Moon Over Manhattan: Book 2 of the Moon Series

by Graves, Jane

  "I just have a quick question," he said.

  "It's top of the eighth, bases loaded, two outs," Jacob went on. "So talk fast or call back la--aw, crap! The batter popped up. Wait…wait...oh, hell. The left fielder caught it. The Yankees left three men on." He huffed with irritation. "Okay. What do you want?"

  "Am I a glutton for punishment?" Brett asked.

  "Hell, I don't know. What dopey thing have you done now?"

  "Okay, there's this woman, right?"

  "The one whose clothes you threw out the window?"

  Brett winced. "Yeah. That's the one."

  "The one you can't get?"

  "Will you stop reminding me?"

  "Okay. Go on."

  "I apologized to her about the clothes thing," Brett said, "only it didn't seem to help. She tells me she's not interested in a relationship."

  "Here's a thought. Maybe she's not interested in a relationship."

  "No. That’s what she says, but I think she's just scared, or something." Brett sighed. "Oh, hell. I probably just need to forget about her. After all, the world is full of women, right?"

  “Last I heard they make up about half the population."

  "Which means there are a lot of possibilities."

  "I'd say so."

  "So that's what I should do. Kelsey and I are nothing alike, so I should find a woman I have more in common with."

  "Now, wait a minute," Jacob said. "If that's why you're giving up, think again. You've spent years dating women who are like you. Where has that ever gotten you?"

  Jacob was right. It was because Kelsey was so different from other women that he was attracted to her, and there was something to be said for a person whose good habits made up for his bad ones.

  "Here's the deal," Jacob said. "I haven't met this woman, so I can't tell you if your obsession is a good thing or not. But I can tell you that in spite of the incredibly dumb things you do sometimes, you're not a total idiot. If you can't stop thinking about her, there's a reason why."

  Brett thought about that, wondering if Jacob was right. But in the end, it didn't matter how much he wanted more between them. If she rebuffed him at every turn, what kind of future could they ever have together?

  He didn't know. He only knew that when he thought about never seeing her again except to say "hi" in the elevator, he got a sick feeling in his stomach.

  "Or maybe you're just a glutton for punishment," Jacob said. “Later, bro’.”

  As Brett hung up, he was afraid it might be time to admit defeat. After everything that had happened between them, what were the chances Kelsey would ever want anything to do with him again?

  * * *

  Later that night, Kelsey performed her before-bed routine. She fed Francine. Adjusted her air conditioner. Put on her pajamas. Brushed her teeth. Set her alarm. By the time she slid between cool sheets and turned out the lamp, she realized not five minutes had gone by in the past two hours that weren’t consumed with thoughts of Brett.

  The next morning, she dressed for work and left her apartment, reminding herself that it was her morning to stop by the bakery for donuts for her and Angi. Then, as she made her way to the subway, she started thinking about Brett again.

  Oh, hell. Who was she kidding? She’d never stopped thinking about him.

  Yeah, he was calculating. That shouldn’t have been a positive trait, but when the only thing he ever plotted was how to get her into bed and take her to heaven, could that really be considered a fault? Even though his methods were a little questionable, all he'd ever done was try to show her a good time. She had to admit the rush she felt when he left a water gun at her door and started a war, grabbed her and kissed her on the street, or just tossed a little verbal sparring her way. As she plopped herself onto a subway seat, she finally faced the truth. No matter how crazy he was, she wanted more of it.

  She wanted more of him.

  Fifteen minutes later she entered the room for roll call. She took her chair, and Brett's words echoed over and over in her mind.

  The ball's in your court.

  As the other officers schlepped through the door, looking half awake and grabbing cups of coffee, she pulled her phone from her pocket and flipped to Facebook. Her finger hovered over Brett’s friend request. What did she put on her page that was personal, anyway? Her favorite songs? Favorite movies? Links to interesting YouTube videos?

  For God's sake, Kelsey. It's Facebook. Not a lifetime commitment.

  Before she could think about it another moment, she hit “accept.”

