Frisk Me(41)

Oh. Whoops.

While Ava had liked Elena very much, Ava couldn’t say she’d noticed her eye color. It was hard to pay attention to the women in the room when there was so much male eye candy.

And the Morettis really were an exceptionally attractive family.

But Luc, with his strong jaw, sparkling blue eyes, and lean strength?

He belonged on a movie poster.

The crowning jewel of the family.

Orrrrr…maybe she was biased.

“It’s a pain, huh?” he said, interrupting her thoughts.

“What’s a pain?”

“Being attracted to someone you’re determined to dislike.”

Her mouth went dry at his husky tone. “You speaking from experience, Officer?”

His answer was to drop his gaze to her mouth, and Ava swore she felt butterflies. Ava Sims did not do butterflies.

“You didn’t answer my question,” she blurted out. “About why you jumped into the river.”

Luc tipped his head back and laughed, and Ava went all fluttery at the sight of his Adam’s apple.

Get a grip, Sims.

“You and I do a lot of that, have you noticed? Dodging each other’s questions? Answering with other questions?”

“Part of the reporter thing, I guess.”

“Answer my question, Sims. You attracted to me?”

He moved in, then, not quite touching her, but somehow pinning her against the railing using body heat alone. Ava kept her eyes locked on his chin even as her pulse flipped into overdrive.

Luc touched a knuckle to her cheek. “I think the woman behind the reporter is pulled to me. Just like the man behind the cop is drawn to you.”

He was going to kiss her. She could tell by the firm command of his voice, the positioning of his body.

She wanted it.

Oh, how she wanted it.

She wanted to wind her arms around him, arch her back into him, wanted to absorb all of his heat and goodness.

But it was that last part that gave her pause.

People weren’t good.

This man may have the wool pulled over the eyes of his family and half of New York City, but Ava wasn’t about to get pulled into his vortex.

At least until she saw the side of him that wasn’t so shiny.

Most women liked the early stages of a relationship because the men hid their dirty laundry.

Ava hated it.

She wouldn’t be kissing Luc Moretti any time soon. Not until he showed her the real Luc.

Ava sidestepped; she patted his arm. “The Statue of Liberty really does get you all sappy and romantic, doesn’t it?”

The light went out of his eyes, his head tipping back just slightly as he watched her with a narrowed gaze. And the slight twist of his lips told her he wasn’t done with her yet.

Fine.

She wasn’t done with him either.





CHAPTER SEVENTEEN



Avie, how’s the story coming along?”

Ava glanced up to see her boss, Brent Davis, taking an uninvited seat on the edge of her desk where she’d been solidly in the zone while Googling the Morettis.

She moved her coffee mug out of the way of his leg, careful not to let her hand touch his leg, even though she was fairly certain he’d placed himself too close on purpose.

It was so grossly cliché, the aging media boss chasing after the young skirts in the office, but Davis seemed all too happy to play his part.

“Earth to Avie.” His knee bumped her arm.

Okay, that was another thing. Wasn’t the point of nicknames to shorten the original name? Ava and Avie were the same number of syllables, which meant her boss only utilized Avie to breed a familiarity that wasn’t there.

Still. He was the boss. And like him or not (she absolutely did not), he was a key part in her path to anchorwoman. Not that he was high enough on the food chain to make the final decision, but he was certainly a gatekeeper.

So even though she itched to tell him to get his bulging thigh out of her personal space, she smiled.

“Sorry, this story’s taking up all of my mental capacity.”

He smirked. “It should be. A three-hour prime-time special is no fluff piece. It’s the real deal. The rest of the girls are yapping behind your back.”

“Good to know,” she muttered. Though she wasn’t all that surprised. There was no such thing as real friendship at CBC. Mostly it ranged from two-faced, to backstabbing, to cutthroat.

“Hey, are you familiar with the name Shayna Johnson?” she asked, tapping her pencil against her notepad.

Brent Davis may be a lecher, but he was a good newsman. His memory for stories, no matter how small, was legendary.

He folded his arms across his beefy chest, blue eyes scrunching as he went into what she thought of as his thinking mode.

“Kidnapping case gone wrong?” he said.

“If by wrong, you mean she died, yeah,” Ava said, glancing at her notes. “And sadly, not all that unusual, especially in the rougher area of Harlem.”

He frowned. “Wasn’t that a couple years ago? What are you doing looking at a story that’s stale and common? You’re not chasing a cold case, are you?”

“No, they caught the bastard,” she said distractedly, her pencil tapping more quickly against the notepad. “He’s rotting in prison.”