Her anger was justified.
She had every right to be downright pissed, because damned if he hadn’t been widely out of line by allowing Holly Adams to manipulate them.
But damn. The old biddy had known all the buttons to push. Buttons that had been blinking red in Vincent’s peripheral vision since Jill’d returned from Florida with that fucking rock on her finger.
And he’d just… lost it.
“You don’t get to decide when we talk,” Jill was saying. “You don’t get to just stew for months—no, years—and then snap your fingers and decide to become an open book. In front of a suspect, no less.”
“Holly Adams didn’t kill Lenora Birch, and you know it,” he growled.
“Doesn’t mean we should be talking about our personal life in front of her!”
He leaned down so their faces were inches apart. “So you admit we have a personal life.”
“Of course we do. We’re friends. Although we won’t be if you keep this up.”
Vin yanked his palm back from where it had been resting against her collarbone.
It was as though she burned him. Not by the warmth of her skin, but by the white-chill fire of her words.
Friends.
Jill thought of him as a friend.
Vincent swallowed.
When had friends stopped feeling like enough?
When had that one simple word ripped down to his very gut?
She lifted her hands as she opened her mouth, then let them fall, and the defeated slump of her shoulders was a little jab to his heart.
“What’s going on, Vin?”
What’s going on is that I can’t stand the thought that in a couple short months, you’ll be some other man’s. What’s going on is that I only have a few weeks left to convince you that…
Fuck.
Fuck!
What did he want to convince Jill of?
That he was the man for her?
Because he wasn’t.
Jill’s favorite holiday was Valentine’s Day, for Chrissake.
Vincent didn’t do hearts and flowers. Or love.
But companionship and sex? He wanted those things.
With Jill?
He closed his eyes and rubbed a hand over his face. “I don’t know.”
“Well, you seemed to know when you were gossiping with Holly Adams,” she said, starting to put her hands on her hips, confrontation-style, only ending up wrapping her arms around her middle. Defensive-like.
She was literally withdrawing from him, and it made Vin want to punch something.
He moved past her toward the kitchen.
Vincent was no stranger to Jill’s home. They’d had dozens—hundreds—of working dinners at her kitchen table, arguing over Chinese food.
There’d been birthday parties, and dinner parties, and random Saturday night movie marathons when neither of them had any plans.
But as he opened her fridge, it hit him that this was the first time he’d been here since she’d gotten back from Florida.
Yet another testament to how much had changed between them, and yet one more thing that had Vin wanting to hit something.
Jill followed him in, not saying a word as he rummaged around in her fridge looking for a much-needed beer.
Not finding anything, he moved to the small cabinet where she sometimes kept wine and pulled out a bottle of Chianti and wordlessly held it up to her in question.
She shrugged out of her jacket, dropped it on the back of a kitchen chair, and hesitated only briefly before nodding.
He found her corkscrew in its usual spot in the drawer to the right of the sink. Watched out of the corner of his eye as she opened the freezer and pulled out a frozen pizza.
Jill put the pizza in the oven while he poured them both hefty glasses of the under-ten-dollar Chianti.
He held out a glass to her and she reached for it, although he noticed that she seemed strangely careful not to let their fingers brush.
They hadn’t said a word since their heated exchange in the foyer, and Vincent held up a glass. “Truce?”
Jill rolled her eyes as she clinked her glass to his. “I don’t even know what we’re trucing over.”
He took a sip of wine and watched her. Get out of this, man. Take it back to safe territory. Fix it!
“How are you?” he asked.
Her glass paused halfway to her mouth, and her nose wrinkled. “How am I?”
Vincent shrugged, not really sure why he asked, and yet instinctively knowing that someone needed to ask her.
And that someone should be him.
“You spend four to five days a week with me,” Jill said with a little laugh. “You know how I am.”
“Do I?” he asked.
Do you? Vincent said the words to himself. Do you know how you are?
She blew out a breath, then took her wine to the kitchen table, where she folded one leg up beneath her and sat down, both hands cupped around her glass.
“I don’t know how I am,” she said.
He leaned back against the counter and nodded once, hoping she’d continue.
“I feel…” She glanced up. “I feel lost. I don’t know if it’s the case, or the wedding planning, or the fact that Tom and I are apart more often than we’re together.”
He withheld his flinch, barely.
Then she shook her head. “Actually, that’s not it. None of that is the problem.”