Chapter 2
Just after nine o’clock that night, there was a soft knock on my front door.
As much as I had been looking forward to seeing Nick, I wasn’t feeling ready for it.
I had only just managed to get the kids to bed thirty minutes ago.
My hands were still pruny from scrubbing burned cheese off the frying pan, the laundry I’d pulled from the dryer was in a pile on my sofa, the floor was a minefield of Barbie dolls and Matchbox cars, and the front of my holey sweatpants were drenched after Zach’s tantrum in the bathtub.
I smelled like baby shampoo and kitchen smoke, and I probably looked like a house fire.
I threw my hair up in an elastic band on my way to answer the door. Nick came over most nights after work, and while he kept a toothbrush, a razor, and a stick of deodorant in my bathroom, he used the key hidden under my downspout only when I couldn’t manage to stay awake long enough to let him in.
I peeped through the window before unlocking the door. Nick smiled back at me, his brown eyes twinkling. A balmy breeze rippled his tie and ruffled the dark, thick waves of his hair.
“Hey,” he said over the chirping of crickets.
The tiny frogs Zach loved to chase were singing, too, almost loud enough to drown out the low hum of the highway a few miles off and the planes flying over Dulles.
Spring had sprung early in Virginia, bringing with it warmer temperatures and gentle thunderstorms, and my neighborhood in South Riding was ripe with the smells of daffodils, wet asphalt, and a hint of the trash bins left out for morning pickup.
“Hey,” I said back, my heart doing a little jig at the sight of him.
He’d shaved that morning before he’d left the house, but his full lips were already framed in sexy dark stubble.
It hardly seemed fair that he looked that good after a full day of work, while I looked like one of Delia’s off-brand Barbies after her brother got hold of it and dragged it mercilessly by its hair through the playground.
I pulled Nick slowly into the house by the end of his tie.
“Rough day?” he asked.
“Is it that obvious?”
He refrained from answering that. Probably because we had agreed on a strict policy of one hundred percent honesty with each other, and answering that question truthfully would probably make me cry.
He pulled me into his chest. A faint hint of his cologne lingered in the warm and comforting space there, and I drew it in deep as he pressed a kiss to the top of my head.
I felt his lips stretch with a smile as he sniffed my hair. “Grilled cheese?”
“Lucky guess.”
“Is there any left?”
“I’ll make one for you, if you’re feeling brave enough to try it.” I stepped out of his arms and started toward the kitchen.
“Not so fast,” he said, catching me by the shoulders. He turned me gently toward the table and deposited me in a chair. His cop voice brooked no room for argument as he lifted my feet and propped them on the empty chair beside me. “You’ve done enough today.”
His shoulders flexed between the straps of his leather holster as he stripped off his jacket and loosened his tie.
He moved through my kitchen with an easy familiarity, retrieving a bottle of cheap red wine from the pantry and twisting open the metal cap.
He poured me a glass and set it in front of me.
I drew it to my lips and paused. I’d been so busy, I’d forgotten all about the pregnancy test I’d hidden in the cabinet.
I set the wine down. “Actually, I think I’ll just have a ginger ale.
” Nick raised an eyebrow. “Just a bit of an upset stomach,” I said.
“Have you eaten anything today?” he asked. I opened my mouth to tell him I was fine, but he held up a finger. “Picking at Zach’s leftovers doesn’t count.”
I had to think about that. The day had been a blur. “I could eat,” I admitted.
He poured me a glass of soda and began assembling grilled cheeses.
When he set a steaming sandwich in front of me, my stomach actually growled.
I hadn’t had much of an appetite since Vero was arrested.
I had been telling myself I was too busy to eat, but the fact of the matter was that nothing had tasted quite the same since she left.
Not because she was a better cook, but because I missed her. Every bit as much as the kids did.
I moved my feet to the floor to make room for Nick.
He sat down and eagerly tucked into his meal.
I could feel his cop-brain working overtime, analyzing my body language—the way my elbows rested beside my plate, the long sips of ginger ale I took after every slow bite.
He refilled my glass. “Any word from Vero?”
“Not since last weekend. I thought maybe she was just busy, but Javi says he hasn’t heard from her either. I’m starting to worry.”
“Her trial’s coming up. She probably has a lot going on. Her mother and her aunt are with her, and Ramón’s been checking in,” he reminded me.
It was the same reassurance I had offered Javi, but the longer I sat with it, the more doubtful I felt. “What if something’s gone haywire with her case?”
“She’s been assigned a lawyer. I’m sure he’s doing everything he can. We just have to trust the legal system to make the right call.”
“And what if they don’t?” I didn’t want to think about what would happen if Vero wasn’t acquitted.
He set down his sandwich, watching me with a look of concern as he wiped his hands.
“Want me to make a few calls? Sam has some contacts in Maryland. She probably knows someone in PG County. Maybe she can get an update.” Detective Samara Becker was my sister’s girlfriend.
Sam worked in cybercrimes, and she seemed to have contacts everywhere.
Apparently, being gorgeous and ruthlessly good at her job didn’t make it hard to find friends.
She looked more like Hollywood’s version of a lady cop than any actual female detectives I’d ever known, and if she weren’t so head over heels for my fashion-challenged and socially awkward big sister, I would think Sam and her Louboutins were too perfect to be real.
If anyone could get information quickly and discreetly, I didn’t doubt it was Sam.
But maybe Nick was right and I was stressing over things I couldn’t control and probably didn’t need to.
“If she doesn’t call me back tomorrow, I’ll reach out to her mom.
” I had met Vero’s mother for the first time the day Vero was released on bail.
