He gave her a lazy grin that turned the air in her lungs into champagne bubbles. “I guess I’ll take that as a compliment?”
“From someone with my last name? You totally should.” Luca. She’d never figured her last name to be one of the barriers to her hooking up with the right guy. Not that her last name overrode the big nose or her bulgy eyes in that department, but it sure didn’t help. And thinking of her last name… “Any update on the cause of death and if someone is lurking in the shadows to make sure he or she can’t get tied to Grandpa’s death?”
Ford froze, his bottle halfway to his lips, for a second before setting it down on the porch. His unflinching gaze slid over to her. “Not yet.”
She chewed on that for a second, considered it against her initial distrust. It tasted different now that she’d spent some time with him. Ford was dependable, solid, and beyond normal chit-chat about her family, he never asked about her brothers. Maybe she’d gotten to be too cynical. Maybe it was time to stop expecting the worst from him.
She took a sip of her spiked lemonade and looked out at the solar lanterns hanging from her neighbor’s fence that were beginning to flicker on. “No one is going to be coming after me.” There really wasn’t, she knew it in her gut.
Ford pivoted on the step so he faced her and gave her a teasing wink. “You think this whole situation is a farce so I can get close to you?”
She snort-laughed, and it wasn’t a pretty or nice sound. “Definitely not that. But it wouldn’t be outside the realm of reality for someone to use me to get what they wanted.”
“Explain,” he said, his voice hard.
What? She was supposed to roll over and expose her soft, vulnerable underbelly to the guy who was only sitting beside her because it was his job? She shouldn’t do that, but the words came out anyway.
“When you look like I do, you get used to people treating you as if you were just a punchline and not an actual human being. So yeah, people have tossed me into the boys locker rooms, walked away from me mid-sentence when someone hot walks into the room, and—oh yeah—sent me to a hotel room when I hadn’t been invited. Stuff like that has happened to me for pretty much my entire life. I guess that’s why my brothers are so overprotective of me.”
She let out a shaky breath but refused to give into the nerves and the worry and the anxiety that ate away at her stomach lining whenever she had to confront the ugly reality of her life—no pun intended.
Ford didn’t say anything. He just looked at her with his head cocked to the side as if he couldn’t comprehend what she was saying. Really, why would he? He was hot, sexy, and had the kind of sense of humor that snuck up on a person. Then, he picked up his beer and drained it in one long swallow, tapping his thumb against the label after it was empty, a warm flush creeping up his cheeks.
“About the hotel—”
She smiled at him. She couldn’t help it. The guy was obviously embarrassed by that night. “You’re not to blame.”
“Still—”
Stomach cramping up at the idea of hearing an insincere apology meant to spare her feelings, Gina cut him off. “Don’t worry about me,” she said with more bravado than she felt. “My life has gotten a lot better since I’ve accepted who I am and said a collective fuck-you to the assholes of the world.”
He raised a dark eyebrow. “Accepted who you are?”
“An undateable.” She shrugged.
“That’s not right.”
She shrugged again. There was no arguing with the truth, and she was done fighting against it. It sucked, but it was what it was. “The world is a visual place. People judge others on what they look like, from skin color to age to physical ability to prettiness, within seconds of meeting. You know it’s true. They’ve done so many studies to show how beautiful people have more opportunities than those with average looks—or less-than-average looks.”
His hands were on her knees in the next breath, and he pivoted around so they faced each other. The fierceness of his expression made her catch her breath. His fingertips gripped her legs, and his thumb pressed into her inner thighs, sending jolts of electricity along her skin.