by Taylor Lewis
“No, he doesn’t know.” Kyle shuddered and wrapped his arms around Megan waist as she whooshed out a breath of relief. He almost wailed into her ample cleavage, “He said he’d be back. Megan, he’s coming back.”
Megan was an excellent friend. She had been Kyle’s main support and comfort for more years than either of them cared to remember and she loved him with a bone deep surety that was only matched by his love for her. Nonetheless even being the stalwart friend that she was she couldn’t stop herself saying after a horrified pause, “Can I say I told you so now?”
Kyle spluttered with reluctant teary laughter, “You are so fired.”
~*~*~*
When he finally got home at just past six that evening, Kyle was seriously flagging and in need of several medicinal cocktails and a long hot soak in the bath. Unfortunately what he got was hit by a small, solid bundle of boy the moment he stepped through the door and the remnants of a half-eaten banana smushed into his Gucci pants. “Da!” Shea proclaimed triumphantly as he wrapped himself around one of Kyle’s legs and beamed up at him with a sticky face and a bite of banana in danger of slipping out of his smiling mouth. “Da, da, da!”
Kyle froze, closed his eyes in momentary horror at the mess that had been made of his previously immaculate pants, and then opened his eyes again to smile down into Shea’s excited face. “Shea.” He bent down and scooped the little boy into his arms, pressing enthusiastic kisses all over his son’s giggling face. “Shea, Shea, Shea!” He laughed when Shea shrieked with joy and felt a little of the tension he had been carrying inside him ease as his son bounced in his embrace. “Missed you, baby. Have you been good today?”
Shea shrieked again and threw the rest of his banana onto the hardwood floor in answer. Kyle looked down in time to see their black miniature poodle Lady Ga-Ga come shooting out from under the piano that stood in the corner of the large family area and snap up the dropped food. He sighed, gave her the stink eye – which she ignored as she started to sniff hopefully at the smears of fruit on his pants – and made for the kitchen at the back of the house where the tantalising smells of dinner were wafting into the air.
“Hey!” His housekeeper cum nanny, Louise, looked up as he walked into the room with Shea still screaming ‘Da!’ at the top of his lungs and Ga-Ga trying to lick his trousers as he walked. “Thought I heard you pull up. Good day?”
Kyle smiled at her and resisted the urge to yell at the top of his lungs just how very terrible his day had been. Instead he crossed to the sink where an ever present stack of clean cloths were stacked, dampened one under the tap and began the seemingly never ending labour of cleaning his son. “Fine.” He ignored Shea’s joyful crowing of his name dwindling into angry little splutters as he briskly scrubbed away slimy banana and some drool and asked, “What about you? Any problems?”
The pretty Asian girl shook her head and sent her pink and black hair flying around her shoulders. “Nope. We were at movement and sound class this morning and then we went swimming with some of the other kids from the toddler group at the rec this afternoon.” She shot Shea a wry glance where he was now trying to bite the cloth as Kyle swiped it over his face, evidently having given up on trying to avoid it altogether. “I was hoping that would help tire him out but he went down for a half hour nap when we got home and he was good to go again.”
Kyle finally gave up on getting Shea any cleaner than just a tentative ‘grimy’ and set his son down on his still slightly wobbly legs. He watched with a fond expression as Shea fell over Ga-Ga still trying to get the banana off Kyle’s pants before picking himself up and toddling over to where Louise was cooking at the stove. He stopped at her heels and stared upwards with an intense expression of concentration on his face. Louise looked down at him and grinned. “In a minute. It’ll be ready soon.” Shea stared up at her fixedly and moments later was joined by the dog. Louise laughed. “Like two peas in a pod.” She glanced over her shoulder at Kyle. “I’m not sure which one is the bad influence over the other.” She frowned when she saw him staring at Shea with a stricken expression. “Hey, just kidding, I’m pretty sure this is just a phase. He’s going to grow out of begging for food eventually.” She laughed again. “I mean, he’s going to learn to cook for himself sometime, right?”
