Distracted wasn’t the right word for her demeanor. She seemed nervous. Or anxious, maybe. “Hi. How are you?” he asked.
“Good, thanks. How are you?” She kept walking up the pathway to the house, a small, neat structure that his parents had owned since before he was born. “What a sweet house.”
Joe tried to see it through her eyes. Freshly painted, the yard well tended, mums in bloom. He’d put in long hours to get it looking good after a few years of neglect.
He followed Arianna into the house, also newly painted and spotless, although the furnishings were dated. “Kitchen’s to your right,” he said.
She walked into the room and set her bag on the counter. “Where are your parents?” she asked, looking around.
He put the ice chest next to the bag. “My mother passed away five months ago. My father just moved to a smaller place.”
She stared speechlessly at him for several seconds then crossed her arms and looked at the floor. After what seemed like an hour she said, “I’m so sorry about your mother.”
“Thank you. She put up a long, hard fight. Lung cancer,” he added. “The house just sold. I’m doing an inventory of the contents so that I can figure out what to do with everything.” What’s going on? he wanted to ask. She was so subdued he didn’t know what kind of conversation to have with her. He figured she would give him hell about implying there would be four for lunch. “Do you want to eat now?”
She roused herself enough to smile. “Sure. Anyone in the neighborhood you’d like to invite? There’s enough here to feed ten, I think. Great bread. Marinated shrimp, barbecued chicken, several deli salads.”
His stomach burned at the thought. Even bland food lit a fire. “I don’t mind having leftovers.” He took some plates from the cupboard and silverware from the drawer while she set out the containers.
“Do you want the bread heated?” she asked, holding up a loaf of something. If it wasn’t sourdough or white sandwich bread he could only hazard a guess. This was brown, flat and oblong.
“Whatever you prefer.” He figured she was a warm bread kind of person. If she heated it, she meant to stay and have a conversation. If she didn’t heat it, she planned a quick escape after the meal.
She moved to the stove and turned it on. He relaxed. Maybe he was reading something into her actions that wasn’t there. She was normally confident and direct, but not today. Could she actually be nervous about being alone with him? Was that why she’d jumped at the chance of meeting him at his parents’ house?
“I guess I should’ve told you my parents wouldn’t be here,” he said.
“That would’ve been nice.” A brittle smile accompanied the razor-sharp tone.
He got it. She was mad. That he could handle.
“I didn’t mean to mislead you, Arianna.”
“You said you were going to be at your parents’ house. You could easily have corrected my assumption that they would be here, but you didn’t.” Her eyes gave off sparks.
“I was too curious. Why would you want to meet my parents?” When she didn’t answer, he moved to stand next to her. “What’s going on?”
After a few seconds she faced him. “My father was murdered twenty-five years ago.”
Like it was yesterday, he decided, seeing the pain in her eyes. “I’m sorry, Arianna. You must have been very young.”
“Eight. Your father was the lead detective in charge of his case.”
Surprise zapped him in the midsection, then he realized she must have known that fact before the party last night. He’d been set up. Used. “Is that why you wanted to meet him?”
“I want to know why he didn’t find my father’s killer.”
Four
Arianna saw him retreat, not only physically by taking a step back, but his expression cooled, too.
“Some cases don’t get solved. It’s a sad fact of life,” he said, crossing his arms. “So are you the reason I got an invitation to the party last night?”
She owed him the truth. “I saw a picture of you and Scott in his den last month when I had dinner there, and I asked about your relationship. Then I started having nightmares about my father.” She brushed some crumbs off the counter with her hand, hoping he wouldn’t see how much the dreams affected her. “For the first time since I was a little girl I got out the scrapbook I’d made after he died. I hadn’t remembered the lead detective’s name, Mike Vicente. It seemed too much of a coincidence, but I did some checking and found out he was your father.”
“Then you asked Scott to invite me to the party so you could set me up.”
She shook her head. “I wanted to talk to you. Away from your office.”
“What made you think I wouldn’t have talked to you? Met with you, away from the office? Did you figure you had to play the sex card to get my attention? I assure you, I’m not that base.”
“The attraction was real and unplanned,” she admitted. “Unfortunately.”
“Unfortunately?”
“It complicated everything.”
“You seemed to deal with that complication just fine. Nice dance, Arianna. Great kiss. I bought it.”
His anger was justified, but it still stung. “I didn’t know it was you by the waterfall. I had no idea.” She couldn’t tell if he believed her. His expression didn’t change. “As for the kiss, I was as swept away as you were. The last thing I needed was—was…” She spread her hands wide, not able to come up with the right word.
“Chemistry?”
“Yes. I don’t know if you’ve heard but I haven’t exactly endeared myself to the LAPD through the years.” Which was putting it mildly, she thought.
“I heard rumors,” he said, then shrugged. “I asked around a little after we met.”
“I have a lot of resentment.”
“I gather that. At least now I know why.”
She’d wondered. She’d thought maybe that was why he hadn’t tried to contact her after they met last year. But that was before she knew he’d been engaged. “I figured you might have. But there’s no denying we made some kind of connection when we met. I also figured if you got to know and like me, you would be more willing to do me a favor.”
He shoved his hands in his back pockets. “What kind of favor?”
“I want to see my father’s file. I had hoped you’d find a way to get it to me.”
“All you have to do is request it.”
“No. It’s unsolved. I’ve
