Cuff Me by Lauren Layne

Author:Lauren Layne
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Published: 2016-03-28T23:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

Vincent could feel Jill’s heartbeat against his palm as he roughly pushed her back into her apartment.

He told himself the feel of it didn’t excite him—that her excitement didn’t excite him—but he’d be lying.

And it was excitement Jill was feeling, at least for a moment. He saw it in the flash of her eyes, the catch of her breath.

But then her pointy little chin jutted out in defiance as the anger overtook her once more.

Her anger was justified.

She had every right to be downright pissed, because damned if he hadn’t been widely out of line by allowing Holly Adams to manipulate them.

But damn. The old biddy had known all the buttons to push. Buttons that had been blinking red in Vincent’s peripheral vision since Jill’d returned from Florida with that fucking rock on her finger.

And he’d just… lost it.

“You don’t get to decide when we talk,” Jill was saying. “You don’t get to just stew for months—no, years—and then snap your fingers and decide to become an open book. In front of a suspect, no less.”

“Holly Adams didn’t kill Lenora Birch, and you know it,” he growled.

“Doesn’t mean we should be talking about our personal life in front of her!”

He leaned down so their faces were inches apart. “So you admit we have a personal life.”

“Of course we do. We’re friends. Although we won’t be if you keep this up.”

Vin yanked his palm back from where it had been resting against her collarbone.

It was as though she burned him. Not by the warmth of her skin, but by the white-chill fire of her words.

Friends.

Jill thought of him as a friend.

Vincent swallowed.

When had friends stopped feeling like enough?

When had that one simple word ripped down to his very gut?

She lifted her hands as she opened her mouth, then let them fall, and the defeated slump of her shoulders was a little jab to his heart.

“What’s going on, Vin?”

What’s going on is that I can’t stand the thought that in a couple short months, you’ll be some other man’s. What’s going on is that I only have a few weeks left to convince you that…

Fuck.

Fuck!

What did he want to convince Jill of?

That he was the man for her?

Because he wasn’t.

Jill’s favorite holiday was Valentine’s Day, for Chrissake.

Vincent didn’t do hearts and flowers. Or love.

But companionship and sex? He wanted those things.

With Jill?

He closed his eyes and rubbed a hand over his face. “I don’t know.”

“Well, you seemed to know when you were gossiping with Holly Adams,” she said, starting to put her hands on her hips, confrontation-style, only ending up wrapping her arms around her middle. Defensive-like.

She was literally withdrawing from him, and it made Vin want to punch something.

He moved past her toward the kitchen.

Vincent was no stranger to Jill’s home. They’d had dozens—hundreds—of working dinners at her kitchen table, arguing over Chinese food.

There’d been birthday parties, and dinner parties, and random Saturday night movie marathons when neither of them had any plans.

But as he opened her fridge, it hit him that this was the first time he’d been here since she’d gotten back from Florida.

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