Kyle forced a laugh. “I certainly hope so. There’s no way I’m paying for him to have a cook of his very own when he grows up.” He turned away and busied himself opening a drawer and getting the knives and forks out to lay the table for dinner. “Will dinner be long?”
Distracted once more by the child and the dog, Louise shook her head. “About ten minutes, just waiting on the pasta.” She giggled, knowing after nearly two years how her employer thought. “You’ve got time to go and take off your pants and sponge them off if you want.”
Making himself smile, Kyle pressed a grateful kiss to her cheek as he walked out of the kitchen and patted Shea’s head when he squawked in alarm, obviously thinking his daddy was making a play for the food. “Relax, little man, there’s going to be plenty for you.”
He waited until he had closed the bedroom door behind himself before he let the smile fall from his face. He hadn’t given much thought to Shea’s other father since making the decision to go through with his pregnancy knowing he would be raising his child alone. Aside from the odd pinch of regret whenever Shea did something especially cute or reached a landmark in his development that he had no one to share it with, he had never regretted his choices.
Megan, Louise and even his dad did their best, but they couldn’t really understand just how proud and filled with joy and gratitude Kyle was when his perfect little boy smiled at him or said his name and now that Jonah had come so unexpectedly back into his life he didn’t know how to react. Logically he knew every time he looked at Shea with his curly black hair and olive coloured skin and the deep brown eyes that were so different in shape to his own that his son didn’t bear much resemblance to him. He had Kyle’s delicate shape of face and his sharp chin, but every other feature seemed to come straight from Jonah and, more shocking to Kyle, he seemed to have inherited expressions and mannerisms too.
The look on Shea’s face when he was watching Louise like a hawk as she cooked dinner was eerily reminiscent of the look on Jonah’s when he had been studying Kyle in his office that morning – hungry, focused and just a little obsessive. Shea also had a way of slyly looking up from under his eyelashes that he had inherited from Jonah as he attempted to look casual and nonchalant when he was really studying the best way to get his own way and bend the recipient of the look to his will.
Kyle sagged down on the end of his bed and stared blankly down at his banana and dog drool smeared pants. He brought a weary hand to his eyes and prayed very hard that he would never have to see Detective Goldman again.
Then he remembered the blatantly heated looks Jonah had dragged over his body that morning and groaned to himself – somehow he didn’t think he was going to get that lucky.
Chapter 4
“There,” said Lopez throwing a thin manila folder down on Jonah’s desk before dropping gratefully down into the chair at her own and reaching for the open box of pastries balanced precariously over the narrow gap between the two. “Mystery solved. He’s a Twofer.”
Jonah looked up from where he was playing hunt and peck with his computer keyboard as he tried to catch up on the reports their captain was insisting he finish before she slung his ass in a cell for the night and scowled. “What?”
Her teeth clamped tight around a jelly donut as she shrugged out of her jacket and hooked it over the back of her chair, Lopez grunted in annoyance and pulled the donut out of her mouth with one hand and swiped the back of the other over her lips before nodding at the file Jonah was just opening. “The mystery’s solved with Little Mary Sunshine. He’s a Two Fer One. Comes ready equipped with all available human accessories.” She tore another bite of her donut away and mumbled around her mouthful, “He had the kid himself. No other fat
her on record. He was probably acting like a complete pussy because he was expecting some attitude and shit if we realised what he was.” She rolled her eyes impatiently. “Like the mayor didn’t make a point of yelling it from the rooftops when we all had to take those sensitivity seminars last year to improve our ‘understanding and awareness’.” She quirked her fingers into air quotes as she uttered the last three words and shook her head in disgust. “Paranoid little freak.”
Jonah glanced up from the copy of Shea’s birth certificate Lopez had located and fought back a grin. “Yeah, that shit paid off in spades with you alright, Lopez.” He looked back down at the folder and flipped the birth certificate over to see a brief summary of the information they had on Kyle himself in the system. “Huh. Just turned twenty-two.”
