Cuff Me (18 page)

He stopped the car, but neither moved. “I didn’t even realize he saw me looking at it until later that night when my parents gave me my graduation gift.”

Jill smiled at the sweetness of the memory. Tony Moretti was a gruff, but caring, man—much like Vincent. She was betting the moment was all the sweeter from the awkwardness of it.

“Well I appreciate you lending me such a beloved item,” she said as they walked into the lobby.

“Don’t be weird about it,” he muttered.

Jill smiled.

Yup. Gruff and caring all right.

The elevator ride up to their floor was quiet.

Vin paused outside his room, and Jill shrugged off the coat. She didn’t look up at him as she handed it back.

But then his fingers touched hers as he accepted it, and her eyes flicked up of their own volition.

It was a mistake.

Because whatever was written on his face made her want to lean into him—to toss that coat, beloved or not, to the side and wrap herself around…

She took a step back and swallowed.

Tom’s warning went through her head.

He wants what he can’t have.

She took another step back.

“Well, ’night.”

“’Night,” he said, his voice a little rough.

She nodded once, and started to move toward her own room next door when he caught her arm.

Jill froze, even as common sense made its first appearance of the evening and told her
for the love of God, walk away.

“Jill.”

She bit her lip. She didn’t say anything. Couldn’t. She only stared at his face, both begging him to let her go and begging him to say—whatever it was he needed to say.

His hand lifted slowly. His thumb brushed her cheek, just for the briefest of moments before this thumb and forefinger closed around a strand of hair that had escaped her ponytail.

“I wish—” He cleared his throat. “I wish…”

Not yet, Vin. First I have to tell you I’m not engaged. I need you to know…

“Wait,” she whispered. “I don’t—”

His eyes seemed to shutter close, blocking all emotion, but not before she saw a flash of pain cross his face that felt like a vice around her heart.

But before Jill could correct him—before she could add the crucial words “not yet” to her rejection, he’d released her hair.

He turned toward his door, opening it and stepping inside before she’d had a chance to gather her thoughts.

“Vin—”

The door closed in her face.

V
incent supposed he should have addressed it the morning after, but he hadn’t known how.

How does one apologize for making a sort-of move on an engaged woman?

Vincent wasn’t good at apologies. Wasn’t good at emotion.

Hell, he wasn’t good at talking.

So he’d taken the coward’s way out. And said nothing.

Neither had she.

They hadn’t sat together on the plane ride from LA back to New York.

Vincent had let Jill think that the airlines had just messed up, but in reality, he’d slipped away to call customer service the moment he’d seen the rock on her finger, still firmly in place, and the sinking feeling in his stomach had been almost unbearable.

Whatever he’d thought had been between them in that moment had either been one-sided, or hadn’t been enough for her to end things with the Pretty Boy.

Jill was still getting married, and he was still…

Lonely.

The thought of sitting beside her for six hours…

Somehow the thought of holding her hand was a hell of a lot more painful than not holding it.

He’d paid for it with every bump of the incredibly turbulent flight home, but he told himself he’d earned it.

It was no less than a man lusting after another man’s fiancée deserved.

It was now three days after they returned from their LA trip, and Vincent was beginning to think that he’d imagined that entire disastrous scenario outside his hotel room that night.

They were speaking—the silent treatment wasn’t really an option given their working relationship.

But the easy camaraderie was once again gone, as was the sexual tension.

Vincent leaned back in his standard-issue desk chair as he watched her talk on the phone at the desk across from his.

She’d been on and off the phone all day, although most of the calls had been from her cell phone, and she’d slipped outside to make them.

Wedding stuff, he’d guess.

He tried really hard not to care. Really he did.

But this particular phone call was from her desk phone and definitely related to the Lenora Birch case.

A case that was all too close to being labeled a cold case.

It would be the first of Vincent’s career and thankfully, it gave him something to think about other than her.

It wasn’t just that it was a blow to his ego. Or to his perfect record.

It was that someone was getting away with
murder
. And he didn’t have the faintest idea who.

“Yes, thank you, Ms. Lee. If you could send over everything you have, that’d be so appreciated. No, copies are fine. Thank you, we really appreciate it… yes. Yes, I was a fan of hers too. So sad… yes, we’re doing everything we can…”

Jill finally hung up the phone and Vincent leaned forward. “Who was that?”

Jill plunged her fingers into her hair before tugging the blond strands outward slightly in frustration.

