Butterface(25)

Lucy zeroed in on Fallon. “You know him?”

“He’s my brother,” she said, giving Gina an assessing look that all but screamed they’d be talking about this later.

Tess gasped. Gina took a big drink of the second cup of wine, wondering if maybe she’d get lucky and it would be poisoned. This was so not how she expected tonight to go. Come on out to Paint and Sip night, it’ll be fun, they said. Yeah, sure. More like total mortification. At least she hadn’t told her besties that she’d slept with Ford this week—although sleeping was pretty much the last thing they’d done. She had muscles she’d never known about that were still a little sore.

Lucy let out a loud laugh and clapped her hands together with joy. “You banged her hot brother?”

And that earned them a glare from Larry and some curious looks from the other women at Paint and Sip night.

“What? Ugh. No. Tell me no more,” Fallon said, slapping her hands over her ears. “Hearing uptight Ford get called hot is bad enough, please do not let me hear about what he’s like in bed.”

“If they even made it to a bed,” Lucy said in her version of a whisper that to almost everyone else in the known world was a normal volume.

Twin dots of fire zapped Gina’s cheeks. They had. Eventually. But she wasn’t just going to announce that in the middle of Paint and Sip. Not that this whole thing wasn’t awkward enough as it was, because it very much was.

Fallon fake gagged. “I need a time machine so I can leave myself a note at the door to warn me not to come in.”

If she figured out how to do that, Gina so wanted in on it. “Don’t worry, I’m not commenting on what happened.”

“But something did happen,” Lucy pressed.

What was the use in denying it at this point? Lucy and Tess would see right through any lame attempts at lying. And Fallon? She’d been at that Hartigan family lunch, so if she hadn’t seen the almost-kiss herself then she’d probably heard about it. No one in that family—besides Ford—struck Gina as the kind to keep any tidbit of gossip to themselves. So she might as well fast forward from the fun stuff to the reality of the situation now.

“But it’s not going to happen again,” she said, her tone more cheerful than she actually felt about the whole thing.

Tess gave her a sympathetic shoulder squeeze. “Oh, I hate that.”

“It doesn’t matter.” And if she said that enough, it would become a reality. “I’m fine with my life the way it is. I don’t need a man to make me happy.”

That last part wasn’t a lie. She didn’t. She had a home that would—eventually—be exactly how she wanted it. She owned her own business helping people celebrate their own happily ever afters. She had friends who, despite their nosy ways, were the best she’d ever had. She had family—okay, they were more than a little strange, but they were still her family and they loved her. Really, what more could she ask for? Sure, having someone to share her life with on a more intimate basis would be nice, but she didn’t need it. She was fine just the way she was.

“No, you don’t,” Lucy said with a nod of agreement. “But it does help if you want to keep your feet warm at night.”

“I can get socks for that,” she retorted.

So what if she was picturing big thick ones that smelled of warm cedar, just like Ford did.

“Ladies,” Larry said, his unexpectedly deep voice cutting through their giggles. He stood in front of the room, paint brush at the ready. “Class is starting.” That was their usual Wednesday night cue to shut the hell up. “Tonight’s painting subject is the naked mole rat sunning itself on a settee.”

“Okay, I take it back,” Lucy whispered in her totally loud way. “Painting a drowning aardvark wouldn’t be that weird for him.”

…

By Tuesday, the box of supposedly bleach-enhanced Chapstick left on Ford’s desk in the squad room had been swapped with a new kind of supposed gift. There, on his stack of case files, was a brown paper bag with eyeholes cut out. Ford stared down at it. The fuckers had even done a half-assed job of drawing a pair of women’s open lips below the eyes, with an opening cut into the middle. Fury, hot and immediate, rushed up from his toes, and his gaze locked in on Gallo and Ruggiero, who were watching him.

“You two don’t know who happened to leave that, do you?” Ford didn’t bother to try to hide the anger burning in his gut as he grabbed the latest anonymous so-called gag gift from the stack of case files on his desk and crumpled it into a tight ball that he flung into his trash can.

