Luc remained silent, but the glare he shot his father was lethal. A glare his father ignored.
“No, it’s okay,” Ava said, dabbing her mouth with her napkin. “Plenty of people feel that way about reporters.”
“That may be so,” Luc’s mother said quietly, “but you’re a guest in our home.”
“I’m a guest in your home because I’m doing a story on your son,” Ava said, her voice kind but firm. “It’s fair that you all would have some concerns. And I’m more than happy to answer any questions you might have.”
“Okay, I’ve got one,” Anthony said, jumping in for the first time. “I think we all know why Luca got chosen for this article over any other cop. The face. The smile. The jumping into rivers to save kids. But what I want to know is how you’re going to stretch Luca’s good deeds into three hours’ worth of television.”
“Well,” Ava said slowly, “it won’t just be about Luc. He’ll be the focus, certainly, but we’ll be talking about the NYPD and law enforcement in general. And when we do focus on Luc, we’ll of course cover his recent good deeds, and the fallout of that, but we’ll look into the complete picture as well. Who is Luc Moretti off camera? What’s his journey been like from youngest son of the police commissioner to officer?”
The silence in the dining room was deafening.
Luc knew that Ava thought she’d be putting the family at ease, but her words had done anything but.
“So you’re planning to dig into his past,” Tony said.
“Well, not dig, exactly,” Ava said, shooting a confused look at Luc. “I mean, we want to tell a complete story, but if there’s something you want us to avoid…”
“No,” Luc broke in before his family could interject. “We have nothing to hide.”
He looked around the table as though to say right?
Not a single family member met his eye. Not even Nonna. His eyes narrowed. What the hell was going on here? It’s not like Luc wanted Ava to start digging into Mike’s death…or Shayna Johnson’s…but the way his family was skulking around like there was some sort of deep dark secret was bound to arouse Ava’s suspicions.
He glanced at her, and sure enough, her eyes had sharpened, and he could all but hear the wheels turning in her head.
She shifted her gaze toward him, and he forced himself not to look away. Not to look as ridiculously guilty as the rest of his family.
Which made no sense. Luc knew why he felt guilty. He’d been the one to watch Mike die. The one to find Shayna’s body. The one who could have stopped both deaths.
But from the NYPD’s perspective, Luc was clean. He’d followed process. He’d done exactly what he’d been trained to do.
Which didn’t ease Luc’s guilt. At all. But it did mean that if Ava Sims went digging into Luc’s past, she’d come up empty. On a professional level, at least.
On a personal level, Ava Sims could destroy him.
But somehow, Luc didn’t think that was what his family was worried about. At least not all they were worried about.
When the silence had stretched too long, Nonna jumped in with a too-detailed description of her adventures in Bikram yoga, and Luc allowed himself to relax slightly.
At least until he found his father watching him with an unreadable expression.
And that wasn’t the worst part. The worst part was that Ava was watching Tony.
And Luc didn’t like the speculative look. Not one bit.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Luc’s family was lovely. Really lovely.
As in…Ava hadn’t even known families could be like that. She hadn’t been exaggerating when she told him that the Simses were not the Sunday family dinner types. She doubted they would be even if they lived in the same state.