Cuff Me (12 page)

J
ill’s place was a ten-minute walk from Vincent’s apartment, which was handy when he had what she thought of as his “fits.” Those abrupt, semifrantic phone calls that meant he was onto something.

Hadn’t happened in a while though.

Both because she’d been in Florida for three months, and because in the month she’d been back, they’d both been thoroughly stumped by the Lenora Birch case.

Funny how she’d almost missed his barked commands to drop whatever she was doing and come over.

This interruption in particular had been welcome. Jill had been sitting on the center of her bed, surrounded by bridal magazines and trying to get excited about… something. Anything.

What did it say about her that the latest trend in bridal bouquets (yellow roses were apparently “in”) didn’t even
cause a blip on her radar, but a lead in a homicide case revved her motors?

Right now, Jill didn’t care.

Because she and Vin were
back
. She could feel it.

She knocked at his door, but he didn’t answer, so she let herself in.

“You know, you should really lock your front door,” she called, shrugging out of her coat. “Being a cop and all.”

Still no answer. She walked toward his living room and found him precisely where she expected to. Where she’d found him a thousand times before.

Scribbling frantically at his whiteboard.

She watched him for a moment. He was wearing jeans and a white T-shirt, a surprising change from his usual black. The muscles of his back rippled beneath the thin fabric as his arm moved furiously across the board, scribbling whatever was going through his head at warp speed.

His black marker was starting to run out, and Jill wordlessly went to the small, utilitarian desk in the corner and pulled out a fresh pen.

She moved to his side, uncapping it and then fluidly swapping the dying pen in his hand with the fresh one in hers.

He barely paused. Didn’t grunt so much as a thank-you, and Jill smiled.

She’d missed this.

She tossed the dead pen in the trash and then settled down on his couch to wait.

And wait, and wait.

She tried to read his notes as he wrote them but his handwriting was atrocious, and he kept moving back and forth from one end of the board to the other.

Finally, finally he stopped, although likely it was more a function of him running out of space than his brain slowing down.

He capped the pen.

Stepped back, and stared at the board.

He held up the marker without turning around. “Thanks for this.”

Jill lifted an eyebrow. Acknowledgment of her usefulness. That was… new.

She pushed off the couch and moved beside him so they stood shoulder-to-shoulder. Actually, more like shoulder to waist, since he was several inches taller.

“What am I looking at?” she asked.

He tossed the marker on the coffee table, then linked his fingers behind his head, turning in a circle.

“I had a breakthrough.”

She smiled. “Yeah, I figured.”

He glanced at her then, seeming to see her for the first time since she’d arrived, and he dropped his hands, looking her up and down.

“You’re in your pajamas.”

She glanced down at her pink-and-white-striped flannel pants and white tank. “Well, you called me at nine o’clock on a Sunday night. Not quite my bedtime, but let’s just say I’d put my ball gown away for the evening.”

He’d already turned back to his boards. His main one—the one he called
the
board—was more barren than last time she’d seen it, and the stack of papers on the table told her that he’d recently decided he was on the wrong track.

“Talk to me,” she said patiently.

“We’ve decided that pushing someone over a railing
smells more like impulse than premeditation, right? If you’re going to show up at someone’s house with the intent to kill, you take a gun, maybe a knife—”

“Right,” Jill said. “You don’t think, ‘gosh, I want to off someone; I’m going to wait until they’re in a prime position on the second-floor landing and then push them.’”

“Exactly. So we’ve been operating under the assumption that this is a crime of passion.”

“Right…” she said, waiting.

“It
is
a crime of passion, but we got the passion wrong,” he said, turning to face her, eyes excited.

Jill shook her head. “Explain?”

“Something’s been bothering me about the way she died,” he continued hurriedly. “We know that someone pushed her, likely in a fit of rage.”

“Sure, but that’s not all that unusual—”

Vincent held up a finger. “No, what’s been bothering me is that everything we’ve learned about Lenora Birch says that she’s not the type to provoke someone. Almost everyone we’ve talked to, from the housekeeper to her boyfriend, said she’s hard to rattle. Cool to the point of being cold.”

Jill nodded, still having no idea where he was going with all this.

“Everyone except one person said that,” he said.

Jill chewed her lip as she mentally ran through every conversation they’d had, every person they’d interviewed.

“Her agent,” Jill said. “The Lenora that her agent described was a different person. Fiery, temperamental, passionate.”