  There. It was done. She put her hand against her chest, waiting for regret to hit. Ten seconds passed. Fifteen. Twenty.

  Nothing. All she seemed to be able to feel was exhilaration.

  "So where's breakfast?"

  Kelsey jerked her head around to find Angi sitting down next to her. Kelsey lay her phone facedown on the table beside her. "Huh?"

  "Breakfast," Angi said. "It was your turn to pick up donuts."

  Crap. "I'm sorry. I forgot."

  Angi looked at her dumbly. "Seriously? You forgot something? You?"

  Kelsey frowned. "Hey, I'm allowed to forget once in a while. Everybody else does."

  "But you're not everybody else. The last time you forgot something, you had a hundred‑and‑three-degree fever."

  Angi was right. This wasn't like her. And Brett was the reason why.

  Sergeant Perry stepped to the podium. "Ladies and gentlemen!"

  The officers came to attention. The sergeant started in on the usual updates, but Kelsey wasn't listening to a word the man said. Instead, she rested her phone in her lap and flipped to Brett's Facebook page, her heart beating with anticipation. He might be able to see things about her now, but she could also see things about him.

  His profile was pretty unremarkable. He’d turned twenty‑nine last July. His college credentials were there. High school, too. His job at Gianelli’s. She saw the basic things she’d expected, such as likes for popular movies, music, and businesses around Manhattan. He played third base on a softball team with some of the other guys who worked at Gianelli's. All very expected. What she hadn't expected were his personal posts and photos.

  Instead of party pics with Brett’s arm slung over a couple of women and a beer bottle in his hand, Kelsey saw photos of him sitting with people of all ages around a Christmas tree. Playing with a toddler. Standing with his arm around an older woman who, on further inspection, turned out to be his mother.

  Yeah, there were photos with people his age, friends or girlfriends or whatever. But a significant amount of his social networking happened with people in his own family. He had a brother and sister‑in‑law in White Plains, and they had a son. Two cousins lived in Michigan. His parents lived in Florida. He’d taken a trip to the Bahamas last year, but the only photos from that trip showed him with family members, mostly splashing at the foot of a swimming pool slide with his nephew.

  One post after another included interaction between Brett and his family and friends. Sharing. Teasing. More emoticons than Kelsey had seen in one place since the birth of the Internet. Cheezburger cats and crazy memes and links to humorous things. Photos of Boomer looking as goofy as he clearly was. And everywhere people were smiling.

  Suddenly the image she’d held in her mind all this time of a guy who was a player and nothing else evaporated. And in his place was a warm, down-to-earth person who seemed to come to life before her very eyes. No wonder Brett was so cheerful all the time. What was there in his life to make him any other way?

  She went to her own page. As she scrolled through it, she realized that her only interaction was with Angi, some of the cops she worked with, a college friend or two, and Sarah, who had just returned from Jamaica. And most of it consisted of Kelsey commenting here and there on other people's posts rather than sharing any of her own.

  As she compared her page to Brett’s, she felt the oddest sense of longing, as if he was living a brilliantly colored life and hers was stark
black and white. She consoled herself with the idea that every family had skeletons in its closet. No matter how great they looked on the surface, all kinds of awful things could be lurking beneath.

  "Officer Morrison!"

  Kelsey jerked her head up to find Sergeant Perry glaring at her. "Yes, sir?"

  "Would you kindly repeat what I just said?"

  She turned her phone facedown in her lap. "Uh…"

  Then she heard Angi's whispery, not-moving-her-lips voice next to her. "Annual policemen’s benefit."

  "Well," Kelsey said, "you were bringing us up to speed on the preparations for the annual policemen's benefit." She held her breath, praying she'd heard right.

  "That's correct, Officer Morrison. But in the future, would you afford me the privilege of looking at me as I'm speaking?"

  "Yes, sir."

  A few minutes later, roll call broke up and she and Angi headed for their patrol car.

  "What's with you today?" Angi said as they got in the car. "You're really out of it."

