Butterface(12)

Off-limits, Hartigan. She’s very off-limits.

That reminder was enough to move his gaze up to see the very-not-amused expression on her face. “Let me go check the main valve.”

“Good plan,” she said through clenched teeth.

“You know where it is?”

She closed her eyes and let out a sigh that would translate in any language to idiot. “Basement.”

He’d never been so glad to get out of a kitchen in his life. Not even when he was growing up at home and the rule was last one in the kitchen with Mom after Sunday family dinner had to do the dishes. He had six siblings, and at six foot two he was considered one of the short ones, so there were a lot of dishes after feeding a lot of big people.

The basement was at the end of rickety stairs in a dark room that had a single lightbulb with a pull string hanging from the ceiling. In other words, it was a basement he would have fully expected to get called to for work. Despite the atmosphere and the fact that the basement used to belong to Big Nose Tommy Luca, he didn’t find a body—at least not another one—but did find the main water valve behind a stack of boxes that looked like they’d been in the basement for the past century. He turned the main water valve off and hustled upstairs to the kitchen, where he almost had a heart attack.

Gina was sitting at the kitchen table—still more wet than dry—breaking down his service weapon like a pro.

“What in the hell are you doing?”

“I don’t allow guns in my house.”

She grabbed a flat-head screwdriver and pushed down on the black collar around the exposed portion of the firing pin while simultaneously sliding the back plate back. A rookie would have let go of the firing pin and the big steel safety pin and sent them flying across the room, but not Gina. She kept ahold of both and then removed them and sat them on the table beside his nine millimeter’s magazine.

He’d never gotten turned on by a woman who knew her way around a gun before. Watching her changed that.

What in the hell was wrong with him? Forbidden fruit really wasn’t normally his kink. He went for the future soccer mom type who followed the rules and kept to a schedule. This detail was just messing with his head—both of them.

“You do remember I’m here on official business?” he said, striding into the kitchen and stopping on the opposite side of the table, leaning forward for emphasis. “There may be someone waiting for the perfect moment to clean up any details they’d overlooked before with your grandfather.”

She kept on with what she was doing, not even bothering to look up. “You do remember I pay the mortgage, so you have to follow my rules and I don’t allow firearms in my house.”

“This is ridiculous.”

She shrugged. “Then leave.”

“That’s not gonna happen.” Not with her other option being Gallo at her kitchen table to find out what he could from the Luca brothers’ totally off-limits—remember that part, Hartigan—sister. “And neither is me giving up my gun.”

…

Gina tried her hardest to ignore the way Ford’s forearms looked when he pressed his palms to the kitchen table and leaned forward. She totally failed.

Before, she’d never really gotten why some women raved about arm porn. Now she did. She shifted in her seat and sat the flat-head screwdriver down next to the nine millimeter’s slide and spring.

“If you’re in this house, it’s without your gun.” That was her line in the sand, and no one got to cross it.

She didn’t believe this cock-and-bull story about someone out there lurking to clean up a mess left behind after they’d offed her grandfather twenty years ago. That meant only one thing. Her brothers were up to something more poorly thought out than usual and it had gotten the attention of Waterbury’s finest. Playing along with this nonsense was her best option to find out what Paul and Rocco were doing, which was the only reason she’d agreed to let Ford stay. Really. That was it.

“No gun?” He stood straight and crossed his arms over his bare chest. “That’s total nonsense.”

“I don’t like guns.” Brilliant comeback, Regina.

She could have come up with something better if she had gotten to make the pot of coffee she’d been starting when the damn faucet she was trying to tighten at the base came off and sent water everywhere. That’s all it was. It sure wasn’t because she was distracted by his biceps or his washboard abs or the dark happy trail that started right below his belly button and disappeared beneath the waistband of his low-slung jeans.

“Well you sure are comfortable with them.” He jerked his chin at the separated pieces that made up his nine millimeter that were spread out over her kitchen table.

