Neanderthal Seeks Extra Yarns (Knitting in the City Book 8)

by Penny Reid

  I was breathing heavily and definitely sweating when we stopped just inside a gallery that looked very much like all the others. Alex spun suddenly, and I collided with his chest. He reached for my arms to steady me, his eyes studying my face.

  “Are you okay?”

  I nodded. “Yeah. Fine. Water.”

  “What?”

  “Need water.” I fanned myself, unable to manage long sentences.

  He grinned. “We’ll have time for that later; come stand over here.”

  Alex reached for my hand again and pulled me to a bench in the middle of the room. I thought he wanted me to sit on it, so I moved to do just that.

  “No, no, no—you can’t sit yet. Stand here, like this.” He positioned me next to the bench, angling my shoulders very precisely toward the open doors we’d just entered.

  I glared at him because, though the wheels were sometimes slow, the gears in my head just clicked, and I caught on that he was definitely up to something. I glanced down at my T-shirt and read the white lettering. It said, Tasered Anyone Today?

  Oh shitzterhozen.

  “What’s going on?”

  Alex lifted his eyebrows and gave me another grin. This time I could see his excitement; it was a living, palpable thing.

  “Well, you said—”

  “Alex! There you are.”

  Alex turned, and I leaned to one side to look around my husband to see who had just entered the room. It was Dan the Security Man with his stripper eyes.

  “Dan…?” I said.

  “Sandra. Hey.” He lifted his chin in greeting, then turned his attention to Alex. “You’re late. If we’re going to do this, then you need to get into position.”

  “Okay, we got it.” Alex nodded.

  “Is she wearing the vest?” Dan pointed to me.

  “The vest?” I asked them both; neither answered.

  “I was just about to do that.” Alex reached under the bench and pulled out two items: a bag and a bulletproof vest. The first he handed to Dan. The vest he hoisted around my shoulders and helped me slip my arms through.

  “What…wait…what is going on?” I knew my eyes were huge as they moved between Alex and Dan.

  Dan briefly dug around in the bag, then handed Alex an odd-looking black rectangle, which he took with care, then turned to me.

  “We have just enough time to go over the basics. Don’t worry; they shouldn’t be armed, and the rest of Dan’s team will either be chasing them in here or are on the other side of that door. I wouldn’t put you in a situation where there was a chance you’d get hurt. Okay? You’re perfectly safe.”

  “What is going on?” I asked again, this time my voice betraying my panic. My heart was racing, I was hot and sweaty, and everything was happening too fast.

  Dan ignored my question and pointed to the strange rectangle thing Alex was holding. “You will aim like this, and press here, then the dart electrodes will shoot out—but they’ll stay connected via conductors…”

  I blinked at Dan and his calm recitation of how to operate the object, which I’d just realized was a taser. I was so entrenched in my own little world of shock—no pun intended—that I missed most of the demonstration, but I did tune back in just in time to hear the never do’s, aka: never point it like this, and never do that, and never touch here.

  “Oh my God…who, who am I going to taser?”

  “Just some guy who is trying to steal art.” Alex shrugged, he literally shrugged off the fact that I would soon be electrocuting someone. I wasn’t surprised because Alex was a total weirdo, but I was stunned…again, no pun intended.

  “Some guy? Some guy?” My voice cracked.

  “Don’t worry about it, Sandra. If you don’t stun him, I’ll do it. Either way these guys are going down. This was the plan all along, to bring them in here. It doesn’t matter who does it; it only matters that—” Dan stopped speaking and pressed his first and middle finger to his ear, his eyes losing focus, like he was listening. Abruptly, he turned away and marched over to the open doors, standing to one side.

  “Alex, this is crazy,” I whispered.

  “I know.” He grinned. “I love your crazy. It makes really good fig salad.”

  I laughed—half hysterical, half confused—then said, “I can’t believe you arranged this. I don’t know that I can do it; it feels so staged.”

