by Susan Sey
“Wan’! Some! Tawwwwfeeeeee!” Evie howled, melting into her mother’s arms with a red-cheeked fury. Mara deposited a quick kiss on her hair and gave Patrick an eye roll.
“I know, babe,” she said, shifting the kid onto her hip. She crossed to the fridge and jerked it open. “Here.” She shoved a cup under the kid’s nose, the kind with two handles and a lid with a spout. “Here’s your coffee.”
Patrick frowned. “You give your baby coffee?”
“You bet,” she said, flicking a loving finger over her child’s flushed and remarkably placid cheek. “Evie loves her coffee.”
Evie bounced on her mother’s arm, completely restored to sanity as she guzzled at the cup. Mara glanced over her head at Patrick. “It’s just juice,” she told him. “But in a special cup. She doesn’t like feeling left out when Jonas and I have coffee in the mornings. So we give her a coffee”—she put the word into exaggerated finger quotes—“of her own and let her tear up the classifieds while we read the paper.” She shrugged lightly. “It works for us.”
Patrick poked a testing finger into his ear. “Glad to hear it.”
The phone on the wall burbled and Mara’s black brows shot up. “This can’t be good,” she muttered. “Not this early.” She tucked the receiver into the tangle of hair at her ear and moved around the kitchen, absently setting to rights a few small bits of clutter while she made soothing noises into the phone. Patrick eyed his niece warily, but she seemed perfectly content to ride along.
Mara set the receiver back onto the cradle with a decisive click. “God da—” She broke off, glancing at her child. “Well, darn,” she said feelingly. “Just darn it all to heck.”
Patrick felt his brows creeping up in reluctant amusement. “Bad news?”
“The shipment of organic field greens I ordered for today’s menu isn’t in yet, and neither is the free-range farm chicken. Some kind of scheduling snafu. Thank God you’re here,” she said. “The babysitter’s off on Saturdays and it looks like I’m going to work this morning.”
“Wait, what?” He broke off to catch the kid she all but tossed to him, shifted so he could evade those grimy little hands and swinging feet. The kid was a damn howler monkey.
But Mara had disappeared down the hall, shedding the robe as she went. Patrick wasn’t about to follow her into her room to argue. He assumed she’d be out when she was dressed, which was soon enough to argue in his book. Evie beamed up at him around the cup she was devouring, then grabbed a handful of his favorite virgin wool sweater.
He dumped her on the counter as if she were on fire, then pried her sticky little fist out of his sweater. “Okay, what did I tell you about touching?” he asked as he reached for a damp cloth.
“No, no, no!” she sang, bouncing on the counter. Patrick knew instinctively that the squishy noise coming from the vicinity of her diaper probably wasn’t good, nor was the vague sensation of wetness on his forearm.
The kid had peed on his sweater.
“Christ,” he yelped as the kid polished off her juice and held it out to him. “What are you, a sieve?”
She laughed and threw the cup at him. It bounced off his shoulder, but only because Patrick’s reflexes were still damn sharp. She’d been aiming for his chin. “More,” she said and there it was again. That look. The one that said, I know where you sleep, pal.
Patrick narrowed his eyes at her. “Listen up, you little terrorist. I don’t know what you get away with in this household, but look at my face and understand me. You are not getting more juice while the stuff you just drank is still draining out of you. Especially not since it just drained all over my arm and the chances of my finding a decent dry cleaner in this godforsaken state are somewhere south of zero.”
The kid tightened her mouth and glared at him. Patrick glared back. “And even if you were getting more juice, it wouldn’t be coming from me. Got it?”
She gave him a considering look, the kind that said, On your head be it. Then she opened her mouth and unleashed The Howl. Opera singer on crack again, heading for high C. Patrick was prepared this time. He grinned at her.
“That all you got, kid?” He crossed over to the breakfast nook with his steaming cup of coffee and settled in for the show. It was bound to be a good one. This kid was determined, and she was already turning a violent shade of red. “I’ve got all day, but smart money says you’ll be out cold in two minutes or less.”
