Cuff Me(49)

She slammed the door as she got out because it felt good.

It wasn’t until she reached the front door that she realized Vin was right behind her.

“What are you—”

She spun around, only to find herself backed against the door by one very livid, very close cop.

Wordlessly, he pulled her keys from her hand and without moving away from her, slowly reached around and unlocked her door.

He unlocked it, pushing it open just barely.

“What the hell, Moretti? In case it wasn’t evident by the last three hours of silence, I have no interest in talking—”

“Oh, we’re talking,” he said, his voice gravelly.

His hand slowly, deliberately rested low on her throat as he pushed her backward into her house.

Followed her inside.

His brown eyes were black with anger. “We’re having this talk, and we’re having it now.”





CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE


Vincent could feel Jill’s heartbeat against his palm as he roughly pushed her back into her apartment.

He told himself the feel of it didn’t excite him—that her excitement didn’t excite him—but he’d be lying.

And it was excitement Jill was feeling, at least for a moment. He saw it in the flash of her eyes, the catch of her breath.

But then her pointy little chin jutted out in defiance as the anger overtook her once more.

Her anger was justified.

She had every right to be downright pissed, because damned if he hadn’t been widely out of line by allowing Holly Adams to manipulate them.

But damn. The old biddy had known all the buttons to push. Buttons that had been blinking red in Vincent’s peripheral vision since Jill’d returned from Florida with that f*cking rock on her finger.

And he’d just… lost it.

“You don’t get to decide when we talk,” Jill was saying. “You don’t get to just stew for months—no, years—and then snap your fingers and decide to become an open book. In front of a suspect, no less.”

“Holly Adams didn’t kill Lenora Birch, and you know it,” he growled.

“Doesn’t mean we should be talking about our personal life in front of her!”

He leaned down so their faces were inches apart. “So you admit we have a personal life.”

“Of course we do. We’re friends. Although we won’t be if you keep this up.”

Vin yanked his palm back from where it had been resting against her collarbone.

It was as though she burned him. Not by the warmth of her skin, but by the white-chill fire of her words.

Friends.

Jill thought of him as a friend.

Vincent swallowed.

When had friends stopped feeling like enough?

When had that one simple word ripped down to his very gut?

She lifted her hands as she opened her mouth, then let them fall, and the defeated slump of her shoulders was a little jab to his heart.

“What’s going on, Vin?”

What’s going on is that I can’t stand the thought that in a couple short months, you’ll be some other man’s. What’s going on is that I only have a few weeks left to convince you that…

Fuck.

Fuck!

What did he want to convince Jill of?

That he was the man for her?

Because he wasn’t.

Jill’s favorite holiday was Valentine’s Day, for Chrissake.

Vincent didn’t do hearts and flowers. Or love.

But companionship and sex? He wanted those things.

With Jill?

He closed his eyes and rubbed a hand over his face. “I don’t know.”

“Well, you seemed to know when you were gossiping with Holly Adams,” she said, starting to put her hands on her hips, confrontation-style, only ending up wrapping her arms around her middle. Defensive-like.

She was literally withdrawing from him, and it made Vin want to punch something.

He moved past her toward the kitchen.

Vincent was no stranger to Jill’s home. They’d had dozens—hundreds—of working dinners at her kitchen table, arguing over Chinese food.

There’d been birthday parties, and dinner parties, and random Saturday night movie marathons when neither of them had any plans.

But as he opened her fridge, it hit him that this was the first time he’d been here since she’d gotten back from Florida.

Yet another testament to how much had changed between them, and yet one more thing that had Vin wanting to hit something.

Jill followed him in, not saying a word as he rummaged around in her fridge looking for a much-needed beer.

Not finding anything, he moved to the small cabinet where she sometimes kept wine and pulled out a bottle of Chianti and wordlessly held it up to her in question.

She shrugged out of her jacket, dropped it on the back of a kitchen chair, and hesitated only briefly before nodding.

He found her corkscrew in its usual spot in the drawer to the right of the sink. Watched out of the corner of his eye as she opened the freezer and pulled out a frozen pizza.

Jill put the pizza in the oven while he poured them both hefty glasses of the under-ten-dollar Chianti.

He held out a glass to her and she reached for it, although he noticed that she seemed strangely careful not to let their fingers brush.