by Layne, Ivy
I cut in, “I thought you knew Lily pretty well.”
“A lot better than you do,” Dave said petulantly.
Giving Lily a warning look I hoped she'd read right, I said. “This isn't the right time to have this conversation.” A tilt of my head in Adam's direction. “But since we're having it anyway, Lily's perfectly capable of balancing the changes in her life with being a mom. I've spent a lot of time with her and Adam, and they're a great family.”
“Look, you don't know what you're talking about. You've only been here a few days, I've known Lily for years.”
“Then you should know that you're full of shit.” I looked down at Adam. Oops. “Sorry, Lily.”
“It's okay, Mr. Knox,” Adam piped in. “I've heard the word shit before. Mom told me it's a grown-up word, so I'm not allowed to say it until I'm old enough to know when it's 'ppropriate. Right, Mom?”
With an exasperated sigh, Lily agreed. “Yes, that's right, Adam. But I'd prefer if you didn't say it at all, even when you're repeating what someone else said.”
Adam flushed and looked at his plate guiltily. Being a five-year-old, he'd known he wasn't supposed to say it but couldn't resist the opportunity.
“This is the kind of thing I'm talking about,” Dave said, trying again. “This guy is a stranger, and you're letting him practically live with you. He's not a good influence on Adam. He's got him swearing already—”
Lily grabbed a cookie off the plate and snapped with irritation, “Dave, Trey said worse in front of him, and so have you.”
Seeing he was outnumbered, Dave gave in. “Lily, I'm just trying to help.”
“I know, Dave, and I appreciate it. I do. I don't know what we would have done without you since Trey died. But we're okay. I appreciate the concern, but I promise, we're okay.”
Dave gave an abrupt nod and took another bite of the cookie, forcing a smile as he chewed. “You made these?” Lily nodded. “They're good.”
Okay, now I had to try one. The grimace hiding beneath Dave's smile told me he was a liar. I doubted 'good' described Lily's cookies.
Yep, he was a fucking liar. The cookies tasted like sawdust, and that was an insult to sawdust. They were terrible. Worse than the muffins and almost as bad as the coffee cake. Lily took a bite and chewed slowly, her face falling as the lack of flavor hit her tongue.
Adam looked up at me. “How is it, Mr. Knox?”
I set the cookie on my plate and opened my mouth to tell Adam it was fine. Instead, I said, “I'll teach you to make cookies, Lily.”
Where the hell did that come from?
I could do it, that wasn't the problem. One of my best friends ran a bakery and café. She taught me to bake cookies back in high school. She'd taught me to bake a lot of stuff. I wasn't a great cook, but I knew my way around cookies and brownies. I could even make a decent cheesecake.
Deputy Dave's eyes narrowed at my offer, and Lily's brows shot up in surprise. “You know how to make cookies? Really?”
I should have made my impulsive offer into a joke. I didn't need to cozy up to the widow until I knew how deep she was in her husband's business.
She could be sweet, sexy, a great mom and still be a criminal. None of those things were mutually exclusive.
I needed to stop thinking about the sexy part.
Focus on 'criminal', Knox. Figure out what she and her husband were up to. You're not here to bake her fucking cookies.
I knew it, and looking at her warm brown eyes, the genuine smile on her face, I couldn't dredge up a shred of regret.
I always did the smart thing.
So what if this one time I didn't follow the rules? Who would it hurt? It was cookies. Cookies.
It wasn't until she smiled at me that I remembered how wound tight she was most of the time. Lily was a champ at putting on a brave face, mostly for her son, but underneath she was strained. Scared. Until I knew why, I couldn't fix that, but I could make her smile.
I wanted to see that look on her face more often, the line gone from between her brows, her eyes bright and happy. I wanted to be the one who made it happen.
That thought dragged me right down into the gutter as an image flashed in my mind of Lily naked, her smooth, tawny skin and cloud of soft curls spread before me, that same bright, happy smile curving her lips.
