Vin sat back in his chair, and damn if he didn’t feel a little… wounded.
It was strange, considering how long they’d been working together, but Vin had never really given conscious consideration to what Jill thought of him. Their relationship had always been both horribly complicated and wonderfully simple.
Those two elements canceled each other out so that when it came right down to it, Jill and Vincent were beyond definition.
They simply were.
He’d always thought they’d shared a secret understanding that the fact that what was between them couldn’t be named was precisely what made it theirs.
Now, he was realizing that this had been one-sided. That all this time, he’d merely been her colleague while she’d been his… everything.
“Can you put the damn phone away,” he heard himself snap.
Jill glanced up in surprise, and he saw guilt flash across her face. She immediately locked her phone and set it facedown on the table.
“Of course. I’m sorry.”
Her apology was simple. Sincere.
And yet it did nothing to mollify him. He didn’t want Jill to pay attention to him just because he begged her to. He didn’t want to have to compete for Jill’s attention at all. He wanted— Fuck. He didn’t have a clue.
He reached for his beer, then instead changed course and grabbed one of the laminated menus at the back of the table.
“You hungry?”
“Always,” she said. “Nachos? Wings? Ooh, we could split a burger!”
Vin lowered the menu and gave her a look. “One does not split a burger.”
“One can and one should when the burger is as big as it is here,” she said.
In the end, they ordered nachos for her and a burger for him.
“I’m not sharing,” he said, pointing his newly refilled beer at her.
“Of course not,” she said soothingly, picking through all of the nuts to get at the almonds and leaving the peanuts for him.
Vin grunted. He knew that voice. He was definitely going to end up sharing that burger.
“I must be out of practice,” Jill said with a tired sigh. “Because for the life of me, I don’t know where we start tomorrow with this case.”
“Me either,” he admitted.
She lifted an eyebrow. “I wondered why I wasn’t getting your smug, I-know-it-was-you vibe all day. I thought I was rusty on my Vincent-reading skills too.”
You are, he wanted to say.
But that wasn’t fair. Not really.
He couldn’t expect her to read him, when he didn’t have a read on himself.
He didn’t know what he wanted her to look at him and see. He only knew that something was very, very wrong. Starting with the fact that she was going to marry another man in…
“When’s the wedding?” he asked.
Jill’s beer glass froze halfway to her mouth, and she lowered it without taking a sip. “So I guess we’re not talking about the case then.”
He popped a handful of nuts in his mouth. “We’re off the clock.”
“That hasn’t stopped us from talking about work before.”
He narrowed his eyes. “Are you avoiding the question?”
Jill puffed out her cheeks and then slowly blew out a breath the way she always did when she was annoyed. He took a sip of his own beer and studied her.
Interesting.
Interesting that she should be annoyed about a topic that should send her over the moon.
And she’d been plenty happy to talk about wedding stuff with the women of his family last night, so it was obviously just with him that she didn’t want to discuss it.
He leaned forward. “Come on. If you can’t give me a date, at least promise me I’ll get to be a bridesmaid.”
She smiled, and he was relieved to see that it reached her eyes. “You’re going to look so pretty in pink.”
He winced. “Don’t tell Nonna that. She’ll make it her life’s mission to get me into a pink bow tie. Seriously though, when’s the big day?”
“We don’t know yet.” She fiddled with her glass. “It’s all been happening so fast.”
“You think?”
She glanced up. “If you don’t approve, you can just say so.”
“Who said I didn’t approve?”
She gave him a look. “Your scowls. Your grunts. Your silences.”
He shrugged. “I’m always like that. Even when I’m happy.”
This time it was Jill who leaned forward. “So you are happy?”
“You are so damn annoying,” he muttered.
She sat back in her seat and studied him, then leaned forward again, her face all kinds of animated. “Okay, two things. First, that is such a pathetic non-answer. I’m disappointed in you. Second, it doesn’t even make sense considering earlier today you accused me of not being happy.”
He leaned even closer. “Speaking of non-answers, you didn’t exactly rush to reassure me that you’re over the moon about your fiancé.”
He drew out the last word, and it came out just slightly mocking.
She didn’t look away, but he had the sense that she wanted to. “I answered.”
“So you are happy?” he asked, turning her own game around on her.
Someone who didn’t know her as well might not have noticed the half-second pause. But he noticed.