Cuff Me(25)

Not because he had any gory emotional wounds, not because he had some brokenhearted past.

He was just… he didn’t feel like other people did.

He wasn’t some sort of sociopathic weirdo, he just had never really absorbed things to his very soul the way his sister, and to a lesser extent his brothers, had.

So, no.

Vincent certainly wasn’t in love with Jill Henley.

“Do you need smelling salts, honey?” Luc asked politely.

Vincent finally recovered from his shock and shot his brother the finger. Then his other brother too just for good measure.

“Where the hell did you two idiots get that idea?” he asked.

Luc sighed and slumped back. “Still in denial, I see.”

Vincent ran a hand over the back of his neck, feeling strangely itchy. “Look, I’ll admit that I’m having a hard time with these changes with Jill. But only because I don’t want her to make a mistake. Because she’s a friend.”

He may have emphasized this last word a bit too desperately, and he could have sworn he saw Anth hide a smirk.

“So you’re just going to let her go off to Chicago?” Luc asked.

“Hell no,” Vincent grumbled.

“So, let me get this straight,” Anth said slowly. “You’re not in love with her… but you’re also not going to let her go be in love with someone else?”

Vincent drained the last of his bottle, set it on the table with a clink. “She’s not in love with this Tom guy.”

“Really? Because the big-ass rock on her hand says otherwise.”

Vin pulled his wallet out of his back pocket and fished out a couple of bills. “Jill’s in love with the idea of love. Always has been.”

“Can I be there when you tell her that? Please?” Luc begged.

Vincent stood. “Better idea. How about you two stay out of mine and Jill’s relationship.”

“Ah, so it is a relationship.”

Vincent ignored this.

What he and Jill had was… undefinable. It didn’t need names, or labels. All he knew was that he was suddenly itching to get to Elena’s party. Itching to meet this guy who’d somehow managed to wrap Jill around his finger.

To his brothers’ credit, they finally backed off, and the walk over to their sister’s was blissfully free of talk about women.

Instead, Vin filled them in on the details of the Lenora case, which after a week was still at a complete standstill.

Dorothy Birch’s tip about the ex-husband hadn’t panned out. The man was a hothead for sure, and Vincent had no trouble picturing the son of a bitch uttering death threats.

But his alibi was solid.

He’d been on a Caribbean cruise at the time of Lenora’s death, and only recently returned to town. There were literally hundreds of witnesses, right down to the captain of the cruise ship with whom Malcolm had gotten his picture taken, dated the night of Lenora’s death.

As far as alibis went, being on a crowded ship in the middle of the Caribbean was ironclad.

Anthony had picked a bar close to Elena’s midtown apartment, so in under five minutes, the three Moretti brothers were waiting impatiently for her snotty doorman to find them on her list of approved guests.

Vincent loved his sister but absolutely hated her apartment. It was one of those brand-new, sixty-plus-floor monstrosities that completely ruined the character of the city. The outside was all generic shiny glass, the inside all bizarre modern art.

For the life of him, he couldn’t figure out why she spent an exorbitant amount of money on something so soulless, but then… he supposed it was because she could.

Elena was the only Moretti sibling not in law enforcement, which would have been fine had her chosen career not been a slap in the face to the NYPD.

It wasn’t just that Elena was a lawyer.

That was fine. No, Elena had to go and be a defense attorney. She fought to defend the very jackasses her brothers and father fought to put away.

Still, much as Vin hated her profession, he had to admit that his sister had done quite well for herself. He might not share her penchant for all things new and swanky, but he could respect that Elena knew what she wanted, went for it, and got it.

Once they made it up to her floor, Anth paused before knocking. “Remember, if whatever drink she’s serving has floating flowers in it, we all take turns distracting her while the others dump it. Agreed?”

“Agreed.”

But then they were inside Elena’s apartment, and Vin realized rather abruptly that he’d drink whatever his sister put in his hand as long as it had alcohol.

Because there was Jill.

And there was her new man.

And holy hell, he wasn’t sure that he could do this.

Luc clamped him once on the shoulder before seeking out Ava, and Vin stood in the foyer for several long moments wondering if maybe he could sneak away, plead a stomachache…

Jill spotted him, and the happy smile on her face drew him forward.

He blew out a breath. He could do this. He had to.

“You came!” Jill said, all but bounding over to him.

“Of course I came,” he muttered.

Jill’s hair was in its usual ponytail, but that’s where his Jill ended, because he barely recognized her from the neck down.

She was wearing a dress. A short, white strapless thing that made her look young, and well… bridal.