She looked as exhausted as he looked. “Janice Lee from the library. I’ve asked her to pull every newspaper article she has on Lenora Birch and send it over.”

“You think there’s something we haven’t seen?”

She lifted her shoulders. “We’ve checked LA papers and New York papers, but smaller presses… I dunno, there could be something.”

He blew out a breath. “Papers from what time frame?”

“
All
time frames.”

“That could take forever.”

“I know it could take forever, Vin. Do you have any better ideas?”

He studied her for a moment. “Let’s take a walk.”

“I don’t want to take a walk.”

He smiled at that because her voice was snippy, and very un-Jill-like. “I’ll buy.”

“You only ever want to buy the cheap stuff.”

He was already on his feet, moving behind her chair and then lifting it so he all but dumped her out of it. “C’mon. Starbucks. You can get one of your sugary-with-sprinkles sugar fests.”

Jill grabbed her jacket and followed him outside, although judging from the dark circles under her eyes and her shorter-than-usual temper, her cooperation had more to do with her need for caffeine than it did interest in spending time with him.

Jill chattered the entire way to the coffee shop.

About the case.

About her new shoes giving her blisters.

About how it was maybe going to rain and how she should have brought a different jacket and why wasn’t it spring already?

Then she chattered as they stood in line at the coffee shop.

About the terrible movie she’d seen last night with the totally ambiguous ending because what’s even the point if they don’t tell you what happens?

And about how her hair stylist had to reschedule.

She chattered all the way home.

Did he think they should go see Holly Adams again?

Did he think it was true that they were finally getting a new car?

And finally, when they were just a few steps away from the precinct and he’d said little more than his coffee order and
mm hmm
, Vin couldn’t take it anymore.

He stopped. Touched her arm.

“Jill.”

She glanced up at him, her smile as wide as ever, but her eyes were nervous and that broke his heart. They couldn’t go on like this.

“Can we talk?” he asked.

Her smile, incredibly, went wider. Even more false. “
You’re
asking to talk?”

Her laugh was even more brittle than the smile, and Vin said a silent prayer that they’d be able to repair whatever it was that he’d broken.

He merely stood, fiddling with the white plastic lid of his coffee, feeling unbearable as hell as he waited for his partner to decide whether or not to hear him out.

“Okay,” she finally said on a long breath, as though she’d managed to talk herself into a completely wretched task.

Vincent should have felt relief, but mostly he felt a sudden stab of panic when he realized for all his desperation to fix things between them, he didn’t know how.

Silently they walked to a small park a block away from the precinct. It wasn’t one of the city’s better. It smelled mostly like dog piss and pot, and this potent mixture of odors ensured that they had relative privacy as they sat on a chipped, wobbly bench.

For several seconds they said nothing. Jill sat perfectly straight, her small hands cupping her enormous coffee, not moving.

Vin blew out a long breath, leaning forward and resting his forearms on his knees before deciding to get it over with.

“You and Tom,” he said, his eyes locked on a discarded cigarette butt in the dirt at his feet. “You’re okay?”

“We’re… on good terms,” Jill replied.

“That’s good,” he said woodenly. His thumbnail flicked at the plastic lid.

“Vin—”

“I owe you an apology,” he said, interrupting. “I don’t know what the hell I was thinking that night in the hotel, but it was out of line.”

Her shoulders hunched. “You seemed like you wanted to say something that night—something important.”

Vin said nothing. Stared straight ahead as a pair of pigeons hacked their way through a discarded hot dog bun.

“Actually,” Jill said softly, “it seems like there’s been a
lot
of times lately that you’ve wanted to say something. I feel like we keep going in circles of unfinished conversation.”

He nodded, still not looking away from the fucking pigeons.

“So let’s finish it,” she said quietly.

Jill leaned forward then so they were shoulder-to-shoulder, although she too stared straight ahead at the birds.

It was as though it was too much for them to talk meaningfully and make eye contact.

He swore softly and dipped his head.

What was he supposed to say?

Don’t marry Tom?

Give me a chance?

Give
us
a chance?

What did he want from her?

Did he really expect her to call off her wedding on the off chance that there could be something more between them?

What kind of first-rate asshole was he, to ask her to postpone a for-sure thing (Tom) for an unstable, noncommittal flight risk (him)?

He’d had
years
to ask her out. Why now? Why wait until she was no longer available?

It was a question she’d ask—one she
should
ask.

And one he didn’t have an answer for. All he knew was that he died a little inside every time he thought about her leaving him.

But he’d be damned if he chose his happiness over her own.

