His eyes shadowed before he looked away and picked up his wine. “I didn’t say that. I said that my instincts were never wrong.”
Ava studied him. It was an interesting and precise evasion. If he admitted to mistakes but also stood by his claim that his instincts were never wrong, it meant that his mistakes must center around not acting on his instincts.
“You mean like—”
Ava broke off, suddenly unsure she wanted to go in this direction. Not when he’d just finally started to relax around her.
“Do I mean like what?” he asked, his voice sharp.
You mean like the Shayna Johnson case. The one where a little girl ended up dead. Where were your instincts then?
But she couldn’t ask him that. Not only because she wasn’t at all sure she’d get a straight answer, but because she knew very well what her bosses would say to that little development in her story: cut it.
There was no room for pesky things like kidnapping and police error and the truth in her line of work.
“Never mind,” she said, forcing a smile.
Luc had set his fork aside and continued to study her. “You’re hiding something, Sims. Holding back on me.”
“I am,” she said honestly. “Just like you’re holding back on me.”
He lifted his glass as though to toast her. “To secrets.”
She rolled her eyes, even as she mimicked his motion. “To secrets you get to keep for now.”
He was silent for a few moments longer before he seemed to shake off whatever dark cloud had hovered around him. “Okay, but at least tell me this, Sims.”
“What?” She was curious.
“This story wasn’t your idea, was it?”
She grimaced. “No. What gave me away?”
He shrugged. “It seemed too tame for you. Your clothes and plastic smile all said that you were merely a network lackey following through on your assignment,” he replied. “But your eyes said otherwise.”
Ava groaned. “Oh, come on, Moretti. I’m going to have to retract my statement about you being good with the ladies if you feed me some garbage about being able to ‘read my eyes.’”
“Ah, Sims. Such a cynic.”
“Realist,” she said, tapping a fingernail on the table. “Facial expressions and tone might give things away, but eyes are eyes. They’re blue, they’re brown, they blink, but they don’t tell stories.”
“You’re wrong,” he said, so confidently that she almost believed him. Almost.
“So tell me, then, Officer. What was it you saw in my eyes that day?” She fluttered her eyelashes dramatically.
He cut a tidy piece of steak and surprised the hell out of her by offering her the bite on his fork as he held her gaze, and God help her, Ava actually found herself leaning forward and nipping the juicy piece of meat between her teeth.
Luc gave her a slow smile.
“Hunger.”
“I’m sorry?”
“Hunger was what I saw that day,” he said, helping himself to another bite of her mashed potatoes. “I couldn’t place it at first—”
“Because it wasn’t there shining in my eyes,” she interrupted.
“—But after you walked away I realized…you’re not the type of woman who wants a story that’s handed to her. You’re the type of woman who wants the story she has to chase.”
Ava blinked. The observation was so shrewd, so dead-on, that she nearly gave him a round of applause.
“You’re wrong,” she lied, sitting back and studying him.
He grinned. “Am I?”
Ava sucked the inside of her cheek between her teeth and considered her best move.
The woman in her was dying to tell him the truth…to tell him everything about her, the way she would if they were just Ava and Luc.
But they weren’t Ava and Luc. They were Ava Sims, reporting for CBC, and Officer Luc Moretti.
If she told him the truth—that she really did like a story she had to chase after—he’d run.
Because Ava would bet serious money that Luc was that story. And not in the way her bosses expected.
Still, she had to give him something. Wasn’t the entire point of this dinner to earn his trust?