F
inally,
finally
Luc typed up the last sentence on the last report for the week, putting one fist in the air.
Victory.
“You know, for some reason, it never really occurred to me that cops could take sick days,” Ava mused, never looking up from the magazine she’d been flipping through for the past half hour.
Luc dropped his arm. He’d almost forgotten he wasn’t alone. The operative word being
almost
, because it seemed his subconscious was
always
aware of Ava Sims.
He reached for his Coke. “Well here’s something to know about Lopez; his ‘sick’ days tend to come on heavy paperwork days. Write that down.”
She scrunched her nose. “You think he’s faking it? He sounded pretty stuffed up on speakerphone earlier.”
“That’s because he thinks he’s allergic to paperwork. It’s psychosomatic.”
“So we’re all done?” she asked, finally flipping her magazine closed.
“
I’m
done,” he said, giving her a pointed look.
“Hey, I’ve been here too. You think hanging around until eight o’clock in a deserted precinct is my idea of a good time?”
Luc snorted and stood. “Don’t even. I wasted thirty minutes trying to get rid of you. I think we can both agree that the ‘American public’ you’re so anxious to impress isn’t going to give a shit about all the filing we cops have to do.”
“No,” she admitted. “They want the sexy, jumping into rivers, saving babies stuff.”
“So why are you still here?”
She stood as well, putting her hands on the small of her back to stretch. “I need to understand the full picture of Luc Moretti the cop. Even if the boring stuff doesn’t make it into production, our interview will be richer if I’m informed.”
“Interview?”
“Don’t worry, the camera will love you,” she said, patting his forearm before reaching for her handbag.
“I never agreed to that. You said the reason you had to follow me around was because people didn’t want to see a boring interview. Now you’re changing it up on me?”
Ava huffed out an exasperated breath. “No, I said they didn’t want
just
an interview. Honestly, Luc, what did you think this news special entailed? Of course there’ll be an interview. It’ll be a huge component of the story.”
Christ
. He should have seen it coming, he supposed.
Showing the brief video clips of his “good deeds” over and over wouldn’t fill up three hours.
Luc rubbed a hand over his face before leaning to shut down his computer. “You’re going to turn my life into a spectacle. You know that, right?”
“I’m afraid it already is, Officer Moretti. A woman asked you to sign her bra the other day. I think you’ve passed the point of no return.”
He studied her. “Is that why you’re able to do what you do without guilt? You figure my anonymity’s shot with or without you, so I’m fair game.”
She tilted her head. “You really don’t trust me, do you?”
“Should I? Seems to be our relationship’s a lot about you taking, and not much giving.”
And a lot of you running hot and cold,
he nearly added, remembering that almost kiss on the ferry when she’d freaked out.
“Relationship, huh?” She smirked.
Shit.
Relationship
had not been the word he’d meant to use.
He also hadn’t meant to infer that he expected—or wanted—her to give anything back. He didn’t need to know Ava Sims.
Didn’t need to know what made her tick.
Other than her career ambition, but he suspected even
that
came from a deeper, dark place. Probably having to do with her messed-up family.
But beyond that?
He didn’t know Ava Sims at all.
And it bothered him more than he liked to admit.
Ava slung her purse over her shoulder. “Okay then.”
Luc gave her a wary look. “Okay what?”
“I’m buying you dinner.”
Luc shook his head as he followed her out. “Not exactly what I meant.”
Ava spun around and put a hand against his chest to stop him. “Maybe I wasn’t clear. I’m taking you to dinner…and you get to ask whatever questions you want. About me. My company is asking you to be an open book, with essentially no choice in the matter. I can’t give you that choice back. But I can, at least, make this a two-way street.”
Luc studied her. It was an unexpected move. Every vibe he’d gotten from Ava so far was that she was fiercely private. Sure, she could have a conversation with anyone, flirt with anyone, wrap anyone around her finger, and yet he’d have sworn that the real Ava was on lockdown.
And here she was practically volunteering transparency? There had to be a catch.
But he could handle the catch.
Luc shrugged. “You’re on.”
Ava blinked. “Really? You’ll have dinner with me?”
He maneuvered them so that his hand was on the small of her back as he ushered her toward the door. “Sure. Hey, does your cell have a camera built in?”
“Um, sure?”
“Good.” He ushered her out into the night air. “Get it ready in case I just happen to catch any babies falling from burning buildings, or throw myself in front of an elderly person to protect them from a runaway cab. Gotta document that shit.”
