“Damn. Mr. By the Book got suspended.” Frankie took his phone out and started thumb typing. “I’m gonna have to put this information in our family group chat.”
Annoyance eating away at his stomach lining, Ford whirled around and shot his brother a glare. “That’s what you’re taking away from this, that I’m suspended with pay for the next week? Not that the moron who was leaving all of that shit on my desk and being a disrespectful asshole only got a three-day suspension?”
“No, I got that part,” his brother said as he sat down in one of the Adirondack chairs that Frankie had been forced to paint lime green with yellow polka dots after losing a bet with Finian. “And I also got the part about how you’ve got it bad for this chick.”
“Did you inhale too much smoke at the last fire you responded to? Because your thinking is messed up.” Got it bad. That was fucking ridiculous. Gina was funny, smart, and yeah, being around her pretty much turned him into a horny teenager, but that didn’t mean he wanted any more than the one-night-only sex—which had been pretty damn phenomenal—that they’d both enjoyed. “I don’t have it bad for her.”
“Uh huh.” Frankie started typing again. “Sure you don’t.”
Ford’s phone buzzed, but he sure as hell wasn’t going to look at it. He had the jackass texting right in front of him, grinning at him like he was some TV shrink about to solve all of Ford’s problems.
Pissy? Me? Not at all since I walked out of Gina’s house at the crack of dawn, thank you very much.
“What does that mean?” Ford asked, taking a seat in the other obnoxiously painted deck chair and taking a long drink from his beer.
“Well, Mr. Detective, using the information you provided as well as my own keen observational skills, I noticed that you couldn’t stop looking at your”—he made air quotes—“‘just friend’ as she gave you the hey-good-lookin’ eyes during family lunch. Then, you defended her honor to the point that you broke police rule nine hundred and forty-six and tried to clean the clock of a guy who happens to outrank you. So, by putting on my Sherlock hat, I was able to deduce that you have a major hard-on for one Gina Luca.” Frankie’s phone buzzed in his hand, and he glanced down. “Felicia agrees, and since she’s the only one of us in a committed relationship, I’m gonna declare that means I’m one hundred percent correct.”
Ford glared out at the pristine backyard. “You’re an idiot.”
“Not when it comes to women.”
Okay, Frankie may have made the rounds a few dozen times among Waterbury’s single women, but that didn’t make him a relationship sage. “If that’s the case, then why is Felicia the only one of us in a committed relationship?”
“Are you kidding?” Frankie waved his hands over his body like a gameshow hostess showing off a prize. “You want me to limit the ladies of Waterbury’s access to all this ginger firefighter hotness? I’m not that cruel.”
Ford laughed. He couldn’t help it. Even when he was in a shitty enough mood to eat nails, Frankie’s good-natured lack of humility always cracked him up. The man really was a menace to the women of Waterbury. How in the hell he managed to stay friends with 99 percent of the women he dated was a mystery to Ford.
He couldn’t even get Gina to call him. Not that he’d called her.
He couldn’t initiate contact. But if she’d called, that would have been a different story. Too bad she hadn’t called. And the fact that she hadn’t told him just about everything he needed to know about her thoughts about things after their night together. And now he was stuck twiddling his thumbs for a week.
“What am I going to do?”
Frankie looked at him like he had two heads and neither of them had a brain. “Go tell her you’re into her.”
“Not about Gina.” Because there was nothing he could do about her, they’d both known that going into the other night. That’s probably what made it seem like more than it was and why he couldn’t seem to stop thinking about her. “What am I going to do about the suspension?”
“Dude.” Frankie shrugged. “I have no clue on that one. I’m a man who loves two things in this world and they both start with F—fighting fires and fucking.”
Ford snorted. “You’re so classy.”
“No, but I am honest about who I am and what I want.” His brother turned a very un-Frankie-like serious gaze on him. “Maybe you should try that.”