  He gripped my shoulders, then smoothed his hands down to my elbows and squeezed. “We’ve been following this scam for months; it was a complete coincidence that it was set to happen today. I saw the chance, and I thought it might make a fun birthday gift; but you don’t have to do it.”

  “Your birthday gift to me is to place me in the middle of an art heist so that I can taser someone?”

  He nodded, smiling, looking very proud.

  “Thank you, Alex. I mean it. I...I just love you so much.”

  “Less than a minute.” We heard Dan call from the other side of the room. “Alex, get in position.”

  Alex smiled at me. I smiled at him.

  As he stood next to me, shoulder to shoulder, I shook my head, feeling a surge of wonder and love and gratitude that we’d found each other, because—really—who else in the world was this weird?

  Who else was ever going to get me and think I was awesome instead of disturbed?

  Alex.

  Only Alex.

  Because he was awesome.

  And I was in stupid love with the fact that we were now, and would forever be, awesome together.

  Extra Scene: The Junior Hackers Society

  (canon)

  Author’s Note: As it turns out—as I was assembling this collection—I realized Alex and Sandra had no deleted scenes! How nutty is that? However, there was one dialogue note for Alex that I’d wanted to use, but wasn’t able to find a place for in Love Hacked. Since it really is the *only* thing deleted/unused, I thought I’d share, as follows:

  Alex leaned back in his chair, blinked once slowly, and said, “I’m sorry if you misinterpreted my patronizing you as being passive aggressive. Please accept my humblest apologies as well as sincerest sympathy for your inability to recognize the different classifications of rudeness. In case you can’t tell, this one is called sarcasm.”

  That Alex . . . such a treasure.

  Anyway, this new scene was written specifically for this collection and has never been shared or published before. I hope you enjoy.

  Saturday’s Horoscope (Scorpio): Your resistance to change is about to be tested in a big way. It’s in your best interests to go with the flow (just this once).

  ~Alex~

  “HOW LONG YOU two been married?”

  I didn’t look at the man across the table, nor did I make any sign that I’d heard his question. If I ignored him, would he ask again? Or could I act as though I hadn’t heard? Or perhaps I could stand, walk to the cash bar, and he’d let the matter drop.

  I didn’t have to ponder the probability of his non-action for long.

  “Hey, Alex. It’s Alex, right?” he said louder, presumably to speak over the music, and moved from his chair to the empty seat next to mine. “I was just asking, how long have you and Dr. Fielding been married?” He sounded interested. Really interest. Far too interested to be simply making conversation or attempting to fill a conversational silence.

  But I was used to this. I was used to fielding questions about my wife. My wife. I allowed myself a smile. I would never get tired of calling Sandra my wife.

  Drawing in a breath, I moved just my eyes to him. I tried to remember his name and gave up. I was fairly certain he was a physician. He wore a tuxedo like me. Sandra had picked mine out. It had a real bowtie, not one of the clip-ons. She said clip-ons were cheating, but I knew the real reason she preferred an actual bowtie, and it had everything to do with binding her wrists. Or mine.

  Shifting in my chair, my attention dropped to his tie; it looked like a clip-on.

  “Ten years.”

  His eyebrows jumped and he
flinched slightly, blinking like I’d moved too suddenly. “Ten—ten years?”

  I nodded, bored, casting my attention around the room, searching for Sandra.

  She knew better than to leave me alone at one of these things. The last time we’d been to a charity benefit and she’d disappeared for more than fifteen minutes, every person present with a cell phone banking app had donated an additional $1,000 to pediatric cancer research. Except the idiots at our table. They’d donated $10,000.

  Rubbing my thumb over the screen of my battery-less burner, I studied the cufflinks at the man’s wrists. They looked to be solid gold, and I wondered how much missing cash would pique his ire. Of course, if I had five minutes, I’d be able to review his bank balances before making a withdrawal.

  Be good. . . A voice that sounded suspiciously like Sandra’s reminded me in my brain. She was always telling me to be good. For the most part, I was. And yet, though we’d never explicitly discussed it, we both knew there would always be a part of me that couldn’t be good.