  "Nothing's with me," Kelsey said. "Can't I have an off day once in a while?"

  After she slid into the driver's seat and shut the door, she glanced at her phone and saw a Facebook message from Brett. Already? It was almost as if he'd been watching and waiting. As she hit the button, her heart skipped with anticipation.

  Hi, friend, the message said. Nice backhand.

  Just those few words made her feel tingly inside, and she’d never been a tingly kind of person. But now she couldn't think of anything to say back. This was a man she'd had sex with. Twice. And she still couldn't think of anything to say?

  Hi, she finally wrote, feeling dumb the instant she hit "post." Hi? Really? She'd put so much thought into that. Poetry at its finest.

  She waited for him to respond and got nothing. No wonder. Hi barely lobbed the ball back over the net. She needed to keep the game going.

  Gianelli's tonight? She held her breath. A few seconds later came his reply.

  Can't wait.

  Kelsey felt a surge of satisfaction. He was looking forward to it. Was she a master communicator, or what?

  "That's strange," Angi said.

  Kelsey looked up, tilting her phone so Angi couldn't see the screen. "What?"

  "You're smiling."

  "So?"

  "That freaks me out."

  "Come on," Kelsey said. "It isn't as if I never smile."

  "Uh…yeah. It kinda is."

  "Then I guess I'm overdue."

  "Any particular reason you look like you won the lottery?"

  "Walgreens texted me a twenty‑percent‑off coupon, and I need shampoo and razor blades."

  Angi sighed. "You know the problem with that? I believe you."

  Kelsey tucked her phone away and started the car. She didn't want to tell Angi that she and Brett were seeing each other again. At least not yet. After all the protesting she'd done about him, Angi would think she was as crazy as Brett was for jumping back in.

  There, she thought with satisfaction. She'd hit the ball back, and the game was on again.

  * * *

  That evening, Kelsey spent twenty minutes deciding what to wear to Gianelli’s, which was about nineteen minutes longer than it had ever taken her to decide that before. Where casual clothes were concerned, her closet contained one blah, solid-colored shirt after another, along with half a dozen pair of jeans and three pair of sensible shoes. No matter what combination she tried, it all looked the same.

  Boring.

  She’d told Angi she was meeting her at seven at Gianelli’s. It was already twenty till, so she gave up and threw on combination number five, telling herself that if she wanted to get out of the box tonight she was going to have to do it with something besides her clothes.

  She left her apartment, only to hear voices down the hall. As she walked toward the elevator, she saw Edwin standing at Gloria’s apartment door. He wore a gray thermal underwear shirt two sizes too small over a pair of tattered khakis. Sofia stood at the door with Ricky in her arms. The baby’s face was red from crying.

  "You gotta find a way to keep him quiet," Edwin said, picking M&Ms out of a bag and stuffing them into his mouth. "The other tenants are complaining."

  "He's teething. They all cry when they're teething."

  "I don't care if something's chewing off his left foot. He can't be crying like this."

  "Edwin?" Kelsey said, coming up beside him. "Is there a problem?"

  "The kid’s disturbing the peace. People are complaining.”

  “Sofia’s doing the best she can.”

  “Well, she’s going to have to do better.”

  "You can't just tell a baby to be quiet."

  "Try harder. The neighbors are pissed." Then a calculating look came over his face. “Though for a slight compensation, I could be persuaded to overlook their unreasonable demands.”

  Kelsey narrowed her eyes. “Nobody’s compensating you for anything."

  “I don’t want to have to come up here again. Yankees are playing Cincinnati tonight.”

  “You won’t have to come up here again.”

  “Is the kid going to stay quiet?”

  “Yes, Edwin,” Kelsey said through gritted teeth. “The kid’s going to stay quiet. Now go.”

  Finally he turned around and walked away, crumpling his empty M&M bag and tossing into the trash can by the elevator.

  "He's such a jerk," Sofia muttered. "Like I can do anything about it when Ricky won't stop crying? Like I want him to cry?"

  “Is there any way I can help?”

