Author: Jill Shalvis

Luke met Edward’s gaze. Edward still didn’t speak.

“So you’re going to help Ali, right?” Mr. Lyons asked.

Luke could smell the brown sugar and baked apples. He needed that pie. The hell with it. He snatched it. “Yeah. I’m going to help her.” He snagged the other fork out of Mr. Lyons’s pocket. He took a big bite and nearly died and went to heaven. “Sawyer said the cops aren’t done talking to her yet, not until around two.”

Mr. Lyons blinked. “You were already going to help her,” he said all accusatorially.

Luke took another big bite. “Yeah.”

Mr. Lyons narrowed his eyes. “And Roger? You’ll help Roger too?”

“Yeah, but only because Phillip Schmidt was the idiot who built that monstrosity on northeast bluffs. It blocks access to the beach from that side of the harbor, so he calls the cops on the kids that have to trespass to get to the water.”

Mr. Lyons smiled. “You’re a good boy. You’re going to be good for Ali. I take her classes, you know, both the ceramics and her floral-design class. They help with my arthritis. She deserves better than to be treated like a common criminal.”

Luke turned to Edward. “So what’s your interest in this?”

“Oh, he takes Ali’s classes too,” Mr. Elroy answered for him. “We all do.” He smiled. “We love her.”

Luke was having some trouble with the image of his tough, stoic, impenetrable grandfather taking ceramics and floral design.

Not to mention—what the hell was floral design?

Chapter 7

Ali had a recurring nightmare that changed in details, but at the core it was always the same—she was alone.

Terrifyingly alone.

Sitting on a chair in some chilly room at the police station, her nightmare had gone live.

There’d been lots of questions. Had she been angry when Teddy had broken up with her? Angry enough to want to frame him? Because apparently her messages, both the voice mail and the sticky note, indicated a vengeful woman.

Did she know that if she turned the rest of the money in right now that charges would be reduced, possibly dropped? Because apparently she was holding it hostage somewhere.

Did she know that the sticky-note message could also be construed as an actual threat? She didn’t know how calling someone an ass who was an actual ass had become threatening, but okay. Fine. Lesson learned.

She’d said maybe she needed an attorney, and one of the cops brought her to a phone. She stared at it in rare indecision. This was new, being on this side of the phone call. She’d been on the other side, several times, the first being when her mom had been arrested for property damage after she’d taken that bat to her boyfriend’s car. What the cops hadn’t known was that Mimi had been aiming for the guy’s head.

The second time had been when Mimi had set fire to a different boyfriend’s wardrobe. Her mistake had been in using the bonfire to have a party. Mimi had tried to plead temporary insanity on that one, but no one bought it. There was nothing temporary about Mimi’s rage whenever she got cheated on.

Both times Ali and Harper had bailed Mimi out using the secret cash stash taped to the bottom of their couch, which was accumulated from her mom’s tips. Over the years, that stash had ebbed and flowed, depending on various needs. Christmas. School field trips. Mimi’s breast augmentation. And then the second surgery to remove the implants after they’d begun to leak.

Then Harper had taken her turn one year and had gotten arrested for indecent exposure after she’d pulled off to the side of the road to pee in the snow.

Ali still liked to tease Harper about that one.

She could call them, either of them. They’d be here in a blink, their tip stash in tow on the chance that she did indeed get arrested. But Ali wasn’t going to call them. She hadn’t been arrested—yet—and even if she had, she wasn’t going to have them spend their hard-earned money on her.

Besides, neither her mom nor her sister was qualified to offer legal advice, and then there was the embarrassment factor, which on a scale of one to ten, was at an eleven right now.

She should call Ted, because oh, did she have things to say to Ted. She stared at the phone some more. Luke. She could call Luke. He’d probably know what she should do. Except she wasn’t his problem.

And she needed an attorney, not a detective.

She knew exactly one attorney: Zach Mullen. They’d gone to high school together, and skinny, geeky Zach, the PlayStation master of their neighborhood, had always been the smartest guy she knew, despite his huge crush on Harper. He’d graduated from UNLV law school last year, but it’d been months since she’d talked to him. Had he passed the bar?

She called him and was so grateful to hear his soft, friendly “yo” that she nearly collapsed. “Zach,” she said. “Tell me you passed the bar.”

“Okay, I passed the bar.”

“No, really.” She lowered her voice and crossed her fingers. “Did you?”

