The house phone rang, and they both looked at it. “Is that your personal line?” he asked. “Or Marshall’s?”
“Well, it started out Teddy’s,” she said. “But I use it too.”
He gestured for her to go ahead and answer it then, since it couldn’t be for him. Few if any knew he was here. Certainly not his commander, who was still pissed off that Luke had taken time off in the middle of the media shitstorm. And not his parents or his sister, Sara.
The only people who might know—his two closest friends, Jack and Ben—were working. Jack, right here in Lucky Harbor as a firefighter, and Ben, off saving the world. Somewhere.
Ben, who’d suffered his own unimaginable losses, would have known to leave Luke alone, but not Jack. Jack would sniff him out sooner rather than later, but Luke wanted to have his head on straight first, because no one saw through him like Jack did.
Ali had answered the phone and was frowning. “You’re looking for who?” she asked. “Detective Lieutenant Luke Hanover?” She slid Luke a long look.
People usually had one of two reactions when finding out that he was in law enforcement: They either wanted to see his gun and be shown some self-defense moves, or they ran like hell.
Ali’s reaction was somewhere in between, but Luke didn’t care. What he cared about was not having anyone know he was here. He shook his head with a “hell no” look. He had no idea how whoever was looking for him had gotten this number but he was not here.
“How did you get this number?” she asked whoever was on the phone.
Luke liked the question and wondered at the answer.
“Uh-huh,” she said, still looking at Luke. “I see.”
Luke pointed to himself and shook his head, his message implicitly evident: He was not here.
Ali gave him a sweet smile and then lifted a single finger, indicating that she needed a minute.
Luke gave her his best intimidation stare—which was completely wasted on her because she turned her back to him.
“Yes, of course,” she said into the phone. “I understand why you’d want to speak to him.”
Okay, they were done here. Luke strode toward her, intending to physically remove the phone from her hand, but then she surprised him again by holding him off with a hand to his chest. “However,” she said, “you’re mistaken about Detective Lieutenant Hanover being here…uh-huh…”
She was getting an earful, he could tell. Ignoring the hand still on his chest—which was shockingly difficult to do—he motioned for her to hang the f**k up.
“Uh-huh…”
Again he reached for her, and again she pressed on his chest. “Hmm,” she said, reminding him he still had no idea what that meant. “Well, as I mentioned, he’s not here. Don’t call again.” She hung up and looked at Luke. “Interesting.”
“A reporter,” he guessed.
“Yes.”
He let out a breath. “Thanks.”
“No problem,” she said. “I’ve got lots of practice dodging callers. I honed the skill with bill collectors and various other annoyances for my mom. Had it down to a science before I knew my multiplication tables.”
Luke braced himself for the inevitable questions that most anyone else would have asked, but she surprised him yet again.
“I’ll get that phone line shut down for you before I go,” she said.
“Thanks. Ali—”
Someone knocked at the door, and he swore.
“I’ll get it,” she said. She started to head out of the kitchen, but stopped to look at him. “I take it you’re still not here?”
“Correct.”
She looked at him for a beat, her eyes softening just a little before she vanished. He had no idea what that meant, but a minute later he heard the front door open.
“Mr. Gregory,” she said, an obvious smile in her voice. “Everything okay?”
In the kitchen, Luke swore again. Mr. Edward Gregory was the closest neighbor, a disarmingly sweet-looking old man who was actually about as sweet as a rattler.
And once upon a time, for about three minutes, he’d been married to his grandma—which made him Luke’s biological grandfather. Not that Ali could possibly know that since he sincerely doubted Edward would have mentioned him. Luke hadn’t exactly done anything to be proud of in his grandfather’s eyes, unless one counted getting his sister sent to prison at age eighteen, and then two years later, letting his grandma die alone.
Luke and Edward hadn’t spoken in a while, a long while. And for now, he intended to keep it that way.
“Do you need help with the pot I started for you?” he heard Ali ask.