Fucking hell, I could make her smile like that all night if I got her in bed. I could find all new smiles, new ways to make her eyes shine…
“Can you really teach my mom to make cookies?” Adam asked from beside me. A wave of guilt washed away my lustful thoughts of naked Lily.
Christ, I was sitting next to her kid and imagining fucking her. Maybe Deputy Dave was right, and I was a bad influence. My phone rang in my pocket. I slid it out to see Cooper's name.
I'd call when I was back in the cottage. Silencing the phone, I looked down at Adam. “I absolutely can teach your mom to bake cookies.”
“How did you learn? Did your mom teach you?”
“It's not just moms who know how to make cookies, bud. I have a friend, Annabelle. She bakes the most amazing desserts you've ever seen. She has one that's three kinds of cake layered together, filled with peanut butter and covered with chocolate. She taught me how to make cookies because I kept eating all of hers.”
Adam nodded. “Smart of her.”
“She's a smart girl,” I agreed. I looked up to see the deputy smiling with satisfaction and Lily's eyes avoiding mine. I'd think about that later. I stood, picking up my plate, and looked down at Adam. “Get your plate and bring it to the sink?”
He popped up and grabbed his stuff, dutifully following me into the kitchen. Behind me, Lily muttered under her breath, “For you, he clears the table.” The second his plate hit the sink, Adam took off for the stairs, eager to avoid anything else to do with the dishes.
As expected, Dave didn't do shit to help clean up from dinner. He stood, patted his stomach, thanked Lily for the meal and excused himself to the bathroom.
I would've bet a hundred bucks the bathroom wasn't his only goal. With the rest of us occupied in the kitchen, he thought he was safe for another search. I ignored him, helping Lily clear the dishes and wash up. I could check the camera feeds later.
“You don't have to help with this,” Lily said.
“I can wash a few dishes, Lily. You cooked. And as bad as your cookies were, the meatloaf was great. So were the potatoes. What did you put in them?”
“Oh, shredded cheddar and roasted garlic.”
“They were good,” I said again. Good was an understatement. The rich garlic and sharp bite of cheddar had been way better than just good. I was already hoping I could cadge some leftovers for the cottage.
“You don't have to teach me how to make cookies,” she said hesitantly. “I know you're here to work and—”
“I can teach you to make cookies, Lily. It's not a big deal.”
“Okay. I can use all the help I can get if you really don't mind.”
Deputy Dave ducked his head back in the kitchen. “I got a call, Lily. Gotta go. Thanks for dinner. Next time I'll take you out.”
Not if I had anything to say about it.
Dave let himself out as I wondered where that thought had come from. First, I was going to teach her to bake cookies, now I wanted to scare off her potential dates. I needed to get my head together.
Nothing would do that better than talking to my older brother. Drying the inside of the last pot, I set it on the counter. “I've got to head out. I need to return that phone call.”
“Oh, okay. Wait one sec.” As I'd hoped, she'd packed a generous serving of potatoes and meatloaf in a plastic storage container. “Just in case you get hungry,” she said, pushing it into my hands.
“Thanks, Lily. I'll see you tomorrow.”
The cruiser was gone when I made the short wal
k from the main house to the cottage. A quick scan of the security footage from Trey's office confirmed that Deputy Dave had taken advantage of our distraction to search the office closet again. Again, he'd come up with nothing.
I pulled my phone from my pocket and called Cooper back. “What do you have?” he said when he answered. “What's up with the widow?”
“I don't know,” I said. “She's looking for something. I have the house wired, and I've seen her searching. Whatever it is she hasn't found it yet.”
I filled Cooper in on the situation with the deputy, the break-ins, and my growing certainty that Lily knew nothing of her husband's business, that, if anything, she was a victim. Cooper barked a laugh that wasn't a laugh.
“I saw the way you looked at her picture, Knox. Don't let your dick cloud your brain.”
“Coop, her kid is here, okay? She's a client and her husband just died.” Almost a year ago, but still too soon. Her recent widowhood was the least of the reasons I should stay away from Lily Spencer. I didn't need Cooper to tell me that.
