The tea burned her tongue, but she didn’t care. She needed something in her mouth to stop herself from screaming NO! Because he wasn’t wrong. Rocco and Paul were beyond annoying in their attitude toward keeping her safe. They’d been like that since the first time some jerk on the block had started making fun of her. They were good brothers. They were also total idiots who would punch first and think later, which was very not good if the person who ended up with a broken nose—or, she had to face it, worse—wasn’t someone threatening her.
She put the cup down and looked around her kitchen, taking stock of the boxes of tiles, the PVC pipe and paint brushes—really anywhere but at the man in her kitchen who discombobulated her thinking.
Her brothers were the last ones she needed at her house. And while Tess was supportive in her own super-quiet way and Lucy as enthusiastic as she was impulsive, on the off chance her grandfather hadn’t just slipped into the space between the walls on his own, she didn’t want to put either of her friends in danger by having them stay here.
Finally, her gaze landed on Ford. More specifically, she zeroed in on his hands as they practically dwarfed his tea mug. They were strong hands. Capable hands. The kind that had felt so good on her skin as he—
Girl! You’re in danger!
Gina stopped that line of thought before it could go any further. “Are you any good with your hands?”
Ford set down the mug on her counter and smiled. “I’d like to think so.”
She couldn’t swallow the tea in her mouth as she stared at him and the cocky upward curl of his lips. It just sat there like hot judgment on her tongue while her body forgot how to do basic tasks.
Oh, she remembered how good he was with his hands. She’d only been remembering in vivid detail what he’d done in the hotel room every night in her own lumpy bed. Where was the hole in the floor, because she really wanted to slide down into it. No, really. There was a hole in the floor of her kitchen. Owning a Victorian in need of so many repairs really did have its privileges. Too bad she’d moved the kitchen table over it so no one would accidentally fall.
Nice move being all safety first, Regina.
At the realization that once again the embarrassing truth of the matter was written in red all over her face and that there was no escaping it, her body suddenly remembered how to move. She swallowed the tea, set down the mug on the counter, and gave Ford what she prayed was a snotty glare.
“I think this whole thing is crap, but if you’re going to stay, you’re going to have to help with renovations.”
There. That should send him running.
It should have. But he didn’t disappear.
“I worked my way through college on a construction crew.” He picked up his mug and took a drink, never looking away from her. “Home renovation is in my wheelhouse.”
Of course it was.
…
It was hours later, after the crime scene techs had left, leaving a trail of black fingerprint dust behind them and a big X of police tape across the door leading to the attic stairs, before Ford got a chance to call his captain.
He’d basically blackmailed Gina into letting him stay. He could claim it was for his job all he wanted, but it wasn’t.
Initially, it may have been to save Gina from having to deal with Gallo, but the captain was going to try to tap her for information one way or another. If Ford had said no and Gallo wasn’t an option, the captain would have gone with someone else. That didn’t make lying to her any better. It made it worse. Why? Because there were other ways to get the information they needed.
But in the kitchen, with her brothers hovering and crowding her space, she’d looked like she’d needed his help. And he wanted to keep her safe. He hadn’t lied about that. If someone had killed her grandpa, odds were they’d come back to check that they’d not left anything at the scene. And the idea had just come to him. Stay with Gina and keep her safe, keep the captain from getting anyone else to stake her out, and keep her close enough that if her bonehead brothers were getting more involved in the Esposito organization, he might be able to protect her.
He glanced around the house he’d just agreed to help renovate for a few days.