What the hell?
“No, I’m good,” Edward said. “I’m heading over to the senior center to take the whole crew to the buffet special.”
Luke glanced out the kitchen window. Parked behind Ali’s truck was a big, white van with SENIOR CENTER DIAL-A-RIDE across the side. His grandfather was old enough to be in the damn center himself, or at least close to it, but apparently he was driving for them instead.
“I saw an unfamiliar truck in the driveway,” Edward said. “Wanted to make sure you were okay.”
Luke’s truck was two years old. No one here in Lucky Harbor would recognize it except Jack, but Edward Gregory was a wily, old fox. And Ali was clearly kind and caring and all kinds of gullible. She’d probably fall for it hook, line, and sinker and let the old man in.
And wouldn’t that just make Luke’s day, having the confrontation that had been brewing for a decade, on top of everything else.
“Oh, aren’t you sweet,” Ali said. “But I’m just fine, Mr. Gregory. Thank you so much for asking.”
Was she actually protecting Luke? It’d been a while since he’d found himself in this position, needing help, and he didn’t know how to feel. He settled for uncomfortable and off balance.
“You still having problems with that kitchen plumbing?” his grandfather asked.
“Nope, it’s behaving now.”
Luke looked into the kitchen sink. Yeah. She was definitely protecting him. It was totally clogged. And suddenly, so was his throat. Christ, he was tired. Tired and messed up.
Ali and his grandfather continued to chitchat for what felt like ten years, but in reality was only a few minutes, with Edward continuing to angle for an invite in, turning on the charm full power.
But Ali held her own, laughing and keeping things light, while remaining utterly firm. And in another minute, the front door shut, and she was back.
Luke looked at her. “You deal pot to the geriatric crowd?”
She stared at him and then laughed. She laughed so hard she had to put her hands on her knees and double over. Finally she straightened and swiped at her eyes. “Oh my God, I needed that.” She got herself under control with what appeared to be some effort. “No, I don’t deal pot. I teach a weekly ceramics class at the senior center.” She shook her head at him. “You are such a cop.”
Guilty. “A detective.”
“So I heard.”
The damn reporter.
“A lucky cop too,” she went on.
His life was such complete shit that he had no idea what she could possibly be talking about. “Lucky?”
“With your neighbors,” she said. “Growing up, my neighbors were career arsonists and loan sharks.” She shrugged. “The arsonist was nice enough, but if I left my dolls out, he’d set their hair on fire.”
“And the loan shark?”
“He wasn’t crazy about little kids,” she said. “He used to tell me and my sister that he was going to sneak into our place one night and sell us on the white slave market, and then retire off his portion of the profit.”
Jesus. “How old were you?”
“I don’t know, twelve maybe. He never got the chance. When my mom found out what he’d said, she threw a lamp at his head. That straightened him out pretty quick.”
Luke wasn’t into civilians taking matters into their own hands, but in this case, the vigilante justice worked for him. “Good. And thanks for your help.”
She smiled. “I figured you didn’t want to socialize.”
“No.”
“So maybe it’s fate that I’m here.”
Fate? He’d call it bad luck. “I don’t put much stock in fate.” He believed in making his own path—even if that way was to f**k up a few times before he got it right. He never blamed something as intangible as fate for his screwups.
He blamed himself.
She stared at him for a moment, her eyes soft, as if maybe she felt sorry for him, of all things. “That’s okay,” she said. “I believe enough for the both of us.”
Well, hell.
He tried to shake it all off, but his eyes were gritty from the exhaustion. “I’m hitting the sack.” He walked away and took the stairs down to the basement.
It’d been years since he’d been down here, but not much had changed. The walls were a midnight blue with the galaxy painted on the ceiling. Pluto was still a planet. The door was covered in late ’90s radio station stickers, a virtual time capsule to Luke’s teenagehood.