“
Crap
,” Ava said, skidding to a halt. “We forgot your cape. I was up all night sewing sequins onto it.”
“There goes your whole story,” Luc said with a shake of his head. “I don’t suppose this means we can call the whole thing off?”
“No, although now you know why Clark Kent had multiple Superman outfits on hand,” she said, linking her arm in his and pulling him toward the curb to hail a cab.
“I hardly think he called them
outfits
,” Luc said as he followed her into the taxi.
“West Village?” he asked skeptically after hearing the address she gave the cabbie. “That’s your neighborhood?”
“Nah, I don’t make enough to live there. Yet,” she added with the sort of firmness that told him she fully expected to make enough someday to live in one of Manhattan’s trendier neighborhoods.
“So where do you live?”
“A tiny box in the Financial District,” she said. “When I first moved to the city, I didn’t know what the hell I was doing, and the broker assured me it was the best I could do while still living in Manhattan, which at the time, I was hell-bent on. You’re in Upper West, yeah?”
He turned to see her watching him in the shadows. “Dying to know how I can afford it, huh?”
“Nope, your grandma filled me in. Roomies! That must be fun.”
Luc grunted. “This morning I woke up to her shouting at the window washers across the street asking them to, and I quote, ‘shake it.’”
She laughed softly. “You love her.”
“I love my whole family.”
Ava’s smile faded a little. “As you should. They’re great.”
The restaurant Ava picked was tiny, trendy, and crowded, even on a Wednesday night, and definitely not a typical NYPD hangout.
“Don’t worry,” she said, catching his expression as they claimed a spot at the bar to wait for a table. “I’ve got this handy thing called a corporate credit card and a hefty spending limit. So what can CBC get you from the bar?”
The restaurant was noisy, so Luc dropped his head slightly so his lips could get close to her ear. “I’ll have what you’re having.”
“You like wine?”
He gave her a look. “I’m Italian.”
“Does that mean I should limit it to Chianti, or are you up for a little adventure?”
Luc’s brain went in a sideways direction. He wanted to take an adventure with Ava all right. And not with wine.
“Surprise me,” he said, turning to face the bar more fully in hopes that nobody noticed that his response to this woman was immediate and potent. At least he wasn’t in uniform tonight. Boners and cop uniforms didn’t go well together.
Out of habit, Luc surveyed the restaurant while Ava chatted up the bartender about the wine list. He didn’t eat out much, beyond the odd late-night cheeseburger run, and he had to admit that while he wasn’t much of a “scene” guy, there was something sort of nice about being out for a late dinner with a beautiful woman.
It made him feel his actual age.
Despite the fact that his family frequently reminded him of his status as the baby, the truth was, Luc generally felt a good deal older than his twenty-eight years.
The job had aged him. The things he’d seen, the long hours…Mike.
Shayna.
He closed his eyes briefly to block out the haunting image of her tiny body.
Not now
, he pleaded his subconscious.
Not when I’m having dinner with a reporter.
But Ava would never connect him with the case.
Somehow, Luc had gotten lucky, and none of the follow-up news reports of the kidnapping gone sideways had gotten into the specifics of the first responders.
As far as the world knew, this was just the sad case of a sick fuck-wad killing little kids.
Of course, everyone wished that it would have worked out differently; that the cops could have gotten in front of it. But the public was sadly accepting that sometimes it didn’t work that way. There was an assumption that the cops had tried their hardest, but sometimes it wasn’t good enough.
It was a mistaken assumption.
But nobody knew it.
Except Luc.
“Here,” Ava said, turning around to face him. Luc grasped at the oversized red wineglass like it was a lifeline.
Her head tilted a little, her brown eyes worried. “You okay?”
Luc clinked his glass to hers. “Never better. Now what are we drinking?”
“Pinot Noir from Oregon. The good ones are expensive, but hey. We’re worth it.”
Luc didn’t buy into the whole swirl and sniff routine with wine—any wine—but he did appreciate the good stuff, and his taste buds told him right away that this was good. Very good.
“So,” Ava said, slipping onto a recently vacated bar stool and crossing her legs. The motion made her pencil skirt ride up just a little, exposing smooth knee and long calf. His fingers itched to run from her ankle all the way up to her knee, to her inner thigh and beyond…
She snapped her fingers against his upper arm. “Do not look at me like that,” she said, her voice husky. “When I suggested a get-to-know-Ava evening, I didn’t mean
little
Ava.”
Luc choked on his wine. “Is that what you call your—”
She laid a finger over his lips, although she looked as surprised by the gesture as he felt. Very slowly she removed her hand, shaking her head slightly as though to erase it.
