“Why? Because it’s you, and you’re special?”
She looked stung. With reason, he thought. That had come out a little snarky.
“You’re awfully free with advice, Mr. Mancuso,” she said coolly. “Where’s your girlfriend or wife helping you out with this, if you’ve got this all solved?”
“Not something I’m looking for,” he said, his tone equally cool.
“Might want to rethink that,” she said, gesturing at the twins who were, oddly, trying to pass a stuffed unicorn back and forth, with great concentration.
“Getting married just to have someone to help take care of them would be the worst thing I could do for them. And that wife.” Her brow furrowed. He added, his tone carefully measured now, “Not to mention the insult to that woman if, for instance, I asked her to prove she could take care of them before I’d marry her.”
“That would be...”
Her voice trailed off, and he knew she’d seen the parallel.
“I rest my case,” he said.
“Why don’t you just mind your own business?”
“Why don’t you—”
In unison the twins wailed, and he had the sinking feeling it was because their voices had gone up a bit. Guilt flooded him. He started to move, but Gemma beat him to the girls and picked one up. He grabbed the other and hoisted her to his chest. It only made the wailing more piercing. He patted her, bounced her, everything he’d ever seen a parent do. Nothing. He held her back a little, looked at her scrunched-up, unhappy face. Zita of the pointed brow, he noticed. Realized he was grateful to Gemma for noticing that, no matter what.
Lucia calmed first as Gemma cooed to her. He half expected her to shoot him a triumphant glare, but she didn’t. She merely came over to him, standing close enough that Lucia could reach out to her sister. Zita seemed to realize she was now wailing alone, and the volume decreased slightly. Lucia leaned out in Gemma’s arms, her tiny hand flailing a bit, but looking for all the world as if she were patting her sister’s arm. The wailing subsided into a hiccuping of sorts, then into silence as Zita reached for her sister’s hand.
When it was quiet again, Dante looked at Gemma and said, “Thanks.”
“My job,” she said brightly, patting Lucia’s chubby cheek.
“Still,” he said.
She gave him a smile that lightened his guilt that they’d set the girls crying. “Maybe you could put that crib back together? It’s probably getting close to time to put them down.”
“Where should I put it?”
“Where do you want them?”
“I don’t know.” He groaned as soon as he said it. Rubbed at eyes that felt as if he hadn’t slept in a week.
“Maybe you should shorten it to IDK.”
His gaze shot to her face. She was clearly suppressing a laugh. And suddenly the pressure lessened.
“Well, I don’t,” he said, but he was shaking his head ruefully.
She looked at him curiously then. “When that someday came, when you’d have kids, how did you imagine it? What kind of relationship?”
The words were out before he thought. “Better than I had with my father.”
For a moment she looked away, but then she shifted her gaze back to his face. “Well, then. We have some common ground.”
The simple declaration relieved him much more than it probably should have. Considering he had no idea how to accomplish that goal.
“Where are they now, your parents?”
“Dead. A while ago now. We weren’t close, either.” And for the same reason.
“I had a nanny,” she said, and it seemed almost a non sequitur until he realized it wasn’t, really. “I saw my parents rarely, maybe a couple of times a week. And when I did, they were always going somewhere. So Mrs. Hicks, the nanny, was the closest thing to a parent I had. Then my parents got divorced, Dad bought me in the deal and—”
“Bought you?” The way she’d put it startled him.
She shrugged. “I was still young enough to be useful when he needed to put on the solid-family-man image. And my mother didn’t care. I got a huge trust fund that nobody else can touch, and she got a nice payout and went off to live in...Majorca or someplace.”
Dante let out a low whistle. “And I thought my family was bad.”
She smiled, as if her description hadn’t been the coldest thing he’d heard in a while. “I wasn’t supposed to mind, because we were rich and I could have anything.”
“Almost anything.”
“Some things you can’t buy, isn’t that what they say? Like love?”
“Yes.” He studied her for a moment, then decided to risk it. “And sometimes the price isn’t money. Sometimes it’s...doing what someone else thinks you should, whether it’s right for you or not.”
Something flashed in her dark brown eyes. Temper, maybe. “Let’s not talk about Dev again.”
He shrugged. “I meant my brother, who thought I should give up this stupid cop idea and settle down into the family business. And when I wouldn’t—couldn’t—he pretty much disowned me.”
“Oh.” She looked abashed. But she held his gaze as she said, “And yet...” and waved toward the girls.
“Yeah. And yet.”
“So...he didn’t love you, but he trusted you?”
“Apparently.”
“Did he ever understand? Why you became a cop?”
“No. And I gave up trying to get him to.”
She sighed. “I envy you that. I can’t seem to give up trying to win over my father.”
And your boyfriend.
He managed not to say it. But in the silence she stared at his face, and he realized he might as well have shouted it.
He shook his head. “You were right. It’s none of my business.”
“True.” She gave him a faint smile. “But I appreciate the concern.” She glanced around at the gathered things once more. “And we are no closer to a working arrangement, are we?”