Not that there was a lot to the time capsule. His parents, both doctors, had never put much stock in sentiment. They believed in higher education, hard work, and harder, tough love. And the cause, always the cause.
Right now that meant being in Haiti. Back then, it’d been Doctors Without Borders, which had left Luke and his older sister, Sara, more often in the care of their grandma up here in Lucky Harbor than at home in San Francisco.
Which had worked for Luke.
He’d had a lot of good times in Lucky Harbor, the best times of his life. His first climb. His first ski. His first boat race. His first jump off the pier. His first kiss. And given that Candy Jenson, a senior to his freshman, had also taken his virginity, he’d had just about every possible first here.
Good memories.
At least until several years later, on one particularly stupid night when he’d been with the girl of his dreams. They’d parked up at Pigeon Point to “stargaze,” aka have sex, in her daddy’s truck. They’d been doing just that when his sister had called him. Twenty years old to his eighteen, Sara hadn’t bothered with Luke all that often, but that night she’d been drinking and had needed a ride home.
Luke had still had two condoms left. He’d told his sister to give him a little bit.
But Sara hadn’t waited. She’d driven home drunk, blasting through a stop sign and killing an old man crossing the street.
Though Sara had never blamed him for her two years in jail, Luke still hadn’t forgiven himself, and their relationship had been strained ever since.
And then his grandma had died two summers later. Again, he hadn’t been the direct cause, but close enough.
He’d not come back to Lucky Harbor since.
The stack of boxes against the wall suggested that at some point this room had gone from housing a teenager to housing extra crap. His grandma Fay had never been able to throw anything of his or Sara’s away. She’d been the only sentimental one in the entire family.
Luke took a long look around and nudged the first box with his toe, eyes locking in on a lump of clay—the stupid snowman he’d once made at summer camp. It was missing an eye and a chunk of its head, but his grandma had cherished the thing, which had sat on her desk as a paperweight for as many years as he could remember.
Her desk was still upstairs in the den, but it was empty now, available for whichever tenant wanted to use it.
Luke stared at the snowman, reluctantly acknowledging the damn ache in his chest before shaking his head and heading straight for the bed. Kicking off his clothes and shoes with equal carelessness, he sprawled onto the mattress.
His last conscious thought was the image of Ali standing in his kitchen in nothing but her sexy bra and panties and that smile, the one that told him he was in a whole shitload of trouble, whether he liked it or not.
And for the record, he didn’t like it.
Chapter 4
Ali heard the door shut from the depths of the house, and then nothing.
Just silence in Luke’s wake.
She cleared up the shards on the floor from the ceramic pot she’d thrown and let out a long breath. Luke Hanover was a force. A big, edgy, enigmatic force.
And a cop. A detective lieutenant.
Good Lord.
Her mom loved men, all of them, but one thing she’d always imparted to her daughters was a general distrust of men of the law. Ali’s growing up years had been like living through a season of COPS, and she still tended to twitch when she heard a siren. Though she’d twitched at the sight of Luke for an entirely different reason.
In light of the fact that she was just dumped and therefore temporarily uninterested in anyone with a penis, this was deeply disturbing.
Luke was a good-looking guy, she told herself. Any woman would react. It was the way he carried himself—the sharp gaze that missed nothing and a calm, controlled demeanor even after finding a half-naked woman in his house. Although, there’d definitely been something in his expression suggesting a tension that had nothing to do with her. The earful she’d gotten from the reporter had confirmed this. Luke had clearly had a week far worse than hers, especially since his had involved dead people.
Clearly Luke dealt with more stress and responsibility on any given day than Ali had ever managed. She felt bad, but at the moment, she had her own problems.
Big problems.
Roof-over-her-head problems. She could stay here tonight, but she had every other night to worry about. Letting out a shaky breath, she lifted her chin. It was what the Winters women did, they faked their bravado. Then they told themselves everything was going to be okay. “It is going to be okay,” she said out loud to convince herself, because that would make it so. “It’s really going to be okay.”