Gallo just grinned his shit-eating grin and shook his head. “Nah, but it looks like someone hit a sore spot, huh, Johnnie?”

“Probably a PTSD reaction to his last assignment,” Ruggiero said, his voice thick with fake sincerity. “You’d think for that kind of hazard duty he would have at least brought back some useful information.”

“Sure,” Gallo said. “But you can’t be too hard on him. Hartigan probably barely made it out of there with his virtue intact.”

He knew what they were doing. The dipshit duo had gotten yanked into the captain’s office a few hours ago for a reaming loud enough that everyone in the squad could have written direct quotes. The pressure was building for results, and the organized crime task force had gotten almost nothing beyond the date of the heroin delivery. Without a time and location, that bit of news was worthless.

Ford had spent the last two days interviewing CIs, tracing down warehouse owners on the waterfront, and every other idea he could think of to actually use some detective skills to uncover the information they needed. Gallo and Ruggiero had been hitting the streets as well.

They’d all turned up shit.

So yeah, it’s possible the two detectives were just taking out their frustration on him any way they could. But that didn’t mean he wasn’t pissed off regardless.

“What’s wrong?” he asked, closing the distance between his desk and where Gallo sat on the corner of Ruggiero’s desk. “Did the captain chew you a new one for the task force’s lack of results? I mean, sure, you might wish that was because of one operation that didn’t pan out, but you’ve been in charge for months and working the Espositos for years.”

The entire squad room went silent. Even the precinct’s admin assistant stopped typing. Gallo got red enough in the face that Ford wondered if the portly detective was about to have a heart attack.

“You don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about, Hartigan.” He stood up and took what he probably thought was a threatening step forward. “Maybe if little pukes like you did their jobs right, we’d have something to nail those bastards on. Instead, we just got some weak-ass story about how the brown-bagger doesn’t know anything about what her brothers are up to.”

For as quiet as the squad room was before, it totally disappeared at that moment. “What did you just call Gina?”

“A brown-bagger.” Gallo puffed up his chest and put a swagger in his step as he took the last two steps before stopping just inside Ford’s personal bubble. “Why, would you prefer grenade?”

“You need to shut the fuck up, Gallo.” And he needed to mentally remind himself grown men did not lose their shit on their superiors at work. Besides, Ford wasn’t the hot-headed stereotypical kind of Irish. He liked rules and order. He was just about to turn and walk away when Gallo jabbed his finger into Ford’s chest.

“Why, what are you gonna do about it? I’m point on this task force, so you need to remember that, sit your ass down, and do what I tell you, unless you want to be stuck with Butterface duty again.”

Ford’s fist connected with Gallo’s nose before Ford had even realized he was taking a swing at the other man. Gallo stumbled back, but like the bull of a cop that he was, he kept his feet planted. He let loose a roar of fury and came right at Ford.

The older detective may have been putting perps behind bars since before Ford even dreamed about the academy, but the donuts and the laziness had done their job. Ford easily sidestepped Gallo, spun on the ball of his foot, and followed up with a right hook that landed on the sweet spot of the older cop’s jaw, leaving him wobbly on his size ten rubber-soled shoes.

Gallo raised his right fist, but Ruggiero grabbed his partner before he could throw a punch. No one grabbed Ford. There wasn’t a need. The sight of Gallo with the look of murder on his face as his partner held him back was enough to bring him back reality. He’d lost it and slugged a superior officer—definitely a violation of a dozen regulations. Ford never lost it. But this time he had, and in doing so he’d tried to knock his direct supervisor’s head off.

And surprisingly, he didn’t regret a single action.

“Ford. Gallo.” The captain’s yell cut through the chaos of the moment. “My office right the fuck now.”





Chapter Twelve

Ford accepted the beer Frankie handed him as he paced the length of his brother’s deck. Anger and adrenaline were still pumping through his veins, making his steps jerky as he moved from one end to the other while Frankie watched, an amused look on his face.