An Embarrassment of Monsters: A Dark Romantic Suspense Novel (Alace Sweets Book 3)

by MariaLisa deMora

  “I’m glad you didn’t say what you started to.” The scold in Eric’s voice steadied her. “I wish you could see what you and Owen do from my perspective.”

  “Maybe one day.” She shrugged and lifted Lila, positioning the little girl against her shoulder as she rubbed and patted her back. “Can you get me a bottle of juice?” He brushed his lips across hers, then kissed the top of Lila’s head before he rose and walked out. She listened to his footsteps descending the stairs, and once she knew he was gone, she earned a burp for her efforts before altering their positions to allow Lila access to her other breast. Once the infant had latched on again and was nursing steadily, Alace shook her head.

  Crooning lowly, she whispered, “Momma’s a good monster, sweet girl.” Eyes with startling blue irises flashed open, then closed in contentment. Alace teased Lila’s palm with the edge of a nail, smiling softly as delicate fingers wrapped tightly around her finger. Humming, she mouthed the words to a lullaby. “Hush little baby, don’t say a word, Momma’s gonna buy you a mockingbird. If that mockingbird won’t sing, Momma’s gonna give you everything. If all those things don’t make you smile, Momma’s gonna go the extra mile. If that distance doesn’t impress, Momma’s gonna surprise you with a dress. If that dress it doesn’t fit, Momma’s gonna learn how to knit. If knit and purl are not her thing, Momma’s gonna go with lots more bling. If that bling-bling fails to shine, Momma’s gonna find something more divine. If divinity doesn’t approach, Momma’s gonna dig a hell of a moat. If that moat fails to protect, Momma’s gonna explain what she expects. If Momma’s expectations are not met, Momma’s makin’ sure that they’ll regret.”

  “Alace.” Eric appeared to materialize in the center of the room, and she jerked, causing Lila to lose her hold on the nipple, startling, hands flying wide as she let out a tiny wail.

  “You scared me.” Alace adjusted things and winced when Lila’s gums clamped hard before creating a seal, the pain easing as the infant started sucking again. Standing motionless, he stared at her, a bottle of juice gripped firmly in one hand. “What?”

  “There’s a baby monitor in the kitchen.” When she lifted one shoulder in response, he pulled in a deep breath, dropped his head forwards, and shook it slowly side to side. “One, I’m glad Bebe is out for coffee with friends. And two, you were not as quiet as you thought you were being.”

  “It’s just a song, Eric.” She held her hand out for the juice, Lila’s tiny fist grasping the edge of her shirt. “My singing isn’t that terrible, is it?” Her attempted joke fell flat as he approached and lowered to one knee next to the rocker. “What’s so bad about me singing to Lila?”

  “It’s not the singing.” He cupped her cheek, the chill from the juice bottle transferring to her skin and raising gooseflesh over her body. “If you persist in seeing yourself as a monster, then you’ll have to deal with my perception, too.”

  Carefully controlling her expression and respiration, she stared at him. “What does that mean?”

  He leaned forwards, brushing a kiss across her lips once, twice, a third time before he pulled back, still so close each word sent a subtle puff of air across her sensitive skin.

  “You’ll always be my favorite monster.”

  ***

  Owen

  Standing at the curb, he surveyed the front of the house, taking in the open space on either side. The lots backed up against an open field, which stretched a couple of acres towards what looked to be dense forest. Movement behind a window captured his attention, and he tipped his head down to hide a smile when he saw Doc staring out at him.

  Their arrival in Colorado two days ago had initiated a tension-filled few hours. After they’d swapped off driving right before sunrise, Owen had fallen asleep against the passenger door, expecting to open his eyes at the new house. At some point afterwards, Alace had called and chatted with Doc, changing their plans so when Owen woke, they were already on the final street approach to Alace’s house.

  “What’s goin’ on?” He blinked, scrubbing at his face with the edge of a hand, sleep-induced dryness feeling like sawdust against his eyeballs. It only took an instant for his mind to snap alert, recognizing the houses on either side of the street. “What the hell? This isn’t the right neighborhood.”

  “Alace called.”