“Options,” he muttered. “The master, the guest room or the den, which right now is my office. That’s pretty much it. So it’s just deciding what will work best.”
She lifted a brow at him. “You’d give up your room?”
“I can sleep anywhere. If,” he added wryly, “they’ll sleep.”
“I suppose what I should really ask is, do you want to be involved at all?”
“What?”
“Do you want to be involved hands-on with them, or would you prefer they just be presented to you periodically, clean and tidy, for inspection and conversation?”
He thought he might be gaping at her. “Inspection and conversation?”
“True, they’re not talking yet, but they seem to like to pretend they are, which is the first step, I think. They—”
“I get that, but...inspection? Is that what you had to do?”
“In a manner of speaking, yes.”
Dante shook his head. And a moment later he was laughing, he couldn’t help it. “And to think I used to envy you Colton kids.”
She colored up rather brightly this time. But when she spoke it was brisk again. “If you would rather not be bothered, I would suggest putting them in the guest room, with me. It might be a setback, however, in their sleeping through the night on their own.”
He didn’t like the way she said “rather not be bothered.” He hadn’t wanted this, certainly hadn’t had it in his game plan, but now that it had happened, he didn’t want Zita and Lucia growing up thinking they were a bother.
“What about the den?” he said. “Then we could both get to them, if necessary.”
“But you said you have an office in there.”
“It’s just one corner, and I can move the laptop out of there if I need to. There’s a pocket door so it can be closed off. And it’s between my room and the
guest room, so at least one of us would likely hear them in the night.”
After a moment, she nodded. Then she looked at him. With that smile again. The genuine one. Not the practiced one he would have expected, the kind he’d always classified as that “heiress” smile, smooth, polished and utterly fake.
“I think we have a plan.”
Dante smiled back. He couldn’t quite believe how relieved he felt. He might not be sure how good she would be at this, but she couldn’t be any worse than he was, so that counted for something. And no longer being alone to deal with this counted for a lot more.
He was still smiling as, just as he had finished getting the crib together and was putting it in the den, his cell rang. He pulled it out and saw it was his boss, Finn Colton. The chief was a hands-on guy and worked all shifts to, as he said, keep his hand in, so it wasn’t so unusual that he was calling after hours.
“Mancuso,” he said.
“How’s the daddy thing going? My cousin any help?”
“Word gets around fast,” Dante said drily.
“I won’t mention the betting pools already starting on how long she’ll last.”
Dante looked through the doorway to where Gemma was changing the girls into pajamas, or whatever it was they slept in—she seemed to know. “She might surprise you.”
“Hope so, for your sake.”
“So...you didn’t call just to check on my domestic situation, did you?”
“Afraid not. That phone you found in the bag of flour? With the text to one of the Larsons’ known numbers?”
He could hardly forget that long-sought prize bit of evidence that could be the key to bringing the Larson brothers down, no matter how his life had been turned upside down since. “Yeah?”
“It’s gone.”
Dante blinked. “What? It should be in the evidence room. Duke and his partner booked it in for me after the...accident.”
“I know. And Ron remembers them doing it and where he put it. But it’s now missing.”
The property officer, Ron Fox, was organized to the point of obsessiveness and never made mistakes. “But no one has access to that room except...”
“Exactly,” Finn said grimly.
Dante swore, low and harsh. “One of us?”
“Seems it has to be.”
Great. Just what they needed. A crooked cop.
Chapter 11
Gemma looked up from the list—yet another—she was making on her phone of things she’d need to bring here from home. Her new boss was brooding again. Sitting in the chair opposite the gas fireplace, he was staring into the flames. His long legs were stretched out before him, his elbows on the arms of the chair and his fingers steepled before him. He looked dark, intense and totally at odds with what Juliette had told her.
Dante’s a good guy. Everybody likes him. He came up the hard way, from the wrong side of town. He’s all the more honest because of it, and people admire that. He’s tough because he’s had to be, but he’s the first guy you go to if you need a favor.
To her, that said a lot.
But right now, nice guy Mancuso looked more like a man with a mission. Odd, how she could tell it wasn’t the twins—who, after an uncertain start in the strange room, had settled down the moment they were in their crib together—on his mind right now. The atmosphere around him was completely different; there was nothing hesitant or uncertain about this man. This man was focused and intent...and angry. It was suppressed, but she could see it in the set of his jaw, the tight cords of his neck, the dark, lowered eyebrows.
This wasn’t the guy who’d just become, for all intents and purposes, the father of two baby girls and was floundering.
This was the cop.
She took advantage of his absorption to study him for a moment longer. She noticed again his thick, dark hair, wondered if whoever his stylist was had instinctively known how to cut it to get it to look so perfect. Then she remembered how she’d seen him shove his fingers through it several times, and concluded he probably went to some old-school barber and that was just the way his hair grew. Another unfairness, she thought, along with those impossible eyelashes. And he was clearly a guy who could shave in the morning and have that roughly attractive stubble by late afternoon. She’d always thought she preferred men clean shaven, but she might have to reconsider that.