It had to stop.

“I’ve been an ass, Henley,” he said, giving her a brief glance.

“Well—I’m used to that.”

He smiled grimly as he realized what he had to do.

He had to lie.

Vin swallowed, forced himself to turn and look at her. The lie would be all the more convincing if he could pull it off while making eye contact. He waited until she’d shifted, matching his position so they were face-to-face.

She took a sip of her coffee, and waited. Her eyes round and blue and… completely unreadable. Since when had she become a mystery to him?

Since she came home with a ring on her finger. That’s when.

“You know that old cliché—wanting what you can’t have?” he asked gruffly.

She blinked. “Sure?”

“Well,” he said. “That.”

Jill blinked again. “Usually I’m pretty good at deciphering the words you’re not saying, but I need a bit more.”

Fine. She wanted it all laid out there? Fast and furious?
Fine
.

“The thought of you marrying another man has been
making me crazy,” Vincent said, the words terrifying, because this much, at least, was true.

Her breath caught a little. “Why?”

Good Christ, how did regular men do this? Lay it all out there?

“Because I thought—I guess it never really occurred to me that you… that…”

“That someone else would find me attractive? Want to marry me?” Her voice was quiet, not as caustic as it could have been. But she was on edge, definitely.

“No,” he said. “I mean—
fuck
. I just thought—it never occurred to me that I might lose you.”

“You won’t—”

He held up a hand. “I need to finish. And I thought that somehow if I could get you not to marry the other guy, that things could keep going on as they were. And I thought the way to get you not to marry Tom was to convince you that we could maybe be… something.”

They stared at each other in mute silence for an uncomfortably long time, until he finally cleared his throat. “You can say something now.”

There was a little whisper of a smile around her lips, although not a happy one. “Okay.” She sucked in a long breath. “Okay, I’ll just ask. Have you been messing with my emotions the past several months because you want me? Or because you don’t want Tom to have me?”

He cleared his throat and glanced at his coffee. “I want you to be happy.”

“That’s not an answer, Vin. No more evasions. Do you have feelings for me—beyond partner, beyond friend? Yes or no.”

Vincent felt both incredibly hot and unbearably cold at
the same time. As though his body was physically incapable of telling the lie he needed to tell.

But her answer left him no wiggle room—no space for half truths.

He lifted his head and told the biggest lie of his life.

“No.”

T
here wasn’t enough ice cream in the world.

Not enough wine.

Not enough terrible, mindless television.

Jill had tried it all, but nothing helped.

She hurt.

That one word from Vincent—that succinct, no bullshit
no
—had hurt a million times worse than walking away from Tom.

Which told Jill more about her own heart than she could bring herself to admit.

It will get better, she told herself for the millionth time as she stared blindly into the fridge.
It’s only been three days. The sting will fade, and it will be like all of this never happened.

Her phone buzzed, and Jill closed the fridge. Nothing in there but pudding and a fast-wilting bag of mixed
greens for that salad that she kept meaning to eat but never wanted.

The text was from Elena.
Missed you at brunch. Want to grab a movie?

Jill grunted. Sunday brunch with the Morettis. Damn right she’d skipped it. Sitting across from Vincent while he shoveled in biscuits and sausage, completely oblivious to her pain?

Pass.

Not in a movie mood
, she texted Elena back.
Sorry to miss everyone at brunch!

Texting was amazing. Lies were so easily disguised with an exclamation point.

Everything okay?

Or not.

Yeah, why?

Elena texted back.
You’re being weird. Vin’s being weird. You guys get in a fight?

Jill swallowed. You’d have to care about the other person enough to fight. Something Vin wouldn’t know shit about.

Just tension on the case—still no break,
Jill replied.

Hmm. K. We could go wedding dress shopping? A girl from work told me about a brand-new boutique. Up and coming designers, unique, not crazy expensive.

“God.” Jill dropped the phone beside her on the couch, leaning back and digging the heels of her hands into her eyes.

She needed to tell Elena about the wedding. Needed to tell everyone about the wedding.

Correction: the
lack
of wedding.

She glanced down at the ring on her finger that seemed
to get heavier every day. Last night she’d dreamed that the band had grown smaller and smaller until it had cut off all circulation and she’d had to have her finger amputated—by a clown.

Jill hated clowns (who didn’t, really?).

It was so time to get rid of this ring.

But first—the announcement.

Jill stared for a long time at her phone, then picked it up. No time like the present.

And who better to start with than one’s mother?

