Steal Me (21 page)

I
t hadn’t been exactly like she’d envisioned it. And she’d been doing a
lot
of envisioning on how to win Anthony Moretti’s heart.

Everything from the classics (showing up on his doorstep with naught but a trench coat and high heels) to the more modern (declaration on Twitter) to the truly iffy (getting ahold of a police radio) had crossed her mind, but nothing had felt right.

In the end, she’d settled on simply calling him. Asking if they could talk.

But before she could get there, Tony Moretti had called
her
.

Invited her to family dinner. Actually,
invite
was a gentle, inadequate word. Her presence had been demanded.

So here she was, standing on a Staten Island ferry dock, wearing the best of her new dresses, a pretty blue wrap-dress thing with her new boots, and…no sign of Anthony. Or any Moretti.

Tony had told her all she had to do was make it onto the Staten Island ferry and someone would be there to meet her.

And she’d hoped—
oh, how she’d hoped
—that that someone might be Anth.

Only, Maggie wasn’t entirely sure Anthony knew about his father’s invitation. Tony had been particularly vague about that, which would have made the old Maggie chicken out.

But new Maggie almost hoped he didn’t know. Hoped that surprise would work in her favor, would jolt him into realizing what was right in front of him, and—

And then
he
was right in front of
her
.

Walking toward her, his stride slow but purposeful.

Maggie sucked in a long breath, letting herself relish the sight of him. He was wearing jeans and boots and a long-sleeved white shirt. His hands were shoved into the pockets of his down vest, and he looked wonderfully, boyishly handsome.

She didn’t move toward him. Couldn’t make her feet move. Or her brain either, for that matter.

Maggie had spent the past several days trying to figure out what she’d tell him when she saw him again. She had whole speeches prepared on how she wouldn’t stand in the way of his career, and how she wanted to be his partner, and now she couldn’t remember a single word.

He stopped in front of her.

“Hi,” she said softly.

He said nothing. Didn’t smile, just stared down at her with that familiar, unreadable expression.

“I, um…your dad invited me to dinner? Which, I’m thinking maybe from the scowl, you didn’t know.”

Still nothing. Not even a hint of a smile.

Maggie rubbed her hands over the sides of her jacket. Darn sweaty palms.

“If you don’t want me here, I can leave,” she said quietly. “I don’t want to leave, but I will. Because while I adore your family, and your dad is sweet, I didn’t come for them. I came for
you
, and to tell you—”

His hands found her face seconds before he tilted her head up, his lips hovering above hers just briefly before he kissed her sweetly. Tentatively.

It was a kiss that spoke volumes, but not as much as the look in his eyes when he pulled back slightly. They were softer than she’d ever seen them.

“Oh,” she breathed slightly.

He smiled then, slow and sexy before he lowered his mouth to hers again, one arm wrapping around her back while the other cupped the back of her head.

Someone passing them whistled, and another grumbled about getting a room, but Maggie barely heard them. She was too busy wrapping herself around the love of her life.

They kissed endlessly, and when he finally pulled back they were both out of breath.

His fingers brushed along her temple, a little line between his brows. “I’m not good at speeches, Maggie. I don’t know…I’ve never known what to say in these situations—”

“I know, I—”

“—but I know I love you.”

Oh.
Oh
. She hadn’t known it would feel this good to hear it. She thought
nothing
would ever feel as good as loving him, but knowing he loved her back?
That
was better.

“I think you’re supposed to say something,” he grumbled.

“I was supposed to say it first, you insanely bossy man,” she said, her palms resting against his chest. “And I’m not sure I want to say it second.”

“Say it anyway,” he said, a little desperate. He bent his knees so they were eye-level, his gaze pleading. “Say it, Maggie. Say—”

“I love you too.”

Anthony Moretti’s grin was gorgeous and Maggie was pretty sure she fell in love all over again at the sight of it.

“You should smile like that more often,” she said, her fingers finding his lips. “Or on second thought, don’t. Save them all for me. Just for me.”

