17. Nancy Drew
Nancy Drew
ANDY
I'd been looking forward to this Saturday since Halloween night.
Doug and Diana were out of state visiting Diana's family, so I was spending the day on my porch with a box of pizza, a glass of wine, and Reid Gallagher.
Reid and Elise Vaughn had spent most of the book wanting to kill each other, and now he had her pinned against his kitchen counter asking her what the hell she'd done to him because he couldn't stop thinking about her. I was completely gone.
Reid was about to close the distance between them when I caught movement at the bottom of my steps. Wyatt Brooks was walking up my porch with a box in one hand and his daughter on the other.
I set my Kindle down and stood up.
"Sorry to bother you," Wyatt said. "Birdie wanted to come say hi."
Birdie was holding a bouquet of white daisies, wrapped in brown paper.
"These are for you," she said. "I picked them out myself."
"You did?"
"Yes. I picked the white ones because they're the prettiest." She thrust them closer to my face. "Do you like them?"
"We passed by Daphne's shop on the way home," Wyatt said. "Birdie asked if she could buy flowers for the princess cop across the street."
I smiled. The princess cop. She'd called me that on Halloween.
It took me a second to realize she meant the braid.
The coiled bun she'd seen at the school event, the one she told me looked twisty at the back.
To a six-year-old who'd only ever seen women in fairy tales wear their hair like that, a cop with a braid was a princess.
I took the bouquet from her carefully. The flowers were small and a little lopsided where she'd squeezed the stems too hard.
"I love them. Thank you, Birdie."
She beamed.
I don't think anyone had ever given me flowers before.
My father was a man who showed love through dinner on the table and books on the shelf, but flowers wouldn't have occurred to him.
Elliot didn't do flowers. Elliot didn't do anything that wasn't about Elliot.
The first person to hand me a bouquet was a little girl who saw them at a store and decided they belonged to me.
"We just came from the bakery," Birdie said. "Daddy bought my favorite pie. Do you want some?"
I looked at Wyatt. He shrugged, like the invitation was Birdie's and he was just the guy carrying the groceries. I looked at Birdie. She was staring up at me with those wide blue eyes, and the answer was already decided before I opened my mouth.
"I'd love to."
Wyatt's house was warm and lived-in. Birdie's drawings covered the fridge. A tea set was arranged on the coffee table in front of a row of stuffed animals, like they'd been in the middle of something before the bakery run.
Birdie pulled me to the kitchen table while Wyatt cut the pie. She started before the plates were down.
"What do princess cops do?"
I bit back a laugh and glanced at Wyatt. He gave me a small nod. Just go with it.
"Well, I drive around the city and make sure everyone's safe. And when something bad happens, I go to where it happened and try to figure out what's going on."
"Do you look for clues?"
I smiled. "I do. I look at everything really carefully and write it all down."
Birdie's eyes went wide. "So you're like a detective? Like Nancy Drew?"
Something about that hit harder than it should have.
"Not yet," I said. "But I'm working on it."
"Are you going to be one?"
"That's the plan."
She smiled. "I like Nancy Drew."
And then she told me everything. Nancy Drew and her two best friends, Bess and George.
How they solved mysteries together. The clue inside the pumpkin.
The mystery at the birthday party. She talked with her hands, counting the books on her fingers, telling me about ones she hadn't finished yet but she "already knew how they ended. "
I almost laughed. Five years of working toward detective and I thought I had all the motivation I needed. Now a six-year-old with a ponytail thought I was Nancy Drew, and I wasn't about to let her find out I wasn't.
Wyatt sat across the table with his coffee and let his daughter run the whole conversation.
Every question, every tangent, every pivot.
He didn't interrupt, didn't redirect, didn't check his phone.
There was something about this version of Wyatt Brooks.
He was gentle, patient, completely wrapped around his daughter's finger.
It made him more attractive than he had any right to be.
After Birdie finished half her slice, she hopped off her chair and grabbed my hand.
"Come on! I want you to meet Penelope and Mr. Buttons!"
Birdie was asleep on the couch by the time I stood up to leave. She'd made it through two more rounds of questions, half a Nancy Drew chapter read aloud by Wyatt, and a second slice of pie before her eyes started closing. Wyatt draped a blanket over her and walked me to the door.
"Your daughter is adorable."
"She likes you." He leaned against the doorframe. "And she's an honest kid. She tells me when she doesn't like something. I've heard her opinions on my cooking, my music, my driving, and my hair. Criticism from a six-year-old shouldn't hurt as much as it does."
I laughed. "What did she say about your hair?"
"That it looks like a broom."
"She's not wrong."
He laughed. Neither of us said anything for a second.
"Thanks for the pie," I said.
"You're welcome to come over any time."
I didn't leave right away. I should have. The conversation was over, the pie was eaten, the kid was asleep. There was no reason to still be standing in his doorway. But my feet didn't get the message.
"Thanks, Wyatt."
He didn't look away.
I walked down the steps and crossed the street.
Inside, the daisies were on the counter where I'd left them, leaning sideways in a glass of water. I changed into sweats, pulled my Kindle off the charger, and sat down on the couch.
I opened my Kindle. Reid and Elise were still in the kitchen where I'd left them. I read a few pages, but my mind kept drifting across the street to pie crumbs on the table, Penelope and Mr. Buttons lined up on the couch, and a little girl counting mysteries on her fingers.