“Whatever. I've seen how you are. You don't say a fucking thing and women fall in your lap. Don't let this woman distract you. Evers has nothing and the clock is ticking. We need to know what Trey Spencer was into. You have no idea what the widow is looking for?”
“No clue.”
A long pause. I could practically hear Cooper thinking over the phone. Finally, he said, “I take it back. If you get the widow in bed, she'll trust you enough to tell you what she's looking for. Find out that way.”
A wave of revulsion hit me at the thought. “You want me to be the honey trap? Fuck that. I won't do that to Lily.”
“She's not 'Lily', she's the target. And since when are you too good to fuck for information?”
“Fuck off. She's not just the target, she's the client. I don't know what's up your ass, but you're being a dick. The woman lost her husband, she's alone up here with a little kid, and she's scared. I'm not going to make it worse.”
“She's probably as guilty as her fucking husband. I went through the files you sent and ran them against the bank records we found. Based on the money, he was wrapped up in all of Dad's shit, running a lot of it after Dad disappeared. I don't know how they hooked up, but if he was that deep with Dad, he was in with Tsepov, and the widow was right there the whole time. Transport, arms, these fucking adoptions. This is a goddamn mess, Knox.”
Adam flashed in my mind and my stomach went tight. Lily loved her son. If Trey and my Dad set up his adoption or brokered the surrogate, what would that mean to Lily? What would she have been willing to do to keep her child?
I didn't need to ask.
Anything.
Lily would do anything for Adam.
I'd been in the business long enough to know that most criminals didn't think they were the bad guys. There was always a reason, a lie they told themselves to make it okay.
Protecting the son she loved might justify almost anything to Lily. Everyone has a line. I didn't know Lily well enough to guess where she'd draw hers, especially with Adam at stake.
Annoyed with Cooper, with his insinuations and my own uncertainty, I said, “Back the fuck off, okay? I know what my job is. I'll let you know as soon as I find something.”
I hung up on Cooper and took up my usual position at the desk, watching the cameras on two monitors while I searched through the files I'd taken from Trey's laptop on the other.
After Adam was in bed, Lily went straight to the closet in the master bedroom. I expected her to take off her clothes and get ready for bed. I was about to shut off the monitor when she walked past her things and stopped in the other half, still full of Trey’s belongings.
She opened a drawer, rifled through and closed it, then moved on to the next. Searching again. What the hell was she looking for? I needed to know.
If she was trying to find whatever it was that Tsepov wanted, then she and Adam were in danger. Time passed, and her search grew increasingly desperate. Her jaw set and her eyes scared, she checked his pockets, looked inside his shoes, and still came up with nothing. I could feel her fear through the cameras.
Lily should have been a puzzle to solve, nothing more than a target of our investigation. At best a client and at worst a criminal. Nothing to me either way.
When the hell did it get complicated? I wanted to walk up there and demand that she let me help. Demand she tell me the truth so I could fix whatever was wrong and take the fear from her eyes.
I sat watching as she stood and walked back to her side of the closet, dragging her feet, her shoulders slumped forward. My finger hovered over the button that would turn off the camera but didn't fall. She reached for the hem of her T-shirt and pulled it over her head, her lace bound breasts bouncing as she tossed her T-shirt into the laundry bin.
The navy-blue lace bra wasn't particularly seductive. It shouldn't have been. I wanted to peel the straps down her shoulders and—
She hooked her thumbs in the sides of her jeans and pushed them down her hips, kicking them toward the hamper, leaving her standing there wearing nothing but the lace bra and a very brief matching thong. Her ass in that thong was a work of art, full and round, begging for my hands.
I stared a heartbeat longer than I should have. When her fingers went to the clasp at the back of her bra, I squeezed my eyes shut and slammed my finger down on the key to disengage the camera.
It shouldn't have been that hard.
Shouldn't have been, but it was. There was nothing I wanted more than to watch Lily peel off that bra, to see her standing there naked, just for me.
