Frankie snorted, then let out a pained groan. “Because instead of being here trying to kick my ass—which you’ll never be able to do, by the way—for insulting your girl in order to get a rise out of you so that the dim bulb above your head would go off, you should be out there begging and groveling and doing whatever it takes to get the woman you love to give your scrawny ass another chance.”
Because there wasn’t a damn thing he could do about what Frankie got right in that little speech, Ford focused on what his brother got wrong. Just because he didn’t shop in the giganto section didn’t make him a pipsqueak. He was six foot two, for the love of Mike. “I’m not scrawny.”
“But you are wrong.”
Ford opened his mouth to argue—a move that made his sore jaw ache—but he had nothing to say to that, because his oversized doofus of a brother was right. “I know.” Damn it. He hated it when that happened.
“So go get your girl, Ford.”
“What if she won’t listen?” His voice cracked on the last word, as though his fears had been ripped from his throat. He’d be lucky if she didn’t swing that sledgehammer at him, let alone actually hear him admit what a dumbass he’d been.
Still laying down beside him, Frankie swung his arm in a wide arc, and his massive paw of a hand landed with a hard thunk on Ford’s chest. Both men let out an oof of pain before Frankie said, “You mean the guy who bucked three generations of tradition by bypassing the fire department for the police department is scared of doing something hard? Don’t fool yourself, little bro. You’ve got what it takes to make this happen. If anyone can beat the odds, it’s you.”
Ford lay there, his breaths still coming out as big puffs of air, trying to figure out what to say, because that was probably about as close to an “I love you man” and “you aren’t a total dipshit for becoming a detective” as he’d ever heard from his oldest brother.
“If you ever tell anyone I just said that,” Frankie said, “I’ll deny it.”
“All the way to the grave,” Ford said with a laugh, even though it made his ribs hurt like hell, but not nearly as much as the idea of spending the rest of his life without Gina.
So, he ignored how much his entire body ached and got up, so he could go get his girl.
Chapter Twenty
Ford walked into the hotel on Bleaker Street out of breath and a little out of his mind. Okay, a lot out of his mind. He’d tried Gina’s house, but she wasn’t there. He’d tried Vacilli’s Bakery. No dice. He’d braved Lucy’s house and had to remind her that maiming was a serious offense as she put a mean-looking claw hammer down on her kitchen counter when he asked her if she knew where Gina was. Finally, Fallon had taken pity on him—thanks to intel from Tess—that Gina was working a wedding at the very hotel where they’d first met.
And that’s how he’d ended up here with no fucking clue what to do next.
He didn’t have to be a detective to find her once he got to the lobby. He just followed the sound of the Cha-Cha Slide to the right ballroom.
“Where do you think you’re going?” asked an old lady in head-to-toe black standing next to the door like a gargoyle.
“I need to talk to the wedding planner.” And he didn’t have time to play good cop and chat with this old biddy.
He started to walk through, and the old woman whacked him right in the shin with her cane. Pain ricocheted up his leg, and he stopped dead in his tracks before she took a whack at his head with that thing.
“My fool of a great grandson is in there celebrating a marriage that’s not going to last past thirty days, and I know you weren’t invited, so go find another party to crash.”
Since hip checking an old lady wasn’t on his to-do list, Ford turned and reached down deep for the Hartigan charm that had thus far eluded him his entire life. “You look like a woman who knows what she’s talking about, so I’m sorry in advance for your great grandson’s doomed wedding. But I only need to talk to Gina. I promise I’m not crashing.”
“Don’t try to soften me up, buster.” The cane came down on his toe this time. “I’m beyond flattery.”
His toe throbbing, Ford took her at her word and took a step back and tried another tack—honesty. “Look, lady, I messed up with the woman I love, and she’s inside, and if I don’t talk to her and set everything straight, then everything is going to go right to hell.”
The gray-haired bouncer kept her cane on the ground and glared up at him. “Don’t use that kind of language around me. I’m a lady.”
“One with a cane she’s not afraid to use,” he muttered.
“Damn skippy,” she said, using it to tap his toes with enough force to remind him of the damage she could do with that thing. “Now, I don’t want to know what you did, because it’s plain as day that it was total foolishness.” She put the plastic stopper of her cane down on the ground, missing the inside of his foot by two inches, and leaned on the handle to bring herself to her full height of probably five foot nothing. “So what are you going to do about it?”
“Tell her I love her.” That was all he had so far when it came to having a working plan.
The old lady gave him a look that screamed try again. “Pretty words are cheap.”
If he clamped his jaw closed any harder, he was going to lose his back molars. Taking a deep breath—or at least as much of one as he could through his nostrils—he looked over the old lady’s head to the ballroom beyond. The lights were dimmed, but he could see people dancing, a wedding party up at the front, and a DJ in front of a huge movie screen. That was it. Everything had started with that Kiss Cam. Maybe that would fix everything, too.
“Ma’am,” he said, his voice louder than he meant for it to be, but volume control had gone out the window the second time she’d gotten him with her cane. “I’m gonna do whatever it takes to get her back.”
The old woman gave him an assessing look, then snapped, “So what are you doing standing out here?”
What the hell? After all that, she was just going to act like he was the one delaying everything? It had to be the wedding. People lost their minds at weddings. Not willing to waste another second on trying to unravel that mystery, he rushed inside the ballroom.
Gina wasn’t near the DJ booth. She wasn’t near the catering stations. She wasn’t by the bridal party dais. He was getting ready to breach the dance floor, when light spilled out from the swinging door leading to the staff area. There was no mistaking that brown, wavy hair with its tendency to frizz. He’d found her.
He rushed over to that side of the ballroom and through the staff doors into a makeshift kitchen in full go mode. There were waiters and guys in tall chef hats and dishwashers carrying heavy tubs filled with cutlery and mini plates rushing around the room. And there, in the back by a woman in one of the hotel’s signature black blazers, stood Gina. She was wearing that green dress again from the first night they’d met. It had made him stop and take notice. Now that he knew the woman in the dress, he appreciated how beautiful she looked in it even more.
His mouth was open to call out to her before he knew it, but he clamped his jaw shut. He’d spent the past week giving her words. That wasn’t going to be enough. He needed to show her this time, and for the first time since she’d walked out of his parents’ house, he knew exactly what to do.
And sadly, it wasn’t going to be as easy as just getting her on a Kiss Cam again.
…
The wedding had gone off without a hitch and the reception finished early, and Gina was so glad that at least one thing in her world was turning out the way she’d hoped. She walked into her house and swept up the mail scattered on the floor under the postal slot in her front door.
The daily paper was on the top, with a huge front-page spread about how the Waterbury Police Department had stopped a shipment of heroin and arrested ten people associated with the Esposito crime family. After that it was bills, junk mail, and one blue envelope with a foreign stamp. She was about to dump it all on the foyer table when the return address on one envelope caught her attention.
George Ainsley
510 Luca Street