  Cold water doused Owen’s nerves, his breath locking tight in his chest. “What’d she say?” Muscles stretched and flexed, his fingers curled into tight balls of flesh. When Doc didn’t respond immediately, he whipped his head to the side to see the man observing him quietly. “What’d she say?” His strident words echoed within the car and he checked on the kids quickly, relieved to see he hadn’t woken them.

  “She wants to meet me, officially.” Doc shrugged and shifted his gaze back to the street. “I didn’t see any issues with it. It’d give the kids a chance to stretch their legs, too. You want to go to the house instead, I’ll turn around. You can remap the nav, and we’ll be there within a few minutes.”

  Doc made it sound so easy Owen sucked in a silent breath to make sure he still could. Not easily, but still capable.

  “Nah. Nah, man. It’s cool. If it’s her suggestion, then this is actually perfect. You get to meet her, and we can see how the kids respond. Her husband is a softie, so I bet Shiloh will warm up to him fast. Kelly knows about Alace in theory, and he knows she’s part of the reason I wanted to relocate here. He can put a face to a name, and it’ll all be good.” The longer he talked, the more it made sense in his head. “It’s good. We can get it out of the way, and then afterwards, we can take our time. Settle into the house.” He deliberately eased the tension from his muscles, starting from his feet upwards. Unclench the piggies first, then the ankles. “Just didn’t expect it is all.” He uncapped a bottle of water and upended it, lungs burning for air by the time the bottle emptied down his throat. “It’s cool.”

  “Anything I should know before we walk into her house?” Doc’s chin lifted, his throat elongating, and Owen watched as his Adam’s apple fluidly dipped down towards his collar with a swallow. What a weird thing for me to notice.

  “Yeah.” He capped the empty bottle and tossed it into the footwell next to his sock-covered feet. Bending forwards, he tugged on first one boot and then the other. “She’s scary as fuck, and it’s entirely earned. Don’t show fear, don’t give her your back, and believe everything she tells you.”

  A lawnmower roared somewhere behind him, setting up a homey-feeling echo. It reminded him of growing up in Minnesota, summers filled with lazy days and easy happiness. He swept the neighborhood with a gaze again, tracking everything changed since the last time he’d looked around. A car was backing out of a garage two houses down. Owen lifted a hand, and the man behind the wheel returned the gesture. Nick Cappiello, mid-thirties, respiratory therapist at the local county hospital, married to Annie, who was an X-ray technician. They had no kids.

  Alace had sent a digital folder of information with a dossier on each neighbor in a three-block radius. Owen had built his own investigative research data and then compared the two. Mentally he’d called it an overall tie, because while Alace had dug deeper on a couple of residents based on something indefinable that piqued her interest, Owen had done deeper dives on the same individuals based on his study of details in their surface lives.

  Nick and Annie Cappiello were harmless.

  He turned and looked in the other direction, focusing on a house three lots down, roof rising over the structures around it as if the large home loomed over them all.

  Samuel Donald Ashworth, early sixties, retired, residing with his current wife, Jan Gertrud nee Marlow. She was Ashworth’s fourth wife. They’d been married for not quite seven years and were already at the outskirts of the survival range for the man’s previous spouses. Owen glanced at the concrete equipment idling at the curb in front of the house, the extended boom pulsing as the pump pushed the mixture through machinery, resembling an articulated spider’s leg.

 
; Home improvement projects had coincided with each of his previous wives’ deaths. If Owen didn’t intervene, Jan was probably scheduled for the end of her spousal run at Samuel’s side, a tragic accident in her near future.

  I’ll get Alace’s opinion. Owen tucked his chin to his neck and angled his gaze to the curb running along the edge of the street. Already second nature to consult with his partner on anything and everything. He not only didn’t mind the direction his brain had gone but also welcomed the sense of support gained from merely the thought. It wouldn’t be awkward at all, since she’d seen the same pattern of behaviors for Ashworth.

  Owen swiveled and stared farther down the street at a small, nondescript house poised at a nearby intersection of streets. Aldo Lamar Kuellen lived alone, no relatives nearby. Kuellen had been in the neighborhood for more than twenty years, buying one of the first built-for-speculation homes offered. He was a plain man, living in a plain house, driving a plain car to his plain job.