  “There’s nothing you can do when he starts in like this. If I could just hold him or rock him the whole time, he’d be okay. But the minute I put him down, he screams. And as soon as my Mom left, Rosa started to get cranky, too. I think she's coming down with a cold, or something. I don't know how I'm going to get my homework done."

  “Is your mom at work?”

  Sofia paused. “No. She’s out with Eduardo.”

  From the look on Sofia’s face, she was none too pleased about that. Kelsey couldn’t believe it. Gloria was out with that guy instead of home with her kids?

  "Why don't you let me take Ricky for a while?” Kelsey said. “That way you can put Rosa to bed and get your homework done. Just for a few hours."

  Sofia looked uncertain. “Do you know how to take care of a baby? It’s not easy, you know.”

  Kelsey couldn't help noticing the irony of being interviewed by a thirteen-year-old about her babysitting experience.

  “It’s okay,” she said. “I babysat a lot when I was a teenager.”

  Finally Sofia nodded. She handed Ricky to Kelsey, then grabbed his diaper bag and shoved in a bottle of formula, a few toys, and extra diapers.

  “Just tell your mom to come get him when she gets home, okay?” Kelsey said.

  Sofia nodded. As Kelsey started back down the hall with the baby in her arms and the diaper bag slung over her shoulder, she sighed with regret. This evening was not turning out as she’d planned.

  10

  I can’t come tonight. Something came up. I’m sorry.

  Brett stood behind the bar at Gianelli's, staring at the message, wondering exactly what it meant. The best case scenario was that something really had come up. Worst case, Kelsey was avoiding him again. Either way, it sucked.

  He mixed a pair of martinis for a couple of women at the bar, then texted back. Everything okay? Five minutes later, Kelsey hadn’t responded. A few minutes later, he texted again. Nothing.

  The avoidance thing was starting to make more sense all the time.

  Angi showed up a few minutes later. Kelsey had texted her, too, but her message was equally short on details. As the night wore on, Brett tried to tell himself nothing was really wrong, but as it approached the time for him to go home, he convinced himself that Kelsey was doing it all over again. Warming up, then cooling down. Getting hot, then turning cold. And he’d had just about enough of it.

  It was a
fter ten when he left Gianelli’s and started down the street. A minute later, he reached the barricades blocking the street where the sewer work was being completed. He started to sidestep them, intending to take the shortest route home, when all at once he heard Kelsey’s voice in his head.

  Those are there for a reason.

  He ignored her voice and started forward, only to stop again.

  Are you crazy? Walking through there is dangerous!

  He gritted his teeth, wishing she would stop talking inside his freakin’ head. She was too damned uptight. Why would he listen to a woman like her?

  But for some reason, he just couldn’t ignore the barricades. Instead he made a right turn and walked two blocks out of his way to avoid the construction, every step he took angrier than the last. There you go, Kelsey. I followed the rules. Are you happy now?

  He decided that under no circumstances was he going to talk to her again. He wasn’t going to knock on her door to see if she was home. He wasn’t going to lure her to his apartment. He was going to ignore her, just as she was ignoring him.

  When he reached their building, he took Boomer for a walk, then came back up the elevator, intending to head straight into his apartment and then call it a night. He started to unlock his door. Then all at once he heard a howling cry. Startled, he wheeled around.

  It was coming from Kelsey’s apartment.

  His first thought: serial killer, knife at her throat, blood everywhere. But in his next heartbeat, he realized it wasn’t a woman’s scream. It was a baby’s cry. What the hell?

  He shoved Boomer inside his apartment, then crossed the hall and knocked on her door. A few seconds later, Kelsey opened it.

  “Brett! Thank God. Get in here. I need you!”

  Okay, he definitely liked the sound of that, but for some reason he couldn’t imagine she was holding a baby, which kinda screwed up the fantasy. She stepped back so he could come inside, then headed for her kitchen.

  Then he recognized the baby. Ricky DeVita from down the hall.

  “You didn’t return my text messages," he said.