He kissed her again, then trailed his lips over her cheek to her ears, and he kissed her there too. “You’ll always come first. You’re
everything
. You know that, right?”

“I do. But I’ll
never
make you choose, I swear it. I’ll be your biggest fan.”

He pulled back, his grin wicked. “Could you also be my nakedest fan?”

“Um, I better be your
only
naked fan.”

He laughed and the sound was wonderful. Then he reached for her hand, and that was wonderful too.

“I’m supposed to ask you if you like lamb. Or maybe chicken,” he said as they walked hand in hand toward his family’s house. “I can’t remember.”

“I’m sure I’ll like anything your mother cooks. Do you think she’ll let me help serve? Maybe I can dump something in your lap for old times’ sake, and then you can scowl at me for old times’ sake.”

“I think you
like
the scowl.”

“I’m on the fence,” she said as they crossed the street. “It may take me a couple months to decide. Years even…”

He pulled her to a stop then, spinning her around to face him. “Years, huh? How many?”

Maggie pretended to consider it. “At least one. Probably closer to two.”

“I can do a hell of a lot better than that,” he said, pulling her in for another of those melting kisses.

“Yeah?”

“Yeah,” he said gruffly. “Because the thing is, Maggie…”

She held her breath, watched as he paused, looking unbearably shy before his eyes met hers once more.

“I was kind of planning on giving you forever.”

V
incent, damn you, you’ve gone and gotten champagne all over my new shoes!” Jill said, swiping at her purple suede heels with a napkin.

“Uh-oh,” Elena said, nudging Maggie. “Looks like someone forgot to tell Vin that you’ve cornered the market on spilling things on people.”

“This has a nice symmetry to it though, doesn’t it?” Jill asked, glancing up from where she swiped at her shoes. “Maggie spilled iced tea on Anth’s shoes at his celebration party, and now Vincent’s trying to flood Elena’s place with champagne on Maggie’s celebration! But honestly, Vincent, you fool, look at my shoes!”

Vincent glanced down at Jill’s shoes and shrugged. “So? Buy new ones.”

Jill’s jaw dropped as she turned to Maggie, Ava, and Elena. “Tell me he did not just say that. Is there no respect—”

“No, none,” Elena said, holding out her champagne flute so her brother could refill it. “The sooner you accept this, the more peaceful your life will be.”

“Peaceful is not in my future. I’m a homicide detective in New York, and don’t tell your parents, but I’m pretty sure there was a mix-up at the hospital and my partner is actually the biological son of the Grinch…”

“Who’s the Grinch?” Vincent asked as he poured champagne into Jill’s glass.

“I can’t even,” she muttered. “Fill up our glasses and then scram. We need girl talk.”

He shook his head and met Maggie’s eyes. “Is this what it was like when you had to serve us at the diner? Horrible?”

Maggie narrowed her eyes. “Hmm, it’s hard to know if you’re getting the full experience if you’re not wearing the orange uniform. I think I still have mine, if you want to—”

“And I’m out,” Vin grumbled, grabbing another bottle of wine from the bucket and heading over to his brothers.

Maggie followed his progress and found Anthony watching her. She smiled, and he didn’t smile back—not quite—but his eyes were adoring.

She gave a happy sigh.

Ava made a hooting sound. “Girl, you have it so bad.”

“Oh, because you and Luc are so much better,” Elena grumbled. “Don’t think I didn’t see that you both came out of my bathroom at the same time and that I had to remind you to pull the back of your dress out of your thong.”

Ava gave a smug, sorry-not-sorry smile.

“Thanks again for hosting us all tonight,” Maggie said to Elena. “Your new place is gorgeous.”

“Isn’t it?” she said happily.

Anthony’s sister had recently moved into a gorgeous midtown high-rise with a view of the Empire State Building. It was a tight fit with all of the Morettis, plus Vincent’s and Luc’s partners, and a few of Maggie’s friends from the diner, but it was a
wonderful
kind of crowded.

The loving, happy kind of full.

“Is it too early to toast Maggie?” Jill asked, raising her glass.

“Hell no. I’ve been toasting myself all week!”