Especially since her mom, while certainly excited on Jill’s behalf, had been only marginally interested in the wedding planning. Jill’s parents had been married on a beach in Malibu with only their best friends present, and she must have asked Jill a million times if she was “sure she wanted all the fuss.”

Oh, to have listened to her mother.

A knock at the door interrupted Jill’s resolve to spice up everybody’s Sunday with a bomb of an announcement.

She rolled off the couch.

It was probably Elena. Jill knew it was only a matter of time before her best friend realized something major was going on and demanded that Jill spill all of the gory details.

At least it had better be Elena.

The alternative was Vin, and she was so not ready to see him. She’d had a hard enough time faking that everything was fine at work. Without the protective barrier of homicide discussions… she couldn’t. Just couldn’t.

It wasn’t Elena.

Nor was it Vincent.

“Maria!”

Reflectively, Jill ran a hand over her pajamas, wishing that she’d have put on real clothes. Or, you know… showered.

Vincent’s mother smiled kindly, looking as put together as ever in her usual Sunday attire. A green dress today that perfectly suited her complexion, making her look forty-something instead of the sixty-something Jill knew she was.

“May I come in?”

“Of course!”

Jill followed Maria into the kitchen, doing a quick scan to make sure it didn’t scream
single-woman
. Other than the open bag of potato chips on the coffee table, it could be worse.

“May I get you coffee? Tea?”

Maria smiled. “You have tea?”

“Ah—” Jill mentally scanned her cupboard inventory. “Yeah, that’s a no.”

“Just a glass of water would be fine. That food at the diner is so salty, but I find I love it anyway.”

“So brunch was good?” Jill asked, pouring them both a glass of water from the Brita filter in the fridge.

“It was… fine,” Maria said. “We missed you.”

Jill said nothing to this. In all honesty, Jill only joined the family at brunch once a month or so.

Partially because she didn’t want to overstep the delicate line between family and non-family, and partially because she was afraid if she went more than that, it would hurt all the more that she
wasn’t
family.

“So, how are—”

“Jill.” Maria’s voice was kind, but firm. The same voice Jill had heard Maria turn on her own children a million
times in the past, but being on the receiving end was a whole other ball game.

“Yeah?” Her voice was too high. Squeaky.

Vincent’s mother moved to the kitchen table, sitting down as she placed her water glass in front of her. Then she tapped the finger gently with one finger. “Sit.”

Jill sat.

“Tell me.”

It was a command, but a gentle one.

Jill didn’t have to ask what Maria meant—instinctively she knew that the older woman meant tell her everything.

And incredibly… she wanted to.

Jill pushed her glass aside, folded her hands, and placed them gently on the table in front of her. “I’m not marrying Tom.”

Maria merely nodded.
Go on.

“We called it off before the California trip. It was mutual—I mean truly mutual, not just one-of-us-is-trying-to-save-face mutual.”

Jill’s thumb rubbed against the underside of the ring. Tight. So uncomfortably tight. But not for much longer.

She told Maria about how things had been weird with her and Vincent, but not in a way she could describe. She told her about the half conversations, and the bickering that felt more personal than usual.

She told her about that moment in the hall when Vincent had touched her cheek.

Maria watched Jill carefully, but Jill watched Maria just as carefully.

If anyone knew what was going on—really going on—with Vincent, it would be his mother.

But the Moretti matriarch had a wicked good poker face.

And then Jill got to the part about the park bench the other day.

“I asked him straight out if he wanted me,” Jill said, looking at her thumbs. “I was tired of all the weird dancing around each other. I just wanted it out there.”

She squeezed her eyes shut. “But now I wish it wasn’t out there.”

“Nonsense.”

She opened her eyes and looked at Maria. “Nonsense?”

“It was good of you to put an end to the games,” she said, reaching across the table. “You two have been playing them for far, far too long.”

“Only a few weeks,” Jill grumbled.

Maria laughed softly. “My dear. Don’t start lying to yourself now.”

Jill’s lips rolled inward in denial of what Maria was getting at. This thing with her and Vin—it was new.

Wasn’t it?

Deep down, Jill suspected she knew better. Knew that whatever was between her and Vin had always been, well…
more
.

But that didn’t mean she knew how to define it.

And she certainly didn’t know what to do about it.

“I worry about all my children,” Maria said, somewhat absently. “Luc and his secret ghosts. Anthony and his pressure to be everything to everyone. Elena—I worry that she’s spent so much time toughening her outer layers that her inner layers are unreachable. Marc, I worry that he’s too good—too trusting of people—and that he’ll get burned. But Vincent… I worry about Vincent most of all.”

