Frisk Me(46)

She gave him a toothy smile. “Men are shits.”

He laid a hand over his chest. “You wound me.”

“I didn’t say you were a shit.”

“But you sometimes think so. Admit it.”

“I may or may not be revising my opinion,” she said after taking a sip of wine.

“I knew it. You did keep that ticket as a memento of your feelings for me. How did your boyfriend feel about that?”

This time Ava’s smile was wide and genuine. “I give you a free pass to dig into my entire personal life, and you seem to be focusing only on my romantic endeavors, Officer Moretti. Why is that?”

She awaited the flirtatious banter that rolled off him so easily, but to her surprise, his expression went serious.

“I can venture into other topics if you want, but somehow I don’t think you’re going to like them.”

Ava’s smile slipped. “Meaning?”

He leaned forward, his expression more intense than before. “That first day in Captain Brinker’s office…I didn’t bother to hide the fact that I wanted no part in this damn news special. But my cop instincts were telling me that you didn’t want any part in it either. Explain that.”

The bite of duck Ava had just put in her mouth suddenly seemed to dry and swell up on her, and she forced herself to chew slowly and methodically as she reached for her water.

Finally the piece of meat went down, and she was able to respond.

Only to realize she had nothing to say.

Journalists were good at evasive bullshitting. Ava in particular was great at it; it was the only way to explain away why you were somewhere you shouldn’t be when researching a story, and the occasional white lie here and there wasn’t unheard of to get interview subjects to open up and spill their guts.

But she and Luc seemed past that somehow. And so she didn’t quite lie.

She did, however, evade.

“Maybe your cop instincts were wrong,” she said, forcing herself to meet his gaze with a steady, bland look of her own.

“They haven’t been yet.”

She leaned forward. “Oh, come on. You’re telling me you’ve never made a mistake.”

His eyes shadowed before he looked away and picked up his wine. “I didn’t say that. I said that my instincts were never wrong.”

Ava studied him. It was an interesting and precise evasion. If he admitted to mistakes but also stood by his claim that his instincts were never wrong, it meant that his mistakes must center around not acting on his instincts.

“You mean like—”

Ava broke off, suddenly unsure she wanted to go in this direction. Not when he’d just finally started to relax around her.

“Do I mean like what?” he asked, his voice sharp.

You mean like the Shayna Johnson case. The one where a little girl ended up dead. Where were your instincts then?

But she couldn’t ask him that. Not only because she wasn’t at all sure she’d get a straight answer, but because she knew very well what her bosses would say to that little development in her story: cut it.

There was no room for pesky things like kidnapping and police error and the truth in her line of work.

“Never mind,” she said, forcing a smile.

Luc had set his fork aside and continued to study her. “You’re hiding something, Sims. Holding back on me.”

“I am,” she said honestly. “Just like you’re holding back on me.”

He lifted his glass as though to toast her. “To secrets.”

She rolled her eyes, even as she mimicked his motion. “To secrets you get to keep for now.”

He was silent for a few moments longer before he seemed to shake off whatever dark cloud had hovered around him. “Okay, but at least tell me this, Sims.”

“What?” She was curious.

“This story wasn’t your idea, was it?”

She grimaced. “No. What gave me away?”

He shrugged. “It seemed too tame for you. Your clothes and plastic smile all said that you were merely a network lackey following through on your assignment,” he replied. “But your eyes said otherwise.”

Ava groaned. “Oh, come on, Moretti. I’m going to have to retract my statement about you being good with the ladies if you feed me some garbage about being able to ‘read my eyes.’”

“Ah, Sims. Such a cynic.”

“Realist,” she said, tapping a fingernail on the table. “Facial expressions and tone might give things away, but eyes are eyes. They’re blue, they’re brown, they blink, but they don’t tell stories.”

“You’re wrong,” he said, so confidently that she almost believed him. Almost.

“So tell me, then, Officer. What was it you saw in my eyes that day?” She fluttered her eyelashes dramatically.

He cut a tidy piece of steak and surprised the hell out of her by offering her the bite on his fork as he held her gaze, and God help her, Ava actually found herself leaning forward and nipping the juicy piece of meat between her teeth.

Luc gave her a slow smile.

“Hunger.”

“I’m sorry?”

“Hunger was what I saw that day,” he said, helping himself to another bite of her mashed potatoes. “I couldn’t place it at first—”