. The words were complimentary. The tone was just subtly condescending.
“What are you doing here?” Ava asked.
Luc’s eyes narrowed even further. Ava’s voice was all excitement, but there was a false-note too. Whatever the relationship between the women, there was an edge there.
“Some way to greet your sister,” the woman said with a husky laugh. “I came to see you.”
“You flew from Los Angeles to New York to see me?”
“Well yeah, it’s your birthday week!” Again with that low laugh. Rather villainous, actually.