Zach huffed out a laugh. “Barely, but don’t tell anyone that part.”

Thank God. “So you’re a real lawyer?” she asked, needing to be sure.

“Yep,” he said. “A real, bona fide lawyer. I work for a hotel in Seattle in their legal department, though this week I’m in their Los Angeles office. Mostly fact gathering, but they pay bank so—”

“Okay, that’s great,” she said quickly. “Listen, I have a side job for you. How fast can you get to Lucky Harbor?”

There was a beat of silence. “Lucky Harbor?”

“Yes. I…sort of need some legal advice.”

Zach might be a sweetheart, and he looked like a good wind could blow him over, but he was also sharp as a tack. “I’m in L.A. until the day after tomorrow,” he said. “I’ve got a late-night flight back into Seattle, and then I’m all yours. What do you need, Ali? Anything.”

“I need you.”

Ali was eventually released with the caveat that she not leave town. A few minutes later, she was standing on the sidewalk in the bright sun, staring in surprise at the tall, silent Luke, who’d been waiting for her. “Why are you here?” she asked.

“Later. You’ve got other issues.” He pointed at the two women holding up FREE ALI signs in front of the courthouse.

Her mom and sister.

“Ali!” they cried at the sight of her and rushed over. Dropping her sign, Mimi grabbed Ali in close and hugged her tight. “Oh, Ali-gator! Did they violate any of your rights? Because honey, you have rights, lots of them.”

“I’m fine, Mom. All my rights are still intact.”

Mimi was wearing white capri leggings and a sparkly gold lamé top. Her gold hoop earrings matched the wide strip of bangle bracelets up one arm and was the same color as her spiked sandals. Her face was creased with worry as she tried to pat down Ali’s gone-wild hair.

Ali pulled free and turned to Harper, who was wearing Daisy Dukes and a halter top, her hair and makeup bar-ready. She’d come straight from work and probably raced through the two-hour drive out here.

“Zach called us,” Harper said. “Told us you might need moral support until he could get here.”

“And moral support means picketing the courthouse?”

“Hey, it works on TV,” Mimi said. She smiled up at Luke. “My baby has no manners. I’m Mimi Winters, Ali’s mama, and this here’s her sister, Harper.”

Luke reached out to shake her hand. “Luke Hanover.”

Because Mimi was looking at Luke with a speculative are-you-going-to-marry-my-daughter gaze, Ali quickly said, “Luke’s helping me out with a place to stay.”

“Aw!” Mimi kissed him on the cheek. “Aren’t you the sweet one?”

“Mom, I’m paying rent,” Ali said.

Mimi cupped Ali’s cheek. “Of course you are.” She sent a look Luke’s way. “She’s stubborn, this one, can never accept a helping hand.” She looked around. “Where’s Teddy? I swear, I don’t care how hot he is, I’d like to castrate him. I’ve got a perfectly good pair of pliers in my purse to do it with too. Should’ve packed scissors, but the pliers’ll be more painful. I’m thinking one slow twist and his doodle will snap right off…” She mimed the motion.

“Mom!” Ali quickly looked around. If a sticky note had constituted a threat, she couldn’t imagine what packing pliers with the intent to twist off a guy’s…doodle would mean.

“Just sayin’,” Mimi murmured.

“Well stop just saying,” Ali said. “And castration would mean cutting off his…other parts, not his…” She gestured vaguely, not daring to glance at Luke. “Doodle.”

“Honey, he deserves to be castrated for accusing you of stealing money. You wouldn’t steal money. You wouldn’t steal anything.” Mimi lowered her voice to a whisper and leaned in close. “You don’t still steal lip gloss, right?”

“No!” Good Lord. “And no castrating. I’ve got this handled. I’m sorry you made the drive out here, and I appreciate the support, but you should both go back to work. I’m fine.”

“We were going to wait until dark and TP Teddy’s new place,” Harper said. “Where’s he living now?”

“I don’t know,” Ali said, her second lie of the day. “But no TPing!” She was in enough trouble. “Everything’s going to be fine.”

“You promise?” Mimi asked. “Do you swear by the tip jar, baby? Because we need you.”

“Yes,” Ali said, crossing her fingers behind her back. “I swear by the tip jar that everything’s going to be fine.”

Mimi hugged her again, and she smelled like her favorite body spritz and long-past, sweet memories. “Love you, Ali-gator.”

Ali held on for an extra minute and closed her eyes. “Love you too, Mom.”