by Dale Mayer
“Yes,” Nico said, “but we’re still trying to track down the birth mother.”
“Are you thinking that Charlotte’s assistant was the mother?”
He looked at him and said, “I like that as an idea, but now we have to prove it. Do we even know if the ages work?”
“I don’t know that either.”
Nico quickly typed it into the chat window. When the answer came back, his eyebrows shot up. “Interesting. The father is young, considering the boy died three years ago at the age of eighteen, making him born twenty-one years ago now. The father’s only forty now. Apparently his son was born when the father was about nineteen, when the parents were both teens, I presume. That was one of the reasons they lost custody.”
“So she is?” Keane asked.
A text beeped and Nico checked it out. “Thirty-seven,” Nico said, now that that answer had come through.
“And Maggie the assistant was how old?”
He looked at his partner. “Charlotte said the grandmotherly type.”
“Which could mean anything. Do we also know if she wore a disguise and how good she might have been with makeup?”
He sat back, thinking about it. “It’s a whole lot easier to look older than younger. Let me talk to the landlord.”
“Good luck with that. Did you check the time?”
He swore. “Yeah, that won’t work, will it?” But then he thought out loud, “I’ll ask Miles for some ID on her.” He quickly opened up the chat box again and wrote down what they were thinking now and typed, Do we have any photo ID of Maggie? As the pictures came in, they all made her look like she was in her sixties. “Looks like she is in the area of sixty.”
“So not likely the mother.”
“No. So what’s the connection?”
They looked at each other, and Nico felt his heart sank. “Grandmother?” He snatched up the phone and contacted Miles. “We need to check on the grandparents. On both sides of the family.”
“You really think they’d be involved?”
“Depends if Andy was their only grandchild.”
It took another ten minutes to get the facts. But apparently the grandparents on the birth mother’s side were dead. Andy’s paternal grandfather had passed away, and his paternal grandmother herself was living on a small island in Greece at this time. There were no living grandparents on Andy’s adoptive family’s side, having died a long time ago.
Deflated, Nico decided it was time to grab some shut-eye. “Over to you,” he said to Keane. “Feels like I didn’t get anywhere.”
“Well, we’re knocking people off the list, if nothing else.”
“Right,” Nico said. He headed upstairs. Joshua’s door was still closed, and Nico opened the door to Charlotte’s bedroom to see her tossing and turning, obviously caught up in a nightmare. He hesitated, knowing it was a dangerous move, plus he had no business invading her privacy. But it was hard for him to see somebody in so much fear and anguish. When she cried out again, her legs caught in the sheet, he immediately stepped in and closed the door gently behind him. Then he softly walked over and sat down beside her and gently shook her awake. “Charlotte.”
When she finally opened her eyes and stared at him, there was no comprehension.
“Charlotte, it’s Nico,” he whispered.
Immediately she sat up and threw herself into his arms. “The nightmares,” she gasped. “Will they ever stop?”
“They will,” he reassured her, holding her close. “Just maybe not as fast as you would like them to.”
She nodded and burrowed even closer. “I’m so exhausted,” she whispered. “And, every time I close my eyes, I keep waking up, tied up in the back of that damn truck.”
“The laundry truck?”
“I don’t know if it was a laundry truck or not,” she said. “It was a transport truck.”
“Right,” he said. “Do you remember anything about it?”
“It was one of those refrigerator trucks,” she whispered. “And the guys were all sitting down at the far end, and two of them were filling the place with smoke and pissing off the other one.”
He looked down at her in surprise. “I don’t remember you mentioning that before about it being a refrigerator truck.”
“Was it important?”
He thought about it and then said, “Quite possibly, yes. Were they all smoking?”
“Two were really heavily. The other one, I think, might have had a smoke or two but wasn’t as bad.”
“Right.” He frowned and pulled out his phone, even with her in his arms, and sent a message on the chat window.
“You think it’s important?”
“No, not necessarily,” he said. “Just tying up ends.”
She nodded. “I wish this would all go away.”
“It will,” he said. “We just have to figure out what’s going on.”
“Right, and that’s not quite so easy.” She stretched back down again on the bed and stared up at him. “Is your shift over now?”
He nodded. “Keane is taking over.”
“Would you?” and then her voice fell off.
“Would I what?”
“Would you mind lying here beside me while I sleep? I mean, only if you could sleep too.”
He smiled and said, “Move over.”
With a big grin, she rolled over. “If you don’t mind.”
“Sleeping beside a beautiful woman is never something I’d argue with.”
“Ah,” she said. “Hopefully you don’t do it with everybody.”
“No, only those who ask,” he said with a chuckle.
She smiled, and, as soon as he was stretched out, she curled up against him. He wrapped an arm around her, and she shifted and tucked back up close to him.
“Now sleep,” he murmured. “We don’t have too much longer before daytime comes anyway.”
“I know,” she whispered. “I need rest.”
Her voice was so exhausted. He waited until she slowly drifted off to sleep, and then he let himself close his eyes. His mind still churned with ideas, trying to figure out the puzzle and who was behind all this. More information had come up, and none of it made any sense. But still, he let himself drift off to sleep.