“Exactly.” He took a step nearer, his eyes blazing. “Passionate. This was a crime of passion, but not of the
romantic, sexual nature. If Lenora could be provoked into saying something that would piss off another person to the point of murder, it means they would
both
have to be fired up.”

“Okay?”

He breathed out a sigh of irritation. “We’ve been looking at her lovers, and lovers of her lovers. But the Lenora we keep hearing about would have been indifferent if she were talking about a husband or a boyfriend, and nobody pushes an indifferent person to their death.”

“Not entirely true,” Jill said, holding up a finger. “For some people there might be no more trigger quite as hot as being ignored by someone you love.”

He shook his head. “Lenora was nearly seventy. The people in her life would have learned not to love her that deeply. They would have been used to it.”

“So what are you saying?”

“I’m saying that we’ve been trying to figure out the murder’s trigger, when what we really should have been looking for is Lenora’s. What would have set her off enough to say something that would drive another person to murder her. She’s not a woman that inspires great passion because she doesn’t
feel
great passion. Except when talking about—”

“Her career,” Jill said, finally understanding what he was getting out. “Lenora Birch cared about her career—her legacy—more than anything.”

He nodded. “Someone that threatened that—challenged that—it would have pissed her off. She would have been—”

“Cruel,” Jill finished for him. “Her agent said that Lenora could be cruel when she felt her legacy as an actress was threatened.”

“We’ve been looking at people that Lenora’s wronged on the personal front, but it’s the professional one we need to pay attention to. It didn’t dawn on me before, because she’s retired, but then I thought of my dad. He’s retired, but so much of his self-worth still stems from his identity as a cop.”

Jill wandered closer to his board, feeling both elated and overwhelmed. “The woman’s been in acting since she was fifteen. There are literally decades of old rivalries. Holly Adams was just the tip of the iceberg…”

“So we start with her,” Vincent said. “Something tells me the woman will be all too happy to provide a list of all her and Lenora’s old acting buddies that might be holding a grudge.”

“Yes, she will,” Jill said slowly, as everything began to settle around her. She felt both the most calm she’d been in weeks—months—and the most invigorated.

She turned back toward Vincent and saw that he was feeling the same things as her. Elation. Relief.

“We did it,” he said, sounding slightly awestruck. “We fucking did it.”

Vincent lifted his hands to his sides as a wide grin spread over his face, and then he looked at his hands in surprise, as though not sure what to do with them—not sure what to do with the unfamiliar sensation of happiness.

And then he apparently figured it out. Vincent’s hands found their way to either side of her face, and he bent his head to hers.

And kissed her.

The kiss was over before Jill even realized it had begun.

Nothing but a firm meeting of lips.

A victory kiss, if you will. The type of kiss a friend gives another friend in an impulsive moment of triumph.

There was nothing romantic.

Nothing sexual.

Vincent had already moved away from her, his attention shifted back to his precious board.

Jill lifted her fingers to her lips.

It was nothing. It meant nothing.

But if it was nothing… why was her hand shaking? Why were her lips tingling?

If it was nothing…

Why did she want him to do it again?

V
in helped himself to yet another piece of pizza and tried not to stare at Jill’s profile as she chewed absently on the end of a pencil.

She looked completely unperturbed. As though an hour earlier their lips hadn’t collided in a careless, casual victory kiss.

He took a sip of beer.
Casual my ass.

That kiss had been…

There were at least half a dozen reasons he shouldn’t have done it. The fact that she belonged to another man being number one.

But reason number two was a very close second.

He shouldn’t have done it, because now he couldn’t stop thinking about it.

Couldn’t stop wanting to do it again.

Except longer this time—he would linger. Let his hands
explore her curves as his tongue slipped into her mouth, learning what she liked…

“Fuck,” he muttered.

She glanced up from her notebook. “What’s up?”

“Nothing.”

Jill reached out and grabbed the neck of her own beer bottle, twisting it between her fingers before taking a sip and staring at him all the while.

“What?” he asked, irritated.

“Nothing,” she said sweetly.

He glared. “Are you mocking me right now?”

“Only because you’re so cute when you’re riled.”

“You’re a nightmare,” he muttered.

“Oh, come on,” she said. “I think I’ve been pretty good lately. I haven’t played the ‘what’s your favorite color’ game, or tried to set you up with that cute barista at the Times Square Starbucks. I haven’t forced any Abba sing-along, or…”

“What, you, like, want a medal for not driving me nuts?”

