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4

WEST

I lit the three candles in the center of the table, hoping the romantic ambience would soften Joanna. I poured red wine into a pair of glasses, and switched off the lights in the living area, leaving the kitchen lights on to create enough visibility for us to eat. The door opened, signaling Joanna’s arrival, and I slid a tray of pizza into the oven.

She stepped inside and paused, no doubt taking in the fancy table setting and the soft Italian music playing in the background. I strode around the kitchen counter and pulled out one of the chairs, then presented it to her with a flourish. She approached hesitantly and dropped her bag on the ground at her feet.

“What is this?” she asked.

I hid my grimace. Part of the reason for this whole setup was to avoid further questions by romancing my wife until she no longer had the wherewithal to be suspicious. We were off to a great start. She used to go along with my romantic plans with a sweet, indulgent smile. Now, she didn’t trust me.

“Dinner.” I guided her to the chair, and she lowered herself onto the seat, her eyes narrowed. “I’ve prepared pizza. It’s cooking now.”

She pursed her lips. “With your mamma’s special sauce?”

“What else?” I ignored a twinge of guilt. As far as Joanna knew, my mother had died a couple of years ago. Another lie.

“What’s the occasion?”

I sat opposite her, frustrated that we were squaring off against each other yet again when I’d much rather kiss her and whisper sweet nothings. “Do I need an occasion to spoil my wife?”

“I suppose not.” She wrapped her fingers around the stem of her wine glass, lowered her nose to the glass, and inhaled deeply. If I’d ever seen her do this before, I might think it was her way of savoring the wine, but I hadn’t. She was sniffing the drink because she was suspicious of me. Did she really think I’d lace her wine?

“I wanted to cook, and it’s been a while since we had pizza.” The explanation was bullshit and she seemed to know it.

“Why aren’t you at Henry’s?” she asked. “Aren’t you scheduled for tonight?”

I flashed her my most charming smile. The one I used on little old ladies and, before I’d met Joanna, on pretty women. “You caught me. I called in a favor so I could have the evening off to romance my beautiful wife the way she deserves.”

She inclined her head in acknowledgement. “It smells delicious. Thank you.”

“You’re very welcome.” Even if I was beginning to get the impression that my mission to distract her would be a dismal failure, I’d never been subjected to her detective side before. I’d always known she was tenacious, but perhaps I’d underestimated just how much.

“Consider it an early Valentine’s celebration,” I added on a stroke of inspiration. Tomorrow was conveniently Valentine’s Day, after all. “Since I’m working tomorrow.”

Her eyebrows furrowed. “Is Henry expecting many Valentine’s Day bookings?”

I chuckled and ran my hand through my hair. “No, but he’d never risk being understaffed.”

Most people’s idea of a romantic night out didn’t include a dusty bar frequented by cops. Still, there were a few couples who both belonged to the department who might go there.

“He does like to be prepared,” she agreed.

“So”—I raised my glass to my lips and sipped—“how was your day?”

It was the kind of question I’d asked many times since our whirlwind relationship had begun, but for the first time, her gaze sharpened, and I got the impression she didn’t intend to tell me everything.

“We discovered our murder victim was pregnant,” she said.

I barely managed to hide my shock. Not at the fact that a pregnant lady had been killed, but if I was correct in thinking that her latest case was the murder of Sasha Sloane—which seemed likely given she’d seen me with Portia—then a pregnancy added a whole new dimension.

“That’s terrible.” I drank another mouthful to buy some time. “Was she far along?”

“Only a few weeks.”

So perhaps no one had known. “That’s sad. Have you had any luck hunting down whoever killed her? ”

She sipped her own wine, holding it on her tongue for a few moments, although, whether it was to delay her response or because she enjoyed it, I couldn’t be sure.

“We have a couple of leads we’re following up on,” she said vaguely.

I frowned. Usually, she didn’t mind talking about the details of her cases in the privacy of our home, even if she kept names and personal details to herself. It was unlike her to be circumspect.

“Anything promising?” I asked.

She shrugged. “We can’t be sure yet.”

Yeah, she was definitely holding back. But why?

The timer pinged. I got up and checked the pizza. It was perfectly cooked, the cheese golden, the crust thin and soft. I pulled it out, shifted it onto a cutting board and carried it to the table.

I returned to the kitchen to collect the plates and cutlery. I passed Joanna hers, set mine down, and used the pizza cutter to slice the pizza into six pieces. I took a slice, cut a chunk off, and forked it into my mouth.

I often ate pizza with my hands, but that didn’t seem appropriate for the vibe of the evening. Or at least, not for the vibe I was trying to achieve.

“Do you remember the first time we shared a pizza?” I asked, hoping to remind her of those wonderful days and nights we’d shared together on a train hurtling through the Canadian mountainside. I’d arrived at the train station thinking of her as nothing more than a job, but by the time we’d reached our destination, I’d realized I was in big trouble.

“That was good.” She followed my lead, cutting her pizza and chasing down a bite with wine. “But not as good as yours. ”

I smirked, and hope unfurled in my gut. If she could compliment me, perhaps all wasn’t lost. “You flatterer.”

“Mamma Gallo raised her son to know proper Italian cuisine,” she reminded me.

My heart sank. Yes, my mamma had taught me to cook, but Joanna didn’t know nearly as much about her as she thought she did.

“What is it?” she asked, concerned.

I shook my head. “Nothing. I’m fine.”