“Are you making Anth address you as Published Author?” Elena asked. “If not, you must implement this plan immediately.”

“No,” Maggie admitted. “But I have started practicing my signature on every scrap of paper that crosses my path. A little premature considering the book hasn’t even been printed yet, and book signings are a long—”

“Oh stop,” Ava said, clinking her glass against Maggie’s. “None of that. You’ve sold a book. A
book
. That’s huge. Beyond huge. Tonight is about
you
, you fabulous published author.”

Maggie couldn’t stop the goofy grin.

She hadn’t gotten tired of hearing it. Hadn’t gotten tired of
thinking
about it. It had been a long road; eight months of rejection after rejection and false hope after false hope, but she’d gotten the call last week.

A New York publishing house wanted to publish her book.

Her
book.

She felt a warm hand on the back of her neck and smiled as she smelled Anth’s spicy cologne.

“Ladies,” he said in his deep voice. “How about you share the guest of honor, hmm?”

“Please, like
you
share her,” Jill said. “You hardly let her out of the apartment for the first three months after you finally came to your senses—”

“Hey, Henley,” he interrupted. “I believe your shoes are bleeding purple all over Elena’s new hardwood floor.”

Jill shrieked. Elena shrieked. Ava rolled her eyes at both of them and grabbed a roll of paper towels, and Anthony pulled Maggie in for a kiss.

“They’re right, you know,” she murmured against his mouth. “You have been hogging all of my attention.”

“Yeah? Strange, I don’t remember you uttering any protest.”

She held her champagne, still not drinking, her eyes taking in the room. Taking in the people that had come for her.

She’d invited her father and Cory. Neither had responded, much less shown up.

But that was okay.

Because she had a new family now. One that was warm and loving and who brought copious amounts of champagne to celebrate her accomplishment.

“This is real, isn’t it?” she said quietly. “I’m not dreaming it?”

“Well it
is
real,” he said, touching a gentle fingertip to her cheekbone. “But it’s a dream too. Your dream.”

“True,” she said, snuggling closer. “But I’ve had a little epiphany about that dream lately. An addition.”

He lifted his eyebrows. “Did you now? Not sure that’s allowed.”

“It is,” she said confidently.

“Okay then. Tell me about this new and improved dream.”

“Well, I’m still a published author and I still get to wake up each morning and write books. But there’s also more. A tall,
gorgeous
man, who is short on smiles but had this way of looking at me that turns me to mush…”

His eyes were tender as he listened.

“And there’s Duchess, of course,” she continued.

“Of course.” Duchess was now officially Anthony’s dog. Maggie was lucky to get a pet in.

She took a deep breath. Took a chance. “And there’s a baby,” she said in a rush, her voice quiet. “Who cries every time I finally sit down to write, but it’s okay because I love him or her so much—”

Anthony’s fingers wrapped around her bicep, his expression stunned. “Maggie, are you—are we—”

She smiled. “I think so. I mean, I’m not a hundred percent sure, but I took, like, five tests. All positive.”

He stared down at her. Stunned. And Maggie felt a little stab of nervousness. “Is this okay? I know we didn’t plan it, but—”

He put a hand over her mouth. “I have something to tell you too.”

She nodded and he removed his hand, replacing it with his mouth, kissing her softly before he moved his mouth to her ear, drawing her close. “
My
dream has evolved over the past few months too. And you just made it come true.”

T
here’s something wrong with a man that grins like that at a crime scene.”

Detective Vincent Moretti glanced up from where he’d been studying the gunshot wound of the vic and glared at the officer who’d been shadowing him for the past three months.

“I wasn’t grinning.”

Detective Tyler Dansen never paused in scribbling in the black notebook he carried everywhere. “You were definitely grinning.”

“Nope.”

Dansen glanced up. “Fine. Maybe not grinning. But I’m one hundred percent sure I saw you smile.”

“How about you be one hundred percent sure about who shot this guy instead?” Vincent said irritably.

Dansen returned his attention to his damn notebook, but he didn’t look particularly chagrined by Vin’s reprimand.

