It Had to Be You (7 page)

Vibrant. Fierce.
Sexy.

But she was also sweet and warm. And vulnerable.

And she was sitting in the police station.
Shit.

His cell vibrated. He looked at the screen. His commander. With a long, slow inhale, he connected. “Hanover.”

“Got a death threat this morning.” Commander Craig O’Neil’s voice was gruff and as commanding as his title. “Aimed at all of us. Just wanted you to know.”

“Great,” Luke said. “I’ll start working my way down my bucket list.”

“How about instead you just get your ass back here.”

Not a question but a statement. Actually, more like a direct demand. “I’m on vacation,” Luke reminded him.

“You’re not, you’re working a fucking case. Sheriff Thompson called me to make sure I didn’t mind sharing you. What the hell?”

Thanks, Sawyer.
“What did the threat say?”

“It said ‘die pigs.’ But he misspelled ‘die,’ used a Y.
Dye
pigs just doesn’t have the same impact. But watch your back just in case.”

“Will do.”

“How long are you really going to be?”

“Didn’t we just do this? Three weeks.”

“Goddammit.” The commander went quiet for a moment. “How about one?”

“I’ll get back to you.” Luke disconnected.

“Work problems?” Mr. Wykowski asked.

Luke didn’t answer. Mr. Wykowski was a nice guy, but he was close friends with Lucille, which was a lot like being close friends with a PA system. Whatever he told Mr. Wykowski, he had to be willing for the entire county to hear. If he mentioned the threat, it’d be on Facebook in five minutes flat.

Mr. Lyons made his slow way back up the driveway, cane in one hand and in the other…an apple pie.

“Homemade,” he said, waving it back and forth beneath Luke’s nose. “We got it off of Betsy Morango, who made it for her granddaughter. We have to let her in on the next poker game now, but anything for Ali.”

“You can’t bribe me with pie.” Before he’d finished the sentence, his stomach grumbled loudly in a plea for the pie.

The men grinned.

“We all know you’re a pie ho,” Mr. Elroy said.

Mr. Lyons had two plastic forks tucked neatly into his breast pocket. He took one out and scooped up a bite of the apple pie. “Oh yeah,” he murmured, licking the fork. “Good stuff.”

Just the thought of it was making Luke’s damn mouth water.

Edward was still looking at him steadily. Intensely. Luke had no idea what his grandfather’s angle was on this, but one thing he did know: There
was
an angle. “If I agree to step in here, you nosy-bodies have to agree to something too.”

“What?” Mr. Lyons asked.

“Ali needs a place to stay until she gets an apartment. You have lady friends.” Again he met Edward’s gaze. “Surely one of you knows someone looking for a roommate. She cooks. She does her own dishes. She’s…” Not quiet. Not easy to ignore. “Cheerful,” he finally said, hoping that sounded like a compliment. “She’d be a good roommate for anyone.”

Except for him.

“She can stay with me,” Mr. Elroy said, and waggled his brow.

Luke wrestled with his conscience and lost. “No.”
Christ.
“Never mind. I’ll find her a damn place myself.” He reached for the pie, but Mr. Lyons held it close.

“Almost forgot, I need another favor,” Mr. Lyons said.

Luke gave him a look. “I’m a little busy working on the first one right now.”

“This one can wait until you get Ali home safe and sound. Roger Barrett needs to hire you. He’s got a problem. He misplaced his ’67 GTO.”

“He didn’t misplace it,” Mr. Wykowski said. “He lost it in a poker game to Phillip Schmidt two years ago, remember?”

“Yes,” Mr. Lyons said, “with the caveat that when the old geezer died, he had to give it back to Roger. Phillip’s been six feet under for six months now, and his grandson Mikey ‘The Doper’ Schmidt still says he hasn’t ‘located’ the GTO, which is bull-pucky. He’s just not done driving the piss out of it.”

“You realize that car’s no longer PC,” Mr. Elroy said, disapprovingly. “It’s a gas guzzler.”

“Gas guzzler, smuzzler,” Mr. Lyons said. “It’s a beaut. They don’t make cars like that anymore. God rest Pontiac’s soul.”

Luke shook his head. “And the GTO is my problem why?”

“Because you’re the problem-solving guy,” Mr. Lyons said.

“Says who?”

“Your grandpa says that’s what you do best.”

Luke met Edward’s gaze. Edward still didn’t speak.

“So you’re going to help Ali, right?” Mr. Lyons asked.

