Rook rolled his eyes. “Don’t be ridiculous. She asked once and that was just because she was trying to figure out why the hell we were biting one another’s heads off.”
“No. That was because she wanted to be the one who got to bite your head off. If you know what I mean.”
Rook winced and shook his head like a dog shaking off water. “No. I don’t know what you mean and if that’s the way you imagine Detective Schwab gives head then remind me to lose her number.”
He looked up and apparently correctly interpreted the murderous expression on May’s face because he burst into laughter again.
“I’m kidding, May. She didn’t give me her number.”
“I hope you two will be very happy together.” May started to stride out of the kitchen and the bastard didn’t even try to stop her. He just laughed and poured himself a cup of coffee.
May took a shower in Ricky’s bathroom and changed into the clothes that she’d packed for herself. When she finally emerged again, her temper was still bubbling just under the surface. She wished she’d gotten a hotel room instead of staying in Rook’s single-man-sex-palace.
Ricky was napping on the couch and seeing her look so at-home made something pinch in May’s chest. Not only was this Rook’s home. This was Ricky’s home too. Her ex-husband and her daughter lived someplace that had absolutely nothing to do with May and didn’t that just sting something terrible. She hated it.
May went into the kitchen to make herself a sandwich and heard Rook on the phone in the other room. There was no doubt that he was taking care of everything he could behind the scenes. He was certainly making this whole mess his business and not only was May grateful, she was irritated as hell. She wanted to handle everything on her own and she also wanted Rook to take the burden of it all off her shoulders. She couldn’t win. She wanted two completely opposite things and it was driving her insane.
She’d finished her sandwich and was just working on a glass of orange juice when Rook came into the kitchen and leaned forward onto the counter, bracing himself against it. She knew that look in his eye. This was not his negotiation look. This was his I’m-gonna-win look.
“What’ll it take?” he asked, his eyes staring into the middle distance, as if he were making calculations in his head.
“What?”
He shook his head to clear it and focused his eyes on her. “The fact is, the safest place on earth for you and Ricky is gonna be in the middle of nowhere on Moreau’s private island. You’ll be completely safe from whoever did that to the house. You’ll be surrounded by highly trained security professionals. And while you’re gone, the NYPD will be able to get a jump on your case. It’s a win-win. So, I’m asking you, what’ll it take to get you to go?”
The vacation. She’d completely forgotten.
For a moment, she pictured what it would feel like to be stuck in New York while her family and all of her friends were away together. And now, added to that would be the fact that apparently there was someone out there who wanted to harm her? She’d be a basketcase the entire week that they were all gone.
The fact was, it wasn’t going to “take” much at all to get her to go on this trip. She was already most of the way convinced. But being in his house had put May on edge and she was feeling argumentative and pissy anyways. So she pushed back and played her cards.
“I do not want to go on a vacation with you, Rook.”
To her complete surprise, he merely gave a brisk nod and pushed back from the counter. “Done and done.”
She blinked at him. Why wasn’t he arguing with her? Trying to convince her to do what he wanted?
“What?”
“The flight is tomorrow at noon. So, you can sleep here again tonight and tomorrow morning I’ll bring you guys home to pack before the airport.”
Ah. So he was just choosing to completely ignore her. Nuh uh. No way. Her temper went through the roof. “I’m sorry. Did you not just hear me? I will not be attending vacation with you. You can get Ricky packed and take her to the airport, but I will be staying here in—“
“I heard you. And you won’t be on vacation with me, okay? But your ass is getting on that plane tomorrow and you’re getting the hell out of dodge until we can figure out how to keep you safe.”
He turned on his heel and strode out of the kitchen. May slid off the stool and got in his way, shoving his chest with one hand. “You can’t tell me what to do, Rook. I’m not getting on that plane with you.”
Rook reached down and took her by the shoulders. “May, I’m not going to be on that plane, okay? You don’t want to be on vacation with me? Good. Grand. Wonderful. You and Ricky can go and I’ll stay here and try to figure out who the hell broke in and tried to burn the house down, all right?”
Still holding her by the shoulders, he just sort of set her aside and proceeded to stride down the hall.
“What?!” May hissed after him. She was jumbled up and speechless. He didn’t turn around. He strode into his home office and shut the door.
***
By dinner time, Rook was still holed up in his office, hard at work. He’d pulled out every stop and called in every favor he had to try and get the top brass on this case. He was extremely disturbed by the facts of the case. Whoever this guy was, he’d barely left anything for the investigators to go on. And his crimes didn’t fit any pattern of other unsolved cases.
Rook only knew this because Wilkes, his friend with the sister who wanted to go on a date with Rook, had recently moved from the LAPD to the NYPD in order to pursue a relationship with a woman out here. Wilkes was feeding Rook as much info as he could get his hands on, which wasn’t much yet.
It was screwed up that this didn’t match other case profiles because that likely meant that their arsonist wasn’t just randomly lighting a house on fire for the hell of it. The chances of a new arsonist randomly choosing May’s house were slim to none. The chances of the arsonist being someone that they knew, who wanted to hurt them, were unfortunately much higher.