He wasn’t wrong. The Lucas could trace their connections back to the old country, but her dad had been the odd duck of the family who walked away from the family business. There weren’t any guns in her house growing up, but here in this one? Yeah, that had been different when her grandfather had been alive.

“It was my grandfather who taught me how to do this.” It hadn’t been the usual grandpa and granddaughter bonding experience, she guessed, but it was theirs.

For the most part, her parents kept her, Rocco, and Paul away from their grandfather’s bad influence, but they still managed to sneak in time with him. The man was far from perfect, but they were kids and that hadn’t mattered to them.

Ford pulled out a kitchen chair and sat down, his posture relaxed but the look in his eyes sharp. “And your brothers followed in Big Nose Tommy’s shoes?”

A person didn’t have to have connections to organized crime to see the trap he was laying there. “I’m not talking to you about that. Look, they might be assholes, but they’re my assholes.”

His lips twitched. “Your assholes?” he asked, emphasizing the plural ending.

It took her a second and then she realized what she’d just said. “You know what I mean.”

They made it four seconds in silence before both of them started giggling like twelve-year-old boys. Immature? Very. Needed to break the tension making her gut clench? Absolutely. She let out a breath, and her shoulders relaxed a few inches.

“Okay, so coffee is out of the question, but I’ve got cereal and milk.”

He did that half-smile thing that made her stomach flutter. “Sounds like a plan.”

A few minutes later, after she’d changed into a dry T-shirt and yoga pants and he’d gotten a shirt on, they were sitting on opposite sides of the small kitchen table finishing up their bowls of Peanut Butter Crunchies. While she’d changed and called the emergency plumber, he’d dried the puddles on her kitchen floor and had wiped down the counters. However, he’d left his gun where she’d put it. Smart man. The broken-down nine millimeter took up a good chunk of the middle of the table between them. Gina glanced down at it and back up at Ford.

“I have to have my gun,” he said. “It’s my job.”

“Your job sucks,” she said as she stood up and then took her empty bowl and spoon over to the sink that was no longer trying to drown her.

“That’s a negative.” Ford followed her to the sink, bowl and spoon in hand, and left his dishes in the corner of the sink with hers.

“What is it that you like so much about it?” Because, for the life of her, she didn’t get it. It was all black and white, and the world had so much more color than that.

Ford turned to face her. The morning sun coming in through the window above the sink highlighted his strong chin and the lighter brown strands in his dark brown hair. The urge to let her imagination go lower to wonder if his chest hair poking out of the shirt had the same variation in color was so frickin’ tempting, but she held strong. Okay, she didn’t. She pictured it in her head. The hair dusting his pecs would totally do the same thing. What could she say, she was human and he was a very good-looking man standing in her kitchen. What kind of underwear was under those jeans of his? Boxers? Briefs? Questions to ponder another time, not when Ford was looking at her with a serious expression that made her insides a little fluttery.

“I like to figure things out. I like order. I like to know that someone is out there making sure people follow the rules. I like the idea that those rules are keeping people safe.”

Now, Gina was a woman who liked her spreadsheets, and walking into The Container Store gave her the happy sighs, but getting locked into following a set of rules devised by someone else? Yeah, totally not her game. It’s why she liked yoga. There were set steps and guides, but it was all about listening to her body and knowing what it needed. Some days, she could do the shoulder-pressing pose where she balanced her entire body on the palms of her hands while her legs were wrapped around her arms. Other days, it was all she could do to make her warrior fierce.

“Life is too crazy to always follow the rules,” she said. “Sometimes you have to adapt and be flexible.”

“Flexible,” he scoffed.

Fine, Mr. Rule Follower, time for a demonstration.

“Yeah, you know…” She took a few steps back, inhaled, and as she exhaled let herself stretch into a standing split, with her nose nearly touching one kneecap and her other leg pointed up toward the ceiling. “Flexible.”