He stared down at the broccoli. “I don’t like broccoli.”
“Why not?”
“Because it’s green.”
“When was the last time you tried it?” she asked.
“I don’t like it,” he repeated, as if this answered her question.
“Eat around it.”
He stood there eyeing the offending vegetable like it was a bomb, and then his stomach grumbled loudly.
“Eat.”
Kicking out a chair, he sat. “Thanks,” he said around a mouthful. “I hate to cook.”
She smiled. “My mom always said I should know how to feed a man. She says most women assume a guy’s most critical body part is considerably lower than his stomach, but they’re wrong. She says it’s a man’s stomach that does his thinking for him, not—” She broke off and felt herself flush. “Anyway, cooking is how she caught all her boyfriends.”
“Was your dad one of those boyfriends?”
Ali’s dad lived in Tacoma, and last she’d heard, he was a bartender. By all accounts, he was an effortless charmer who meant well, but she knew him as the guy with all the unfulfilled promises. Long gone were the days where she’d wait by the phone for the call he’d promised, but the memories still made her ache a little bit. “He didn’t stick around. The first boyfriend who did was a dentist.” She let out an involuntary shudder. “He was a pincher.”
“A pincher?” Luke asked.
“Yeah.” She opened and closed her first finger and thumb together a few times to demonstrate. “Whenever we annoyed him, he’d pinch. Always where the bruise wouldn’t show too. Hurt like hell.”
Luke didn’t show much in expression or body language, and he had a way of staying very still. But his eyes had gone hard, pissed off on behalf of a young girl he’d never known.
“Your mom let him touch you?” he asked.
“Oh, we didn’t tell her,” Ali said. “She liked him so much, it would have killed her. But one day we were shopping and she saw a bruise on my sister in the dressing room.”
“I hope she kicked his ass,” Luke said.
“She took a baseball bat to him.” Her smile faded because Mimi had cried for a week when he’d moved out. “She didn’t bring another guy home for a long time after that.”
“Good.” Hooking his bare foot in a chair, he pushed it toward her. “Sit with me.”
She put the pan in the sink and sat, shaking her head when he offered her a bite.
“So you learned to cook so you could catch a man?” he asked.
“No. I learned to cook because I like to eat,” she said, “not because I want a string of boyfriends. Because I don’t.” Not until she figured out how to pick them anyway. She watched Luke work his way carefully around the broccoli. “Broccoli has almost as much calcium as milk,” she told him, amused. “It gives you strong bones.”
His gaze slid to hers, and she felt her face heat again. He had strong bones. And as they both knew, a few minutes ago, he’d had one particularly strong boner to boot. But mercifully he let the comment go.
Setting down his fork, he opened the envelope she’d left on the table, staring in surprise at the cash she’d carefully counted out. “What’s this?” he asked.
“What I owe you for a few nights’ stay. I prorated what I was paying monthly. I hope that’s okay.”
He was quiet for a full sixty seconds, and when he spoke, his voice was low. “I got the impression you were hard up for money.”
“Not that hard up.”
He looked at her for a long moment, then set the envelope back on the table and pushed it toward her with one finger.
She slid it back. “I pay my debts.”
“How much does it leave you?” he asked.
She felt a small smile curve her lips. “Worried I won’t have enough to find another place?”
“Hell yes.”
She laughed softly. “Don’t be. I’m not your responsibility.” She wasn’t anyone’s responsibility and hadn’t been in a long time.
He went back to eating. When a tiny piece of broccoli found its way on his fork, he gave it a look, but shoved it in his mouth.
She waited, but he just shrugged.
“Don’t overwhelm me with praise or anything,” she said dryly.
He flashed a quick grin. “It’s good,” he said. “Really good. You’re holding up your end of the bargain.” His smile faded. “But I’m not taking your money, Ali.”
Bossy alpha. She got up and loaded the few dishes into the dishwasher, trying to pay no attention to the silent man behind her. Hard to do when he rose and put his dish in for her.
A neat, bossy alpha.
“You should go back to bed,” she said softly. “You look beat.”
He gave her a long look, which she decided was best not to decipher, before walking away, leaving her alone with her thoughts.
Ali didn’t sleep well and got up before dawn. With several hours before she had to be at the shop, she quietly made her way to the garage. She pulled on an apron that said Florists Do It with Style. Retrieving fresh clay from her storage bin, she worked it for a few minutes, trying to lose herself.
From the other side of the garage door, she heard a car pull up, but it didn’t really register until the doorbell sounded. Startled at the early hour and pissed that another reporter might have found Luke, she wiped her hands on her apron and left the garage, moving quickly through the house to the living room. Prepared to kick some ass, she opened the front door, shocked to find two police officers standing there, flanking Teddy.
“Are you Ali Winters?” one of the cops asked.
“Yes, yes, it’s her,” Teddy said impatiently.
“Is something wrong?” Her heart dropped. “My mom? My sister, Harper? Are they okay?”
“This isn’t about your damn family,” Teddy said in disbelief. “It’s about the fact that you stole that money to f**k me over. You’re that pissed at me, that you had to try to ruin me?”
Ali shook her head in confusion. “What?”
“Ma’am,” one of the cops said, “we need to bring you down to the station to ask you some questions.”
Her heart stuttered to a stop just as someone came up behind her. Luke. She could feel the warm strength of him at her back.
“What’s the problem here?” he asked calmly.
“Who the hell are you?” Teddy demanded.
Luke ignored him and waited for the officers to speak.
“We have a situation in regards to a theft that occurred at the town offices over the weekend,” the first cop said. “A briefcase of money went missing from Ted Marshall’s office.”