Not going to happen, I told myself. Forget about getting your hands on Lily Spencer.
That wasn't going to happen either.
Chapter Thirteen
Lily
With a five-year-old in the house, laundry is never-ending. I don't know how one small person can dirty so many clothes, but Adam was a pro.
Peanut butter and jelly, markers, dirt, and grass stains. You name it, he got it on his clothes. I never understood the wonder that is stain spray until I had a child. I swear I went through a gallon a month.
I concentrated on folding his little T-shirts just so, smoothing the edges into neat creases, hoping that my focus on the laundry might keep me from thinking about everything else.
It didn't.
My anxious mind couldn't decide what to stress out about and skipped from one problem to another. Like every other person on the planet, I'd had worries before Trey died. I'd wondered what I was doing with my life. If I was a good mom. I'd worried about my marriage and my husband. Those worries were real, but none of them felt as dire as the worries that plagued me now.
Trey died and left me trapped in this house. I had access to the bank accounts, but nothing else. I'd searched his office from top to bottom. Nothing. I'd been through his closet. Ditto. I'd searched every inch of the house. I didn't know where else to look.
What if he had a safety deposit box? I hadn't found any record of one in his files. That didn't mean much now that I knew the files were missing a lot of other things as well. If he had a safety deposit box, how would I even find it?
It'd be like searching for a needle in a haystack. Different needle, different haystack, same frustration.
I should have been sleeping better with Knox nearby, but there was a ticking clock in the back of my head, counting down to disaster. I didn't know what form that disaster would take, but I knew we couldn't go on this way for long.
A quick double rap sounded on the front door. I jumped, dropping the pair of socks in my hand. I needed to chill out. Yeah, like that was going to happen.
I set the socks in Adam's laundry basket before going to the door to check the camera. Knox filled the screen, his dark, faded T-shirt stretching across his broad shoulders. My heart sped up in my chest a little. Maybe a lot. Op
ening the door, I looked up into his dark eyes.
“You want to make some cookies?” he asked in his low, rumbly voice.
“Sure, if you think I can manage it without ruining them.”
“All you have to do is follow the directions.” Knox walked behind me into the kitchen and began searching through the pantry, pulling out ingredients and lining them up on the counter.
“I've been following the directions,” I protested. “You know how that's worked out.” I looked at the line of ingredients on the counter. “What else do we need? A bowl and spoon?”
“The usual. Measuring cups, something with a flat top. A kitchen scale would be better if you have one.”
I shook my head, baffled. Why would I need a scale to make cookies? “I don't have a kitchen scale.”
His head inside a cabinet, Knox said, “If you really want to learn to bake, you need a scale. For now, measuring cups with a flat top will work. Just not the glass ones with the handle. Measuring spoons. A saucepan and a soft spatula. Cookie sheets. Two if you have them.”
I started to take out what he needed, studying my glass measuring cups and wondering why they weren't good enough. Then another odd thing on his list caught my attention. “What's the saucepan for?”
“We're going to brown the butter before we mix it in.”
Knox definitely knew more about baking cookies than I did because I'd never heard of browning butter for cookies. “Really? I've never seen a recipe with browned butter.”
Knox waited as I pulled out the cookie sheets, standing beside the line of ingredients, looking down at his phone and tapping on the screen. Absently, he said, “It's a trick Annabelle taught me. Trust me, it's worth the trouble.”
I set the cookie sheets on the counter and stepped beside him. He showed me the screen of his phone with a recipe pulled up. It was titled Annabelle's Chocolate Chip Cookies. Underneath in parentheses, it said (Share this on pain of death. I'm not kidding, Knox.)
“I don't want to get you in trouble with Annabelle,” I said, only kind of meaning it.
I didn't even know this Annabelle, and already, I didn't like her. Not fair, but when he said her name, there was a warmth in his voice that bugged me. It was petty and childish, but a part of me was greedy for Knox. I wanted to keep him for myself.
