Done being his partner.
Luc shook his head. “This has gone too far. What’s your plan?”
It took Vincent a moment to register that Luc was directing the question to him. “What makes you think I have a plan?”
What makes you think I have a say?
Anthony again leaned forward, his sanctimonious Big Brother face still firmly in place.
“Luc’s right. Enough with the playing-dumb bullshit. Are you in love with Jill Henley, or are you not?”
Vincent choked on his beer.
Cleared his throat, tried to talk, and started coughing again.
“I thought we agreed we weren’t going to freak him out,” Luc said under his breath to Anth.
“He can handle it,” Anthony said with a shrug.
“Look at him!” Luc pointed at Vincent. “He looks ready to pass out.”
Vincent felt ready to pass out.
How the hell had his brothers got it in their heads that he was in love with Jill? Or with anyone?
Vincent wasn’t even sure he knew what love was.
Family love, sure. He loved his parents. His sister. Loved his brothers, when they weren’t being delusional morons. He was crazy about his grandmother, and even Ava and Maggie, who were new to his life, but might as well be sisters…
But in love was a different animal altogether.
One that Vincent had never encountered.
He’d dated, sure. Not so much recently. Okay, so it had been a couple years since he’d done more than hook up with random women.
He didn’t do dating, not in the traditional sense. Not in the out-to-dinner, bring-her-home-to-Mom kind of way.
And he’d certainly never felt anything more than passing lust for the women whom he’d brought to his bed.
It wasn’t that Vin didn’t believe in love, the all-consuming, turn-you-into-a-sappy-moron thing. He wasn’t that cynical. He’d seen it every day growing up between his parents.
Hell, it had taken him seconds to understand what happened to Luc the second he met Ava, only to watch it all over again when Anthony met Maggie.
He believed in love. He did.
He just didn’t believe in it for him.
Not because he had any gory emotional wounds, not because he had some brokenhearted past.
He was just… he didn’t feel like other people did.
He wasn’t some sort of sociopathic weirdo, he just had never really absorbed things to his very soul the way his sister, and to a lesser extent his brothers, had.
So, no.
Vincent certainly wasn’t in love with Jill Henley.
“Do you need smelling salts, honey?” Luc asked politely.
Vincent finally recovered from his shock and shot his brother the finger. Then his other brother too just for good measure.
“Where the hell did you two idiots get that idea?” he asked.
Luc sighed and slumped back. “Still in denial, I see.”
Vincent ran a hand over the back of his neck, feeling strangely itchy. “Look, I’ll admit that I’m having a hard time with these changes with Jill. But only because I don’t want her to make a mistake. Because she’s a friend.”
He may have emphasized this last word a bit too desperately, and he could have sworn he saw Anth hide a smirk.
“So you’re just going to let her go off to Chicago?” Luc asked.
“Hell no,” Vincent grumbled.
“So, let me get this straight,” Anth said slowly. “You’re not in love with her… but you’re also not going to let her go be in love with someone else?”
Vincent drained the last of his bottle, set it on the table with a clink. “She’s not in love with this Tom guy.”
“Really? Because the big-ass rock on her hand says otherwise.”
Vin pulled his wallet out of his back pocket and fished out a couple of bills. “Jill’s in love with the idea of love. Always has been.”
“Can I be there when you tell her that? Please?” Luc begged.
Vincent stood. “Better idea. How about you two stay out of mine and Jill’s relationship.”
“Ah, so it is a relationship.”
Vincent ignored this.
What he and Jill had was… undefinable. It didn’t need names, or labels. All he knew was that he was suddenly itching to get to Elena’s party. Itching to meet this guy who’d somehow managed to wrap Jill around his finger.
To his brothers’ credit, they finally backed off, and the walk over to their sister’s was blissfully free of talk about women.
Instead, Vin filled them in on the details of the Lenora case, which after a week was still at a complete standstill.
Dorothy Birch’s tip about the ex-husband hadn’t panned out. The man was a hothead for sure, and Vincent had no trouble picturing the son of a bitch uttering death threats.
But his alibi was solid.
He’d been on a Caribbean cruise at the time of Lenora’s death, and only recently returned to town. There were literally hundreds of witnesses, right down to the captain of the cruise ship with whom Malcolm had gotten his picture taken, dated the night of Lenora’s death.