Ali felt the horror fill her—they thought she’d stolen the money?
“It didn’t go missing,” Teddy said. “She stole it to get back at me for breaking up with her.”
“Hey,” Ali said, “I broke up with you!”
The officer went on as if neither of them had spoken. “The missing cash was from Friday night’s town auction. According to several eyewitnesses, you were the last one in his office.”
“Twice,” Teddy said. “You were let into the office first by Gus on Saturday and then again by Aubrey on Sunday. Christ, Ali, how could you do this to me? I thought we were friends, at least.”
“Friends don’t sneak out in the middle of the night,” she said, hating that they had an avid audience soaking up the exchange. “And I didn’t steal anything.” She recognized one of the cops. He’d been in the shop to buy flowers for his girlfriend. She spoke directly to him. “I’ve never stolen anything. Not once in my whole life.”
Well, except she had. She winced. “Okay,” she said, “so maybe one time I took a lip gloss from the drugstore, but I was twelve and stupid and my mom made me take it back. I had to work there for free for a whole day to make up for it. I haven’t stolen anything since.”
The second cop was rubbing his temple. Men did that a lot around her. Apparently she gave good headache.
“You have to believe me,” she said. “I didn’t take any cash. How much is missing?”
“All of it,” Teddy said tightly. He was wearing khakis and an untucked, white button-down shoved to his elbows. He looked like he’d walked right out of a GQ ad, but instead of feeling her heart sigh, it hardened. The dreamy quotient of Teddy Marshall had run out.
“So you just showed up here to accuse Ali?” Luke asked him.
Teddy stared at him. “Seriously, who the hell are you?”
“Detective Lieutenant Luke Hanover.”
“My landlord?”
“Ex-landlord,” Luke said.
Ali’s stomach was somewhere in the vicinity of her toes, so she couldn’t process the exchange of testosterone at the moment. “So what now?” she asked the first cop.
“You come to the station for some questions, ma’am.”
“Even though I didn’t do it?” she asked.
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Ali,” she managed. “You keep saying ma’am, and I want to look over my shoulder to see who you’re talking to. Why can’t you just question me right here?”
“That’s not policy, ma’—”
At her glare, he wisely swallowed the “ma’am” part.
“Look, Ali,” Teddy said, clearly attempting to soften his voice. Once upon a time that might have charmed her, but not today. “You’re pissed at me,” he said. “I get that. So just give us the money back, and we’ll all go to our separate corners. No harm, no foul.”
“I don’t have the money; I didn’t take it!”
When the two cops just looked at her, she let out a breath. “I didn’t.”
“Go through her stuff,” Teddy said wearily. “There isn’t much. It shouldn’t take long.”
Luke put a hand to Teddy’s chest, halting his forward progress. “No one’s searching her or the premises,” he said, still calm but with one-hundred-percent authority. “Not without consent or a warrant.”
Ali turned and looked at him for the first time. He was in black board shorts, still damp enough to cling to his body. No shirt. Bare feet. A towel was slung over his shoulder, his hair wet and uncombed.
He’d been in the water, she realized, swimming or maybe on the paddleboard she’d seen leaning against the back deck. She wasn’t sure if she was grateful for his intervention or pissed that he clearly thought she needed the protection from a search due to what they might find.
“I didn’t do it,” she told Luke. “They can search.”
“Good.” Teddy pushed his way in through the door. “Where’s the stuff you took out of Town Hall, Al?”
“I brought the floral arrangements to the senior center yesterday,” she said. She pointed to her purse and the box of small ceramics on the foyer bench. “That’s all that’s left from the auction.”
Teddy reached for the box, but the first cop stopped him. “It can’t be you, Marshall, sorry,” the cop said, and grabbed the box.
Ali heard all her things clink together. “Careful—”
She broke off when he pulled out the pine tree pencil pot.
“What the hell?” Teddy said incredulously. “You gave that to me.” He turned to Ali, brows knit together. “You stole it out of my office?”
“Took back,” she corrected. “I took it back because you didn’t deserve it.”
“You stole it. Where’s the money, Ali?”
“I didn’t take the money!”
The first cop pulled something out of the pot.
“Jesus,” Teddy said as they all stared at a bank bill wrapper, the kind that was used to hold together a stack of money, exactly like the bill wrappers that’d been used on the auction money.
He whirled on her now, eyes furious. “Where’s the money?”
“I…” At a loss, she shook her head. “I didn’t know that was in there.”
The cops looked at each other, faces impenetrable, their entire demeanor shifting from fairly relaxed to on guard and far more alert.
“Oh no,” Ali told them. “This isn’t what you think. That bill wrapper must have been in there when I took the pot.”
“So you admit to taking the pot, ma’am?” the first cop asked.
“Well, yes, but…” She trailed off at their expressions. Clearly, they thought she was full of shit. She didn’t dare turn to look at Luke to see if he felt the same. “I didn’t steal the money,” she said, suddenly feeling very small and very alone. “I didn’t.”
Teddy blew out a breath and shoved his fingers through his hair. “What now?” he asked the two cops.
“Do we still have your permission to search the premises?” one of them asked her.
“You don’t need her permission,” Teddy said. “I shared this place with her. It’s half mine. I give you permission.”
“Wrong,” Luke said with that same steely authority in his voice. “You no longer live here or have rights to the property.”
Again, Ali didn’t know whether to be touched or upset. She went with upset. “Search,” she said. “Please. You’ll see…”
They started with the living room and kitchen. Luke stood by, watchful. Impassive.