“Don’t you have my favorites memorized?” he teased.
Her lips twisted into a small smile and she glanced up. “You want to know how I found out about this place, don’t you?”
“I do.”
She tapped her nails against the table, and he noticed that at least two of them were dramatically chipped. It was the only part of her incongruent with an otherwise perfectly manicured persona.
“Sawyer told me. Said your family comes here every Sunday, but that on your days off, you come alone.”
“Figures you got Lopez to talk,” Luc said, taking a sip of coffee. “How’d you get it out of him, agree to go on a date?”
“He tried. I dodged.”
Luc grunted, oddly relieved by this revelation.
“I opted for a lap dance instead,” she deadpanned.
Luc choked on his coffee.
“He even got change for a twenty,” she continued. “And let me tell you, there’s something oddly gratifying about having all those one-dollar bills slide against your skin when he tucks them into your G-string, you know?”
Luc coughed up the coffee that he’d aspirated. “That’s just…no words. I have no words.”
Helen returned to take their order.
Luc got a bacon, spinach, Swiss omelet with fruit instead of potatoes. Ava ordered the same, with the addition of mushrooms.
“Fruit, huh?” she asked when Helen had walked away.
“I like it,” Luc said with a shrug. “Not manly enough for you?”
“Yeah, because that’s what all women look for in a man. The right breakfast side-order.”
They both sipped their coffee, and Luc finally asked the crucial question. “What are you doing here, Sims?”
Ava took a deep breath, but to her credit, she met his gaze dead-on. “I wanted to get to know you.”
Well that was…blunt. And interesting.
He leaned in a little. “For the sake of the story? Or for you?”
“The story,” she said, the words coming out too quickly, despite the fact that his tone had been deliberately teasing.
Luc sat back and considered.
“Sims, we’ve spent every day of the past week together. You’re practically my second partner on the job, even if you’re in the way more often than not.”
“Hey!”
He held up a hand to stop the protest. “No. You are, and you know it.”
She huffed. “I just wanted to turn on the siren once. Just to try it.”
“Uh huh. You’re telling me it had nothing to do with the fact that it was rush hour and you had to pee?”
She waved this away. “Look, I know that I’ve been…annoying. But I’m just trying to do my job.”
He groaned. “Enough with that. We both want to do our jobs without the other getting in our way, but that’s not going to happen, is it? In order for me to do my job well, I need you to go away. For you to do your job well, you need me to kiss your ass.”
She leaned forward, her eyes as intense as he’d seen them. “You don’t have to kiss my ass, Moretti. Truly. I just need you to talk to me.”
“I do talk to you.”
“No, you grunt, growl, and lecture.”
Luc took a sip of coffee to hide his surprise at the accusation.
Luc was not the grunting, growling type.
Not to toot his own horn or anything, but truth be told, Luc had always thought of himself as being fairly, well…likable.
Of all the Moretti clan, Luc was the quickest to smile and according to his mother, the easiest to talk to.
That last one, of course, could have been due to his mother buttering him up so he’d come over and help her move her recipes from ragged index cards to “the cloud” on the new laptop his dad had bought.
But with or without his mother’s praise, Luc was sure of one thing:
This was the first time a woman had ever accused him of being an irritable prick.