  Alace hadn’t been curious about Kuellen, her information thorough but not turning up anything of note. Plain information. Owen had been intrigued, the chameleon aspect of the man’s hiding in plain sight enough to make him wonder what was behind the façade. It had taken a little effort, but curiosity drove results as efficiently as suspicion.

  Porn. Extreme porn videos on a subscription-based website created specifically for the dangerously violent genres. Owen had surmised the hosting servers were stored within the home, his intuition based on data surfaced regarding long-term electricity use paired with the structure’s high-speed fiber connection for the Internet.

  Owen had tapped a gig worker for a review of movies he’d extracted from Kuellen’s servers. The feds had a program he’d appropriated in the past, and normally Owen would have initiated that, utilizing the software to look for previously tagged and identified porn images, but it hadn’t yet been expanded to video. The developer Owen hired had detected multiple movies featuring members of vulnerable communities, including homeless, drug addicts, mentally incompetent individuals, and alcoholics. So many people who could be swayed with a word or a promise, coming out the other end maimed and wounded in unacceptable ways. Or, in several cases, not coming out the other end at all. The apparent snuff films were in the database in limited quantities, but even one was too many.

  Need to loop Alace in on this one, too. That would not be an easy conversation. Owen wouldn’t downplay his intuitive identification of the pornographer. Alace would find it more offensive than simply laying out the facts. She’ll be all-in on this. The only real complication was the close proximity to his and Doc’s new home.

  A glance back at the front of his house showed him Shiloh staring out at him. He waved, grinning broadly when she readily waved back.

  Pornographer Kuellen and wife-killing Ashworth aside, this was going to be a great neighborhood in which to raise children. “Just gotta take out the trash,” he muttered as he headed up the sidewalk to the front door. “Easy peasy.”

  ***

  Alace

  “I’m going to invite them over for dinner.” Eric’s words drifted up the stairs to where Alace sat with Lila in her arms. Head leaned back against the rocking chair, she closed her eyes and waited. “If you’re going to be working with this doctor—”

  “Doc,” she interjected, soothing Lila when the baby startled at her half-shouted word.

  “With this Doc,” Eric picked up seamlessly, “then I want to know more about him. Not what you can hand me on a piece of paper, but how I feel around him. They weren’t here long enough for me to get a good read on the guy.”

  “He’s gay.” She pitched her voice differently, pleased when Lila nursed on unconcerned.

  “So?” Pans rattled, signaling Eric had started on whatever he was making for supper.

  Alace smiled, looked down at Lila, and traced a finger along the curve of the infant’s cheek. “Daddy’s thickheaded sometimes.” Shifting to the same projected voice as before, she called back, “You’ll have to keep your shirt on this time. He might be impressed in a different way than Owen was.” The computer gave off a soft sound, and an instant later, Lila fussed, fists flailing as she jerked and pulled on Alace’s nipple.

  “I don’t know what you mean.” The rattling sound increased, signaling Eric’s discomfort with the topic.

  Deliberately taking in a deep breath, Alace lowered her shoulders, focusing on her muscles as she relaxed them, Lila’s fussing fading away. She’d found the baby was an infallible lie-detector and a stress meter, which was impossible to ignore. The computer made the same sound, but this time Alace successfully masked her response from her daughter.

  “I distinctly remember a shirtless you in the kitchen the first time Owen came for dinner.”

  The computer noises were from a specific communication tool she and Owen used. If he was messaging her via the software and not her phone, it meant the topic was sensitive. Which might mean he’d found the cop who’d taken his kids from their foster home and sold them into the sex slavery ring.

  “What do you mean? I’d just showered. I didn’t want to be rude and keep him waiting.” Eric’s voice was louder, accompanied by quiet footfalls coming up the stairs. Alace used a finger to break Lila’s hold on her nipple and lifted the girl to her shoulder, using one hand to adjust her clothing. Her soothing pats against Lila’s back elicited an overly loud burp as Eric came into the room. “That’s my girl.” He grinned, beaming proudly, hands out to take their daughter from Alace. “That’s my very good girl.”