As she watched he tapped his steepled forefingers against his lips, clearly still deep in thought.
Yeah, those lips, too. What a mouth.
He jolted her out of cataloging of his assets by lifting his gaze suddenly and locking onto her, as if he’d somehow sensed her scrutiny. Maybe he had, with some weird sixth sense cops had.
“Bad news?” she asked rather hastily, needing to distract him before he came right out and asked why she’d been staring at him.
He frowned. “What?”
“That phone call. You’ve been a bit...preoccupied ever since.”
“Oh. Yes. Work.”
“The twins seem to have settled in.”
“Yes.”
“Would you be all right with them for a while?”
The frown came back. “Bailing on us already?”
She found it interesting that he was already calling himself and the girls “us.” She was finding a lot about this man interesting. But that’s all it was. She was curious about the guy she was now working for, and that was only natural, right?
“I need to go home and get some things. Clothes and stuff.”
His gaze slid down her body. For an instant she thought—with a smothered gasp of what she was certain was outrage—that he was checking her out.
“Better shoes,” he said when his perusal got to her feet, blasting that idea right out of her head.
Better shoes? She couldn’t help glancing at his feet and the worn pair of black military-style boots he wore. What did he know about shoes? These were $600 pumps she’d bought at a designer boutique in San Francisco!
“Wouldn’t want you falling off those stilts while you’re carrying the girls,” he drawled.
She blinked. He hadn’t had a drawl before, had he? And then she met his eyes, saw the glint of humor there. And the calculation. As if he was waiting to see how she’d take it.
She realized the corners of her mouth were twitching. Felt a matching humor rising. He did have a point, after all. She was used to heels, but she was not used to heels while carrying two tiny squirming bundles that tended to throw her off balance.
“I’m thinking steel-toed construction boots,” she said with an echoing drawl. “That jar Lucia knocked over onto my foot hurt.”
“Coulda been worse.” He was grinning now, and she couldn’t help it—she laughed.
“Yep. The jar could have broken and I’d have a real mess to clean up.” She wrinkled her nose. “Ew. Mashed peas.”
He laughed in turn, and the seriousness of the last half hour or so vanished. For a moment they just looked at each other, and Gemma became oddly aware of her own breathing, her own heartbeat. She didn’t know why, nor did she understand the odd sensation stealing over her—a strange combination of heat and chill that made the back of her neck tingle.
Just as the silence became unbearable, he spoke. Softly. “Go get what you need. We’ll be okay.”
She nodded, glad of the break in this unexpected tension. She stood up. “I won’t be long.”
He rose, too. Walked over to the kitchen, opened a drawer and pulled out a key on a ring with a small metal animal attached. He came back and held it out to her.
“A coyote?” she asked, looking at the ornament.
“It is the state animal, after all.” He gave her a crooked smile. “Besides, I kind of admire their adaptability.” He drew back at his own words. Glanced toward the den. “Guess I need to work on that myself.”
She took
the key. “I’ll return it when I get back.”
He shook his head. “Keep it. You’ll need to be able to come and go on your own. And I’ll show you how the alarm system works.”
“Just like that, you give me a key and the alarm code?”
He gave her a startled look, then laughed. “You going to steal something? I don’t have anything Fenwick Colton’s daughter would want.”
She barely managed not to retort, “Don’t be so sure,” and spent the entire drive back to her own condo wondering what on earth was wrong with her.
* * *
Sleep. He needed sleep. That had to be it. The only explanation for the crazy way he’d felt when he’d looked up to see Gemma staring at him. Because for a moment there, he’d thought she hadn’t been looking at him like he was the guy she now worked for.
He shook his head, hoping to clear out...whatever this was. He’d been told, more than once, that he could get pretty intense when deep into a case. And nothing could be deeper than finding out that someone at Red Ridge PD was dirty. Hell, that was probably why she’d been staring at him, afraid he was going to explode or something. Now that was an explanation that made sense. As much as anything could to his weary brain right now.
He rubbed at his eyes. It didn’t help much.
So he started to chew on it. Like Flash on a bone, he worked on it awhile, turned it over and started again on a fresh spot. Over and over. But no matter what angle he looked at, the crux of it stayed the same. The Larsons had gotten to somebody. Whether it was a payoff or coercion, whether they’d offered someone so much they couldn’t refuse or had something on somebody or threatened someone they loved, the end result was the same. Whether it was a onetime threat or bribe, or they had somebody inside already on their payroll, it was still the same. Whoever it was had stolen the one piece of evidence they had that connected the Larson brothers to the criminal web he knew in his gut they ran.
He hated the whole idea. Hated what it meant to the trust they all had to have in each other. Hated the thought of having to look at everyone he relied on to have his back and wonder which one had gone bad.
He was way down in the rabbit hole when his cell rang. Yanked back to reality, he picked it up. The boss again. Maybe it had all been a mistake, the phone just misplaced?
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