I had driven up to Norma’s house with a suitcase full of Vero’s clothes, her toiletries, and her laptop, along with some art my children had made for her.
Norma had been understandably distraught, Vero had been depressed and distracted, and my visit to their home had been far too short.
Nick reached over and took the napkin I was shredding from my hands. He turned my chair sideways, pulling it and me a few inches closer to him. “Why don’t you go see her?”
“I don’t have anyone to watch the kids.” My mom and dad had been sick with the flu, and Steven was visiting his family in Pennsylvania.
“I’ll do it.”
My head snapped up, but Nick’s expression was serious.
“I would never ask you to do that. It’s more than just watching them, Nick.
” How did you explain the impossibly broad scope of child-rearing to someone who’d never done it?
It was feeding them and bathing them and keeping Zach on track with his potty training.
It was giving Delia her allergy meds and shuttling her to and from preschool.
I could hardly manage it all myself now that Vero was gone.
We had been a team for so long now, I had almost forgotten what it felt like to be a single parent.
Her absence was eating away at me, but my relationship with Nick was too new to test.
I stood and gathered my unfinished plate. Just because we had exchanged bodily fluids and I love yous didn’t mean he was volunteering to become a dad. Expecting him to care for my kids—even for a night—felt like too much to ask of him.
Nick got up and followed me to the sink.
He reached around me, taking the dirty plate from my hand.
“I can handle it, Finn. And I can wash the dishes, too.” He set them in the sink basin and turned me around to face him, bracing his hands against the counter on either side of my hips.
He ducked his head, bringing his face close to mine until he was all I could see.
Not the stacks of unopened mail on the counter or the pile of clothes waiting to be folded on the couch in the next room.
“I’ll think about it,” I said.
He kissed me. When he didn’t stop kissing me, I reached my arms around his neck, letting him hoist me onto the counter. “What do you say we leave the dishes for the morning and go upstairs?” he murmured.
I cringed inwardly, remembering the large swaths of leg hair I’d missed during my hurried sponge bath over the sink that morning.
As much as I wanted to let Nick make me forget all about the day, I didn’t think I had it in me to stay awake once my head hit the pillow.
“I’m a mess,” I said with a hand to his chest. “I didn’t even have time to shower before my doctor’s appointment, and—”
He put a finger to my lips. “First, if I wanted to have sex with you—and let the record show I always want to have sex with you—then there is nothing you could say about the state of your body that would dissuade me from wanting to see it naked. Second, as much as I do want to get you naked and have sex with you tonight, I’m not going to. ”
“You’re not?”
“No, I’m not.” His mouth quirked into a smile at my obvious disappointment. “You’re exhausted,” he said, brushing the hair back from my eyes. “So you’re going upstairs to take a long, hot bath, and then you’re going to sleep.”
“I can’t,” I said. “I have too much to do.”
“I thought you might say that.” Nick unbuttoned his shirt cuffs with a sigh. He rolled up both sleeves all the way to his elbows.
“You don’t have to help me wash the dishes. I can do that mysel— Nick!” I cried, laughing as he slung me over his shoulder. “What are you doing?! You’re going to hurt your—”
“Shhhh! You’re going to wake the kids.” The kitchen disappeared behind me as he carried me up the stairs to my bedroom.
I waited for him to plop me down on my rumpled sheets, my anticipation turning to disappointment as he walked right past my unmade bed and straight into the bathroom.
He set me down on the edge of the tub before I could utter a protest.
He scooped out Zach and Delia’s bath toys, put the stopper in the drain, and turned on the faucet.
Then he reached for the jug of Mr. Bubble and poured a generous glob of it under the stream.
“I’ll be back in a minute. I want you undressed and in that tub when I get back,” he said in his most authoritative tone.
I was having second thoughts about not wanting to have sex as I watched him walk out of the bathroom.
I stripped off my sweatshirt and lollipop-smeared yoga pants and sank down gingerly into the steaming water.
The tub was almost full by the time Nick returned, holding a glass of milk and a paper plate full of store-bought cookies.
He set them beside me and turned off the water, leaving and returning once more with a single towel.
“Aren’t you coming in?”
“I’m going downstairs. You are going to relax.” He put a cookie in my hand and walked out the door.
The water was cool, the cookies were gone, and my fingers were prunes by the time I finally pulled the plug on the drain and dried off.
I wrapped my clean hair in a towel and put on the pajamas Nick had set out for me, then I left the bathroom to find him.
He wasn’t waiting for me in bed like I had hoped.
Instead, I found it made with fluffed pillows and fresh linens.
I padded downstairs. The laundry I’d left on the couch was folded and piled neatly back in the basket, and the dishwasher was humming quietly.
Nick was working at the stubborn sticky spots on the counter with a sponge, and the effort was doing lovely things for both his backside and my libido. “Did I pass?” he asked me as he scrubbed.
“Are you trying to ace some kind of test?” I wrapped my arms around his waist and rested my chin on his hunched shoulder. “You do realize the chores aren’t this easy when the kids are actually awake, right?”
“You don’t think I can do it?”
I closed my eyes, relishing the way his muscles moved under my hands. “I’m just saying, it’s easy to get things done when the kids are asleep, assuming you have the energy after they’ve run you ragged all day.”
He tossed the sponge into the sink and turned around to face me, his eyes making a slow pass down the front of my pajamas. “I have the energy for all kinds of things.” He leaned back against the counter with a lethal grin.
And damn if the heated look in his eyes wasn’t a shot of adrenaline straight to my chest. “Suddenly, so do I.”