“For God’s sake.” Mara sighed, marching back into the kitchen in a well-worn pair of jeans and a fleece pullover. She scooped up her child again. “Why was Evie on the counter?”
Patrick shrugged. “I put her there.”
“It’s not the ideal place for babies, you know.”
He shrugged again. “We were doing fine until she peed on my sleeve.”
The kid had ratcheted the noise back to pathetic, snuffling little moans, and Mara leaned down to nuzzle at her curls. “She’s two, Patrick. They do that. For crying out loud, you’re her uncle. Her blood relative. Surely you can find a way to survive each other for a couple of hours while I keep my livelihood afloat for another day?”
Patrick thought for a minute. “There’s some O’Connor in that kid,” he said finally.
Mara sighed. “Tell me about it.” She glanced at her own empty mug on the counter, then grabbed for Patrick’s. He let her have it. She drained it, then set it on the counter and Evie safely on the floor. “You guys will be all right?”
Patrick and Evie eyed each other. “You bet,” Patrick said. “Go on. We’ll figure something out.”
Then she was gone in a swish of fleece, boots and flying braids, leaving him with a toddler, her wet diaper and her amazing lung capacity.
“Unca Padwit?” The voice was small, penitent.
“Yeah?”
“I need a fwesh diaper.”
He pressed a fist to one eye. “Oh hell.”
He picked up the phone and dialed.
LIZ HAMMERED at Patrick’s door while the cell phone at her ear continued to ring. She’d been dialing and redialing him for the last fifteen minutes, ever since he’d called her, demanded her presence, and then abruptly hung up on her. She could hear his phone ringing through the door and it only intensified the ball of dread gathering in her belly. Nobody answered. Not the door, not the phone.
Christ, what if she’d been wrong to keep Villanueva’s presence in town to herself? What if he wasn’t in town to lure Patrick into a new score? What if he was really some psychotic, revenge-seeking killer who was even now selecting a nice Chianti to go with Patrick’s liver?
“Patrick!” She pounded on the door again and kicked it once for good measure. “I’m armed and I’m pissed, and if you don’t answer this door in five seconds, I’m kicking it in and leaving you to explain it to your sister!”
She had one hand on her weapon when Patrick flung the door open and glared down at her. “What, did you stroll here? How the hell long does it take you to get across town?”
Liz felt her mouth drop open, and she stared at him in complete amazement. He was rumpled. Wrinkled. Disheveled, even. The meticulously dressed and pressed Patrick O’Connor had fallen apart. She groped for something to say, then settled on the obvious. “You have . . . um, a naked kid on your shoulders.”
He glared. “Say hello to Agent Brynn, Evie.” He turned and stalked down the hallway. Liz stepped into the apartment and followed him into the sunny kitchen.
“Hi!” The little girl sang more than said it, and Liz couldn’t help smiling at her. There she was, naked as the day she was born, bouncing on the shoulders of the world’s best-groomed man, both her sticky hands twisted ruthlessly into one of the more expensive haircuts Liz had ever seen in person. One of Patrick’s sleeves was suspiciously damp, and there were two distinct handprints on those custom-made khakis, about knee high. Liz couldn’t help it. She laughed. Nice and long and loud.
He turned and drilled her with another ice-cold glare. “Something funny?”
“You don’t believe in fate, remember? So don’t try to blame this . . . this . . . incident on me.” He sneered at her, though the punch was somewhat diminished by Evie’s beaming grin about six inches above his head. All was right in that kid’s world. Liz smiled back at her, in perfect charity.
“That’s right. Fate’s a bunch of bull,” Liz said cheerfully. “This is more like cosmic justice. Your talent for getting attractive women naked just turned around and bit you on the ass, didn’t it?”
Evie bounced enthusiastically. “Ass!” she sang.
Patrick closed his eyes and grabbed at Evie’s flailing feet. “Nice going, Liz.”
“Sorry.” Liz smiled evilly. “Clearly, I’m not fit company for little kids. I’ll just be going now so you can get back to . . . whatever it is you two were doing.”
