now.”
“By all means.” He dropped down to the bench a few feet away from her, settling the basketball between them for good measure. He didn’t have any intention of following a dangerous attraction without knowing more about the woman, even if his eyes were glued to her hand resting on the denim-encased thigh. “Fire away.”
“Why do you think your partners have pointed the finger at you now that there is money missing from the company you own together?”
Maybe Uncle Sergio put them up to it. He hadn’t seriously considered that angle until Vanessa showed up— possibly leading anyone looking for him right to his door.
“I guess because I disappeared around the same time.” He twirled the ball on the metal bench, hoping to keep her involvement more marginal. “And I happen to have a blood relationship with a gangster.”
“But you’ve always been related. Why would your partners suddenly decide now that it makes you a bad guy?”
“It’s complicated.” Major understatement.
Vanessa messed up a perfectly good spin by palming the ball. “Hey, I explained my answer. If you’re going to half-ass your end of the deal—”
“I’m not.” He studied her hand on the ball beside his. No fingernail polish. No rings. Just a surprising amount of strength. She was nothing like Donata Casale, who’d been sheltered and pampered her whole life. “It’s tough to explain my relationship with my partners. All along, they’ve provided most of the money while I’ve provided the vision and actual labor required to move the company ahead.”
“From all accounts, you’ve been incredibly successful.” She didn’t say where she came by her information, but Alec knew his company’s projects were in business trade publications more often than not, although he made it a point to keep himself out of the spotlight. A low business profile suited him just fine and his partners were content to be the face of McPherson Real Estate.
Her hands retreated from the ball as she straightened.
“It’s been a good gig.” Until he’d found out half the reason his partners had joined forces with him was to leverage a criminal connection. “We were all getting along just fine until I had a recent falling out with a family member who’s got some powerful friends.”
Uncle Sergio hadn’t taken kindly to his girlfriend’s claim that she’d slept with his nephew. Thanks, Donata. She’d chosen a hell of a way to pay him back for offering to help her escape his uncle’s control.
“They’re upset you fought with your family?” Brow furrowed, Vanessa tucked her hands into her pockets.
“None of their business, right? I didn’t realize until then how much they liked the tie to my well-connected clan.” And damn, but that had turned his whole life inside out. All those years he’d thought he’d been putting distance between himself and the family, his partners had been discreetly using his uncle’s name as a way to cinch business deals. They were all in a shitload of trouble now, and Alec didn’t have a clue how to dig them out of the mess. Yet.
“So you went into hiding to regroup and—” raising an eyebrow, she glanced around the recently refurbished gym “—create an inner-city haven for delinquents to hone their fighting skills?”
That pissed him off. As a cop, she ought to know better. “Just because they live in the middle of a war zone doesn’t make them responsible for the violence.”
For a moment, he thought he saw a hint of regret in her dark eyes. But then the impression was gone, her gaze as remote and unyielding as when she’d swept his legs out from under him and planted him flat on his ass.
“So why did you come here?” Her tone implied only a moron would spend time teaching self-defense to kids who could easily be the street thugs of tomorrow.
Maybe some of them would use the knowledge unfairly. But if his fighting techniques saved a life…it would go a long way toward making up for a lot of mistakes he’d made.
“It’s my turn to ask a question, remember?” He didn’t have any intention of telling her more than necessary. And he found himself a little too eager to learn more about this woman who fought like she meant it and didn’t waste words. Both rare qualities in women, in his experience.
“I’m ready when you are.” She flipped her long, dark braid over one shoulder and crossed her legs.
Alec told himself he wasn’t following the line of her calf with his eyes. He was just thinking she looked very…fit. Yeah. That’s it.
“Fair enough. How about telling me where you learned those moves you used to fight me off earlier? Those aren’t exactly standard issue for NYPD cops.”
“I’ve been trained in kendo. It’s an older fighting style I don’t see offered much in New York.”
“Yet you managed to hunt down your own archaic fighting master from the comfort of downtown Manhattan.” Something about her didn’t add up. The unusual martial art style. The fact that she’d found him in the first place. She seemed too well trained for a city detective. Too elite to sit around with a bunch of cynical cops all day debating how to set up drug dealers.
Which brought him back to his first inclination that she seemed more like a top-of-the-line hit woman. Probably a paranoid thought fostered by his situation, but he still had to consider it. Vanessa could be either a skilled cop who’d led his revenge-happy uncle right to him, or she could be the means to Sergio’s ends.
“Let’s just say I was well motivated to seek out the toughest training I could find.” She waggled her fingers toward the ball, indicating he hand it over. “Now— completely off the topic—you need to tell me why you don’t want to go to the police station with me.”
“Don’t you think that question is a hell of a lot more personal than me asking you about a few kung fu chops?”
“Depends why you were asking.” She scooped up the ball and balanced it on her forearm, rolling it to her elbow and back to her hand in an easy rhythm. “I can’t help it if you don’t use your questions wisely.”
“For a woman who doesn’t like to talk about herself, you sure don’t mind showing off.” He plucked the ball off her arm and put an end to her trick. “And I already told you why I don’t want to be grilled by a bunch of junior interrogators who think I’m going to be their ticket to a big bust.”
“I recall that’s what you told me, but this time, I’d like to know the truth.” She watched him with those remote eyes of hers and Alec wondered if anything ruffled this woman. Did she ever scream during sex, or did that detached chill remain even then?
“You want to know the truth?” He couldn’t tell her the whole story. Hell, he’d be here for days. And although he hadn’t appreciated many of his uncle’s teachings, Alec still practiced one of Sergio’s most repeated doctrines—never talk about family business outside the family.
“I find it hard to believe you’re afraid to speak to interrogators since you’ve been in a prominent position at a major corporation for years. Anyone who heads up the kind of controversial building projects you do has surely crossed swords with business reporters, or at least a few in-house detractors, before. So any suggestion of you being intimidated