Jill looked up in surprise. “Why? He’s so—”

She broke off, unsure of the word that she was looking for. Self-sufficient? Independent?

“He knows how to take care of himself,” Jill finished. “He doesn’t need anyone.”

Maria’s smile was a little sad. “I believe that’s what he wants everyone to think. Perhaps even believes it himself.”

Jill was skeptical. “With all due respect… I’ve been chipping away at Vincent’s crusty layers for years, trying to figure out if there was some traumatic incident that made him so—”

“Guarded?” Maria replied.

“Ah, sure, we’ll go with that,” Jill said. “But as far as I can find, there are no deaths in his past, no schoolyard bullying, no dramatic heartbreak, no secret lack of confidence born of feeling inadequate in a family of champions. Nothing that would explain why he’s so closed off.”

Maria traced a finger up and down her water glass, but she said nothing.

Don’t pry. Do not pry, Jill. He’ll never forgive you if you ask his mother—

“Is there something?” Jill heard herself ask Maria. “Something that happened to make him…
guarded
?”

Jill went with Maria’s word choice, since her default of
antisocial jerk
wasn’t quite how every mother hoped to hear her son described.

“I don’t know,” Maria said finally. “I don’t think so. I suppose it’s always possible that he’d be keeping some hidden hurt from all of us, but I think maybe it’s subtler than that. No one event that we can put a Band-Aid on.”

“So there’s nothing,” Jill said, shoulders slumping. “No way to fix it? Not that he needs fixing, it’s just—”

Maria sighed and stood, picking up her water glass and taking it to the counter. She turned around and crossed her arms, looking strangely hesitant, as though she wanted to say something but wasn’t sure she should.

“Maria,” Jill said quietly. “Please—I care about him.”

The older woman’s face softened considerably. “I know you do, sweetie. It’s why I’m here. To ask if you were sure—really sure—about this Tom fellow. But I see you got that sorted out on your own, so the last thing I’ll say…”

She took a deep breath. “Vincent was shy as a child. Not horribly so. Not enough to be picked on, but his quietness could be off-putting, I think. He’s always been an observer. The boy that watched before joining in. But you know how children are…”

“They move fast,” Jill said with a smile.

“They certainly do. They misconstrued his hesitancy for lack of interest and stopped trying to include him. He was left out of things more than my others. It became more noticeable in high school. Eventually I suspect it became a vicious cycle. He would be quiet because he was excluded—he was excluded because he was quiet.”

Jill’s throat hurt at the picture Maria was painting. Vincent had always been an outsider, but Jill’d always figured it was because he wanted to be. The thought that she could have been wrong—that he was guarded because he’d never learned to be different…

“I guess what I’m saying,” Maria said, sounding tired, “is that I don’t know that Vincent knows how to accept love—or even affection. But what really breaks my
heart—I don’t know that it’s ever been offered. I don’t know that anyone’s ever tried to love him.”

Jill ignored the tear in her heart at that last sentence. “But… he’s had girlfriends…”

Maria waved this away. “I know my son. If he felt strongly about any of them, he’d have brought her home to meet me. Meet the family.”

“Wait, you’ve never met a single one of his women?”

Maria’s smile was gentle. “That’s what I’m trying to tell you.”

Jill shook her head, confused.

“You, Jill. You’re the only one he’s ever brought home.”

Jill’s first instinct was denial. “Yeah, but not as a girlfriend. As a partner.”

Maria’s eyebrow went up. “All of my sons have had partners at some point in their career. How many of them do you see as part of the family like you?”

Jill warmed a little at the mention of being part of the family, even as panic settled a little as what Maria was saying was starting to set in.

She was still trying to process it as Maria washed and dried her water glass and then put it away as though she owned the place.

Vincent’s mother then gave a self-satisfied nod as if to say, “my work here is done,” and then headed toward the front door.

Jill scampered after her. “Wait—Maria. If what you’re saying… if he does think of me as more than a partner. Why did he say otherwise when I asked him?”

Maria took a step closer, placed her warm wrinkled hands on Jill’s cheeks. “Sweetie, if you’d spent your entire life silently wanting—desperately wanting—someone to
love you, and never having that gift even offered—would you know how to
give
it?”

Jill closed her eyes. “What am I supposed to do?”

Maria patted her cheek softly. “I think, if you want him… I think you’ll have to be the brave one.”