Oh what Vin wouldn’t give to go back to those early days when all he’d had to do was
look
at Dansen and the kid practically dropped in a deferential bow.

Three months of spending every workday in each other’s company had the newly minted detective acting nearly as impudent as Vincent’s
real
partner.

Nearly
being an important distinction, because Vincent didn’t think they made ’em sassier, more stubborn, or more annoying than Detective Jill Henley.

And he would know. They’d been partners for six long years, and their pairing up as partners was proof of God’s sense of humor.

Jill Henley was Vincent’s opposite in every way.

Jill was chipper, charming, and smiley.

Vincent was…none of those things.

Especially not the last one. Although, if he was being really honest with himself, Dansen may have been right about Vincent cracking a smile earlier.

It’s not that Vin was immune to death. There was absolutely nothing humorous about a man lying cold in his own blood and guts, dead from a gunshot wound to the stomach.

But after six years as a homicide DT for the NYPD, one learned to compartmentalize. To let the brain occasionally go somewhere else other than death even as you were staring straight at it.

It was the only way to survive. Otherwise it was nothing but puking and nightmares.

And speaking of puking…

Vincent stood and gave Officer Dansen a once-over. “If you’re gonna barf, do it outside,” he said, just to needle the younger man.

Dansen threw his arms up in exasperation. “That was one time. One time! And I hear it happens to everyone on their first day.”

“Didn’t happen to me.”

“That’s because you’re a machine,” Dansen muttered under his breath.

Vincent didn’t respond to this. It was nothing he hadn’t heard before.
Robot.
Machine. Automaton.

He just didn’t know what people expected him to do about it.

In the movies, there was always some reason for the semi-mechanical, unfeeling action hero.

Either a dead wife or an abusive past or some other sort of jacked-up emotional history. But Vincent had always sort of figured he’d been born this way. Quiet. Reserved. Broody.

It’s not that he didn’t feel. Of course he did. He just didn’t feel
out loud
.

He wasn’t sure that he really knew how to. Wasn’t sure he wanted to learn.

But in Dansen’s defense on the puking thing, the kid’s first crime scene as a homicide DT had been a rough one. A sixteen-year-old girl sliced to pieces and then tossed in the Dumpster behind a one-dollar-slice pizza joint in Queens.

Vincent’s fists clenched at the memory.

It had taken them three days to find the guy who’d done that to her—a real sicko who’d claimed he’d done it because he was “bored.”

That was one son of a bitch he hoped prison was
really
rough for.

“Let’s move out,” Vin growled at Dansen.

He headed toward the door of the hotel room where the body was found, and Dansen fell into step beside him, flipping through his notebook. “Okay, so here’s what I’m thinking. The wife is the one who found the body and called it in, but—”

“She also shot him,” Vincent said, impatiently punching at the down button for the elevator.

Dansen huffed in exasperation. “I was getting to that.”

“Get there faster,” Vincent said as they stepped into the elevator.

“So, can I—”

“Bring her in for questioning?” Vincent finished for him as he pulled out his cell phone. “Do it. And don’t go easy on her. She’ll slip up within minutes, all tangled up in her own guilt.”

The younger man snapped his notebook shut. “It’s really annoying when you do that. Finishing other people’s sentences.”

“’Kay,” Vincent said distractedly, already striding off the elevator.

The lobby was crawling with reporters, and Vincent glared at Dansen, who held up his hands in surrender. “Don’t look at me. I didn’t call them.”

Vincent gritted his teeth. He
hated
hotel cases. There was always some bellhop or housekeeper who couldn’t keep his or her damn mouth shut, and the result was a media circus that made the police work a thousand times more complicated than it needed to be.

Not that it really mattered in this particular case. There wasn’t a doubt in his mind that the wife had pulled the trigger. He’d bet his pension on it. Vin had been doing this too long not to see the signs immediately. The too-fast way of speaking. The awkwardly forced eye contact in a conscious effort to minimize nervous blinking. Fidgeting hands.

The vic’s wife had all of the above. This murder was practically the definition of open-and-shut case.