“Liz, please.”
She stopped, arrested by the unexpected note of desperation in his voice. “What?”
“Don’t leave me alone with her.” Even Evie seemed struck by the switch in tone, and she laid her cheek on the top of Patrick’s head and wrapped both little arms around his throat. He wedged a hand under her arms and opened his airway a little. “You owe me that much.”
Liz folded her arms and cocked a hip. “I do?”
“Somebody sure as hell does,” he said quietly. “And Christ knows I’ve done you enough favors.”
“I’ve done you a couple myself.” Liz watched him closely. He always kept his true self so meticulously hidden behind those immaculate clothes, that sophisticated veneer. But for a moment, she thought she’d heard something more. Something honest, intense, revealing, and she was irresistibly drawn by the idea of widening that crack, of seeing more of what he really was.
He gazed at her, silent, impassive, as if he’d never lowered himself to plead. She sighed.
“You owe me,” she said. “Big-time.”
Chapter 11
AN HOUR later, Liz handed Patrick a steaming disposable cup of coffee and a plastic stir stick. She plunked herself on the sticky yellow bench beside him and watched him wrap those long, elegant hands around the coffee.
He watched Evie with the concentration of a new parent, his eyes following every move as she scampered joyfully through the maze of molded plastic tunnels and slides that made up the McDonald’s play land. Liz was pretty content to watch for a while herself. Freshly diapered and bundled into a little romper covered with daisies that Liz privately thought was absolutely charming, Evie was clean, full, happy and energetic, thanks in no small part to Liz’s determination to make her so. Patrick had mostly just hovered in the doorway and taken directions.
And it was fascinating to Liz that a task as mundane as diapering a two-year-old could drive a man so patently self-assured to his knees.
She sucked contemplatively on her straw, then said, “Why am I here?”
He shook his head, never taking his eyes off Evie. “Beats the hell out of me. I’d never have thought to take her to McDonald’s, though it looks like it’s working out great. How did you know to bring her here?”
“I’ve had some experience with kids.” She didn’t let herself think about all the kids she’d diapered, walked, rocked. Kids who shared her blood—her father’s blood—whom she’d never see again. She—and they—were a hell of a lot better off than when they’d been together, so nostalgia was nothing but stupid.
Instead, she drilled a finger into his shoulder, gave a satisfied sniff when he winced and gave her his full attention. “I mean why do you need me here? Why does a grown man need supervision to watch his own niece?”
He slid her a sideways look, full of self-deprecating humor. “Surely I don’t have to explain this to a woman who already feels that her very badge is tainted by my presence?”
“Unless you’re planning to come out of retirement to pull a couple of jobs in front of her little eyes, I don’t see the connection.”
He turned his attention back to the tunnels. “I have all the money I could want, a mansion in Palm Springs, and a little black book full of starlets.” The smile that touched his lips was rich with irony. “What kind of fool would throw it all away to shinny in and out of other people’s windows in the black of the night?”
A nonanswer, Liz realized, but she didn’t push. She’d file that away and chew on it later. “So you were afraid that, what, you’d lose your mind and teach her how to bust into a safe or disarm security systems? Pick a lock maybe? Cheat at cards?”
He chuckled. “Liz. Darling. Cheating at cards is a life skill. But no, I wasn’t planning on it. Child care just isn’t a strong suit, I’m afraid. So I outsourced. Simple as that.”
She frowned at him a moment, thinking. “Oh my God,” she said suddenly. “You’re afraid.” She thumped him on the shoulder and ignored his theatrical wince. “I can’t believe I didn’t see it before. You’re terrified.” She let her eyes round dramatically. “Of a toddler.”
He waved this away. “Oh, please. She has some impressive lung power, sure, but in the end, I’ve got her by nearly thirty years and four feet. If it came down to fisticuffs—and Lord help us both if it did—I could take her.” He watched Evie tumble willy-nilly through a clear plastic tunnel and land in what looked like a hamster bubble. “Probably.”