If this had been six years ago, Rook would have been able to go through every single person who May and Ricky knew, start the profiling himself. But the fact was, large parts of their lives were mysterious to him now.
It was depressing.
He was just starting to think about the need to take a break and have something to eat when the door to his office swung open.
May strode in with his duffel bag over her shoulder and dumped it onto his desk.
Rook rolled back in his desk chair and eyed the bag. It was stuffed to the brim with neatly folded clothing, the damn thing couldn’t even zip the whole way.
“What’s this?” he asked her.
“I packed for you.”
“You packed for me,” he parroted blankly.
“You’re going on that damn vacation and so am I. We’re going to suck it up and be adults and make the best choices for our kid. So. Yeah. I packed for you.”
Rook blinked down at the bag. There were clothes in this bag he barely even remembered purchasing. She must have dug through his closet to find them. “Packed for me? Or took the opportunity to snoop through my drawers?”
She smirked. “A little of column A…”
They both laughed as he shook his head at her. “You’re sure? You’re fine for us to both go on this vacation?”
May shrugged. “If one of us stays behind, Ricky is just going to worry her ass off the whole vacation.”
Rook chuckled. “True enough.”
“I’ll make sure to give you plenty of space. Apparently it’s a very big island.”
He nodded, and didn’t mention that he wasn’t interested in space from her at all. But he didn’t want to say anything that might tip her over the edge and make her stay behind.
He cleared his throat and pushed away from the desk. “I was about to order some dinner for us.”
She smirked at him. “Not in the mood for one of my gourmet meals?”
He had the grace no
t to wince. “I… think we’ve had a rough enough twenty-four hours without adding May Jones’s signature burned mush to our troubles.”
She laughed and rolled her eyes, but there wasn’t any malice in it.
He ordered Chinese food and ate with May and Ricky at the kitchen table. Afterward, they watched a movie together and May and Ricky went to his bed. He took Ricky’s terrible little twin and made a note to at least buy her a full-sized bed when they got back from the trip.
The next morning they were out of the house early, packing their bags to prepare for the trip. And Rook was glad for that. He didn’t think he could handle another minute of having May and Ricky in his house. His whole family under one roof. His roof. It was threatening to short circuit his brain.
They packed quickly and made it to the airport with plenty of time, besides, they were flying on a private jet, it wasn’t like Moreau was going to leave without them. Nevertheless, they were the last group to board the plane.
“Ricky!” Naomi yelled from the back of the plane.
“Icky!” Brooke—Naomi and Sequence’s daughter—yelled in her toddler speak.
Everyone laughed and Rook hefted their carry-on bags into an overhead compartment. “It’s like getting onto the plane with a rockstar.”
“Yup,” Ricky agreed. “Everybody wants a piece of me.”
Rook rolled his eyes at her and smiled as he watched her scamper down the aisle of the opulent plane. She dodged a noogie from Geo, blushed heartily at something Moreau said to her, and high-fived Atlas and Sequence. She swooped Brooke from her seat and plunked down with the little girl on her lap.
“One big happy family,” May muttered under her breath as she looked out at the group.
“I guess so,” Rook agreed.
Five hours later they were landing at a small airport and reloading into a much smaller plane that hopped them two islands over to the small, tropical island that Moreau apparently owned.
“I have not been to this villa in over five years,” he warned them as they all dragged their bags up the hill from the landing strip toward the villa. “But I’ve paid for its upkeep and I remember it to be very nice.”
“Holy guacamole,” May muttered under her breath as they stepped inside the walled villa. It was utterly gorgeous.
The white stucco walls were high enough to maintain their privacy from any passing paparrazzi boats and housed a beautiful, sprawling compound. In the middle of the villa was a huge, two-level saltwater pool with loungers all around it. There was a grilling station and what looked to be a fully stocked cabana bar right next to it.
The main house had a humongous dining room, a many-couched living room, a TV room, and an utterly insane kitchen. The second floor was Geo and Moreau’s. There were four other little guesthouses.
When Rook did the math, he realized that he and May were probably going to wind up in the same guesthouse. He glanced at her and wondered how she might take that.
But really, she looked quite relaxed for someone who’d had her house broken into two nights before and was now forced into a vacation with her ex-husband. She wore a wide, floppy hat and enormous sunglasses. Her dark, wavy hair tumbled over her bare shoulders. She looked deliciously old Hollywood.
“What?” she asked, looking up at him and cocking an eyebrow behind the huge frames of her sunglasses.
“Nothing. I like the hat.” He cleared his throat.
“Right. I’m so sure. I’ll have you know this hat is fashionable and functional, all right?”
“I wasn’t making fun of it. I swear. It makes you look fancy. Totally out of my league.”
That had her cracking a reluctant smile. “I was always out of your league, Rook.”
He laughed as she sashayed over to the one guesthouse that hadn’t been claimed by everyone else.
By the time that Rook shouldered his way into the little one-story bungalow, Ricky was already hooting and hollering about how amazing her room was. She’d chosen the smallest room on the poolside of the bungalow because it had a flatscreen and, apparently, a color scheme she was all about.
