put a hand over her mouth, staring in surprise. “Wow.” She flexed her other hand, glancing down at the swollen, reddish knuckles, then looked back up at the bruised man before her. “I think you lost that fight.”
He touched the area gingerly. “Ya think?” He dropped his hand and looked her up and down, a smile crooking his mouth. “You look fantastic. I like the red. We ready?”
“Almost. I just have one question.”
Tony exchanged a glance with Cole. “This can’t be good.” He looked back at Margrit. “Shoot.”
“How on earth did you get those roses to the office so fast? It didn’t take me that long to get back to work.”
Laughter crinkled Tony’s eyes, and then he winced, touching his fingers to the bruise again. “I called Anita and begged her for a favor.”
“I thought her flower shop wasn’t open yet.”
“It opens officially on the first, but this was an emergency. I threw myself on her big-sisterly mercies.”
“Did you tell her what you’d done?”
“She wouldn’t send the flowers until I did. She said men pulling that sort of shit was exactly what keeps her from getting married again.” Tony made a face. “Despite Mama and Papa nagging.”
“Or maybe because of their nagging. Your mom puts mine to shame. Well, tell her thank-you for the flowers. They were beautiful.”
“I don’t get thanked? My sister does?”
“Life isn’t fair, is it?” Margrit sat down on the couch to pull her shoes on, then stood again, smiling.
Tony cast a despairing look at Cole. “Why do I keep trying to make this work?”
“Because she’s beautiful, intelligent and challenging?” Cole suggested.
Margrit dimpled. “Careful, or I’ll try stealing you from Cam. Do we have reservations, Tony?”
“Yeah. We should go. Anaconda says hi, by the way. She wants to know if you’re all coming over for the Superbowl on Sunday. It’s tradition.”
Margrit laughed. “We’ve only done it twice!”
“Tradition gets set fast in my family. Besides, Ana’s thirteen. You wouldn’t want to break her heart.”
“Okay, but I’m telling her you’re calling her Anaconda out of her hearing.”
“I’m going to have to marry her,” Tony said under his breath to Cole. “Out of self-defense, if nothing else.”
“Marrying me means I couldn’t be forced to testify against you, Tony, not that I wouldn’t volunteer to.”
Tony clutched his heart. “Ow. All right, let’s go before I get stung by any more slings and arrows. They’re holding a table for us.”
“So.” They spoke the word at the same time and let laughter take them, Tony reaching across the table to curl his fingers over Margrit’s before releasing her hand. “I did my best,” he said, gesturing to the restaurant. Booths were set around its outer perimeter, crimson velvet curtains separating one from another. A lightweight gauze net fell over the entrance to their own booth, making the lighting hazy and friendly and offering an illusion of solitude. Sound was surprisingly muffled, giving them more privacy than Margrit expected in a busy restaurant.
“You did good,” she acknowledged. “I’m amazed we both got the night off. Tony, I’m sorry I hadn’t called. In the last few weeks, I mean.”
He held up a hand, cutting off the apology. “This is how we do it every time, Grit. Can we try something different?”
Margrit leaned back and gave him a dubious smile. “I don’t know. That sounds like a chick line. Have you been reading relationship books?”
Something between embarrassment and smugness crossed Tony’s face. “Worse. I’ve been talking to Anne-Marie.”
“Oh, God. Professionally?”
“Are you kidding? I’m a cop. I can’t afford a therapist. No, just more of that big-sisterly advice. I get flowers from the one and relationship advice from the other.”
“How’s her son doing?”
“Still in trouble. You know how boys are at sixteen. Sometimes I think Amie got a psychotherapy degree so she could understand her kid. You’re changing the subject, Grit.”
“I still don’t get how you got Amie out of Anne-Marie. Anyway. Sorry, I didn’t mean to change the subject.” Shivers crept up Margrit’s spine, making her wonder how true the statement was. She leaned forward again, suddenly and uncomfortably aware she was using what Anne-Marie would call open body language. “Okay. I’m listening.”
“I just want to skip all the recriminations, Grit. No more of this my fault your fault, I’m sorry you’re sorry thing. We’ve been doing that for years.”
“Are you sure you haven’t been reading relationship books?”
“Margrit. Come on. I’m being serious.”
“Yeah.” She ducked her head, chin against her chest before she looked up. “Yeah, I can tell. Sorr-mmm.” She closed her mouth on the apology and studied the man across the table from her. His eyes were dark and serious, his mouth held as if he wasn’t sure if he should be smiling or frowning. “So this is the fish or cut bait conversation,” she said after a moment.
Tony exhaled a semiexplosive laugh. “Not how I would’ve phrased it, but yeah, I guess so. I mean, what I said back at the apartment-”
Cold slipped through Margrit’s belly as if she’d been drinking ice water. “Tony…”
“I’m not proposing.” His smile went thin and a little flat. “We’ve spent as much time off in the last three or four years as on. I don’t think that’s a good place to start suggesting marriage from. But the thing is we keep getting back together, Grit. So maybe that says something.”
“Yeah.” She dropped her head again, more a nod this time. “I’ve been thinking that a lot the last few days, too. I’ve also been thinking we’re good together when things are good, and we fall apart whenever there’s a bump, personally or professionally. Doesn’t that say something, too?”
“Maybe it says we’re not trying very hard.” Tony fell silent as the waiter appeared, bringing a bowl of enormous proportions with a dozen different foodstuffs in it. He settled it into the middle of the table, murmured after their well-being and disappeared again, leaving them to their conversation. Margrit reached out to snag a strip of meat and crunchy onions, dangling them over her plate without eating.
“We can’t keep doing the whose-side-are-you-on thing if there’s any chance of making it succeed, Tony. I work for Legal Aid and I’m not planning on quitting, even if-” She broke off, unwilling to get into the discussion of Eliseo Daisani just then. “Even if you don’t like it. And that’s the one that sends us skittering in opposite directions most often. That and our schedules.”
“We both work too much,” Tony agreed-his translation of the last statement. “And I’m not sure either of us can do much about that. Maybe you could.”
Margrit’s smile thinned. “Let’s not turn this into the woman sacrificing her career for the sake of the relationship, Tony. We might as well walk away right now if that’s where you’re going with it.”
“No.” He hesitated. “I don’t know. Maybe it was. It just seems more like a lawyer could work fewer hours than a cop, more predictably than a cop. Emergencies,” he added, with an explanatory spread of his hands.
“And what am I supposed to do with this reduced work schedule of mine? Sit at home waiting for my man to come back from the war? I don’t think so, Anthony. We make this work around the way we really are, or we don’t make it work at all.”
“You have no romance in you at all, Grit.” Tony pulled a wry smile into place and Margrit cut off a disbelieving snort.
“There’s nothing romantic about subsuming my personality and ambitions in favor of a man’s. What would you say if I said the only way to make this happen was for you to be home at six o’clock every day and to never put yourself in any danger?”
“I’d take a good hard look at business school,” Tony answered softly.
The words hit Margrit in the stomach with the force of a wrecking ball, obliterating any appetite she had. The meat and onions dropped to her plate and she wiped her fingers on a napkin, belly churning too much to even consider licking her fingers.