Liz looked up to see Evie squishing her face against the curved plastic and laughing down at them. She sealed her open mouth against the plastic and blew until her entire face inflated like a puffer fish. Her maniacal laughter came floating through the tubes as she shouted, “Dat’s a fishy kiss fo’ you, Unca Padwit!”
Patrick hunched his shoulders and said, “Jesus. Fishy kisses.”
“You are afraid of her,” Liz said. “For God’s sake, look at yourself! The kid blows you a kiss and you act like she just peppered you with buckshot or something. You’re her uncle. She loves you. Why is that so damned frightening that you need somebody running interference?”
“First Mara, now you,” he said, sifting a distracted hand through his hair. “Why is it so difficult for otherwise intelligent women to understand that she’s an impressionable child and I’m not a good influence?”
“Bullshit.” Liz flapped a dismissive hand. “You already promised not to tutor her in the dark arts. So what do you think could happen over the course of a couple hours? Unless we believe you to be so inherently evil that normal, law-abiding folk are endangered by your mere presence, I don’t see how spending a morning alone with your niece is a 911 emergency.”
“I don’t need you to understand it,” he said, watching her with something sad and knowledgeable in those lightning blue eyes. “I just needed you to come.”
He turned back to Evie, carefully tracking her progress through the maze of molded plastic.
Liz blinked, her heart breaking just a little. Holy Christ. It had been a total shot in the dark. She’d never expected to hit the target so accurately. Or to wound him with the shot. “And what about your sister?” she asked slowly. “She’s a decent person. Does she get to love you, or is she frozen out, too?”
“God, Liz, everything is so black-and-white for you. It’s more complicated than that.” Liz watched as he remembered his coffee, paid great attention to peeling back the plastic tab, then took his time over the first sip. She wanted to yell at him for some reason, but she didn’t know what to say. How could she tell him he was wrong when she herself thought he was the most dangerous man she’d met since her father?
Patrick was silent for a long moment; then he spoke. “She did this thing with her face this morning, Evie did.” He smiled into the half distance. “It was like seeing inside my dad’s head.” He gave a tiny shrug and said, “There’s more O’Connor in this kid than I realized.”
&nbs
p; Liz touched his shoulder, unable to stop herself from giving that much comfort at least. “What does that mean?”
“It means,” he said, “that she’s like me. What’s in my blood is in hers and I don’t know if just being around me is going to encourage it. What if she has a chance to be different? To be better?”
“To use her powers for good, not evil?”
He glanced at her, his smile wry. “Something like that. If she has that chance, we shouldn’t even be sharing a zip code. I mean, God, look at her. This child is precious and innocent and pure. I can’t leave my fingerprints on that. I’ve done a lot of evil things in my life and I can live with most of it, but not this. It’s too much. Even for me.”
MARA WAS chopping what looked like grass clippings with some wicked looking kitchen shears when Patrick and Evie sauntered in.
“I hope that’s not lunch,” Patrick said, depositing Evie into his sister’s arms and flinging himself into a kitchen chair with great drama. “Because I deserve better. I’ve earned it.”
Mara made a clucking noise that Patrick assumed women learned when they gave birth. “Poor baby,” she murmured, though it was unclear to Patrick whether she was speaking to him or Evie. “Tough morning?”
“Hell, yes,” he said before Evie could volunteer anything about McDonald’s.
Evie bounced on her mother’s hip and said, “Hell.”
Mara shot Patrick a killing look. He shrugged. “Liz taught her to say ass.”
“Ass!” Evie sang.
Mara pressed green-tinged fingertips to the line between her brows. “For crying out loud.”
“Is now a good time to discuss my compensation?”
Mara’s eyes went to glittering black slits. “You want me to pay you for teaching my child to curse?”
“Oh, please. You have the foulest mouth I’ve heard this side of a Mexican prison. Do not try to imply that I’m the first person to curse in front of your child.” He watched her bite her tongue, could almost hear her grinding her teeth. So he smiled at her, smug and superior, because he knew she hated it. “I did you a nice big favor today, Mara. And that puts me in position to demand a nice big favor in return.”