Ford glared out at the pristine backyard. “You’re an idiot.”
“Not when it comes to women.”
Okay, Frankie may have made the rounds a few dozen times among Waterbury’s single women, but that didn’t make him a relationship sage. “If that’s the case, then why is Felicia the only one of us in a committed relationship?”
“Are you kidding?” Frankie waved his hands over his body like a gameshow hostess showing off a prize. “You want me to limit the ladies of Waterbury’s access to all this ginger firefighter hotness? I’m not that cruel.”
Ford laughed. He couldn’t help it. Even when he was in a shitty enough mood to eat nails, Frankie’s good-natured lack of humility always cracked him up. The man really was a menace to the women of Waterbury. How in the hell he managed to stay friends with 99 percent of the women he dated was a mystery to Ford.
He couldn’t even get Gina to call him. Not that he’d called her.
He couldn’t initiate contact. But if she’d called, that would have been a different story. Too bad she hadn’t called. And the fact that she hadn’t told him just about everything he needed to know about her thoughts about things after their night together. And now he was stuck twiddling his thumbs for a week.
“What am I going to do?”
Frankie looked at him like he had two heads and neither of them had a brain. “Go tell her you’re into her.”
“Not about Gina.” Because there was nothing he could do about her, they’d both known that going into the other night. That’s probably what made it seem like more than it was and why he couldn’t seem to stop thinking about her. “What am I going to do about the suspension?”
“Dude.” Frankie shrugged. “I have no clue on that one. I’m a man who loves two things in this world and they both start with F—fighting fires and fucking.”
Ford snorted. “You’re so classy.”
“No, but I am honest about who I am and what I want.” His brother turned a very un-Frankie-like serious gaze on him. “Maybe you should try that.”
No detective work was necessary to figure the meaning behind that piece of advice out. Ford took another drink of his beer and tried to think of a way around the obvious, but there wasn’t one. There were good guys and bad guys. Cops and robbers. The two didn’t mix.
“Her grandfather was Big Nose Tommy Luca. Her brothers are Rocco and Paul Luca.”
“So?”
“I’m a detective.” He had no clue how to be more plain about the impossibility of it all than that.
“Are you trying to say that the wedding planner who blushes every time you even glanced in her direction at family lunch is actually a member of a dark crime family and does wet work as her side hustle?” Frankie didn’t even try to hide how funny he thought the idea was. By the time he got the words side hustle out, he was working so hard to hold back his laugh that his shoulders were shaking.
“No, you oversized smart-ass. She doesn’t have anything to do with them.”
“I see,” Frankie said and then took a long, slow drink of his beer. “So, what does your job have to do with a damn thing when it comes to you having a good time with a woman who wants you?”
It sounded ridiculously simple when his brother put it that way, but Frankie didn’t understand. “There are standards we’re expected to keep as detectives and regulations we have to meet in regards to who we associate with.”
“And wedding planners are on the list of those to be shunned, huh? I think I understand now why cops’ divorce rates are so high.”
That wasn’t it at all, and his brother knew that. “Go screw yourself, Frankie.”
Frankie let out a loud laugh. “I love you too, man.”
After that, the conversation turned to the Ice Knights and what a total shit trade the team had made when they’d made a play for Zach Blackburn. The defenseman nicknamed the Harbor City Hooligan had made so many boneheaded plays during the season—contributing to the Ice Knights missing the playoffs—that the Post had just named him the most hated man in Harbor City.