“No,” he said as he turned off the car. “I didn’t date.”
Vincent climbed out of the car and slammed the door shut, but Jill sat frozen for several seconds, trying to figure out why his announcement sent such a stab of relief rippling through her.
Relief over what, though? That Vin was still single? That shouldn’t matter because Jill wasn’t single.
Not only was she not single, she had a ring on her finger.
Jill closed her eyes and twisted the diamond in an effort to refocus her thoughts on her fiancé. The handsome, kind man she was going to marry. And when she opened her eyes, she’d stop thinking about Vincent. And the fact that he hadn’t dated while she was away.
And maybe, just maybe—she’d stop herself from thinking about how much she’d dread the moment when he did find a girlfriend.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Vincent Moretti’s adult life had always involved two infallible constants: (1) his legendary “whodunit” hunch
(2) Jill Henley
It was just his fucking luck that both of those things would give up on him at the exact same time, leaving him feeling a little lost.
And a lot pissed.
When Vin and Jill had gotten the early-morning call about a body at Lenora Birch’s house, Vin hadn’t even felt a flicker of warning that the case was going to be an elusive one.
In fact, he’d actually been fairly damn confident that it would be an easy one. The more high-profile cases usually were. The more famous the victim, the more people who wanted to be famous by association.
Even if that association was murder.
Vincent had cockily assumed he’d have a solid sense of their guy—or gal—by the time the news hit the media.
They’d bring the suspect in for questioning, and that’s when Vincent generally passed the baton to Jill.
If his skill was in figuring out who did it, her skill was coaxing—or tricking—them into confession.
But from the second Vincent had stepped foot in the stunning home of Lenora Birch on Eighty-First and Fifth, he’d known something was wrong.
The scene was clean. Too clean.
He got no immediate vision of what must have happened. No gut sense of how the legendary actress came to be lying dead on her foyer floor.
He hadn’t panicked. By the time they talked to all the key players, he’d have something to work with.
But he hadn’t.
Nothing from the utterly useless housekeeper.
He hadn’t gotten the flicker from Lenora’s sister.
Nor Lenora’s latest boyfriend.
Nor her ex-boyfriends and ex-husbands.
Hadn’t gotten it from her longtime best friend and legendary Broadway actress.
By the time he and Jill had called it a day with some much-needed caffeine, not only did Vincent have zero sense of who might have pushed Lenora over her staircase railing, he did not have an idea where to start.
Ignorance was not bliss.
Adding to Vin’s nagging sense of unease was the woman currently sitting across the table from him.
He didn’t know what had compelled him to ask Jill out for drinks.
They did it often enough, but usually it was a natural continuation of their day when they were still knee-deep in work talk.
Today had been different.
Today they’d both been exhausted, frustrated from the lack of leads and lost in their own heads.
He should have left it at coffee. Let them both get enough caffeine to make it through the remaining hours of the day, then dropped Jill off to call her fiancé, while he decompressed with a beer and whatever was on TV from the comfort of his couch.
But then he’d come out of the restroom at Starbucks, seen her lost in thought, smiling to herself, and he’d felt a surge of panic.
Panic that he didn’t know what she was thinking.
Panic that he didn’t know what was making her smile. (Although he was terrified that he did know.) Panic that he was losing her.
It wasn’t supposed to be like this.
She was supposed to have come back from Florida feeling like he had that day he impatiently counted the hours until he saw her at the welcome-home party.
She was supposed to feel what he was feeling.
If he only knew what that was.
Jill cradled a beer in her left hand, her phone in her right as she scrolled through. Then she winced and glanced up, holding her phone up to him. “Story broke.”
He reached for a handful of the complimentary bar snacks the pub offered to customers. “Took them long enough.”
“Right?” Jill said, turning her attention back to her phone. “I’m surprised the media didn’t beat us to the scene. How the hell did this stay quiet all day in the age of Twitter?”
“Lenora Birch is old-school. Way old-school. Everyone we interviwed today was in the geriatric set. You really think they’re on Twitter spreading the news?”
“Everyone’s on Twitter,” Jill muttered, never looking up from her phone.
“I’m not.”
She snorted. “Please. You can barely maintain a relationship with one person, much less hundreds of followers.”