Authors: Lauren Layne
M
aggie had writer’s block.
She
never
had writer’s block. A little stumped on a plot twist, sure. Perplexed by what the heck her characters were thinking, definitely.
But this bone-deep inability to put words—
any
words—on the page was new. And unwelcome.
“What’s the point of a day off if I can’t write more than a crappy sentence about the weather?” Maggie asked her dog.
Duchess placed her snout on Maggie’s leg, and Maggie absently handed the dog the other half of the chip she’d been nibbling on.
She glared at the blank screen. Grabbed another corn chip and nibbled the corner as she waited for her heroine to tell her all the ways in which she was devastated because Colin had asked Stacey to the prom instead of her.
Duchess’s snout returned to Maggie’s knee and Maggie glanced down, happy for the distraction. “No more chips, sweetie. You have kibble in your bowl.”
The dog’s brown eyes were mournful.
Kibble sucks.
Maggie rubbed Duchess’s ear. “Okay fine, one more…but no salsa. Mostly because I forgot to buy any.”
She
could
have been having cheesy scrambled eggs for dinner, but she’d finished off her egg supply last night instead of the yummy leftovers she’d been counting on.
Leftovers that had been delivered straight to the Dumpster after a certain tall, dark-haired police captain had scared the crap out of her and made her drop everything.
Of course, losing last night’s dinner to the Dumpster wasn’t really what was bothering her.
You and me? That’s preposterous.
Maggie slumped back in her chair, annoyed that Anthony’s words kept circling around and around in her head.
“You know what’s annoying as heck?” she asked, running a finger down Duchess’s snout. “That a cop born and raised in Staten Island throws around words like
preposterous
. Like he’s freaking Sherlock Holmes or something.”
The next words in the captain’s vicious little put-down blindsided her, because she’d been trying all day to block it out.
Vin?…There is no way he’d be interested.
Ouch.
Ouch
.
Maggie blinked against the sudden sting of tears. It’s not like she even
wanted
to date Vincent Moretti. Or any Moretti.
But that disdain on Anthony’s face…the combination of shock and revulsion that his exalted family would ever lower themselves to the likes of her…
She couldn’t get his expression out of her head. It was as though he
saw
her. Not the Maggie she tried so hard to be; the smiling, sweet, ever-cheerful diner waitress. It was like he saw the Maggie Walker she’d been before she’d met Eddie—pathetic, timid, and weak.
Even worse, she feared Anthony Moretti could see her as she’d been while she was
with
Eddie—submissive and gullible, a mere shadow of a person.
Why else was he so disgusted with her simply for
existing
?
Maggie gave Duchess’s head one last pet and then forced her fingers to the keyboard, realizing that maybe she could get in her character’s head after all.
Jenny, her teenage heroine, was feeling rejected.
And Maggie knew a little something about that…
An hour later, Maggie had added twelve hundred words. “Not bad, Duchess. Not bad at all. Shall we head to the freezer? The writing muse is demanding cookie dough.”
Living alone could get lonely, but it had its benefits.
Say, like eating ice cream straight out of the carton with nobody to judge.
From her nightstand, Maggie’s phone chirped with a text message. She leaned against the counter, crossing her ankles as she eyed the device across the room and slurped a chunk of cookie dough off her spoon.
Ignoring the phone was tempting. These days, it was bound to be one of three people, and Gabby was the only one of the three she wanted to hear from.
The others were her father and brother. Her father wasn’t supposed to have access to his cell while in rehab, so if he was texting, it meant that he’d failed to see it through…again.
It was also likely to be her brother, whose texts tended to revolve around one topic: money.
As in, him
needing
money. From her.
And considering that she’d just talked to Gabby yesterday, it was unlikely that it was her friend calling again.
The phone had fallen silent.
Just that one text message, and the urge to ignore it was fierce, knowing that it would likely put her in a bad mood.
Once—just once—she wished her broken little family would need her for something other than money. Or better yet, to not need her at all. To contact her just to say freaking
hi
. Or
I miss you.
Or heaven forbid, maybe an
I love you
, something she hadn’t heard since the semi-tolerable years of her marriage, save for Gabby’s ever casual
love ya.
She glanced down at Duchess who was patiently waiting for the ice cream she wouldn’t get.
“We’re going to ignore the phone, baby,” she told her dog. Duchess tilted her head.
“No. No dairy. It gives you gas.”
