With a nod, he set about making a simple dinner for the three of them.
But he never forgot she was in the room.
With a dishtowel tucked into the front of his trousers as a makeshift apron, he got to work. While the chicken breasts browned in olive oil in the pan, she typed away, every now and then exclaiming, or drawing in a breath while she fiddled on her laptop. As the orzo softened, he glanced over his shoulder and saw her unlined brows meeting in the center, those gorgeous blue eyes zeroed in on the screen. Whatever she was looking at had her total and complete concentration as her fingers flew across the keyboard.
“It smells great in here,” Jon said at one point when he came back into the kitchen.
Gemma’s head shot up, a look of puzzlement on her face. “Oh, my God, it does,” she said. “I didn’t even notice.”
“You’ve been pretty engrossed in your work,” Ky said while he dropped a handful of parsley and some lemon wedges into the pan.
“You making YiaYia’s lemon chicken?” Jon asked, settling onto a bar stool next to Gemma.
“YiaYia?” she asked, her gaze ping-ponging between her two protectors.
“My grandmother,” Ky explained.
“She can make shoe leather taste good,” Jon said with a laugh.
Ky filled their plates. “Jon, get drinks.”
“Water okay for you, Miss Laine?”
“Water’s fine, and it’s Gemma.”
He handed her a bottled water from the refrigerator. She uncapped it and waited for Ky to sit with them before eating.
“Oh, good Lord!” she said after the first mouthful went in. “My sister is going to kidnap your grandmother and hold her hostage for this recipe.”
Ky’s fork stopped halfway to his mouth, the pleased grin dying on his lips from her praise when he looked over at her.
Her beautiful eyes were closed, her head thrown slightly back, giving him a full view of her long, smooth neck, as her tongue skimmed from one side of her bottom lip to the other.
“Right?” Jon said, grinning. “The first time Papps ever cooked for me I asked if he had any unmarried sisters at home who cooked as good as he did.”
With an eyebrow tilting up to her hairline, she glanced over at Ky and then back to his partner. “Papps?”
Jon’s grin split his face.
“You’re not the only one,” Ky told her, “who’s had difficulty with my last name.” He forked a helping of chicken into his mouth.
Gemma’s cheeks turned a lovely shade of pink.
“It was our boss who started calling him that,” Jon said. With a good-natured grin, he added, “It stuck.”
“Well, whatever people call you,” Gemma said, addressing Ky, “this is the best meal I’ve had since the last time I visited my sister.”
Before he could thank her, his cell phone pinged.
“Excuse me.” He stood from the bar and moved out of the kitchen when he saw the caller ID.
In the living room across the hallway, Ky punched the connect icon.
“Pappandreos.”
“We got an ID on the attacker,” SAC Tiege barked into the cell.
“One of Ritandi’s guys?”
“Yes. Charlie ‘Little Chico’ Faldo. Low level jackass, but definite ties to our boy.”
“Any idea where he is?”
“Not yet. I’ve got people working on locating him. His rap sheet’s a mile long, but I’m confident he’ll be found. They located the van about an hour ago.”
“Where?”
“Under the Brooklyn Bridge. Empty. Crime Scene Unit’s all over it.”
“How do they know it’s the right van?”
“Descriptions and license plate number your witness gave us matches.”
“I’m surprised it wasn’t torched. CSU won’t find anything.” Ky shook his head, frustration boiling in his chest. “This hit was too well orchestrated and coordinated to leave something as helpful as a fingerprint or any kind of a DNA trail to one of the shooters behind.”
“You never know. The van’s VIN number was eradicated, but I’m guessing it was a chop-shop steal, probably from one of Ritandi’s own. How’s your witness?”
“Pissed,” he said, “but cooperative.”
“How certain are you, Papps, she’s not connected to this, other than as an innocent bystander?”
The question had been rolling around in his head all afternoon. Her explanation for being on the street at just the time Calafano was executed seemed coincidental. But if there was one thing Ky had learned over his years at the bureau, it was to dissect and inspect everything, whether it seemed plausible or not.
“I wouldn’t say certain, but I really can’t see any other scenario that would put her on that street today other than the one she’s given us.”
There was a moment of silence and Ky wondered if his boss knew something he didn’t about Gemma Laine.
“I agree,” he said at last, one tired sounding breath wafting through the phone. “Listen, I’ve got a meeting to brief the director and the attorney general, so I’ve got to go. I’ll call again if CSU finds anything or if Faldo turns up.”
“Appreciate it, boss.”
Ky shot his phone back into his pants pockets, pinched the bridge of his nose, and closed his eyes.
Calafano’s execution shouldn’t have happened. He’d had two of his best, most experienced agents assigned to the bookkeeper for two months, ever since the man had been convinced turning over evidence and being put in witness protection was a better option than spending the rest of his life behind bars where one of Ritandi’s men would have easy access to him.
His men knew—knew—they weren’t supposed to leave the hotel for any reason. Ky had ordered them repeatedly to stay put. All they needed to do was keep him safe for one more week until the attorney general could file charges against Ritandi.
One week. And now, because his agents had disobeyed a direct order, they and the bookkeeper were dead.
Why had they left the hotel?
Today’s events had all but destroyed three years of work, gathering information that would lead to the arrest of mob boss Antonio Ritandi for money laundering, tax fraud, and extortion.
Three years of endless wiretaps, surveillance, and subpoenas that had yielded nothing substantial until Mario Calafano made one small slip up with a bank deposit transaction, and Ky and his partner had roped him in.
A sudden thought danced around his head but was quickly killed when the sound of Gemma’s laughter pulled him like a magnet back into the kitchen.
The smile he’d seen for the first time just minutes before was now broad, free, and lit with mischief. The throaty laugh, lusty and filled with enough just-woken rasp to make his pulse bounce filled the small kitchen at something his partner was telling her.
“That can’t be true,” she said, grinning at Jon. She’d nestled her head against the palm of her hand, her elbow propped on the table.
They’d finished their dinners while his had sat, uneaten.
Jon, ever the fervent storyteller, swiped his index finger across his chest. “Swear to God, it is.”
At