Chapter 13
Charlotte woke up wrapped in a heated blanket. She rolled over to see Nico snoozing gently beside her. His arms were still wrapped around her, and they’d slept spoon-style for almost all the night. She looked outside to see dawn had already come and gone, and there was bright sunshine. She didn’t know how much longer Nico had before Keane came to wake him up because she thought she could hear her brother going down the stairs. Well, she hoped it was her brother. She was still overwhelmed with all that had happened in the last few days. She hated to wake Nico, so she murmured close against his lips, “You awake?”
“I am,” he murmured, his warm breath mingling with hers, sending a shiver down her back and through her soul. She’d been alone for so damn long. She hadn’t had a serious relationship since her husband’s passing, and really she hadn’t even had a light one either. Not one that mattered. Just so much in her world was different now. And it was changing yet again. She could feel it. She was done with traveling; she was done with rallies, and she would spend a more introspective time and work on her writing. She’d said it many times, but this was the first time that she really felt that deep and utter knowing inside. “Do we have to get up?”
His arms tightened around her, tucking her up closer.
She smiled and nuzzled his neck.
“Only if you want to,” he murmured.
“I don’t want to move,” she said.
“Then don’t,” he said, but he yawned a moment later and shifted a little more comfortably.
She smiled. “Once you’re awake, you’re the get-up-and-go kind of guy, aren’t you?”
“Not so much that,” he said, “but waking up with a beautiful woman in my arms and not planning on staying in bed for the next hour
or so isn’t the most pleasant feeling.”
It took her a moment to figure it out; then she shifted her hips, and, sure enough, there was a wonderfully long and hot ridge pressed against her pelvis. Her breath sucked back into her throat. She tilted her head and said, “Wow.”
He didn’t say anything, but the corner of his lips kicked up. “No, wow,” he said. “I need to tell him to go back to sleep.”
She snickered at that. “Does he follow orders?”
“No,” he said, “at least never when he’s supposed to.”
She smiled and gently shifted her hips, her pelvis stroking that ridge.
He shifted his hips back and said, “You’re playing with fire.”
“And it’s already so damn hot in here,” she said, pulling off the blankets so that the two of them were just lying here together. And then she realized that, somewhere along the line, he had stripped down to just his boxers. And she was wearing her camisole and shorty shorts, her preferred nighttime sleepwear. Meaning, very little material stood between the two of them. She gently stroked his cheek and said, “If we have an hour, I definitely have a better idea than getting up.”
He froze under her ministrations. His eyes opened, and the longing look in them had her heart racing.
She smiled and gently kissed him on the chin and whispered, “If you’re interested, that is.”
He nuzzled her nose with his and whispered, “Anybody would have seen how interested I was.”
“Well, I’m not the most observant,” she whispered. “And I’ve spent the last many years turning and deflecting male attention rather than encouraging it.”
“Your husband?”
She nodded and kissed his chin again. She cupped her hands to his cheeks and then stroked his ears, sliding her fingers through his curls. Then she trailed her fingertips to his shoulders and whispered, “I’ve been alone for a very long time.”
“Well, I’m not really a member of the lonely hearts club,” he said.
Her own lips kicked up. “Didn’t ask you to be, did I?” She brought her gaze to his as he studied her intently.
He reached up his thumb, gently stroking her bottom lip. “I don’t play around is what I mean,” he said. “I’m not a big fan of hopping into bed and out of bed and warming up another woman’s bed.”
“Good,” she said. “I figured you had more substance than that.”
“Well, let’s just say there are times when that’s very much wanted and welcomed, but it’s been a long time since I wanted a relationship where it wasn’t with the same woman for several nights in a row.”
She laughed. “Well, since my last serious relationship was with my husband, I’m all for a little bit more long-term.”
“The question is, how long-term?”
Her eyebrows rose as she realized there was an intentional meaning behind his questioning. “Well, I’m certainly open to seeing how far it goes,” she said, her breath heated and wispy as she tried to control her heart slamming against her chest. “I can’t really say that I have any experience in affairs, and I’m not sure I want to have that experience, but, if I found somebody who could possibly be interested in a long-term relationship …” She let her voice trail off.
“Yeah?” he asked, flipping her onto her back and stretching out over the top of her. He stared down at her. “So, something like a long-term relationship might be of interest, huh?”
She reached up and kissed him again. In a teasing voice, she said, “Well, I would be if I thought I knew anybody who might be interested in that with me.”
“Oh, I’m interested,” he said. “But I don’t really know what I’m doing for work.”
“Well, I don’t really know what I’m doing either,” she said. “We’re quite the pair.” She looped her arms over his neck, playing with the hair at the base of his neck. “But we could take this one day at a time and see where it goes.”
“One day?” he asked, licking her bottom lip. “How about one week, one month, one year, and maybe, if we’re lucky, a lifetime?”
“Oh, I can get behind that,” she whispered gently as he stroked her lips with his. “No doubt something is between us,” she said. “I just wasn’t sure if you were interested in going further.”