“Let the questions commence,” she said, taking a sip of her wine. “And keep it clean, Moretti.”
She licked a little speck of red wine from her bottom lip, and it took every ounce of self-control not to crush his mouth to hers.
Clean. Right.
“All right,” he said, clearing his throat. “Let’s start with the basics. How long are we going to pretend that we don’t want to be in bed right now? Or against the wall? Or on a kitchen counter?”
She gave a strangled laugh. “Clearly you don’t understand the art of interviewing. It’s all about finesse.”
Unable to stop himself, Luc traced an index finger along the sharp line of her jaw, dragging the pad of his finger down to her stubborn chin. “Guess you shouldn’t have flirted with a cop then, lady. No such thing as an interview in my line of work.”
“No?”
“Nope.” He moved in closer, shifting so that his upper body leaned into hers. “We start with interrogations.”
“And then?” Her voice was flirty and light, but her eyes were pure heat.
His gaze dropped to his hand, which had found its way to her knee somehow. “Depends. If the cop’s skilled at interrogation, things generally progress to handcuffs…and other things. If the cop’s unsuccessful…”
Luc broke off and shrugged.
Ava looked at him over the top of her wineglass. “Which one are you? The skilled interrogator or the other?”
“Depends.”
“On.”
He leaned in and pressed his lips to her ear. “Whether or not you like handcuffs.”
T
he hostess at La Printemps either had very good timing, or very bad timing, depending on how you looked at it.
Considering that sex with Luc Moretti was a
terrible
idea, Ava was inclined to think she should tip the hostess for interrupting.
Her humming body said otherwise.
And although the sexual tension eased
slightly
as they were seated at their table, the evening continued to feel like a date.
The best date she’d had in a long, long time.
Luc leaned back as the server cleared their appetizer plates. “I just can’t picture you as a small-town, Midwest girl.”
“Believe it,” she said, looking down as she swirled her wineglass. “My graduating high school class had under a hundred people. I passed cornfields on my way to cheerleading practice.”
“Cheerleader. That’s hot,” he said, taking out a piece of bread after offering the basket to her.
She rolled her eyes. “What is it with men and cheerleaders?”
Luc chewed his bread thoughtfully before leaning toward her. “What is it with women and men in uniforms?”
“Nuh uh,” she said, holding up a finger, even as she enjoyed his blatant cockiness. “We already established that I’m not going to be one of your groupies.”
“Is that why you kept that parking ticket as a love souvenir of our first meeting?”
Ava giggled.
Giggled
. What was wrong with her? “Believe me, that is
so
not what it was.”
“No? Because it had lipstick on it, Sims.”
“So that’s your theory? You think I kissed it good night for three years?”
He wiggled his eyebrows. “You tell me.”
“All right,” she said, giving a little shake of her head. “I get it.”
“Get what?”
“Why you’re the family charmer. You’re pretty good at it when you’re not being an uptight bore.”
“Such sweet love words coming out of that pretty mouth.” He gave her that lady-killer smile that she was pretty sure had caused many a damp panty.
Not Ava’s though.
Well
maybe
hers. Just a little.
Ava inhaled, trying to remember all the reasons she hadn’t kissed him on the ferry the other night.
She couldn’t remember a damned one.
“Stop flirting,” she said, desperate to get them to safer ground. “You’ve been whining for two weeks about how I’m prying into your life. Here’s your chance to pry into mine.”
He dunked another piece of bread in the flavored oil as he considered. “Okay then. I do have a question that’s a little bit…prying.”
“Bring it,” she said, hoping he didn’t notice the way her shoulders hunched. She didn’t have any intention of letting him get too personal. She was much too skilled at evasions. But that didn’t mean she wasn’t a little worried about him getting beneath her skin.
“Well I’m just wondering…how short was that cheerleading skirt?”
Ava blinked a little in…disappointment?
Obviously Luc had every intention of keeping the evening flirty and superficial.
She should be grateful. Hell, hadn’t the thought just crossed her mind that she didn’t want him to get too close?
But if she was honest with herself—
really
good and honest with her apparently fickle brain—a little part of her wanted Luc to ask the hard questions.
To know more about the real Ava, not Ava Sims, journalist.
But it wasn’t her
brain
that wanted that.
And no way was she going to put her heart out there when the guy couldn’t even bother to
ask
.
Instead of letting on to her disappointment, she gave him a saucy wink. “It was as short as you’re hoping it was.”