  “She’s already pretty smelly. Someone made a deposit during dinner.” Fingers laced together across her stomach, Alace watched as Eric bobbed and dipped across the room, dancing his way to the changing table that had taken up residence in their bedroom, as had the baby dresser of spare clothing. “We should think about finishing the nursery. Give her some space. Give us some space.”

  “Or, she could stay in here with Mommy and Daddy for another month.” Deftly unsnapping the onesie Lila wore, Eric leaned down and brushed a kiss across her cheek. “Just another month, Mommy.”

  “Next week.” Eric’s head tipped to the side as he looked at her, one eyebrow lifted in a question. “Monday, to be exact. She’ll be six weeks old.” She laughed as understanding dawned across Eric’s expression. “Yeah, Daddy. You wanna have to explain to our daughter’s future therapist how she was damaged by hearing Mommy and Daddy doing the deed?”

  “I doubt she’d be traumatized. She’ll be sleeping.” One hand on the baby’s belly, he held Lila in place while he cleaned her with a wipe, tucking the soiled paper into the set-aside diaper as he grabbed a clean one. He shifted his hold to Lila’s ankles, lifting her to push the back band of the fresh diaper under her bottom. “Yeah, she’ll probably sleep right through anything.” Eric finished and was straightening, a newly diapered Lila held against his chest, as Alace laughed. “What?”

  She flicked up one finger. “Sex.” A second finger joined the first. “A.” The third finger flipped up, and she waggled them back and forth, pretending to fan her face. “Thon.”

  Eric’s laughter was loud and boisterous and set Lila fussing. Alace was mute as she watched Eric soothe their daughter, his capable hands knowing precisely how to stroke and pat to quiet her. God, I love him.

  “Point taken. What if in addition to dinner, we ask for help setting everything up? That way there’s a theme to the evening. It’d have the added benefit in keeping my mother’s efforts at assistance corralled.” He dipped and twisted, dancing in place with Lila in his arms. A rumble came from him, and Alace realized he was humming to Lila, his comfort of the infant now second nature. She must have been staring too long, because he lifted an eyebrow and without missing a beat asked, “What?”

  “When should we try for another one of those?” She tipped her head towards Lila, gaze locked on Eric’s face. Heat bloomed between her legs when his eyes darkened, revealing his pent-up desire matching hers. “How long do you
want to wait?”

  “Let’s see what the doctor says next week, but I’m in favor of whatever kind of timeline you want to follow, Alace. You remember how hard it was for you to keep working with the morning sickness, and then later, when you were tired so much of the time. Your work—” He brushed a kiss against Lila’s temple, whispering softly to the child. Lila’s face relaxed, smoothing out from the wrinkled scowl she had been wearing. “What you and Owen do is important. I don’t think you’d be happy without it, and my only hesitation is how you’d feel if you suddenly had two children in diapers and little-to-no time to work on the cases.”

  “You could quit lawyering and be a stay-at-home dad.” Her laughter at what was clearly a ridiculous option was loud in the room. She cut it off immediately, realizing Eric wasn’t laughing with her. “I’m kidding, Eric.”

  “I know.” Each dip of his chin brought his lips back to the top of Lila’s head—a sequence of soft kisses so sweet to watch it made Alace’s heart melt. “To be honest, I have given it some thought. I love our little Lady Lila here, even when she rules our lives with an iron baby fist. When I leave for work, the first thing I think as I’m in the car driving away is ‘I wish I were home,’ because this is where I want to be.” The swaying stilled, his only movement a hand continuing to slide up and down Lila’s back. “But I know myself well enough to realize I’d be unhappy if that were the reality. Not because I don’t love her, or you, but because I am validated at work. I help people, too. Just in a different way from what you do.”

  “You think I help people?” The question had flashed through her head a split second before she decided to give it voice, pulling down the curtain of insecurity slightly. Eric knew all her secrets and never flinched from giving her feedback that was real and from the heart. She instinctively knew he’d understand this wasn’t a self-serving request from her, wasn’t a false cry for reassurance. This was the war she waged inside with every gig she accepted or turned down, balancing the driving need to find vengeance for those who had been denied, doing it against her own feelings of guilt, and the very real fear of getting it wrong.