“Let’s start with why you kept it from me. I get why Molly did, but not you, Lucas.”
Lucas drew a deep breath, which hurt like hell. “She’s good, man. She deserved a shot at this case. And it wasn’t for me to decide to bring you in on it. She’s her own person and not only that, she’s good at this. You’re going to have to come to terms with that. Now tell me what the hell happened when I was passed out.”
Joe took in what Lucas said and nodded, not looking happy but resigned. “It turns out that Santa had told the elves the truth on one thing—the Christmas Village itself really wasn’t making much money. One to two grand a weekend. But their gambling profits were coming in at ten to twelve grand and they were stupid enough to be claiming the illegal gains in order to wash the money through a legitimate business. They cooked their books, but didn’t count on one thing.”
“Molly,” Lucas guessed.
“Molly,” Joe agreed. “Tommy Thumbs and Janet are going away for money laundering, conspiracy to launder illegal gambling profits, racketeering, and lots of other fun stuff including murder one. Santa’s already six feet under.”
Lucas nodded and reached for a T-shirt. “So,” Joe said casually as Lucas pulled it over his head. “You and my sister.”
Lucas pushed his arms through the sleeves and shoved the shirt down before looking at Joe. “Yeah. Me and Molly.”
“So you freely admit it, that you were fucking around with my sister when you were supposed to be protecting her.”
“I was protecting her,” Lucas said. “And it wasn’t fucking around.”
Joe raised a doubtful brow.
“It wasn’t,” Lucas said, closing his eyes. Even though all he’d done for days was sleep, he felt exhausted to the bone. “It’s different with her.”
“So different that you did your usual be-a-dick until you’re dumped move?”
“You want to go there with me?” Lucas asked. “Because whose fault is it that she’s mad at me for lying? I fell in love with her, Joe. I didn’t mean to, and God knows I didn’t want to, but it’s the truth. I know she doesn’t believe me, but that doesn’t make it any less real. And seems to me that only a few months ago you fell for Kylie while protecting and helping her as well, so please, tell me more about this whole thing being so wrong.”
Joe sighed. Scrubbed a hand down his face. A rare tell and an admission of guilt. “In case you’re confused on the details, she dumped you.”
Lucas nodded. “I’m going to fix that.”
Joe looked at him for a long moment and Lucas knew this could go one of two ways. Either they were still friends and partners or they weren’t.
Joe sighed again. “She was here.”
“What?”
“You woke up looking for her, right?” Joe asked. “Because she was here. Pretty much the whole time, actually. Wouldn’t leave your side, and believe me, I tried to convince her otherwise, but she refused to go and get the rest she needed until she knew you were out of danger.”
Lucas’s heart squeezed painfully. “I’m going to make things right, Joe. I’m going to get her back.”
Joe snorted. “Good luck with that. Getting Molly to change her mind once she’s set it is . . . well, you’d have a better shot at getting hell to freeze over.”
Lucas shoved his feet into his beat-up running shoes. “It’s going to happen.” He straightened. “Are we okay?”
“You really think you can fix it with Molly?”
“I have to believe it.”
Joe stared at him for another long beat and then nodded. “Then we’re okay.”
Two days later Lucas showed up at the office. Once again he wasn’t yet cleared for work, but also once again, he was going batshit crazy at home with nothing to do.
Especially when everything he needed was here.
He walked up to Molly’s desk. She lifted her head and met his gaze, and for a beat he saw so many emotions there he couldn’t breathe. But in the next beat, she shut herself down and gave him a look utterly clear of any emotion.
“You’re not cleared for work,” she said. “Doctor said you have to stay off your leg.”
“I know.”
She arched a brow. “And yet you’re on your leg. Where’re your crutches?”
“Probably wherever your cane is.”
She sighed and went back to her keyboard, her fingers moving at the speed of light, but he could tell she wasn’t in it. Her attention was still on him.
Good, because he had something to say. “You were looking for an out, and when you found one, you took it. Tell me that’s not what you did.”
She opened her mouth and then closed it. Her eyes too. Then she drew a deep breath and opened them again. “I can’t tell you that,” she admitted. “Because that’s what I did. But for whatever it’s worth, I regret it and I’m sorry.”
He nodded, accepting that for gospel, because another thing Molly didn’t do was lie. Feeling tentatively hopeful for the first time in days, he set an iPad down in front of her.
“What’s this?” she asked warily.
“Why don’t you look?”
Instead, she stood and walked around the desk toward him. She was limping pretty badly, more than he’d seen in a long time, and he reached for her.
She let him pull her in and he let out his first real breath since that night in the bingo hall, the one that was haunting him because she’d gotten hurt on his watch.
“You’re shaking,” she murmured and pulled back an inch to look into his face. “Are you okay?”
His throat went tight. She’d been through hell too, and yet she wanted to know if he was okay. He ran his hand up her back and into her hair to palm the back of her head, holding her to him. “Better now,” he said, wondering if she’d let him hold her like this for the rest of time. “You turned off your phone. Didn’t answer your door. When I went to your dad’s, he threatened to shoot my balls off from where he sat.”
She gasped. “He did not!”
“He did. And I risked said balls to ask him to get you to call me.”
She shifted free of him and looked away. “He told me that part.”
“You didn’t call.”
She bit her lower lip. “I almost did.” She turned to her desk and the iPad he’d set on it. “But I needed to think.”
“About . . . ?” he asked.
“Relationships. How I self-destruct them when I’m scared.” She slid him a look. “You lying to me . . .”
Ah, and now onto the gut-wrenching portion of the day. Reaching for her hand, he tugged her back into him, waiting until she met his gaze. “We already talked about this,” he said quietly. “I didn’t lie to you. I will never lie to you. I did withhold the truth. I had my reasons at the time, but I regret them too. Deeply.”
She stared at him, her thoughts hidden. “Keep going.”
“Yes, I was asked to watch after you. I was happy to do so. I didn’t consider it a betrayal, I considered it a job—”
She sucked in a breath.
“—Which lasted about two seconds,” he said. “Until I realized that not only did you have a real case, but that you weren’t going to let it go until you’d done right for Mrs. Berkowitz and her friends, and that scared me.”
“I thought you weren’t scared of anything,” she said.
“You thought wrong. I’m scared of plenty. One of which is letting you get hurt.” He let out a deep breath. He hated facing his fears, much less admitting them. “Another is losing you.”
“I understand that,” she said quietly, surprising him. “You’ve had losses, too many. Carrie. And Josh . . . But you need to know, Lucas, I’m not them. I’m . . . me.”
“I know.” He cupped her face and pressed his forehead to hers. “And I was working through all of that, about how I’d buried my emotions deep, how I’d closed myself off . . . it was all coming to a head for me right about that very first night when I woke up with you in my bed—all over me like white on rice.”
She narrowed her eyes. “That did not happen.”
He lifted his hand as if taking an oath. “All over me.”
She blushed. “Whatever. You sleep like a furnace and my feet were cold.”