He’d basically blackmailed Gina into letting him stay. He could claim it was for his job all he wanted, but it wasn’t.
Initially, it may have been to save Gina from having to deal with Gallo, but the captain was going to try to tap her for information one way or another. If Ford had said no and Gallo wasn’t an option, the captain would have gone with someone else. That didn’t make lying to her any better. It made it worse. Why? Because there were other ways to get the information they needed.
But in the kitchen, with her brothers hovering and crowding her space, she’d looked like she’d needed his help. And he wanted to keep her safe. He hadn’t lied about that. If someone had killed her grandpa, odds were they’d come back to check that they’d not left anything at the scene. And the idea had just come to him. Stay with Gina and keep her safe, keep the captain from getting anyone else to stake her out, and keep her close enough that if her bonehead brothers were getting more involved in the Esposito organization, he might be able to protect her.
He glanced around the house he’d just agreed to help renovate for a few days.
The setting sun coming in through the big bay window bathed the living room—a salon, as Gina had called it—in a warm, golden glow. The house had good bones, but there was obvious neglect everywhere the light hit.
The fact that Gina was even willing to tackle it was impressive. He wasn’t surprised she’d had trouble finding contractors and others willing to take on the specialized work to get it not only up to code but keep it true to who she was.
He dialed the captain’s office and pulled gently on the torn wallpaper hanging on one wall, so he could get a peek at what was underneath while the phone rang.
“Tell me you have good news,” Captain Grant said in greeting.
“I’ve made up the couch, if that tells you anything.” Gina had given him a pillow, a sheet, and a thick Go Ice Knights Hockey blanket before disappearing into another part of the creaky house.
“I don’t need to go over the rules with you, do I?”
“No sir.”
“Let’s just summarize it into two, then,” the captain said. “One, get the information from the Luca brothers we’re after. Two, Ms. Luca is not a target, but she is off-limits—not that there’s really any reason to worry about that, considering what Gallo and Ruggiero are telling the squad about her.” The captain paused. “So how bad is she?”
Well, there was no missing the family resemblance with Big Nose Tommy, and her eyes didn’t quite fit her face, but it wasn’t like she was some kind of snaggletooth troll with poisonous drool. She definitely didn’t look like the women he normally dated, which made the fact that he’d gotten hard almost every time he’d thought about her during the past week more than a little interesting. So how bad was she? He heard her voice in his head talking about the fact she didn’t wear glasses and therefore couldn’t take them off and be suddenly beautiful like in the movies. His gut flopped.
“It’s not pertinent to this investigation,” he said without inflection.
“That’s what I like about you, Hartigan.” The captain chuckled. “You’re always by the book. I don’t have to worry about you going off the deep end.”
“No, sir.” He was the guy who double tied his shoes, kept his receipts, and waited for the walk signal before crossing the street—at the fully-marked crosswalk.
“Any word from the ME?” the captain asked.
“Confirming Big Nose Tommy’s identity is a formality.” Okay, Dr. Dev had told him she’d need to get dental records, but considering the circumstantial evidence of where the body was found, the ring, and the body’s physical stature, she was putting a positive ID at 96.8 percent. That was the kind of specificity that he could appreciate. After that it was just confirming cause of death.
“Foul play?”
“The good doc says not according to initial indications.” She’d gone into detail about the whys and the hows of that, but he wasn’t even going to try to repeat it to the captain.
“Where’s the lady now?”
Ford turned toward the closed pocket doors that blocked off the room he was in from the large foyer and staircase that led up to the next floor. “Her room for the night.”
“And she bought your story about why you need to be in the house?”
He pictured her as she handed him the blankets. She hadn’t said anything, but there was no missing the suspicion written all over her face. The woman really should never consider a job as a spy.
“For a limited time.”
“Then you should consider the clock ticking, Hartigan. Act accordingly.”
His grip tightened on his phone. “I’ll do my best.”
“I’m counting on it, because the chief talked to me about shaking up the task force. This is a great opportunity to either prove you’ve got what it takes or that everyone who says you should have joined the fire department like the rest of your family was right.”
So, minor stakes, then, for a shot in the dark assignment. Great.
Chapter Six
Ford woke up the next morning on the couch and felt like shit. No. He felt old. And achy. And like someone had grabbed a pair of putters and taken a few whacks to his neck. The pleather couch might be good for watching a game—if the room had a TV—but it sucked to sleep on.
Blanket around his hips, he searched for the T-shirt he’d tossed off in the middle of the night, and a sharp pain shot from right behind his ear down his shoulder.
Fucking A.
He reached up and rubbed the aching spot between his neck and shoulder blade. The knot was just starting to ease when a woman’s squawk of a scream echoed through the drafty house, coming from the direction of the kitchen. Ford grabbed his gun and sprinted toward the sound, sliding to a stop in his bare feet in the doorway of the kitchen.
Gina stood in front of the sink with part of the faucet in one hand and her other hand pressed to where the water came out. What must have been one helluva water spray had plastered her brown hair to her head, and one long wet strand was stuck to her nose, running down the length of it, coming to a stop at the tip. As she looked at him, her eyes wide with surprise, a big drop of water hanging from the end of her nose fell. Of course, that just took his attention south over her chest—her nearly see-through tank top was so wet that it must have been in the direct line of the spray zone—and then farther down to the soft pink cotton sleep shorts that ended just below the round curve of her ass. His morning wood woke up again.
“Having a little bit of a problem?” he asked, letting his gun arm relax.
She huffed out a breath, no doubt aimed at the wet hair glued to her nose, and gave him a death stare. “Please tell me you weren’t lying about knowing home renovation stuff and that you can actually turn off the water.”
“That I most definitely can do.” He walked into the kitchen and put his gun down on the table before crossing over to her in front of the sink. “If you can just move over, I can open the cabinet doors and get to the valve.”
“If I could move, don’t you think I would have? One inch and the water cannon goes off again. My seal on this thing is tenuous.”
Great. She stood, feet planted shoulder-width apart, directly in front of the cabinet. “Can you pivot the lower half of your body?”
She turned in toward the cabinet.
“No.” He squatted down beside her, grabbed her hips, and rotated her the other way. “Like that.”
Except like that was bad. Very bad. Her sleep shorts were as thin as they looked, meaning not only could he feel the heat from her body where his palms cupped her hips, he could see the dark outline of the panties she wore under the shorts. His thumb started tapping a beat against her hip, and she inhaled a sharp breath. He looked up, took in how her nipples had pebbled against her tank top, and the desire turning her brown eyes to a dark walnut.