  “Wow,” he said, and I felt his eyes study me. “Y’all must’ve been young when you married?”

  I decided to lie. “Not really. She was twenty-eight, and I was thirty-five.”

  He made a choking sound. “You’re forty-five?”

  I nodded, feeling no trace of guilt. I told this lie often, because people couldn’t handle the fact that I was seven years younger than my wife, so I told them I was seven years older. They didn’t seem to have an issue if the age difference was reversed.

  “Holy shit, man. What’s your secret?”

  “Secret?” I glanced at him, found his stare pointed at my forehead.

  “You have great skin,” he said, wistfulness in his voice.

  Now I flinched, frowning, his comment and tone a little too Silence of the Lambs for me. “What?”

  “I’m a plastic surgeon,” he said, as though this explained his preoccupation with my skin, and he smiled.

  It was then that I noticed his teeth were perfect rectangles, and very, very white. I was also disconcerted to realize I had no idea how old this guy was. He could have been forty or seventy.

  “You got kids?” he asked.

  I shrugged, giving him a non-committal head nod.

  Telling people—strangers—about being a foster parent was something I no longer did. Invariably, someone would ask, “But don’t you want kids of your own? Ones that are normal?”

  For obvious reasons, that pissed me off.

  See? This is why I’ll never be truly good. Shitty people. Shitty people are why we can’t have nice things.

  Regardless of where the kid came from, there was no guarantee that child would fit his or her parents’ expectation of normal, biological or adopted. Every child was a roll of the dice, a surprise. It didn’t matter if he was delivered flesh and blood at the hospital, or if she arrived by paper and pen from the courts.

  But there were other reasons it wasn’t an easy question for me to answer. We’d tried to have biological children, for years we’d tried, but biological children hadn’t been in the cards. Neither of us were willing to go through medical procedures or hire a surrogate to make it happen, not when we were happy and busy fostering kids already here, already alive and in need of a stable home.

  So, no. It wasn’t an easy question to answer, but that didn’t keep people from always asking it.

  Apparently, the man decided to take my vague movement as an affirmative. “That’s great.” He sniffed, nodding quickly. “I got nothing against kids, I have a few myself, and kids are good for business. Nothing gives a person more wrinkles than their kids, am I right?”

  I have a few myself . . . what an asshole.

  As foster parents, sometimes we had up to three kids. We just didn’t have any living with us right now, unfortunately. But there were two kids in particular—Katie and Luke—we wanted to adopt, if or when they were ever permanently removed from their biological mother’s custody.

  Sandra and I kept tabs on Katie and Luke as much as CFS would let us. When CFS wouldn’t give us information, I helped myself to the social worker updates in the CFS dot gov database. The firewall was a joke.

  Which reminds me, I should check up on them . . .

  Forcing my jaw to relax, I gathered a deep breath through my nose and checked my watch. Swiss movement, no chip, untraceable.

  “So, what’s your secret?” he asked again. “Especially with kids, how do you keep yourself looking like a man in his twenties?” The plastic surgeon crossed his arms, looking out over the dance floor. “I guess having a woman around to have fun with like Dr. Fielding helps, huh? She’d keep anybody young, am I right?” He nudged me with his elbow and chuckled.

  Stiffening, I stared forward.

  I was used to men and women commenting on how great Sandra was, how beautiful, how engaging, how funny and charming and magnetic. I didn’t mind until they made it weird, because they were right. Sandra was all those things, and so much more.

  But when they made it weird, they really made it weird. There was always someone who wanted details about our sex life, like they wanted to file details away for later, or someone who asked whether we were in an open relationship.

  Those people needed to learn how to mind their own fucking business.

  I came to a swift decision about the doctor next to me as I stood and buttoned the top button of my jacket. This guy is making an extra donation tonight. He’s going to be very, very generous. They might name a wing after him.

  “My secret?” I scanned the room once more and luckily found someone I knew who wouldn’t: a) irritate me, or b) try to stop me from hacking this asshole’s phone. “I guess my secret is, I don’t ask questions that are none of my business,” I said.

