Totally, Sweetly, Irrevocably(52)

Tony got dressed in his sticky, smeared clothes. And surprise, surprise, he no longer wanted to press charges against Gina. In fact, his whole demeanor changed from combative and insolent to overly respectful. And wary. I guess finding out your truck buddy is a cop’s sister has that effect on a person.

Joe cuffed him, read him his rights, and put him in the back of the squad car so they could take him in for breaking and entering. And destruction of property, from the looks of the inside of the truck. Or vandalism, at the very least. The place was a mess. Rick really didn’t want to dwell on why.

Gina came up to him, approaching him the way you would a wounded animal.

“Rick. I’m sorry. I tried to warn you—”

“I don’t want to talk about it right now. I’ve got a job to do. I’ll deal with you later.”

Her eyes narrowed and all the gentleness dropped from her. “You’ll deal with me? Seriously? I’m not some misbehaving child or problem you need to check off your list. I’m your girlfriend and I was trying to help.”

He was losing his tenuous hold on his anger. Between seeing Gina with Tony and finding his sister half naked and covered in chocolate (which made it all too easy to imagine what she’d been doing), Rick was ten seconds from going nuclear. And that wasn’t something he could do. Especially not when he was on the job.

“We are not getting into this right now, Gina. Go home. You can come down to the station tomorrow to make a statement about what happened.”

“Write your own statement.”

She spun on her heel and stormed back to the truck to secure it. He wanted to follow her. But he had a breaking-and-entering offense and a hysterical, and thankfully now-clothed, sister to take care of first.

He hovered protectively until Stacy finally arrived to take a tearful Jenny to her house for the night. Then Rick took a deep breath and went to the truck. Gina was busily righting spilled containers and scrubbing the counters and floors with a strong-smelling concoction.

“I need to go. We’ll take Tony down to the station and book him for breaking and entering and trespassing.”

“Add destruction of property, vandalism, and being a nasty-ass son of a bitch.”

As pissed as Rick was at her at that moment, he still couldn’t help a flicker of amusement. When she was angry, the woman had a mouth on her worse than any trucker. Hell, even when she wasn’t angry. He kind of envied her that. He could let loose when he wanted, but for the most part he tried to keep things clean. His mother hadn’t raised him to swear every other word, and as a cop, he felt he should be more of an example. Joe cursed enough for the both of them.

“I’ll do that,” he said. “Will you be home later?”

She barely spared him a glance. “Maybe. I don’t know how long it’s going to take me to clean this mess up.”

“We need to talk, Gina.”

She looked up at that. “Yeah. We certainly do.”

Rick gritted his teeth so hard his jaw hurt. She sounded as angry as he felt, though in his mind she had far less reason. There was something else in her tone, though. Disappointment, maybe. He wasn’t sure he wanted to know why.

“I’ll see you later then.”

She got back to scrubbing. “Fine.”

As pissed as he was, he hated to leave her alone like that, cleaning up the mess Tony had made. Rick refused to think of his sister having any hand in it, no matter how delusional that might be.

“If you wait a bit, I’ll help you get this all straightened out.”

She didn’t turn around. “I don’t need your help.”

Her words stung more than he thought possible. “Gina…”

“I called Nat. She’ll be here soon with Eric and Jared. We’ll take care of it. You can go do whatever it is you do. As long as you make sure that asshole never comes back here.”

Rick gripped the side of the truck until his knuckles turned white. Walking away with so much left unsaid between them took every ounce of willpower he had. But he had a job to do, and now was not the time to get into it.

“Fine. I’ll see you at your place when I get off work then.”

“Whatever.”

He waited a moment to see if she’d turn back around. She didn’t.

He balled up his fist but managed to keep from punching the side of the truck. Barely.

It never failed. Things were finally going well in his life, and something had to come along to screw it up. It didn’t seem to matter how tightly he tried to control everything, some wild card always broke through and made a mess of things. This time, the wild card in question was in the back of Rick’s squad car, spouting off shit about how he was really the one who’d been wronged.