Duchess tilted her head the other way, and Maggie scooped another spoonful of ice cream into her mouth. “What’s that? You think I
should
check the phone?”
The dog lay on the ground, resting her snout on her front paws and looking mournful. Maggie pulled the spoon out of her mouth and pointed it at Duchess. “You’re so right, Your Grace. It
could
be an emergency, and then I’d forever regret not checking it.”
Maggie pushed away from the counter, moving across her tiny studio toward her nightstand where she picked up the phone, bracing herself for Cory’s innocuous “Hey, Sis,” or her father’s “Bug, you around?”
But it wasn’t from Cory. Or her dad. Not Gabby either.
Maggie sat on the bed, still clenching her ice-cream shovel in one hand as she reread the text.
It’s Anthony. I realize contacting you via text is inappropriate given your connection to my case, but I can’t stop thinking about last night. My behavior was inexcusable, and I
owe you an apology.
Maggie chewed her lip as she read it again. Then she held up her phone to the dog who was still staring longingly at the ice-cream container on the counter. “Hey, get over here. What do we think of this?”
Duchess didn’t even turn her head. Dogs had no appreciation for the ways in which technology had complicated modern relationships.
Not that she had a relationship—of any kind—with Captain Moretti. No,
Anthony
. He’d specifically used his name in the text.
She wanted to be annoyed at the message. In any other circumstance, she would have dismissed an apology via text as the coward’s way out.
But an apology in any form coming from this man…
Maggie flopped back on the pillow, wondering how to respond.
If
she should respond. She felt a bit like her teen characters, totally overanalyzing things that probably weren’t meant to be analyzed at all.
Her phone vibrated in her hand with another message, and Maggie hated the fact that her stomach flipped when she saw it was from him.
Yep, definitely as bad as her teen characters.
And in case you’re wondering, I got your number the old-fashioned way…from my brother. Not from abusing police resources.
Maggie rolled her eyes. As if she would
ever
think that he’d put his precious career at risk. She didn’t know the man well—or at all—but she was definitely getting the impression that Anthony Moretti was the badge first, the man second.
And yet,
he was apologizing…
Stalling for time before she had to respond, she added the number to her contacts, hesitating over which name to go with, before settling on CAPTAIN, in all caps. Mainly because she figured it would annoy him. If her phone allowed italics, she totally would have added those too.
Duchess gave up hope on the ice cream and trotted over to the bed, jumping up and settling beside Maggie.
“Did you think of a response yet?”
The dog wagged her tail.
“Yeah, me neither,” Maggie muttered.
Annoyed with herself for overthinking it, she forced herself to send a polite acknowledgment of his text, without making a
thing
out of it. It’s not like the text held even a trace of emotion. And it wasn’t the least bit flirty.
Apology accepted
, she texted back. And then, because cookie dough made her brave, she added
Anthony
to the end.
His response was immediate.
Why do I get the feeling there was a fair amount of sass in that response?
Maggie grinned, then grinned wider when he sent another text immediately to follow.
How you’ve convinced my family you’re this mild-mannered, sweet creature is beyond me.
She bit her lip.
You don’t think I’m sweet?
His response was slower this time.
I think you’re complicated.
Stop, Captain. I might swoon.
Back to captain, are we?
Oh God. She was giggling now. Not that it stopped her from responding.
Seems appropriate, considering you only ever call me Ms. Walker.
What do you want me to call you?
“Oh boy,” Maggie muttered, blowing out a long breath, alarmed to realize she was grinning like a fool. “What am I doing here, Duchess?”
The dog gave her a baleful look.
“I know, I know, I’m
flirting
with the heinous man,” Maggie said, flinging an arm over her eyes, resolving to put her phone aside before she could do anything stupid.
But instead, she texted back.
I think you should call me Maggie.
Several minutes passed before his next response, and Maggie wondered if she’d scared him off. When her phone buzzed again, she sat up.
I probably shouldn’t.
Why not?
You’re an informant in my case.
She rolled her eyes.
Trust me, I know. But I thought this was Anthony I was talking to…the man, not the cop.
I have a hard time separating the two sometimes. Maggie.
She swallowed, her mouth suddenly dry. Strange how that simple use of her name did dangerous things to her emotional stability.
His last text wasn’t sexy. Or flirty. But it was revelatory. And somehow she sensed that he was confiding something important in her, even if he didn’t mean to. And knowing him, he probably hadn’t meant to.