  Not waiting for a response, I crossed the room to where Greg Archer was standing with Matt Simmons. Their wives weren’t around, which was good. Fiona and Marie had too many scruples for what we were about to do.

  Saturday Horoscope: Although you’ve been holding on to exciting news for a while now, be careful about when you tell others. Don’t be surprised if those impacted need time to process and adjust.

  ~Sandra~

  I NEEDED TO get back to the ballroom. I knew better than to leave Alex alone at one of these events for any length of time, especially in the vicinity of Greg Archer. But I was sick to my stomach. I’d been sick to my stomach on and off for the few weeks, and I knew why.

  Crazy levels of nervousness and excitement will do that to a person. Also, as a side note, nervousness and excitement and withholding information from my husband apparently also gave me temperature fluctuations. One minute I’d been cold and reaching for my sweater, and the next I’d been hot as a hog in heat and fighting the urge to strip to my undies. But I didn’t.

  The benefit gala for the new children’s research wing was no place for a panty dance party.

  No, no.

  It also wasn’t the place to inform my sexy, awesome husband that we were about to finally and officially become parents.

  . . . AHHHHHHHHH!!! EXCITEMENT AND NERVOUSNES!!!

  But I digress.

  Katie and Luke had first come to live with us four years ago, she’d been six and he’d been eight. A brother and sister, they’d been bouncing between their mother’s home—whenever she wasn’t in prison—and foster care since they’d been born.

  It wasn’t a particularly special or unusual story. Yet, these kids were special and unusual to us. We’d fallen in love with them over the year they’d stayed. Katie was like Alex, distrustful and sarcastic, but with a tender heart. Whereas Luke was more like me, happy-go-lucky and silly, also with a tender heart. They were awesome, and I’d wanted to raise them as ours since the moment we’d met.

  . . . AND NOW WE WILL!!! AAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHH!!!

  Again, I digress.

  On the one hand, it felt strange to celebrate, especially since this was only possible because their mother had been arrested for and pled guilty t
o attempted murder. So. Right. Not a good thing. Also, awkward to bring up in conversation. Also, there’s no card for that in the hallmark sympathy isle, FYI.

  Honestly, I wasn’t trying to be glib, but it was what it was. Nothing was cut-and-dry, nothing was easy, everything was more complex and layered than we wanted it to be, but I knew this already. Life, my job, and Alex had taught me.

  Therefore, the well-adjusted, reasonable part of my brain who’d worked in child psychiatry for over ten years wouldn’t allow me to feel guilty for happiness. Though I grieved for Katie and Luke and present loss of their relationship with their biological mother, it was appropriate to celebrate and look forward to giving them a stable, loving future. It was appropriate to be grateful for Katie and Luke, and it was appropriate to feel honored and privileged that Alex and I would be raising them.

  Speaking of Alex, I hadn’t told him about the adoption yet. I hadn’t told him because I wanted to be greater than ninety percent sure it was going to happen. Instead, I’d sat on it, knitting and eating my feelings, and pretending everything was normal. Well, as normal as things ever got at casa de la Greene and Fielding.

  Which brings us to now and my excitement induced nausea. Or maybe the nausea was because I hadn’t told him yet and keeping the secret was giving me Schmetterlinge im Bauch, that’s German for butterflies in the belly (literally translated . . . I think). Though, admittedly, my German was pretty bad (i.e. sehr schlecht).

  WHATEVER! My inability to speak or remember German notwithstanding, I had to tell Alex. As I stared in the mirror of the ladies’ room, I knew it had to be soon.

  “I’ll . . .” I said to my reflection, debating how best to break the news. Maybe I could find a late-night craft shop and screen print Katie and Luke’s Mom and Katie and Luke’s Dad T-shirts before he woke up?

  Nah. Rinsing a paper towel, I dabbed it against the back of my neck, and then let the cold water from the faucet run over my wrists. Cheese and grasshoppers, I was roasting!