Luck Be a Lady - Cathie Linz [49]
“Yes, but not at the poker table.”
“Really?” Ria prodded him with her elbow. “Come on, share the juicy details.”
“Get a life.”
“I have a life.”
“Then focus on that.”
She stared him down. As the daughter of a Marine drill instructor, Ria was damn good at stare downs. Then she slowly smiled. “You met a girl.”
“I meet a lot of girls.”
“No, you met a girl. A woman. In Las Vegas. Is she a stripper?”
“Hell, no.”
“A showgirl?” Ria asked.
“I was there to help out my grandfather.”
“Was hein trouble with a stripper or a showgirl?”
“You have a one-track mind. Get it out of the gutter.”
“It’s the company I keep. It’s hard to be all girly-girl hanging around you morons.” She swept her arm in a semi-circle to include the rest of the police officers in the vicinity.
“Hey, don’t blame us. You were that way before you became a cop. I think you were born with that don’t-mess-with-me attitude,” Logan said.
“I’m just trying to make my pop proud,” she said. “How about your dad? Is he doing better about you transferring here?”
“Define better.”
“That bad, huh?”
Logan shrugged. “Families are a pain in the ass.”
“Yeah, but they’ve always got your back.”
Logan remembered telling Megan that and her confessing that she’d wished she’d had some siblings.
“A-ha!” Ria pointed at his face. “I knew it! You’re thinking about that girl you met in Vegas.”
“You’re delusional.”
“Don’t bother putting your cop face on now. It’s too late. I saw the look in your eyes.”
“When was your last vision test, Delgado?”
“A month ago, and I have 20/20 vision,” she instantly replied.
“Been sniffing any glue? Smoking any weed from the evidence room? Stealing any vodka from the flask in Schmidt’s bottom desk drawer?”
“None of the above. I’m just naturally observant.”
“Yeah, right.”
“Don’t try changing the subject. There’s no wiggling out of this. You met a girl and you’re afraid to talk about her. And you got defensive when I thought she might be a stripper.” Ria paused and narrowed her dark eyes at him. “Ay dios mio,tell me she’s not another damsel in distress.”
His stony face gave nothing away, but Ria knew him well.
“She is!” Ria socked his arm. “Will you never learn? You didn’t marry her in Vegas, did you?”
“Of course not. Marriage made me what I am today—happily divorced from my ex-wife.”
“Which was the right move for you. I have to admit that marriage doesn’t always suck,” Ria said. “Sometimes it works out okay. I had my doubts and it took my guy two years to convince me to say yes to his proposal. But I’m glad I did. And he’s lucky to have me.”
“You really have to deal with this low self-esteem problem you have, Delgado.”
Ria grinned. “Hey, if you want something in this life, you’ve got to ask for it and go after it. My guy did that. Nobody is going to hand it to you on a silver platter. At least not in our families. Now, the West family is another matter.”
“The West family?”
“Yeah, the owners of West Investigations, the biggest investigation firm in the city.”
“What about them?”
“Their head honcho was in talking to the chief a while ago. You wouldn’t happen to know anything about that, would you?”
“No. Why should I?”
“Because his parting words, which we all heard, were ‘Tell Doyle to stay away from my niece.’ So the girl in Vegas was Megan West, huh? I Googled the family and found the info. I knew all this when I started interrogating you. I gave you the chance to confess on your own . . . which you didn’t do.”
“I’m not confessing diddlysquat.”
“Diddlysquat? Is that another one of your grandfather’s sayings? I love those. I should keep a list of them.”
“I didn’t do anything wrong.”
Ria sighed. “If I only had a dollar for every time a guy said that to me.”
“Tell me again why I agreed to partner with you?” he growled.
“Because you like me. Adore me, actually. Would be totally lost without me.”
Logan rolled his eyes.
“I realize you can’t admit it out loud,” Ria said, “but we both know it’s true.”
“I’ll tell you what’s true. And I’ll even take a polygraph test to prove