Luke could smell the brown sugar and baked apples. He needed that pie.
The hell with it.
He snatched it. “Yeah. I’m going to help her.” He snagged the other fork out of Mr. Lyons’s pocket. He took a big bite and nearly died and went to heaven. “Sawyer said the cops aren’t done talking to her yet, not until around two.”

Mr. Lyons blinked. “You were already going to help her,” he said all accusatorially.

Luke took another big bite. “Yeah.”

Mr. Lyons narrowed his eyes. “And Roger? You’ll help Roger too?”

“Yeah, but
only
because Phillip Schmidt was the idiot who built that monstrosity on northeast bluffs. It blocks access to the beach from that side of the harbor, so he calls the cops on the kids that have to trespass to get to the water.”

Mr. Lyons smiled. “You’re a good boy. You’re going to be good for Ali. I take her classes, you know, both the ceramics and her floral-design class. They help with my arthritis. She deserves better than to be treated like a common criminal.”

Luke turned to Edward. “So what’s your interest in this?”

“Oh, he takes Ali’s classes too,” Mr. Elroy answered for him. “We all do.” He smiled. “We love her.”

Luke was having some trouble with the image of his tough, stoic, impenetrable grandfather taking ceramics and floral design.

Not to mention—what the hell was floral design?

A
li had a recurring nightmare that changed in details, but at the core it was always the same—she was alone.

Terrifyingly alone.

Sitting on a chair in some chilly room at the police station, her nightmare had gone live.

There’d been lots of questions.
Had she been angry when Teddy had broken up with her? Angry enough to want to frame him?
Because apparently her messages, both the voice mail and the sticky note, indicated a vengeful woman.

Did she know that if she turned the rest of the money in right now that charges would be reduced, possibly dropped?
Because apparently she was holding it hostage somewhere.

Did she know that the sticky-note message could also be construed as an actual threat?
She didn’t know how calling someone an ass who was an actual ass had become threatening, but okay. Fine. Lesson learned.

She’d said maybe she needed an attorney, and one of the cops brought her to a phone. She stared at it in rare indecision. This was new, being on
this
side of the phone call. She’d been on the other side, several times, the first being when her mom had been arrested for property damage after she’d taken that bat to her boyfriend’s car. What the cops hadn’t known was that Mimi had been aiming for the guy’s head.

The second time had been when Mimi had set fire to a different boyfriend’s wardrobe. Her mistake had been in using the bonfire to have a party. Mimi had tried to plead temporary insanity on that one, but no one bought it. There was nothing temporary about Mimi’s rage whenever she got cheated on.

Both times Ali and Harper had bailed Mimi out using the secret cash stash taped to the bottom of their couch, which was accumulated from her mom’s tips. Over the years, that stash had ebbed and flowed, depending on various needs. Christmas. School field trips. Mimi’s breast augmentation. And then the second surgery to remove the implants after they’d begun to leak.

Then Harper had taken her turn one year and had gotten arrested for indecent exposure after she’d pulled off to the side of the road to pee in the snow.

Ali still liked to tease Harper about that one.

She could call them, either of them. They’d be here in a blink, their tip stash in tow on the chance that she did indeed get arrested. But Ali wasn’t going to call them. She hadn’t been arrested—yet—and even if she had, she wasn’t going to have them spend their hard-earned money on her.

Besides, neither her mom nor her sister was qualified to offer legal advice, and then there was the embarrassment factor, which on a scale of one to ten, was at an eleven right now.

She
should
call Ted, because oh, did she have things to say to Ted. She stared at the phone some more. Luke. She could call Luke. He’d probably know what she should do. Except she wasn’t his problem.

And she needed an attorney, not a detective.

She knew exactly one attorney: Zach Mullen. They’d gone to high school together, and skinny, geeky Zach, the PlayStation master of their neighborhood, had always been the smartest guy she knew, despite his huge crush on Harper. He’d graduated from UNLV law school last year, but it’d been months since she’d talked to him. Had he passed the bar?

She called him and was so grateful to hear his soft, friendly “yo” that she nearly collapsed. “Zach,” she said. “Tell me you passed the bar.”

“Okay, I passed the bar.”

“No, really.” She lowered her voice and crossed her fingers. “Did you?”

Zach huffed out a laugh. “Barely, but don’t tell anyone that part.”

Thank God.
“So you’re a real lawyer?” she asked, needing to be sure.

“Yep,” he said. “A real, bona fide lawyer. I work for a hotel in Seattle in their legal department, though this week I’m in their Los Angeles office. Mostly fact gathering, but they pay bank so—”

“Okay, that’s great,” she said quickly. “Listen, I have a side job for you. How fast can you get to Lucky Harbor?”

There was a beat of silence. “Lucky Harbor?”