Her response was slower. Careful.
How about you be Captain Moretti when we
need to talk about Eddie. And be Anthony the rest of the time?
She held her breath until his response came.
Does right now count as “the rest of the time”?
Yes.
Then I need to tell you something.
Her dry mouth went drier.
Ok.
Yesterday when I laughed at the idea of you and Vin together…
She winced at the memory.
…It’s because he’s not good enough for you.
Maggie’s breath whooshed out.
That’s a fine thing to say about your brother.
His response was slower this time.
I love my brother. But he’d be a horrible boyfriend. Plus there’s this thing with his partner.
Jill,
Maggie replied, letting him know that she was following.
Yeah. They’re…Let’s just say I wouldn’t wish any other woman into that situation. Not until the two of them deal with each other.
“Deal with each other.” Nice.
She stroked Duchess’s belly as she waited for his response.
Jill’s not the only reason I didn’t like the idea of you and Vin together.
Maggie’s brows lifted.
No?
she asked, knowing she was playing with fire. Sexy fire.
No.
What’s the other reason?
You know damn well the other reason.
“Oh crappers,” she whispered to her dog, putting a hand to her fluttering belly. “To play coy, or not to play coy, Duchess? I’m bad at these kinds of games.”
In the end, she didn’t have to choose. Because a man like Anthony Moretti apparently didn’t play games. His next text said it all.
I didn’t want you to date Vin, because the very idea of another man’s hands on you, even my brother’s, made me jealous as hell.
Y
ou did something. I know you did something.”
Anthony gritted his teeth and let out a small grunt as he pushed through another bench press.
Eight
.
“You either showed her your wang, or didn’t show her your wang. And whichever choice you made was obviously the wrong one.”
He blocked out the voice of his grandmother and pushed through another.
Nine
.
“Big biceps won’t help you with that girl. Do they have exercises for personality? You should do those.”
“Bench presses aren’t for biceps, Nonna. They’re shoulders. Pecs.” This from Luca, who was sprawled on the couch with a beer.
“Pecs, huh? Maybe I should give the weights a shot. Then again my push-up bras do the trick just fine.”
Ten
. Anth scooted down on the bench, grabbing a towel from the ground as he glared at his grandmother. “We talked about this. No reference to your lingerie. Ever.”
“He’s right,” Luc added, glancing over at them. “We did talk about it.”
“I remember,” she said. “But the way I remember it is you two boys doing a lot of yapping and me doing a lot of ignoring, because it’s my name on the lease of this place.”
Anth rubbed the towel over the back of his neck. Their grandmother had them there. Teresa Moretti had been living in this apartment longer than he’d been alive. She and Anthony’s grandfather had moved into the three-bedroom brownstone back in the 1950s, back before the Upper West Side had become one of the most desirable neighborhoods in Manhattan.
The beauty of rent control meant that she could still afford it, even after losing the salary of her cop husband, although nowadays Luc and Anth split the cost of rent between the two of them. Nonna was hardly around anyway, and no way was Anthony going to let his elderly grandmother pay for his room and board.
He did, however, let her cook for him whenever she got the urge, which thankfully, was often.
Nonna might be the only living Moretti without Italian blood running through her veins, but she liked to inform everybody—often—that she was Italian by marriage.
And since Anthony’s paternal great-grandmother had lived with them for the first months after the wedding, she’d taught Nonna the ins and outs of Italian cooking.
It was enough for Nonna to deem herself an expert, much to the chagrin of Anth’s mother who thought being born in Italy made
her
the expert. The two women managed to fight about everything from garlic to how to store basil, and had been known to argue about pasta cooking time down to the second.
Nonna put hands on her slim hips and scowled at him. “Don’t give me that sweaty, hungry look. I’m not feeding you.”
“Why’s that?” Anth asked. Nonna loved to feed her grandsons, and they all knew it.
“She’s mad at you,” Luca said from the couch.
“Yeah, I got that,” Anth grumbled. “Observant of you, though. You should be a cop.”
Luc gave him the finger without looking away from the game.
“Did you show her your wang?” Nonna asked again.
Anth stood up, rolling his shoulders as he stepped around the makeshift gym he and Luc had set up in the living room. “Okay fine, I’ll bite. Did I show who my wang? Also, that word is hereby banned.”
“
Maggie
,” Nonna said, with no small amount of impatience.
