Hold Me Close(36)

“Now you sound like my mother.” Effie rolled her eyes but took another bite.

Bill grinned. “Ah. Good old Stacey. How is she, anyway?”

“Fine.” Effie pointed her fork at him. “And you don’t get to call her that. To you, she’s Mrs. Linton.”

“Right,” Bill said. “Because she has no idea I’ve been f*cking her daughter.”

Effie frowned. “You’re not my boyfriend, Bill. We’ve been over this. What, you want me to take you home, show you around? Introduce you to my family as my, what, boyfriend?”

“Would that be such a terrible thing?”

“I think we both know why it wouldn’t go over that well,” Effie said.

Bill dragged a piece of bread through the garlicky olive oil and took a huge bite. Oil dripped down his chin, glistening in the cleft. He chewed loudly.

“It shouldn’t matter anymore,” he said when it was clear Effie had finished speaking.

“It still would to my mother, and you know it, Officer Schmidt. Anyway, you told me yourself, you don’t want to get tied down. You like the bachelor life. Go where you want, when you want. Fuck who you want,” Effie said flatly, her expression matching her tone. “You don’t have a nine-to-five life, that’s what you’ve always said. Maybe I’m just trying to respect that.”

Bill snorted laughter. “Nah. You’re trying to convince yourself of that, maybe, but we both know the truth. You don’t want a boyfriend or a husband any more than I want to be one.”

“You have no idea what I want.” Annoyed, Effie took her plate to the garbage pail and scraped it empty before putting it in the dishwasher. She turned to look at him staring at her. “But even if that were true, why is it that when a guy wants that, he’s a player, but when a woman wants it, she’s a whore?”

“I didn’t say that. Jesus, Effie, you put words in my mouth.” Bill got up and advanced on her fast enough to keep her from being able to get away. His hands anchored on her hips. She turned her head when he tried to kiss her with that garlic-tasting mouth. Thwarted, he pressed his lips to her ear. “But you like it when I call you a whore, sometimes. Don’t you?”

It was as true as when he’d told her she liked blowing him. Still, annoying. Effie pushed him so she could get past him.

“Not if you mean it,” she said.

Bill looked surprised. “I would never mean it.”

“No?” Effie paused to look him over. “You see a girl on the street in a short dress, you call her a slut. You head over to a domestic violence call, you say later that if any woman talked to you the way that one did to her husband, you’d probably want to slap her around, too.”

“Shit. I said that one time.” Bill’s jaw dropped.

“But you said it.”

He shook his head. “I would never hit a woman without provocation, Effie, and you f*cking know that. But I don’t think a set of tits and a vagina get you off the hook for bad behavior. If you want to dish it out, you should be ready to take it back. That call you’re talking about? The woman had been needling that guy for days, and when he wouldn’t rise to her taunts, she slapped him in the face. Four times before he finally hauled off and punched her, and she called us.”

Effie pressed her lips together. “How do you know?”

“Because they made a report,” Bill said as if she was stupid. “She admitted to it. She signed her f*cking name to the report, and the two of them went off together making f*cking goo-goo eyes all over the place, I almost had to arrest them both for public indecency.”

“Oh.”

Bill put his hands on his hips. “Yeah.”

“Well,” she said after a moment. “You still think it’s okay to judge a woman based on what she’s wearing.”

“Everyone does that!”

“Does that make it okay?” she shot back. “You think it’s all right to catcall a girl as she walks down the street because she decided to put on a pretty dress today that had nothing to do with you? And if she answers you, she’s a slut, and she’s a whore bitch if she doesn’t.”


Bill looked utterly stunned. His mouth opened, then shut. Opened again.

“The f*ck is wrong with you tonight? I was talking about how you like it sometimes when I talk dirty to you, Effie. You asked me to! And it’s hot, sometimes, sure, but I didn’t really mean... Dammit. A guy can’t get a break. You want us to notice you when you look good, and if we don’t, you get all bent out of shape.”

“I’m just saying, what if that was your daughter walking down the street?” she said abruptly and clamped her mouth shut before she could totally lose her shit all over him.

“But I don’t have a daughter,” Bill said as though that made it all okay.

Effie let out a long, slow breath. “Right.”

Bill took a step closer to her but stopped and put his hands up when she bristled. “Right, okay. So what the hell is all this about?”

“If you ask me if I’m on my period, I swear to God I will punch you in the junk.”

Bill laughed. “Uh-huh. See? Totally okay for a chick to threaten violence, but not a dude. Yep. That’s equality, all right.”

“Thanks for letting me suck your dick. And for dinner.” She lifted her chin and crossed her arms over her chest. “I’ll get out of here.”