No detective work was necessary to figure the meaning behind that piece of advice out. Ford took another drink of his beer and tried to think of a way around the obvious, but there wasn’t one. There were good guys and bad guys. Cops and robbers. The two didn’t mix.
“Her grandfather was Big Nose Tommy Luca. Her brothers are Rocco and Paul Luca.”
“So?”
“I’m a detective.” He had no clue how to be more plain about the impossibility of it all than that.
“Are you trying to say that the wedding planner who blushes every time you even glanced in her direction at family lunch is actually a member of a dark crime family and does wet work as her side hustle?” Frankie didn’t even try to hide how funny he thought the idea was. By the time he got the words side hustle out, he was working so hard to hold back his laugh that his shoulders were shaking.
“No, you oversized smart-ass. She doesn’t have anything to do with them.”
“I see,” Frankie said and then took a long, slow drink of his beer. “So, what does your job have to do with a damn thing when it comes to you having a good time with a woman who wants you?”
It sounded ridiculously simple when his brother put it that way, but Frankie didn’t understand. “There are standards we’re expected to keep as detectives and regulations we have to meet in regards to who we associate with.”
“And wedding planners are on the list of those to be shunned, huh? I think I understand now why cops’ divorce rates are so high.”
That wasn’t it at all, and his brother knew that. “Go screw yourself, Frankie.”
Frankie let out a loud laugh. “I love you too, man.”
After that, the conversation turned to the Ice Knights and what a total shit trade the team had made when they’d made a play for Zach Blackburn. The defenseman nicknamed the Harbor City Hooligan had made so many boneheaded plays during the season—contributing to the Ice Knights missing the playoffs—that the Post had just named him the most hated man in Harbor City.
By the time Ford finished his single beer and gotten into his car for the short drive home, he wasn’t even thinking about Gina anymore. Which was what made it even more of a mystery as to how in the world he’d ended up parked outside of her house wondering if she’d answer if he rang the doorbell.
…
Gina had to stop staring at the couch in the front room that had the Ice Knights blanket folded perfectly and resting underneath the pillow Ford had used. Really, it was getting creepy.
She needed to go in there, pick them up, and stuff both back in the storage closet. That’s really what she should do.
Instead, she did a one-eighty and walked to the front door and picked up the watering can so she could water the plants out on the porch. She swung the door open and stopped dead in her tracks. Ford was standing at the bottom of the porch stairs, looking damn good for a man whose facial expression said he couldn’t decide if he should turn back or go forward. She knew how he felt. Her heart was going a million miles an hour, but her feet weren’t moving an inch.
“Hey,” she finally managed to get out. “I wasn’t expecting to see you again.”
Why oh why couldn’t she have found the extra time to wash her hair today? The frizzy mess was contained in a bun on the top of her head, but strands kept escaping and sticking to her lip gloss. Add to that the well-worn jeans and a shirt that declared to all she didn’t do mornings, and she was definitely not looking her best.
He did that slow, half-smile thing that made her lungs go tight. It wasn’t fair. “I wasn’t expecting to be here.”
Okay, that took some of the tingly excitement out of her metaphorical sails. “Then why are you?”
He shoved his fingers through his hair but, because it was him, it all just fell back into perfect place instead of looking a mess. “I wanted to see you.”
And BAM she was back up to teetering on the edge of something fantastic. Why did he do this to her? He made her feel excited and scared and nervous and sparkly—yes, it sounded dumb, but it was true—and at home all at the same time. She didn’t understand it, just like she couldn’t quite grasp why after everything they’d agreed to he’d shown up on her porch saying he wanted to see her.
He climbed the first two steps, his hand on the recently sanded banister and all of his intense focus on her. “Can I ask you a question?”
If there was a time in her life when she’d ever wished she was a Rizzo from Grease, this was it. To have that confidence and bravado and chick balls. Instead, she was a Frenchie, forever the goofy sidekick. She knew this. Still, she dug deep to find her badass inner Rizzo. “Depends on what you want to know.”