Lopez leaned back in her chair and laced her hands behind her neck making her breasts push against the thin cotton of her tank top and Danny Lee nearly walk into the wall across the room when he got distracted by them. “So I figure this definitely makes him pretty much your ideal fuck. Got all the parts you like best and he’s legal.” She waved an expansive hand when Jonah glowered at her and said airily, “Go forth and fuck his little Twofer brains out, partner.”
Darting a wary look around the busy bullpen, Jonah snarled, “Shut up, Lopez, I didn’t say I wanted to fuck him. I just thought there was something weird about the way he was acting over the picture of the kid. Figured it might be something worth pursuing.”
Lopez snorted inelegantly. “Yeah, you figured something was worth pursuing, alright.” She held up her hands when Jonah glared at her again and said, “Hey, I’m not knocking it. You know I got your back whatever.” She gestured at the file again. “He’s clean though. Moved here straight out of high school from some bumfuck town in Wichita with the fag hag in tow. He dropped out of stage school at the beginning of his second year when he got knocked up with the kid and used some money he came into from his dead mom to set up the business and buy a small townhouse a few blocks away. Credit good, building up a reasonable name in off the wall designer circles and no flags raised with social services over care of the kid. Nothing to suggest that his shop being targeted is anything more than another link in the vandalism chain.” She scowled. “Which is pretty fucking irritating because we’ve got fucking nothing to go on.”
“That is not the attitude of a winner, Lopez!” The booming female voice had the entire bullpen jerking to attention and Danny Lee walking into a wall again when his head whipped round in reflex and he couldn’t adjust in time. Lopez yelped and fell off her chair in shock and Jonah was up, his hand going for his gun before he realised what was going on. “Hey, Braintrust, you pull that thing on me and I’m kicking your well-used ass all over the precinct and then busting you back down to traffic.” Captain Carol Simons stood with her feet braced wide apart and her hands on her hips. “Why the hell are you two morons still wasting your time and my budget on solving these vandalism cases and not getting on with all the other cases making me clench my awesome buttocks together so hard that they could crack freakin’ walnuts if I needed them too?”
Jonah dropped back into his chair with a scowl as Lopez scrambled back up into hers trying to look her normal cool and badass self. Jonah caught sight of the smudge of jelly on her cheek from where she had smeared her donut on her way to the floor and was still pissed off enough over her cracks about Kyle that he didn’t motion to her to wipe it off. He smirked meanly at her and then raised his eyes to his captain. “Working on it. You need to give us a little more time.” He closed the folder with the information on Kyle and his son in it and shoved it to one side.
“Save it, Goldman,” Simons snapped. “I don’t give a rat’s ass for your opinion on anything, you rancid hound. All I want to hear from you is ‘Case closed, Cap, and there’s no overtime’, we clear?”
Jonah, feeling one of his headaches coming on, gritted his teeth. “Crystal, Cap.”
“Lopez,” Carol, narrowed her steely gaze on Gina. “Lay off the donuts. The homage to J-Lo can only be taken so far and no babies in my damn department are gonna have back, okay? Hit the gym.” She turned and strode off towards her office, yelling, “Lee, get up, you’re making the place look a mess.” The office door banged shut as Danny picked himself up off the floor where he had been nursing a rather impressive lump on his forehead and the bullpen breathed a collective sigh of relief.
Lopez growled as Jonah tried to hide his sniggers by picking diligently away at his report once more. “My ass is not fat.” She scowled fearsomely when Jonah began to hum innocently under his breath and stood up. “Get your shit together, we’re heading out. I’m hitting the head and then we’re going back and talking to all the business owners who’ve been targeted and find what we’ve missed.” She bared her teeth in a rough approximation of a smile. “I may even play nice and let you leave your sweetie till last so you can try and get a dinner date.”