“Yes. I…sort of need some legal advice.”

Zach might be a sweetheart, and he looked like a good wind could blow him over, but he was also sharp as a tack. “I’m in L.A. until the day after tomorrow,” he said. “I’ve got a late-night flight back into Seattle, and then I’m all yours. What do you need, Ali? Anything.”

“I need you.”

Ali was eventually released with the caveat that she not leave town. A few minutes later, she was standing on the sidewalk in the bright sun, staring in surprise at the tall, silent Luke, who’d been waiting for her. “Why are you here?” she asked.

“Later. You’ve got other issues.” He pointed at the two women holding up
FREE ALI
signs in front of the courthouse.

Her mom and sister.

“Ali!” they cried at the sight of her and rushed over. Dropping her sign, Mimi grabbed Ali in close and hugged her tight. “Oh, Ali-gator! Did they violate any of your rights? Because honey, you have rights, lots of them.”

“I’m fine, Mom. All my rights are still intact.”

Mimi was wearing white capri leggings and a sparkly gold lamé top. Her gold hoop earrings matched the wide strip of bangle bracelets up one arm and was the same color as her spiked sandals. Her face was creased with worry as she tried to pat down Ali’s gone-wild hair.

Ali pulled free and turned to Harper, who was wearing Daisy Dukes and a halter top, her hair and makeup bar-ready. She’d come straight from work and probably raced through the two-hour drive out here.

“Zach called us,” Harper said. “Told us you might need moral support until he could get here.”

“And moral support means picketing the courthouse?”

“Hey, it works on TV,” Mimi said. She smiled up at Luke. “My baby has no manners. I’m Mimi Winters, Ali’s mama, and this here’s her sister, Harper.”

Luke reached out to shake her hand. “Luke Hanover.”

Because Mimi was looking at Luke with a speculative are-you-going-to-marry-my-daughter gaze, Ali quickly said, “Luke’s helping me out with a place to stay.”

“Aw!” Mimi kissed him on the cheek. “Aren’t you the sweet one?”

“Mom, I’m paying rent,” Ali said.

Mimi cupped Ali’s cheek. “Of course you are.” She sent a look Luke’s way. “She’s stubborn, this one, can never accept a helping hand.” She looked around. “Where’s Teddy? I swear, I don’t care how hot he is, I’d like to castrate him. I’ve got a perfectly good pair of pliers in my purse to do it with too. Should’ve packed scissors, but the pliers’ll be more painful. I’m thinking one slow twist and his doodle will snap right off…” She mimed the motion.

“Mom!” Ali quickly looked around. If a sticky note had constituted a threat, she couldn’t imagine what packing pliers with the intent to twist off a guy’s…
doodle
would mean.

“Just sayin’,” Mimi murmured.

“Well stop just saying,” Ali said. “And castration would mean cutting off his…other parts, not his…” She gestured vaguely, not daring to glance at Luke. “Doodle.”

“Honey, he deserves to be castrated for accusing you of stealing money. You wouldn’t steal money. You wouldn’t steal anything.” Mimi lowered her voice to a whisper and leaned in close. “You don’t still steal lip gloss, right?”

“No!”
Good Lord.
“And no castrating. I’ve got this handled. I’m sorry you made the drive out here, and I appreciate the support, but you should both go back to work. I’m fine.”

“We were going to wait until dark and TP Teddy’s new place,” Harper said. “Where’s he living now?”

“I don’t know,” Ali said, her second lie of the day. “But no TPing!” She was in enough trouble. “Everything’s going to be fine.”

“You promise?” Mimi asked. “Do you swear by the tip jar, baby? Because we need you.”

“Yes,” Ali said, crossing her fingers behind her back. “I swear by the tip jar that everything’s going to be fine.”

Mimi hugged her again, and she smelled like her favorite body spritz and long-past, sweet memories. “Love you, Ali-gator.”

Ali held on for an extra minute and closed her eyes. “Love you too, Mom.”

Mimi kissed her cheek and then turned back to Luke. “It was very nice to meet you, Luke.”

“You too, Mrs. Winters.”

“Oh, please. Call me Mimi. When are you coming home, baby?” she asked Ali.

As she’d been told not to leave town, she was pretty sure it wouldn’t be any time soon. “I’ll let you know.”

“Next weekend? ’Cuz they’re filming a new reality show down the street. Something about men and their tools and the women who love them. You could help us get on TV.”

“Would love to,” Ali said. “But I’m working.”

“The weekend after then,” Mimi said. “For my surprise birthday party.”

“Mom,” Harper said, exasperated. “You said you wanted it to be a
surprise
.”