She sat back and smiled, happy with herself. “So I’m not driving you nuts?”

Damn. He’d walked right into that one. “You are.”

She sighed. “I can’t win with you these days. You gripe if I talk about the wedding too much. If I don’t talk about the wedding at all, you make snide ‘trouble in paradise’ comments. It’s like—”

“Don’t move to Chicago.”

Jill broke off and stared at him in shock. “What?”

Vincent wiped his mouth with the paper towel doubling as a napkin as he finished chewing his pizza. “You heard me.”

She let out a little laugh. “Yeah, I was sort of hoping I heard you wrong.”

He forced himself to meet her gaze steadily. “Don’t leave, Jill. You belong in New York.”

You belong with me.

She set her beer carefully on the table. “It’s not that I want to leave New York, Vin—”

“Then don’t.”

“It’s not that simple,” she said, her voice rising a notch.

“Well, make it that simple.”

She snapped her notebook on the table. “You’re impossible. Just because you’ve got this whole lone wolf thing going on doesn’t mean that the rest of us want to be alone forever.”

Now it was his turn to toss his notebook aside. “Who said shit about being alone forever? That’s why you’re moving to Chicago? You think you’re
alone
?”

“No, I just—” She reached up and tightened her ponytail the way she did when she was stressed. “Come on, Vin. You knew things were going to change when one of us met someone. We can’t just keep doing this forever, being each other’s everything.”

He knew she didn’t mean her words to hurt, but they cut like a knife all the same. “I’m not asking you to be my everything,” he said quietly. “I just hate that this guy swoops into your life for all of a couple months, and you’re ready to throw it all away.”

Vin didn’t look at her as he said it. It was the closest he’d come to admitting… something, and he couldn’t bear to see what might be laughter on her face.

He heard the sound of her chair scooting backward before she moved closer, dropping into the chair right next to his.

Her hand found his knee. “Is that what you think? That I’m throwing you away?”

He said nothing.

Her fingers squeezed and she leaned down, trying to catch his eye. “I’m always here for you. Even if I’m in a different time zone, you can call me anytime and I’ll come running. You know that.”

He swallowed. He did know that. Knew that he’d do the same for her.

He also knew that if he kept on with this push-pull thing, he’d risk losing her. He’d put a rift between them that couldn’t be fixed with a doughnut.

Vin forced himself to meet her eyes. “I’m sorry about the kiss.”

Her head snapped back a little. “Oh. Don’t apologize. It was… nothing.”

Burn
. “Right. I know. But I was out of line. I mean, if Tom found out.”

She gave a small smile. “Relax. It’s not like you slipped me tongue and copped a feel.”

Good God. Even her joking, off-the-cuff comment made him horny.

“Yeah, right,” he said, forcing a smile.

There was a moment of silence before she gave his leg a little squeeze. “We’re okay, right?”

“Sure.”

She pulled back, looking frustrated. “Would you talk to me? Please. I feel like there’s so much going on inside your head, but the second we get anywhere, you pull back. It’s almost like—”

“Almost like what?”

Their eyes clashed for several long tense moments, until she finally shook her head. “Nothing. Almost like nothing.”

Vincent felt a brief stab of disappointment until he reminded himself that it was for the best. That this was a conversation they could never have.

He pushed back from the table, grabbing at their empty plates so he had an excuse to walk away.

Vin heard her sigh of frustration and ignored it. He didn’t know what the hell she wanted from him. Sure, she thought she wanted honesty. She thought she wanted him to spill his guts.

But if she had a clue—even the tiniest clue—as to what had been going through his head for the past few weeks, she’d probably find a way to escape to Chicago early.

He dropped the plates noisily into the sink to be dealt with later and then braced his hands on the counter, letting his chin drop, just for a second, willing himself to get it together.

Vin was so lost in his dark thoughts that he didn’t realize Jill had approached until her arms wrapped around him from behind.

She squeezed his waist hard, and he felt her cheek nuzzle against the center of his back. Vin wasn’t particularly tall, but Jill was downright short. Perfect.

She’d always been perfect.

“We’re gonna be okay, right?” she asked, her voice muffled against his shirt.

Vin closed his eyes as his hand closed over clasped arms, his head tilting back so that the back of his head rested lightly on the top of hers.

And because he cared about her—cared about her so damn much—he did the only thing that he could.

He lied. “Yeah. Yeah, we’re gonna be all right.”