Chapter 22
Ruby was stretched out across Livie’s body, nuzzling her neck.
Kendall eased down on the bed. Ruby looked at her and whined as if to say, “Do something.” Livie cried out again, and Kendall scooped her little girl into her arms and gently rocked her.
Slowly, Livie’s sobs quieted, her breathing evening out.
“Did she wake up?” Cooper said as he dropped his knees to the floor next to her.
Kendall glanced at him. “No. I hope that means she won’t remember having a nightmare. Ruby was trying to comfort her.”
He scratched under the dog’s chin. “Good girl.”
She could swear that Ruby smiled. “You know, she might make a good therapy dog. She seemed to understand Livie needed comforting. Do you think she’s an empath?”
“I wouldn’t be surprised. I’m sure she was abused by her previous owner, so she can probably sense when someone’s hurting.” He leaned down and kissed Livie’s forehead. “Have sweet dreams, not nightmares, Princess.”
Kendall eased Livie back into the bed, then pulled the cover over her. Leaving Ruby to guard her, they left the room. “I was hoping her nightmares were done.”
“I think if she has another one, we should have her talk to someone. A therapist that specializes in working with children.”
“Not a bad idea.” When they reached the living room, he sat on the sofa, then pulled her onto his lap. “We need to talk about that email.”
“Do we have to?”
“Just that we need to send it to Gray and Liam tonight. We’ll talk about how to respond tomorrow.”
“Okay. Be right back.” She returned to his bedroom and picked her phone up from the night table. Back in the living room, she forwarded the email to Grayson and Liam. “There. Done. I don’t want to talk about this or even think about it anymore tonight. I’d much rather talk about kissing you.”
He grinned. “My mouth is yours to do with as you please.”
Oh, she pleased.
The next morning, Cooper’s phone chimed while they were eating breakfast. “It’s Gray.” He glanced at Livie. “I’ll take it in the other room.”
Livie frowned at Cooper’s retreating back. “Daddy didn’t eat his breakfast.”
“He has to talk to Grayson for a minute. He’ll finish eating when he comes back.”
“Can I go play with Tyler?”
“Not today. You don’t want to wear out your welcome.”
Livie’s brows scrunched together. “What does that mean, Mommy? How can you wear a welcome outside?”
Kendall chuckled. She loved the minds of children. “It means you don’t want Tyler to get tired of you always being at his house.”
“I don’t want Tyler to get tired of me.”
“Exactly. So, you can visit him on another day.”
“What’d I miss?” Cooper said, returning to the table.
Livie started crying.
“Hey now, what are those tears for, Princess?” He lifted her out of her chair and onto his lap. “Talk to me, sweetheart.”
“I don’t want you to get tired of me always being at your house, Daddy.”
“Why would you think that? I’ll never get tired of you being at my house or anywhere I am.” He lifted his eyes to Kendall, his expression confused.
“She wanted to go play with Tyler, and I told her she didn’t want to wear out her welcome. She asked what that meant, and I told her that it meant she didn’t want Tyler to get tired of her.”
He gave her an amused smile over Livie’s head, then said, “Look at me, Princess.” When Livie did, he brushed the tears on her cheeks away with his thumbs.
“It’s not the same thing as always being at Tyler’s house.
I’m your daddy. Daddies never get tired of their little girls.
Never, ever. You can be at my house as much as you and your mommy want to be here.
And when you go back home, I’ll come see you sometimes at your house. I hope you won’t get tired of me.”
Livie’s eyes widened. “No, Daddy. I’m not tired of you.” She threw her arms around his neck. “I love you, Daddy.”
“And I love you, my beautiful girl. Let’s finish our breakfast, then how about we go do some batting practice?”
“Yes!” Livie screamed.
If it was possible for a heart to melt, Kendall’s would have on the spot.
It wasn’t the first time she’d thought how amazing it was that Livie had won the Daddy Lottery.
Where did that leave her, though? Was there a chance of a future with him?
Or did he only want a fling? She couldn’t bring herself to ask because his answers might not be ones she wanted to hear.
“Okay, Princess,” Cooper said. “You need to get dressed so we can go hit some balls.”
“I want to wear my Braves shirt, Mommy.”
“Okay, let’s go find it.”
Batting practice turned out to be at a sports complex, and Kendall settled on a bench to watch Cooper coach Livie on hitting balls. She knew Livie was good at hitting balls for her age, but with Cooper’s coaching, she was getting even better. A group of tween boys had gathered to watch her.
“She’s better than you, Stephen,” one of them said.
“Nuh-uh. No girl’s better than me.”
Kendall smiled as they wandered off, still arguing who hit a ball the best, Stephen or Livie. When she’d found out she was having a girl, she’d never imagined her daughter would be a tomboy and love baseball.
“You bat now, Daddy,” Livie said, stepping out of the batter’s cage.
Cooper had said he played ball in high school and before his kidnapping had wanted to one day play for the Braves. That had to mean he was good, and Kendall watched with interest as he tested a few bats before selecting one.
He proved how good he was as he hit every ball the machine threw at him, all of them bouncing off the net. Some of those would’ve been home runs in a ballpark. She was impressed.
“Daddy! You’re the best! You should play for the Braves, and I could come watch you,” Livie exclaimed, excitement in her voice. She raced to the cage wires. “Mommy, did you see Daddy bat? He’s so good.”
“I did, and he is.” She lifted her eyes to his, and the grin on his face widened.