“I do. I want to be surprised by both my daughters throwing me a party with friends and flowers and balloons and lots of decorations.”

“I don’t think you’re getting the concept of
surprise
,” Harper said.

“And maybe a piñata,” Mimi went on, “but with good stuff in it. Too bad men can’t fit into piñatas…”

“
No men
in piñatas,” Harper said. “That’s a different kind of party altogether.”

“Fine,” Mimi said. “But I still want the balloons and flowers. And Ali.”

“I’ll be there,” Ali promised, and watched them get into Harper’s car. The engine coughed, emitted a bunch of smoke, and then leaped into gear.

“You crossed your fingers,” Luke said.

“What?”

“When you promised her that everything was going to be fine.”

Ali turned away. “She needs to think that everything is going to be fine.”

Luke pulled her back and looked at her for a long moment. “Cell phone.”

“What?”

“I need your cell phone.”

She passed it over, watching as he programmed his number into it.

“For the next time you’re faced with one phone call,” he said. Luke looked into her eyes and let out a long breath. “Look, don’t read more into this than it is. If you need me, you call.”

“That simple?” she asked.

He shrugged, which she took to mean that he really had no idea, but he’d still do it.

“I wasn’t going to call you,” she said. “You’re on vacation.”

“I’m also not getting involved, but neither is working out so well for me.”

Her mind had been going one hundred miles per hour since the cops had shown up at the door that morning. The adrenaline was wearing off, leaving her exhausted and far too shaky and emotional to deal with this. Horrifyingly close to the edge, she chewed on her lower lip and ordered herself not to lose it. “Why did you come?” she asked.

“You needed a ride.”

Her chest squeezed even tighter. “You’re not worried I’m going to steal something from you?”

“Stop,” he said, his voice far too gentle for her fragile state of mind. She swallowed the lump in her throat and told herself she was just tired. This was out of control. She was out of control. It was just that for once, she wanted her life to move in a direction that
she
directed. With a sigh, she looked away. Life around her appeared to be maintaining the status quo. There was the usual early evening, low-level traffic. People were just getting off work and heading to the gym, the grocery store, the pier…home.

Ali had no idea where that would be for her tonight.

All she wanted was a hot shower and then to go to bed and not wake up again until this whole unbelievable situation had resolved itself. Or until she was old and gray. Whichever came first.

Luke was looking her over. She was still wearing her apron. She had a streak of dried clay across one arm and on one foot. And given the look Luke aimed at her face, she had some there as well. She lifted her chin.

With a small twitch of his lips, he hitched his head in the direction of his truck. He opened the passenger door for her and waited until she pulled her seatbelt across her body before he hit the lock and shut the door. He walked around the front of the vehicle, his stride long-legged and easy. No rush.

When he slid behind the wheel, he put the key in the ignition but didn’t start the engine. There was a beat of silence, and then he turned to her, one hand on the back of her head rest, the other on the dash.

She did her best to appear as though she hadn’t just been sitting in an interrogation room for hours being questioned about a crime she hadn’t committed. But as it turned out, the pretense was far too much for her overloaded emotions, and she closed her eyes, trying to disappear into the seat. If she disappeared, then he couldn’t see her fall apart.

“You okay?” he asked.

Her throat tightened further, and she shook her head. Nope. Not okay. Not even close. “Don’t,” she said.

“Don’t what?”

“Don’t be nice to me right now. I’ll lose it.”

With surprising gentleness, he pushed the hair from her face, then clicked open her seatbelt.

It was all the invitation she was going to get, and all the invitation she needed. Turning to him, she burrowed in as steady, strong arms closed around her. He stroked a hand down her back, and she pressed her face into the crook of his neck, soaking in the warm comfort he offered.

It was the safest and most secure she’d felt in far too long, and she wasn’t sure she was going to be able to let go.

“Ali.”

Afraid he was going to pull away before she was done soaking him in, she squirmed a little closer. “Please, not yet.”

A rough sound escaped him, and he tightened his grip. “It’s okay. I’ve got you.”

Thank God. For just this one second, someone had her. She didn’t have to be strong all on her own. She exhaled a long, shaky breath and concentrated on dragging more air in. After a few beats, she realized he smelled amazing, guy amazing, and that her lips were pressed against his throat. Suddenly it wasn’t just comfort she was feeling, but a whole boatload of other things too, with arousal leading the pack. Extremely aware of the big, warm hand moving up and down on her back, she wondered—did he feel it too?

And then she had a bigger problem. Her face was still pressed up against his warm skin, and—look at that—every time she moved, her mouth slid over him.