“You care if I leave you to finish this one up on your own?” he asked Dansen as they headed toward Vincent’s unmarked patrol car.

Dansen skidded to a halt. “Seriously? You even have to ask? I’ve been begging you for
three months
to let me take point, and—”

“All right, calm down,” Vincent said, jerking open the door of the driver’s seat. He hesitated before getting in, realizing that there were things to be said.

He rested an arm on the roof of the car and glanced at Dansen who was…

Smirking.

“Wipe that shit smile off your face,” Vincent said without any real heat.

“You’re gonna miss me,” Dansen taunted.

Vin narrowed his eyes. “Don’t push it, kid.”

“Kid? I’m thirty-one.”

“Exactly.”

Dansen gave an incredulous laugh. “You’re thirty-three. One year’s difference hardly makes you my senior.”

Not in years, maybe. But in experience…

It wasn’t about who was youngest or oldest. It was about who was best.

And Vin was confident that was
him
.

Vincent was damn good at his job. It was why he’d been assigned a trainee during Jill’s leave of absence despite the fact that his lack of people skills was as legendary as his ability to sniff out even the most clever of murderers.

In truth, Vincent had been dreading his three months with the near-rookie, but it had been less painful than expected. Dansen was a good cop. A little green. When Dansen was assigned his new partner tomorrow, Vin had no doubts that the guy would be able to handle whatever came his way.

And then Vincent’s life would finally get back to normal.

Not that these three weeks without Jill had been abnormal, precisely.

He still worked the same four-week days.

Still saw death on most all of those days.

Still went to breakfast with his family after Mass every Sunday, and argued with his brothers and occasionally with his sister during said breakfast.

He still watched baseball most evenings, still worked out most mornings.

So really, his life wasn’t different without Jill at all.

Except that it was.

He glanced at his watch. Ninety minutes. An hour and a half until her plane landed. Not that he was counting.

“Hey, Detective Moretti.” Dansen cleared his throat from across the hood of the car, and Vin tensed, knowing what was coming.

God, he hated shit like this.

“You can drop the ‘Detective,’” Vincent said roughly. “Just call me Moretti. Or Vin. Whatever.”

Dansen’s smile flashed white across his dark face. “Do you know how many cops dream of the day when they’re given permission to call one of the members of the royal family by their first name?”

“Oh Jesus. Don’t start that again.”

For the most part, Dansen had done a remarkable job of not getting on Vincent’s nerves over the past couple months. But Dansen’s ridiculous hero worship of Vincent’s last name grated on his nerves. Yet another reason he couldn’t wait for Jill to get back.

Jill, who’d never cared that Vincent’s father was the recently retired police commissioner. Or that his older brother was a captain. Or that his younger brother was the NYPD’s most famous officer.

Or that his grandfather had been a cop, and his mother had been a police dispatcher…

Okay, so maybe Vincent could
sort of
understand where Dansen was coming from. The Morettis were kind of NYPD royalty.

And Vincent was proud to be a part of it. Proud to carry on the legacy.

He just got damn tired of the ass-kissing.

“Seriously though, thanks,” Dansen said. “Couldn’t have asked for a better detective to show me the ropes. A nicer one, sure. A better-looking one, definitely. And you can be a real—”

“Asshole, I know,” Vincent said.

Dansen held up a finger. “Not what I was going to say. I think that’s the first time you’ve tried to finish my sentence and gotten it wrong.”

“I’m never wrong,” Vin said out of habit.

“Fine.” Dansen rolled his eyes. “You are an asshole. Happy?”

Vin didn’t bother responding, just lifted his hand in a final farewell to Dansen before the younger man could say whatever it was he’d wanted to say, and lowered himself into the car.

Vincent slid on his aviator sunglasses as he fastened his seatbelt.

He kept his face perfectly blank until he’d pulled away from the curb and merged into traffic.

Only then, only out of sight of prying eyes, did he let a smile overtake his face. A smile that quickly became a grin as he headed toward the airport to pick up his long-lost partner.

It was possible he’d missed Jill. A little.

Not that he’d be telling
her
that.