Jonah, with grim determination, did not deign to reply. However, he did take great satisfaction in humming ‘Baby Got Back’ under his breath at intermittent intervals throughout the rest of the afternoon until Lopez had a nicely developed twitch at the corner of her right eye. That, combined with the smear of jelly still on her face that she had somehow missed on her trip to the bathroom, made the rest of his day one of the more amusing he’d had for a while.
~*~*~*~
Goldman and Lopez did indeed make Kyle’s boutique their last stop of the day – although not for the reasons Lopez kept leeringly offering as they moved slowly up the street in their car looking for a parking space. They took a moment to stand outside and watch through the newly repaired window as Kyle and Megan moved around inside unaware they were being observed. Jonah frowned as he realised that this was the first time he had seen Kyle relaxed and smiling since he had met him. The two people inside the store were busy stripping clothes from store mannequins and redressing them in fast moves that were obviously well practised. Jonah found his mouth quirking in a smile when Kyle popped a white trilby on his head, struck a pose and gathered Megan into his arms and waltzed her round the shop floor.
Lopez’s expression screwed into one of deep disgust and she muttered, “Jesus, kill me now before the sugar rush does. Could they be any more nauseating?”
Jonah’s smile dropped off his face and he resettled his expression into one of scowling disgruntlement more befitting his status as studly badass. “Don’t think so.” He jerked his head. “Let’s do this.”
The first thing that struck Jonah when he pushed open the shop door was the sound of ‘I Feel Pretty’ pouring tunefully from the shop’s sound system. The second thing was the way Kyle and Megan looked towards the door when it opened and the wide, happy smiles fell off their faces the moment they realised who had stepped inside. Lopez pushed the door shut with a casual hand and nodded professionally towards the couple standing in each other’s arms in the middle of the floor. “Afternoon. You got a couple of minutes?” She winced. “And can we lose the soundtrack?”
Megan was the first to recover herself, stepping away from Kyle and then slightly in front of him with a challenging look on her face. “We were just closing up.”
Lopez narrowed her eyes and reached without looking for the sign on the door and flipped it over to read ‘Closed’ and then flicked the latch. “And now you are.” She crossed her arms over her chest and looked pointedly in the direction of the speakers. “Lose the music.”
Megan swelled like an angry toad and had just sucked in breath to start yelling when Kyle placed a hand on her shoulder and said firmly, “Megan, just do as she says.” He looked towards Lopez and Jonah without actually meeting their eyes. “I’m sure this won’t take long, isn’t that right, detectives?”
Shrugging, Lopez said carelessly, “Whatever.” She waited until Megan had switched off the music and returned to Kyle’s side before glancing at Jonah. “You want to start?”
Neither detective missed the way Kyle and Megan ten
sed up and pressed against each other in unconscious support. Jonah cast his mind back to the sensitivity seminars he and Lopez had attended to try and remember if they had covered anything about offering reassurance and support to nervous victims. He scowled when mainly all that came to mind was snoozing in the back row of the seminar room and jerking awake intermittently when Lopez slammed her elbow into his ribs to stop him snoring. “We know about you. We looked into your background and figured out what’s going on here.”
Neither officer was prepared for the reaction Jonah’s words instigated. All colour drained from Kyle’s face and he actually swayed in place before Megan grabbed at him hastily and yelled, “Get the hell out of here! He’s not talking to you again without a goddamned lawyer, and if you think....”
“Whoa, chill out there, lady.” Lopez stepped hastily forward and held up her hands. “We’re not about to give you any trouble, just trying to help here.”
Megan’s lips pilled back in a snarl. “Get. The. Fuck. Out.”
Jonah shoved past Lopez and headed for Kyle who was looking like his entire world was crashing down around his ears. “Look, you need to calm down. You’ve done nothing wrong, but we had to look into your background to see if there was any other reasons we needed to follow up for you being targeted.” He stopped a few feet away from Megan and Kyle when the black woman made a warning noise. Jonah snapped his fingers impatiently in Kyle’s sheet white face. “Yo, Gerritsen, you with me here? We need to know if you think you got hit because you’re intersex. Is someone threatening you and your kid?”