“I knew it. You were my high school fantasy.”
But not your adult fantasy?
Ava was saved from having to follow that thought by the arrival of their entrées.
“A piece of your duck for a bite of my steak?” he said after gesturing for the server to bring them another round of wine.
She didn’t stop him.
Superficial conversation or not, having a long, lingering meal with a guy who was straight-up decent was too nice to pass up.
They exchanged bites of their entrées, and Ava didn’t protest when he snagged another bite of her truffled mashed potatoes as though it were his right. He didn’t even blink when she helped herself to a Brussels sprout on his plate that tasted way better than any cabbage had a right to taste.
They ate in companionable silence for a few moments until Ava felt his gaze on her. She looked up at him. “What?”
“Do you do this often?” he asked.
“Eat dinner?”
He smiled his slow, dangerous smile. “Don’t be a smart ass. I mean eat dinner with a
man
. Go on dates.”
Ava took a tiny sip of wine, trying to ignore the thrill that went through her. So maybe he
did
care about getting to know her after all. He hardly sounded jealous, but he did sound…interested.
“Not much recently,” she said. “I used to try a little harder to date. It’s what single twenty-something women in New York are supposed to do, but…”
“But?”
She gave him a toothy smile. “Men are shits.”
He laid a hand over his chest. “You wound me.”
“I didn’t say
you
were a shit.”
“But you sometimes think so. Admit it.”
“I may or may not be revising my opinion,” she said after taking a sip of wine.
“I knew it. You
did
keep that ticket as a memento of your feelings for me. How did your boyfriend feel about that?”
This time Ava’s smile was wide and genuine. “I give you a free pass to dig into my
entire
personal life, and you seem to be focusing only on my romantic endeavors, Officer Moretti. Why is that?”
She awaited the flirtatious banter that rolled off him so easily, but to her surprise, his expression went serious.
“I can venture into other topics if you want, but somehow I don’t think you’re going to like them.”
Ava’s smile slipped. “Meaning?”
He leaned forward, his expression more intense than before. “That first day in Captain Brinker’s office…I didn’t bother to hide the fact that I wanted no part in this damn news special. But my cop instincts were telling me that you didn’t want any part in it either. Explain that.”
The bite of duck Ava had just put in her mouth suddenly seemed to dry and swell up on her, and she forced herself to chew slowly and methodically as she reached for her water.
Finally the piece of meat went down, and she was able to respond.
Only to realize she had nothing to say.
Journalists were good at evasive bullshitting. Ava in particular was great at it; it was the only way to explain away why you were somewhere you shouldn’t be when researching a story, and the occasional white lie here and there wasn’t unheard of to get interview subjects to open up and spill their guts.
But she and Luc seemed past that somehow. And so she didn’t quite lie.
She did, however, evade.
“Maybe your cop instincts were wrong,” she said, forcing herself to meet his gaze with a steady, bland look of her own.
“They haven’t been yet.”
She leaned forward. “Oh, come on. You’re telling me you’ve never made a mistake.”
His eyes shadowed before he looked away and picked up his wine. “I didn’t say that. I said that my instincts were never wrong.”
Ava studied him. It was an interesting and precise evasion. If he admitted to mistakes but also stood by his claim that his instincts were never wrong, it meant that his mistakes must center around not
acting
on his instincts.
“You mean like—”
Ava broke off, suddenly unsure she wanted to go in this direction. Not when he’d just finally started to relax around her.
“Do I mean like what?” he asked, his voice sharp.
You mean like the Shayna Johnson case. The one where a little girl ended up dead. Where were your instincts then?
But she couldn’t ask him that. Not only because she wasn’t at all sure she’d get a straight answer, but because she knew very well what her bosses would say to that little development in her story:
cut it
.
There was no room for pesky things like kidnapping and police error and the truth in her line of work.
“Never mind,” she said, forcing a smile.
Luc had set his fork aside and continued to study her. “You’re hiding something, Sims. Holding back on me.”
“I am,” she said honestly. “Just like you’re holding back on me.”
He lifted his glass as though to toast her. “To secrets.”
She rolled her eyes, even as she mimicked his motion. “To secrets you get to keep
for
now.
”
He was silent for a few moments longer before he seemed to shake off whatever dark cloud had hovered around him. “Okay, but at least tell me this, Sims.”
“What?” She was curious.
“This story wasn’t your idea, was it?”
She grimaced. “No. What gave me away?”
