07 It Had to Be You Read online

  “I can’t imagine why. It’s his baby, a feather in his cap. And he likes feathers in his cap.” She shook her head. “I’ve never seen him lose it like he did this morning. He was…”

  “Scared,” Luke said.

  She nodded. “Yeah. I think he really believes I stole the money.”

  “It does have a woman scorned feel to it.”

  She didn’t say anything to that, not wanting to know if he thought her capable of being that scorned woman. “I’m meeting my lawyer tomorrow.”

  “Who?” Luke asked.

  “Zach Mullen.” She watched as he pulled out his cell phone. “He’s an old high school friend,” she told him. “What are you doing?”

  “How old is he? He looks twelve.” Luke showed her the screen. He’d brought up Zach’s Facebook profile, where indeed his pic revealed a young-faced Zach, clearly fresh from a haircut, since he had a ring of pale skin across his forehead and the tips of his ears. His latest status update—from an hour ago—indicated he was at a sports bar in L.A.

  Hooters.

  “He’s there for business,” she murmured. “You’re pretty quick with the research. I know you went back to your laptop. What else did you find out about me?”

  He just looked at her.

  “Come on,” she said. “You’re an off-duty detective, and I got taken from your house for questioning on the missing fifty thousand. What else did you dig up about me?”

  Luke shrugged. “A few things.”

  “Like what? That I hated elementary school so much I used to hide at the park and my mom had to take off work and come find me?”

  “You were a decent student though,” he said. “And you took dance.”

  “I loved dance,” she murmured. “But I quit early; I had no coordination.”

  He slid her a look. “Or you were worried about the cost.”

  Or that…

  “You moved around a lot,” he said. “There’s a few gaps in the known addresses.”

  She slid down a little farther in the seat. Yeah, there’d been gaps, which matched her mom’s gaps in income, when they’d bunked on friends’ couches here and there. “Sometimes my mom would lose jobs if she couldn’t keep certain hours. Or…whatever.”

  He nodded, no judgment on his face. And, thankfully, no pity. She hated going back there in her mind, but she hated even more that he knew so much about her. “What else?” she wanted to know.

  “You applied to transfer to several different state schools, even getting into a few of them,” he said, “but you didn’t go. No word why, though I can guess.”

  She felt a horrifying burning behind her lids. “You’re thorough,” she managed.

  He shrugged.

  Ali wasn’t sure what that meant, but decided she didn’t want to know.

  “Tell me about Zach,” he said.

  “We went to high school together. He’s a good lawyer.”

  “Yeah?” He slid her a look. “How long has he been practicing?”

  Ali hesitated.

  “How long, Ali?”

  “He just passed the bar.”

  His mouth tightened. “You need someone who knows what they’re doing.”

  “Zach does,” she said. She hoped. “And it’s not like I’ve been arrested.”

  But you could be… She knew he was thinking this but thankfully it went unsaid.

  “Where to, Ali?”

  She knew she should come up with a plan, but suddenly she couldn’t speak.

  Reaching out, Luke pulled something from her hair.

  Dried clay.

  He let his fingers linger, then tucked a strand of hair behind her ear. “I’ve already asked,” he said very quietly, very seriously. “But I’m going to ask again. Are you okay?”

  She had no idea, but she suspected no. No, she wasn’t okay, not even a little bit. She’d been unceremoniously dumped, made homeless, and could be arrested at any moment. It’d been a craptastic week.

  But hell if she’d say it. Couldn’t say it, really, since the lump in her throat had grown to the size of a regulation football. So she nodded instead, acting perfectly okay…But she could feel the heat and strength of him, and for one shocking moment, she wanted to crawl into his lap and lay her head down on his shoulder. She wanted to burrow in and feel his arms close around her again. She wanted to feel the brush of his rough jaw as he pressed it to hers and whispered silly little nothings in her ear, like “you’re going to be all right.”

  But he didn’t do any of that.

  Because he didn’t want to be involved. She suspected it was his greatest wish to just be left alone, which, of course, was pretty much the opposite of her wish. “You can drop me at the B and B,” she said.

  “Stay with me,” he said softly. “But you should understand that there are things you don’t know about me.”

  “Are you an ax murderer?”

  “No.”

  “You beat up old ladies?”

  “No. Jesus, Ali.”

  “Do you call your mom every once in a while?” she asked.

  Something came and went in his eyes. The very slightest glimmer of amusement. “Yes.”

  “Then I know enough,” she said.

  “You don’t know that there are death threats being lobbed at me.”

  This had her taking a beat. “Seriously?”

  “I think it’s probably just the average, run-of-the-mill nutjob news junkie, but I can’t be sure.”

  “That’s okay,” she said. “There’s something you don’t know about me.” She smiled proudly. “I’m a three-time, sharpshooter Lucky Harbor Arcade champion.”

  “You’re an…arcade champion.”

  “Three time,” she repeated. “Missed that in your research, didn’t you? I can shoot all my ducks in a row, ask anyone. Ask Lance, he runs the ice cream shop next to the arcade. I beat him just last week on a break.”

  Luke laughed softly. “Well in that case…”

  She smiled, but his faded and he shook his head. “This isn’t a joke, Ali.”

  “As I’m all too well aware,” she said quietly. “Look, thanks for the accommodations. I’ll pull my weight, I promise.”

  He looked a little taken aback at the statement. Did he do all the giving in every aspect of his life? If so, it made her ache for him, because she understood. That she’d found this common ground between them felt both unsettling and comforting.

  She was going to have to get over that. And him.

  Chapter 9

  Luke drove up the narrow road toward his grandma’s house, the rocky landscape made up of skyscraper-tall granite boulders that had been pushed here twenty thousand years ago, during the last Ice Age.

  His passenger stared out her window at the rocks, as still and quiet as the surface of the water in the harbor far below.

  This was unusual enough, but there was an element to Ali’s silence that worried him. She was giving off a sadness, a sense of loneliness that made him ache for her.

  He’d seen her with her family, who maybe rivaled his own family for the crazy quotient. But it was clear that she loved them with everything she had.

  He understood that too.

  “Thanks,” she finally said softly, “for coming for me.”

  She hadn’t called, and that got to him too. She hadn’t wanted to be a burden. She’d asked him if he was worried she’d steal from him. The thought had never crossed his mind. She had the face of an angel, but that wasn’t why he trusted her.

  It was her eyes.

  Christ, those eyes.

  And bastard he might be, he wasn’t usually wrong about people.

  “You’ve done a lot for a perfect stranger you found squatting in your house,” Ali murmured. “Or maybe not so perfect when it comes right down to it…”

  “Perfect is overrated,” he said. “And you’re welcome, but I didn’t do it just for you.”

  She turned to him. “No?”

  “No.”

  “Then…