May stood at the end of the other hall and Rook wasn’t sure he was relieved or disappointed when she pointed to the two available rooms there. “Dealer’s choice,” she said to him. “Although, I’m betting you’ll want this one.”
She pointed to the one on her right. Rook ducked his head into that room and then the other one. They were virtually identical. Beautiful soft blue rooms, floaty white curtains, and ocean views.
“Why did you think I’d want that one?”
She raised an eyebrow. “Because you could land a helicopter on the bed.”
“Ah.” He checked out the rooms again. The one on the right did indeed have a king-sized bed.
“What’s the deal with that anyways?” she asked, leaning against the doorjamb of the room she was apparently choosing. “The king-sized bed.”
He furrowed his brow. “If I have to explain it to you then you’ve never slept in a king-sized bed.”
“I slept in one for the last two nights and didn’t magically fall under the spell.” She paused. “You never used to have a problem with our bed.”
“Our tiny bed. Our tiny, noisy bed.”
She pursed her lips but couldn’t restrain the smile. They’d had a lot of loud, very squeaky sex on that bed. She shrugged a shoulder at him.
“Yeah,” he agreed. “I never had a problem with it. But when we split up… I just wanted something new.” His words sat like rocks between them and the good feeling from moments before dried up. He cleared his throat. “Besides. I’m used to it now. I sleep like a starfish these days.”
“Mom! Dad! I’m going swimming!” Ricky called down the hallway.
“I’ll join you,” he called back. The hallway was too small and he was saying too much. Ever since she’d seen his house, May had been in a strange mood that he couldn’t quite pin down. He felt charged around her, aware and on notice. But he knew her too well to think that was exclusively a good thing. When she was like this, she was as likely to smile at him as she was to snarl. And he didn’t care to get snarled at.
Not when make-up sex was off the table.
CHAPTER SIX
May spent the first few hours in paradise making phone calls. She ran a dance studio in Prospect Heights that wouldn’t run itself while she was gone. It had started as a ballet studio, which was what she was the most trained in. She’d hated it as a girl, but grew to love it when she was looking for some sort of fitness to help her lose her baby weight. Recently she’d also added modern dance classes, pole dancing classes, and a few bootcamp classes that were decidedly not for the faint of heart.
All of the subs she’d had to call in were happy to help and all of them were more than sympathetic about the mess at her house. Maybe even a little too sympathetic. May found that she wasn’t entirely interested in reliving the story over and over and that she didn’t particularly want to have to hold the immediate horror and pity that her story was greeted with.
What she really wanted was to forget the whole thing ever happened.
And on that note…
She found Rook reclining on a lounger beside the pool, tossing a ball back and forth with Ricky who was trying to catch it while floating on an inner tube.
May gritted her teeth at the sight of a shirtless Rook. His body had always just done it for her. He was muscular and wide, with more mass than definition. And as time wore on, he’d gained enough chest hair to really make her want to stare. He was blunt and dark and gorgeous.
Sometimes his scars still surprised her.
After he’d come home from Iraq, damn near torn to shreds from the IED blast, she’d been shaken to her core to see him injured. She knew it was foolish, but that was the first time it had even occurred to her that her larger-than-life husband could be injured. Sure, there were some nights while he was overseas that she tossed and turned and worried about him. But for the most part, Rook was just one of
those guys who survived. Who just kept on going.
His scars, however, weren’t even the most painful part of his chest for her to look at. As soon as they’d hit eighteen, Rook had started getting tattoos. And he’d started with the one over his heart.
She couldn’t look at it now. Because looking at it made her wonder if he’d ever considered getting it covered up.
She plunked down on the lounger next to him.
“Hey,” he said, glancing over at her and tossing the ball at Ricky, grinning when she bobbled it and rolled off the inner tube into the pool.
“Dad!” she shouted as she came up sputtering.
“What?” he shouted back. “It’s not like I kicked you off the inner tube.”
She glowered at him and soaked the ball with water before she launched it at him. He caught it and all the water exploded from the ball, soaking him and May.
“You’re gonna get it, kid!” May shouted. “Wait’ll I get my suit on.”
Ricky pretended to shake in her boots and dove under the water.
“Why don’t you have your suit on?” Rook asked her, looking over the belted sundress she’d worn on the plane. “The May I used to know would have been the first person in the pool. Mai Tais for all.”
“I had phone calls to make.”
He sat up from the lounger and turned to face her. There wasn’t quite as much space as he’d apparently thought there was because his knees had to go on the outside of hers as they faced one another. She stared down at his tanned legs. His leg hair was damp and swirled from the water. “Work phone calls or calls about the house?”
“Work. But I wanted to talk to you about the house.”
“Sure.”
“What’s the name of that contractor you used for the bunker? I’m gonna need someone to fix the damage in the kitchen and I was thinking it might be time for a remodel anyways.”
He blinked at her. “Right. Yeah. Uh, his name is Sam Un. He’s great. I’ll give him your number.”
May studied him. “Is something wrong? You don’t like that idea?”
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