“Guess I still got it,” he said.
He sure did have it, in spades. And she didn’t mean just his batting skills.
Everything about him called to something deep inside her.
It wasn’t just his hotness—because he was definitely that—but his innate goodness.
She was falling for him, and that scared her.
She’d never had a broken heart before, but with him, it could happen.
He scooped Livie up and planted a kiss on her cheek. “Did you have fun?”
“So much fun, Daddy.”
“Think we should go for some ice cream now?”
“Yes!”
“She’s down for the night,” Kendall said. She sat on the couch next to Cooper and picked up the glass of wine he had ready for her. “She had a great time today. Thank you for that.”
“Hey, I had as much fun today as she did. It’s been a long time since I’ve been in a batting cage. I’m going to do it more often.”
“You should. You’re really good at it. Do you regret not going for a baseball career?”
“There have been times I’ve wondered if I would have made it into the pros, but no, I don’t for a minute regret the way things turned out.”
“That’s good, then.” She finished the last of her wine, then set the glass aside.
“So, am I going to respond to the creep’s last email?
Not that I want to talk about it, but I feel like there’s a black thundercloud hanging over my head as long as he’s out there somewhere.
I didn’t want to ask while Livie was with us, but did Grayson have any news this morning when you talked to him? ”
He took her hand and tugged her next to him. “Yes, and we’ll talk about that in the morning. For tonight, let’s pretend he doesn’t exist, and we’re just a normal woman and man who are getting to know each other while we date.”
She snuggled closer and rested her head on his shoulder. “Is that what we’re doing? Dating?”
He leaned over and brushed his lips over hers. “If that’s what you want.”
“I’d like that.”
“Good. Should we make out like teenagers in heat?”
She laughed. “I don’t think I was ever in heat… Well, there was that one night in Atlanta about five years ago. I might have been then.”
He stood, pulling her up with him. “Let’s go see if we can recreate that night.”
“You think you can? I mean, you were a lot younger back then.”
He stopped, stared hard at her for a moment, then grinned as he picked her up and tossed her over his shoulder. “Trust me, baby, I’m up to the task.”
“Put me down, you beast.” She giggled when he lightly spanked her bottom.
“I’ll show you a beast.”
And he did. Quite awesomely, in fact.
“This is the response we want you to send to our bad guy,” Cooper said.
She so didn’t want a bad guy. They were back in the conference room at The Phoenix Three. Livie was spending the morning with Tyler again, and she’d been both excited about seeing him and worried that she was going to wear out her welcome.
Sometimes the things you said to your child could come back to bite you. It had taken both her and Cooper to convince her that Tyler wasn’t going to get tired of her. They were lucky that Tyler was out of school for the week for spring break, and that he liked playing with Livie.
The monitor in front of her came to life, and she read the response the guys had crafted.
Do you think I care that you’re disappointed? What I do care about is that I told you to fuck off but here you are again, bothering me with your stupid threats. I have no intention of seeing you soon, so goodbye.
“I guess we really are trying to make him angry.” Her gaze traveled from Liam to Grayson before landing on Cooper. She trusted him, all three of them actually, but she was far outside her comfort level. “What do you expect him to do after he gets this?”
“The whole point of your responses to him is to make him so angry he makes a mistake that will lead us to him,” Cooper said.
Grayson tapped a finger on the table. “We’ve traced his emails back to computers in three different libraries.
One in Decatur, one in downtown Atlanta and one in Marietta.
Right now, he’s a faceless, nameless entity hiding behind the protection of public computers.
He thinks he’s invisible. He’s not, and we’ll know who he is soon enough. ”
“Libraries have cameras. Can—”
“We’re on it,” Cooper said. “We have someone going to those libraries and viewing the security feeds during the time the emails were sent.”
“Someone? Shouldn’t we send this information to Detective Rossi?”
Liam shook his head. “No. Our bad guy might be watching for the police to show up at the libraries. He might have someone he’s paying to let him know if anyone starts asking to see the security videos.
We don’t want to alert him that we’re bearing down on him.
Our man knows how to investigate this without alerting anyone as to what he’s doing. ”
And that was why they were so good at what they did. She never would have thought of any of those things. “Okay. Let’s do this. Can I just hit Send on this?”
Cooper placed his hand over hers to stop her from hitting Send. “We don’t know how computer savvy he is. You need to do it from your laptop since that’s what you’ve been communicating with him on.”
“I didn’t bring it with me.”
“We’ll do it when we get home,” Cooper said.
“Okay.” She was happy to delay baiting the monster.
Grayson picked up a sheet of paper. “I got a reply from the FBI profiler this morning. She apologizes for not having the time to delve deep on our man, but she gave us a brief sketch of him.” His gaze focused on the paper as he read.
“He’s between forty and fifty-five years of age, average height and appearance, lives alone and is a professional of some sort.
Maybe an attorney or business owner.” He dropped the page to the table.
“In other words, could be just about anyone.”
“How do they do that?” Kendall asked. “Take a few facts and come up with things that more often than not are correct.” Profilers were beyond her scope of understanding.
“It’s not really that mysterious,” Cooper said. “They have strong analytical skills, an understanding of criminal behavior and human minds for a start. Some of it, though, is…” He leaned over and loudly whispered in her ear, “woo-woo.”
Grayson laughed. “All true.”
She wished the profiler could have woo-wooed the monster’s name right out of the air.