“You’re not even in uniform,” she said, waving a hand over him.
He was wearing a white undershirt and some blue pajama pants left by her brother on the one and only time he’d come to visit her in New York and stayed at her apartment.
Luc sat back in his chair, eating another spring roll, and Ava narrowed her eyes at the speculative way he was watching her.
“What?” she asked.
He shrugged. “Just trying to figure out what causes that look.”
“I have a look?”
“Babe, you’ve got dozens. But there’s one in particular I don’t like. As though a rancid memory is stuck in your throat.”
“So what, you’re a poet now?” she muttered, grabbing at her wineglass.
Luc shrugged affably. “Fine. Don’t talk about it.”
He reached for a box of some beef dish she’d forgotten the name of, and dumped more onto his plate, the topic apparently forgotten.
He didn’t push.
And unfortunately for both of them, his quiet understanding and no-pressure attitude are exactly what she needed to want to spill her guts.
So she did.
“My family is a bunch of shallow, glory-seeking jerks.”
Luc’s chewing slowed and he got up to fetch the wine bottle. “Okay. I knew they weren’t exactly family of the year, but…what’s that have to do with you?”
Ava shrugged moodily as he topped off her wineglass. “You won’t get this because your family is great. But sometimes I get this feeling that mine has totally messed me up.”
He sat across from her, his expression patient.
She forged on.
“It’s like…” She swirled her glass but didn’t take a sip. “Luc?”
“Sweetie?”
The endearment nearly broke her, but she forged on. “Am I bitchy? You know…cynical, shallow, ambitious, unlikable…you know…a bitch?”
Wordlessly he stood, picking up their wineglasses and jerking her head toward the couch. “We are not having this conversation with cold pad Thai between us.”
Honky Tonky followed at his heels, leaping up to his lap the second he sat down. Ava shook her head at the sight of the broad police officer and spoiled cat lounging on her couch as though they belonged there.
She hesitantly followed after them, sitting beside Luc. It was oddly vulnerable. The cold pad Thai he mentioned may be increasingly unappealing, but it had provided a buffer.
A buffer that was nowhere to be found when he gently pulled her toward him. Ava sighed in contentment as she settled against his chest, earning a glare from her cat, who refused to budge.
His hand found a strand that had escaped her ponytail, and Ava frowned at the confusion rippling through her.
Confusion at the complexity of a hero cop who was long on charm, short on pretense, with a hidden sweet side.
How was a girl supposed to resist a combo like that?
“So,” he said softly. “Who put it in your head that you’re…what word did you use? Bitchy? Do I need to beat someone up?”
She shifted her cheek against his chest, adjusting her glasses slightly. “Don’t you dare. You’ll ruin my whole story if you go vigilante on me.”
“Nah, people love that shit,” he said. “But seriously…talk to me, Sims.”
She shifted her cheek again, this time just for the sheer pleasure of feeling the soft warmth of his shirt.
“I talked to my dad today,” she said, petting the cat, who all but rolled his eyes at her.
“The mayor himself, huh?”
She smiled at that. “Seems he found time in his busy schedule of serving Darrington, Oklahoma, to pep-talk his eldest.”
“Ah, so it was one of those conversations.”
“It’s always one of those conversations,” Ava said.
She heard the bitterness in her voice and hated it. Why couldn’t she be one of those people who could shake off the opinions of those around her? Why couldn’t she be like Beth, who could cheerfully laugh off her mother’s chronic interference on all things wedding, or gently ignore her mother-in-law’s demands to sing at the ceremony?