She didn’t look convinced, but she let me get away with the lie. “Did you have a good day?”

“Of course. I cooked one of my favorite foods and now I’m eating dinner with my incredible wife.”

She arched an eyebrow. “What did you get up to this morning?”

“I worked out.” Truth. “Ran a few errands. I had to pick up some groceries for dinner.” Also technically true. It didn’t matter that I left out a few of the errands. “And then I made a tiramisu.”

“Tiramisu?” She glanced at the pizza. “I’d better be careful not to eat too much of this. I have no doubt that if your mamma taught you the recipe, it will be the best I’ve ever tasted.”

I laughed. “That’s a lot to live up to.”

She looked at me from beneath her eyelashes. “I know you’re good for it.”

Damn. Did she know what that did to me? She was pushing all my buttons, and part of me enjoyed that, but the rest knew how much it would hurt when she decided she was done with me. I supposed the pain was what I got for falling for the woman I set out to target.

If that wasn’t karma, I didn’t know what was.

The conversation lulled as we ate our meal and emptied our wine glasses. I refilled them but made a mental note not to serve myself anymore. If I drank too much, I risked giving away more than I wanted to Joanna.

In the entirety of our relationship, she’d never seen me drunk. Only acting. I’d considered telling her I was a sober alcoholic, so I’d have an excuse to avoid alcohol completely, but that would make her ask questions about my past, and it was more important to keep her from prying into my history than to avoid sharing an occasional drink.

When we’d eaten as much pizza as we could, I packed away the leftovers and presented Joanna with a piece of tiramisu.

She groaned. “It looks amazing. You’ve got to stop feeding me like this or I won’t fit into my work clothes anymore.”

“Uh-huh.” I rolled my eyes at the absurdity of her statement. Not only did she have an incredible metabolism, but she exercised regularly and sparred with some of her colleagues every week. She was far from at risk of gaining weight. Not that I’d care if she did. Joanna would be incredible no matter what shape she was in.

I passed her a spoon and reached for the tiramisu between us. She snatched the plate away and glared at me.

“Get your own,” she grumbled. “This is mine.”

Shaking my head, I returned to the kitchen and served myself a separate piece.

“Good?” I asked.

“The best.” She spoke around a mouthful of cake and cream. “I’m going to need this for my birthday.”

“Anything for you.”

Well, almost anything. I still couldn’t tell her the truth.

We polished off our plates and set our cutlery down. She wiped the corners of her mouth on a napkin.

“I know what you’re doing,” she said conversationally.

I stiffened.

“You’re trying to distract me from thinking about the woman you were with yesterday.” Her lips pressed into a thin line. “While I appreciate the delicious meal, you should know that all you’ve succeeded in doing is making me wonder if there really was something to it.”

I tried to take her hand across the table, but she withdrew it out of reach. Suddenly, all of the rich food settled in my gut like a hunk of lead.

“There is no other woman for me.” I met her eyes, silently pleading with her to believe me. “You are the only one I want. The only one I will ever want. Now that I have you, do you really think I’d do anything to jeopardize our relationship?”

Her shoulders slumped. “I don’t know what to think. When it comes down to it, we don’t actually know each other very well. How can we? We’ve only known each other for four months. We got married after dating for two.”

I grimaced. I should have known that would bite me in the ass. I needed to move quickly for the sake of my job, but the quick progression of our relationship had definitely raised a few eyebrows.

Joanna hadn’t questioned it at the time. At her core, she was a romantic, and she’d been swept away by the romance of it. But she was also pragmatic, and that part of her had finally come to the fore.

“Maybe we don’t know everything there is to know about each other, but we know who we are deep down.” If I sounded desperate, that’s because I was. Even I wasn’t that good of an actor.

“Do we?” She laughed bitterly. “Our work schedules aren’t compatible, so we don’t spend a lot of time together. Even couples who’ve been married for years still learn new things about each other, so it stands to reason that a couple like us could hide much bigger secrets.”

I caught my breath. Was she suggesting there might also be things I didn’t know about her? Surely not. Between the deep dive my handler did and everything I’d discovered about her along the way, I was confident I knew everything there was to know about Joanna Lee.

“You know me better than anyone.” My fingers curled into a fist. I wished she’d let me hold her hand. I needed the contact to ground me.

She stacked her plate on top of mine and laid our cutlery across the top. “I’m not sure I do.”

“But you do! I—”

“Everything went so fast, we never stopped to think,” she interrupted, not giving me the chance to finish my sentence. “We were swept away from the moment we met at the train station.”

“You liked it,” I accused.

“Maybe.” Her expression became wistful. “But perhaps we shouldn’t have been so thoughtless.”

Ouch. Was she calling our feelings for each other “thoughtless”?

“Do you…” I trailed off, summoned my courage, and tried again. “Do you think our marriage was a mistake?”

My heart was in my throat, and it hurt to look at her, but I didn’t allow myself to lower my gaze.

She bit her lip. “I don’t know what to think.”

I stared at her, her words ricocheting around my mind. I felt like I couldn’t breathe. How could she experience the love between us and not believe it was real?

“Have you always been honest with me?” she asked, propping her chin on her palm.

I hesitated for the briefest of seconds, but it was immediately clear that miniscule hesitation had been enough to destroy her faith in me. She drew back slightly, her expression shuttering.

“Of course I have.” The lie burst from me, painfully loud in the quiet room.

But from the twist of her lips, I knew: I’d been too late.