Anthony grabbed a clean towel and wiped down the equipment while he rather deliberately ignored his grandmother.
He’d actually known perfectly well who she’d been talking about. He’d figured it was only a matter of time until one of his family members laid into him about the fact that everybody’s favorite waitress hadn’t been at the diner this morning.
The first Sunday since she’d started at the diner that she hadn’t been there. Not that he’d been keeping track or anything.
“Anthony Franco Moretti Junior, did you—”
“For God’s sake, I didn’t show Maggie Walker my wang,” he said.
Nonna scowled, unperturbed by his outburst. It took a lot to perturb his grandmother. In fact, only his mother really had any skill at it.
“Well then why didn’t she show up today?” she demanded.
“Maybe because he didn’t show her his wang,” Luc muttered into the mouth of his beer bottle.
Anthony chucked his towel at his brother’s head. “The woman’s allowed a day off.”
“But Sundays aren’t her days off. Thursdays and Saturdays are,” Nonna said matter-of-factly.
Anth threw his arms up in the air. “How could you possibly know that?”
Luc glanced over. “
I
knew that.”
Anthony glared. “Don’t you have somewhere else to be? We’ve barely seen you for weeks, and you choose
now
to be here?”
Luc shrugged. “Ava’s out of town. Covering some political rally in D.C.”
Nonna pointed at her youngest grandson. “See,
he
has a nice girl. Luca, at what point did you show Ava your wang?”
“Not answering that,” Luc muttered. “Also, I’m with Anth. Can we stop using the word ‘wang’?”
“Penis?” Nonna suggested. “Appendage? Or in
my
day, we called it—”
“Please don’t finish that sentence,” Anth muttered, heading toward the fridge for a beer. Only there wasn’t any, because his damn brother apparently took the last one, so Anthony grabbed an ever-present bottle of red wine off the counter and poured a hefty glass.
He turned around in time to see Nonna and Luc exchange a knowing glance. “No,” he said, shaking his head and taking a healthy swallow of the Chianti. “Whatever you’re thinking, just stop it now.”
“I wasn’t thinking anything,” Nonna said, laying a hand across her chest and looking scandalized.
“Good. Keep it that way.”
“It’s just…”
Anth closed his eyes as his grandma got that speculative look in her eyes.
“It’s weird, isn’t it, Luca?” she mused. “That Maggie wasn’t there today?”
“It is,” Luc said agreeably, attention still on the game, although the smirk on his face showed that not only was he fully engaged in his grandmother’s pestering of Anthony, but also highly entertained by it.
“Hey,” Anth called across the room to his brother. “Remember just a few months ago when our darling grandmother was meddling in
your
love life?”
Nonna pounced. “You said
love
life. Which means that—”
“That you should mind your own business,” Anth said.
Luc caught his eye and lifted an eyebrow, and Anth knew his baby brother had caught the fact that he hadn’t exactly denied that Maggie Walker had anything to do with his love life.
He
should
have denied it, because there was absolutely nothing between them. Not since the other night when he’d had one too many glasses of whiskey while home alone and crossed a line he absolutely should not have crossed via
text
of all things.
His grandmother let out a long-suffering sigh and lowered herself to the kitchen chair with a fragility that he knew was entirely faked. His grandmother was eighty-something, but she did yoga and walked daily, and, according to her, engaged in “enthusiastic sex.”
So any time she pulled the “little old woman” routine, it was definitely an angle.
Anthony braced for it.
“Hey,
bambino
,” she said, looking over her shoulder at Luc. “You have Maggie’s number, right? Won’t you give her a call, make sure she’s okay? That business with her ex-husband is just awful, and—”
Anthony had to take another sip of wine to keep from telling Luca in disturbing detail exactly what would happen to him if he dared to call Maggie.
And yet if anyone should be checking in on her, it should be Luc. It was
Luc
who she’d given her phone number to in the first place. Luc who’d had to give Anthony her number…
Too late, Anthony saw his brother’s face. Luc’s grin was positively shit-eating.
“Why don’t you have Anth text her?” Luc asked innocently.
“Oh?” Nonna said, her face the picture of sham confusion. “Anthony, you have her phone number?”
“He asked me for it the other day,” Luc provided before Anth could intervene.
“Damn whiskey,” he muttered.
“Yup,” Luc confirmed, pushing up off the couch to put his beer bottle in the recycling bin and helping himself to a glass of the open wine. “Anth here spent a good half an hour texting back and forth with Mags, a fool smile on his face.”
