Butterface (The Hartigans #1)(10)
“Who’s in there with you?” he asked.
She yanked harder, but Ford didn’t take the hint. The obstruction remained. “No one.”
One of Paul’s bushy eyebrows shot up. “If our mother heard you lie like that, she’d be lighting candles at church.”
Their mother had been doing that for all of them since they’d been born—not that it had helped. Gina was still single, and her brothers were still involved with the wrong people. The blonde behind Paul took a weaving couple of steps forward and flashed a friendly smile at Gina. The woman may not be the smartest for getting involved with Gina’s brothers—definitely love-em-and-leave-em types, but that wasn’t Gina’s call to make, just like it wasn’t theirs to get all judgy on her. Of course, that didn’t mean she wanted them to know anything about the guy lurking behind the door, and he was lurking. She knew that because she’d tried to yank the door closed twice now and he hadn’t moved his stupid foot. Time to get her brothers out of here. Now.
Gina gave her brothers her most innocent wide-eyed look. “You two look busy, why don’t you just go—”
Rocco interrupted, “Who are you with, Regina Marie?”
Her middle name? Really? Like she wasn’t thirty-one years old with a mortgage, job, and brain of her own?
“You’re not Mom or Dad, so don’t use that tone with me.” She let go of the doorknob so she could cross her arms and give her oldest brother the death glare he deserved, with a popped-out hip and everything. “And for the last time, I’m—”
The hotel room door swung open.
“With me,” Ford said from behind her.
And totally not shockingly at all, the floor did not open up and swallow her like she so wanted in that moment. Instead, she got an up close and personal look at her brothers’ faces as they turned blotchy with anger way out of proportion for even her overprotective, we-wish-we-lived-in-the-caveman-times brothers. Instinctively, she took a step back so she blocked a direct line of attack against Ford and, hopefully, made it harder for her brothers to notice that the other man was wearing only a sheet.
“Hartigan?” Rocco practically spit out.
Oh. Shit. “You know each other?”
The men ignored her while the women just watched with wide, unblinking eyes.
“Is this what your little task force has sunk to?” Paul asked, taking a step closer to where she stood in front of Ford. “Pillow talk with our sister?”
Crap on a gluten-free cracker. Ford worked on a task force. And her brothers knew him. That meant only one thing. He worked organized crime, and that meant he was all up in her brothers’ business. Judging by the way Rocco’s hands were fisted at his sides and Paul’s not-very-subtle move toward the inside of his suit jacket, things were about to escalate quickly. That she would not have.
Her brothers might be idiots sometimes, but they were her brothers, and she wasn’t going to have them going to jail for assaulting an officer just because she’d been dumb enough to believe that Ford had actually wanted to sleep with her.
“Stop all of this now,” she said, standing as tall as she could. No one paid attention. “He’s not after information about you,” she tried again, her voice rising as panic made her nerves jangly. Desperate to stop this before she couldn’t, she blurted out, “He’s my boyfriend.”
“What?” Rocco bellowed.
Ford stiffened behind her. She couldn’t risk a look back at him to let him know she wasn’t stupid enough to believe what she was saying. If she did, she’d blow everything. She could fix the lie. She couldn’t fix her brothers going to jail, and she’d promised their mom that she’d watch out for them.
“Yeah,” she said in a voice that shook even on that one-syllable word. “We’ve been seeing each other for months.”
“And you’ve known the whole time that he was a cop?” Paul asked, his hand still resting inside his jacket.
Ford made a growl of a sound, and she reached behind her back without looking and grabbed his hand, squeezing it tight enough that even a completely clueless person would know it was code for “shut the fuck up.”
“Ever since I met him.” Okay, not a lie. Not the whole truth, but not a lie.
“I don’t like it,” Paul said, but he moved his hand from being half hidden beneath his jacket to totally in view at his side. “Just imagine a cop at Grandma’s ninetieth birthday party next week.”
“You don’t have to imagine, because he’ll be there.” She could brazen this out. She could. Oh my God, let the earth swallow me up at any moment, please. “I’m a grown woman, and I don’t need your permission when it comes to who I date.”
Rocco’s vein pulsed near his temple. “I don’t approve.”
“I don’t care.” She shrugged, hoping like hell that it looked natural instead of like a jerky movement brought on more by nerves than actual confidence. “Look, I’ve watched out for you two for years since Mom and Dad moved to Florida. Now it’s my turn to have a little fun.”
What she didn’t say—and her brothers didn’t call her on, because despite all the posturing, they did love her—was that she wasn’t normally the kind of person who got to have that kind of fun.