“And I figured that it was happening too fast, and you needed time to deal with everything going on around you before I approached it.”
“No,” she said. “Life is for living. And, if there’s one lesson I learned from my husband, it was to enjoy the good times because you can’t guarantee when bad times are coming.”
“But neither do we expect those times to come,” he said quietly.
She smiled and nodded. “Very true, so yet another reason for taking the moments when we can get them.” She cupped his cheek with both hands, tugging him ever so much lower and kissing him deeply, her tongue sliding inside to stroke and then play with his tongue.
When she went to withdraw, his head came down with hers, and his tongue drove deeper and deeper into her mouth as his hips mimicked the motion of her pelvis. She wrapped her long legs up and around his hips and ground upward. He pulled his head back, gasped, and whispered, “I’m not sure I can hold on too much longer.”
“Good,” she said. “Does it look like I’m asking you to extend this? I’d pick hard and fast any day.”
At that, he groaned and sat up. His boxers went flying, and so did her undies. Then he stopped, sitting up, his palm coming to rest over the strip of curly hair and whispered, “You’re so damn beautiful.”
“I don’t know about that,” she said, “but, if you think so, I’m fine with it.” She crossed her arms, then pulled off her camisole and tossed it along with the other pieces. He gasped, and his hands automatically cupped her breasts. She’d always thought her breasts were her best element, and that sucked because she always kept them hidden. But, as his hands cupped them, she tilted her head back, loving his caress, and just knowing that, for one moment, this man cared and truly loved what he was seeing.
When one hand slipped away down to her hip, she crashed back down onto the bed and opened her arms. But his mouth came down and suckled one of her nipples, almost drawing the breast deep into his mouth. She moaned, feeling an answering impulse in her lower abdomen. He did the same for the other one, until she writhed in his arms. She reached down then, her hands sliding up and down his hips to grasp him in her hand. He shuddered, and she stroked him ever-so-gently up and then slowly down.
And suddenly that was too much for him, and he shifted her thighs wide and slid into position. She moaned as he lowered his head in a beeline from between her breasts and down to her navel and all the way to her curls. When she felt his tongue on her sensitive nub, she came off the bed, crying out. He came racing back up and lifted her hips, and, with his gaze locked on hers, he slid deep inside. She shuddered, feeling her body stretch to accept him.
When he was finally there, he whispered, “Are you okay?”
She nodded and said, “It’s been so long.”
He lowered himself over her and held her head with his hands, his fingers sliding into her hair, cupping her head. Then he started to move.
She wrapped her arms around him and hung on for the ride. With her hips completely overwhelmed at the movement, her body naturally moved. He pounded into her in a rhythm as old as time. She wrapped her legs tight around his hips and shifted her body. And there, that one spot just had her body shuddering. She cried out and arched her back, but he rode her through it and kept on driving for his own pleasure, inciting yet another wave as another orgasm built within.
She was still gasping when he shuddered above her. His own voice got her rolling deep, and she held him close and as he spilled himself into her. Her own climax sent her over the edge, and she cried out for a third time. Her body was shaking and trembling. She couldn’t even stop it. She didn’t know what was going on, but it was a reaction to so much pleasure.
He made a startled exclamation and rolled ov
er, then pulled her tight against him and whispered, “Are you okay?”
She shuddered a few more times, then opened her eyes and whispered, “Never better. But, dear God, that was intense.”
He kissed her again, long and deep, and whispered, “We’ve probably used up all of our spare time.”
She moaned. “Now I really don’t want to go downstairs.”
“Are you embarrassed?” he asked, his brows coming together.
She snorted. “Hell no. I just want to stay here and do that all over again.”
After a quick wash and getting dressed, Nico stood beside her, still napping in bed. He kissed her gently and said, “Come down when you feel like it.”
She gave him a finger wave and said, “I’ll have a shower first.”
Nico walked down the stairs ten minutes later to see Keane sitting at the laptop.
Keane looked up, smiled, and said, “Have a good night?”
“The best,” he said with a tactical agreement between them not to mention the last hour. He was perfectly aware that her cries had been much less than muted. He walked over and said, “Are you ready for coffee?”
“Hell yes.”
He heard another man coming downstairs and assumed it was Joshua.
When Joshua entered in jeans and a T-shirt and slumped onto a kitchen chair, he said, “I’m a little lost, trying to figure out what to do in my civilian life again. I feel like I could sleep for days.”
“How long were you under this last time?”
“Two years.”
“And do you even want to go back under?” Keane asked. “It’s not the easiest of lives.”
“No, it’s not,” he said. “It’s something I’ll have to consider. It’s hard to meet anybody when you’re living a lie. Not exactly the way I would want to have a relationship.”
“No,” Nico said. “That’s the worst. And yet, when you’re doing the job, how can you not? It’s lonely already. Did you leave anybody behind?”
“I did, and she’ll be devastated.”
“And how are you feeling?”
“I’d go back in a heartbeat,” he said. “But I know that it can’t be.”