“You weren’t even here,” Anth snapped.
Luc looked at his glass. “But am I wrong?”
Anthony took another sip of wine. “She’s an informant.”
“So you texted her about work stuff?” Nonna asked.
“I—”
“Because if that
were
the case, you probably should have just gotten her number from the case file, right?” Luc asked. “I mean why go through me? Unless it was personal…”
Anthony put his glass on the counter with more force than necessary, grateful that their wineglasses were of the cheap, heavy variety and didn’t easily shatter.
“And you wonder why I don’t share my personal life with you,” he snapped.
Luc looked at him blankly. “Actually, no. I never wonder that.”
Nonna’s hand shot up in the air. “I do! I always wonder. And your mother too. And your father, although he’d never admit it, and Elena sometimes asks Vin about the logistics of phone taps so she can verify you’re not dating any skanks.”
Anthony stared at his grandmother.
Nonna pursed her lips. “Okay fine, I may have added the
skank
part. But you could substitute whatever word you wanted. Say, like—”
Luc held up a hand to stop Nonna’s endless supply of synonyms for
hookers
. “Dude, Anth. We’re just giving you a hard time. I’m sure Maggie was just taking a sick day or a personal day. Nobody’s blaming you for it.”
Anth inhaled before running a hand tiredly over his hair.
They
might not be blaming him. But he was certainly blaming himself.
He’d crossed a serious line with the texts. Came on too strong.
He’d meant to just apologize and leave it at that. Had wanted to undo any hurt he’d caused, because he knew firsthand how a couple offhand comments could have far more impact than one realized.
Maggie wasn’t Vannah.
Objectively, he knew that, and Anthony thrived on objectivity.
Maggie and Vannah weren’t even similar.
Vannah had been a compelling combination of waifish and glamorous, confident and fragile, all pale hair and exotic cat eyes. And cool…there had been an untouchable element to Vannah, when she wasn’t being clingy.
Maggie was…warm. Beautiful but wholesome, damaged but sassy.
Luc was studying Anthony. “Dude. What’s going on with you?”
He shot his brother a glare.
Don’t
.
But Luca’s gaze merely sharpened. “You know, if you really wanted us to fuck off, you can just go into your room.”
“No, he can’t!” Nonna chirped. “Don’t put ideas in his head, Luca. He’ll stay right here and tell us why—”
“I don’t know why Maggie didn’t come to work!” His voice echoed off the kitchen walls. “Okay? I have no fucking idea.”
Nonna didn’t even flinch at his language. She never did. Being married to a New York cop, raising one who went on to be police commissioner, and being grandmother to four cops did that to a woman.
“Well, why don’t you ask her?”
“She won’t respond to me,” he muttered.
Luc looked confused. “Really? She didn’t respond to your texts?”
“She did, at first,” Anth replied grudgingly.
“Well, what did you do to make her stop?” Nonna barked.
“Nonna,” Luc chided in a mild tone.
Anth was grateful for the moment of brotherly solidarity.
He and Luc didn’t have the type of brotherly conversations that involved cozy fireside chats and discussions of feelings, but they were close. Being roommates did that. So did their shared status as cops.
They
got
each other. He understood that it had taken Luc months to admit his feelings for Ava because of what happened with his partner two years earlier.
And judging from the quiet understanding in Luc’s blue gaze at the moment, his brother understood that Anthony couldn’t be the type of man that a woman like Maggie Walker needed.
The type of man that
any
woman needed.
But just now, he wasn’t thinking about any woman. He was thinking of wide hazel eyes and a mouth that could deliver the sweetest smiles and the sharpest setdowns.
And yet, it didn’t matter that he couldn’t give himself to a woman like her. Because she didn’t even want him. She’d made that abundantly clear after her silence to his last text.
I didn’t want you to date Vin, because the very idea of another man’s hands on you, even my brother’s, made me jealous as hell.
Oh Good Lord he was an idiot.
“You wanna talk about it?” Luc asked casually, taking a sip.
Anth’s response was a glare. He started to storm toward his bedroom before stopping, doing a one-eighty, and planting a dutiful kiss on his grandmother’s cheek. “Love you,” he muttered.
She cupped his cheek. “You’re a good boy, Anth. The very best.”
He pulled away without responding.
He wasn’t good. And he sure as
hell
wasn’t the best.