Butterface (The Hartigans #1)(16)
“You’d say all of this in front of our sister, your girlfriend, without even a twitch of revulsion?” Paul asked, shoving his fingers through his hair again. “She’s fucking delicate.”
Gina couldn’t decide whether to strangle her brother or hug him.
“I’m not delicate,” she said, ignoring the other part of what he’d said. “I’m a grown woman.”
“And we’re here to protect you,” Rocco said. “Because you can’t trust the cops.”
Ford’s jaw clenched.
“I can trust him.” The words came out before she could consider the truth of them, but as they hung in the air, she realized it was true. There was just something about him that settled the frazzled worry that always seemed to be buzzing in the background of her head.
Rocco let out a humorless chuckle and strode to the table, planted his hands on the back of one chair, and leaned forward. “Yeah, we’ll see. He’s sure not acting like a boyfriend.”
This time, it was Ford’s turn to shrug. “She didn’t tell you I was moving in?”
“What?” she said at the same time as her brothers, no doubt all with different reasons for the look of horror on their faces.
Ford crossed over to her and slid his arm around her waist, drawing her in close. “It seemed prudent. If your grandfather was murdered, then whoever did it might come back to make sure there wasn’t any evidence, since there isn’t a statute of limitations on murder.”
The scent of his cologne teased her senses while the touch of his fingertips on her hip, over the yoga pants and under the hem of her hideous T-shirt, made her lungs tighten. Ford? Here? No. It wasn’t true. She repeated it in her head. He was just trying to be nice. A pity kindness to get her brothers to chill the fuck out. He didn’t mean it.
Rocco looked from her to Ford and back again. “I don’t like it.”
“You don’t have to,” she said, concentrating on the words instead of the butterflies doing the Cha-Cha Slide in her stomach—because Ford being this close and touching her was doing a helluva number on her ability to remember to breathe. “But as you can see, everything is being handled. Why don’t you guys go home? I’ll let you know any updates as soon as I get them.”
Her brothers looked at each other and had one of those silent conversations they’d had her entire life, where things got decided without a single syllable being uttered. Finally, Paul turned to her.
“Okay,” he said. “But call us as soon as you know anything.”
A few minutes of hugs for her and dirty looks for Ford, and her brothers were gone, leaving her alone in the kitchen with Ford while a small army of cops clomped up the stairs to the attic to do all of that crime scene stuff that turned her stomach whenever she accidentally stopped on one of the true-crime shows on TV. Needing something to keep her hands busy, she turned on the burner under the kettle and grabbed two mugs from the cabinet and set them down on the counter. Just because she was about to kick Ford out of her house didn’t mean she was going to be rude.
“You are not staying here.” There. Firm and assertive, but not rude because she said it while handing him a tea caddy with seventeen varieties of green tea. As her mom always said, the little things mattered.
He picked out an orange jasmine without even looking at the labels and handed it to her. “If I don’t, then you can’t, either. Your entire house is a crime scene.”
Everything stopped for a second. None of that sentence sounded right. She wasn’t the kind of person who had threats leveled against her. Well, unless she counted the bridezillas on the warpath, but even that was usually fixed with chocolate or champagne.
“What are you talking about? You said it’s probably natural causes,” she said.
Ford held her gaze. “We won’t know that until the ME’s report, so this is going to be treated as a homicide until we know different.”
“Bullshit.” The kettle’s ear-splitting whistle sounded at that moment as if the universe was putting an exclamation on her statement.
“Look, we have to treat the threat with a higher level of concern than we would if it had been called in about a normal citizen.”
She dropped the tea bags into each mug and poured the steaming water over the top. “You mean one without ties to organized crime.”
“Exactly.” As if he owned the place, Ford reached over and set the timer on the oven display for three minutes, the exact amount of steeping time recommended on the back of the tea packets.
He had just told her that her house was a crime scene and because her brothers were idiots involved with the mob the cops were taking it seriously, and yet he still thought it was important to steep his tea properly? What the hell? It was just one more thing to annoy the shit out of her about this entire situation. Why was it that the men in her life felt the need to run roughshod over her?
“So, I’ll just be staying on your couch for a few days until the medical examiner confirms her initial theory that your grandfather died of natural causes after slipping between the walls, and we can make sure that no threats are made against you.”
“Are you deranged?” She yanked the tea bag out of his mug even though there was a full minute and a half left on the timer and tossed it into the trash. “You think I’m just going to agree to that because we told my brothers that you were my boyfriend—as if anyone would believe that. What, do you think people believe this is some lame romantic comedy where the hot guy falls for the ugly chick? Newsflash, I don’t wear glasses, so there’s no taking them off and then suddenly I’m a total babe and believably your girlfriend.”