He shrugged. “It seemed too tame for you. Your clothes and plastic smile all said that you were merely a network lackey following through on your assignment,” he replied. “But your eyes said otherwise.”
Ava groaned. “Oh, come on, Moretti. I’m going to have to retract my statement about you being good with the ladies if you feed me some garbage about being able to ‘read my eyes.’”
“Ah, Sims. Such a cynic.”
“Realist,” she said, tapping a fingernail on the table. “Facial expressions and tone might give things away, but eyes are eyes. They’re blue, they’re brown, they blink, but they don’t tell stories.”
“You’re wrong,” he said, so confidently that she almost believed him. Almost.
“So tell me, then, Officer. What was it you saw in my eyes that day?” She fluttered her eyelashes dramatically.
He cut a tidy piece of steak and surprised the hell out of her by offering her the bite on his fork as he held her gaze, and God help her, Ava actually found herself leaning forward and nipping the juicy piece of meat between her teeth.
Luc gave her a slow smile.
“Hunger.”
“I’m sorry?”
“
Hunger
was what I saw that day,” he said, helping himself to another bite of her mashed potatoes. “I couldn’t place it at first—”
“Because it wasn’t there shining in my
eyes
,” she interrupted.
“—But after you walked away I realized…you’re not the type of woman who wants a story that’s handed to her. You’re the type of woman who wants the story she has to chase.”
Ava blinked. The observation was so shrewd, so dead-on, that she nearly gave him a round of applause.
“You’re wrong,” she lied, sitting back and studying him.
He grinned. “Am I?”
Ava sucked the inside of her cheek between her teeth and considered her best move.
The woman in her was dying to tell him the truth…to tell him everything about her, the way she would if they were just Ava and Luc.
But they weren’t Ava and Luc. They were Ava Sims, reporting for CBC, and Officer Luc Moretti.
If she told him the truth—that she really
did
like a story she had to chase after—he’d run.
Because Ava would bet serious money that Luc was that story. And not in the way her bosses expected.
Still, she had to give him something. Wasn’t the entire point of this dinner to earn his trust?
To let him into her life a little so he’d let her into his?
The more she scraped beneath the gorgeous surface of Officer Moretti, the more she realized that he wasn’t the open book he pretended to be.
And if she wanted to find out what
really
happened to Shayna Johnson, she was going to have to put a little skin in the game.
“Okay,” she said, allowing only the smallest sigh. “You caught me. The truth is, these fluffy, shiny pieces…the three-hour scripted specials…I don’t love them.”
He sipped his wine and watched her. “Then why did you agree to it?”
She fiddled with her fork. “It’s a no-brainer. When your boss’s boss offers you a prime-time slot, you take it. Especially when…”
“Especially when…?” he prompted when she broke off.
“Especially when Gwen Garrison is getting ready to retire. And that’s confidential,” she said, jabbing a finger in his direction. “Don’t tell a soul.”
“Believe me, I won’t,” he said with a little laugh. “I don’t even know who Gwen Garrison is.”
A laugh bubbled out of Ava. A genuine one. He didn’t know who Gwen Garrison was. The most famous anchorwoman on television, and he didn’t know her.
It figured. Figured that she’d fall for the one guy who couldn’t care less how close she was to the big time. Didn’t even know what the big time was.
And she
was
falling for Luc. She couldn’t deny that now.
She idly scratched her temple. “Let’s just say that if all goes according to plan, I’ll
be
the next Gwen Garrison.”
“And that’s a good thing?”
“It’s a huge thing,” she replied.
Luc’s blue eyes held hers. “That’s not what I asked. I asked if it was a
good
thing.”
“Yeah,” she said, her voice tripping over the lie. “Of course.”
His eyes flickered with some emotion she didn’t yet recognize from him…disappointment?
But instead of pressing her, he merely picked up his fork and resumed eating. “Say what you want, Sims. I think we both know this whole thing is all because you’ve been pining for me for three long years since the parking ticket incident.”
“Yes, that’s definitely it,” she said, knowing he was letting her off the hook. “I spent three years in the prime of my life lusting after a traffic patrol officer who gave my news van a parking ticket, and decided that rather than just call him up and ask him out on a date, I’d mastermind a national television series on him.”
Luc nodded. “I like a woman that goes after what she wants. As long as she’s gorgeous and what she wants is me.”
Ava refused to let herself blush because he called her gorgeous. It was just a line. She
knew
it was a line. And yet…
“I never said I want you,” she said.
“You didn’t have to, Sims.” He winked. “It’s all right there in your eyes, baby. All in the eyes.”