by G. G. Andrew
“Princesses?” Kim said. “Of course. It’s like I never play anything else.”
Lily smiled. “Okay. You get to be the guard, and I’ll be the princess all night.” She ran over and started pulling off and arranging couch cushions.
Kim laughed and turned to Scott. “Wow, she’s really fitting into the neighborhood, huh?”
Scott chuckled. “Princesses are overrated.”
“I’ll say.”
Scott called out to his daughter. “Lily, if you’re making a castle out of the couch, make sure you put the cushions back before bedtime, okay?”
“Okay,” Lily called, though she was chest-high in cushions and Kim guessed she hadn’t heard.
Scott rubbed his hands together and moved closer to her. “Okay, so there’s grilled cheese sandwiches in the fridge. You can heat them up in the microwave for dinner.”
“Got it,” Kim said. “My microwave skills are superb.”
“Lily can show you where we keep her pajamas and toothbrush once it’s bedtime. She usually goes to bed around eight.”
“Nine!” Lily called.
“Eight,” Scott said. “And don’t let her convince you otherwise.” He lowered his voice. “She’s wily, that one.”
Kim smiled. He was so at ease here, in his home and around his daughter, that she couldn’t help but let the warmth spread through her, too. Scott was still near her, smiling in amusement, and she had a funny, almost domestic urge to get up on her toes and smooth out a tuft of his hair that was sticking up on the top of his head and kiss him quickly on the lips. She imagined what Scott’s face would be like, though, and that was enough to squash the urge. He’d be surprised, adorably uncomfortable, or subtly disappointed—maybe all three at once. No, she shouldn’t play house here.
“Bedtime at eight,” Kim repeated, her smile growing tight.
“Call me if you need anything,” Scott said, swiping a set of keys off a small table by the door. “Anything at all.”
“I will.”
His eyes glanced at Lily, buried under a mound of cushions, before he turned back to Kim and lowered his voice so much she had to take two steps closer to him. “About that lead I’m checking out. You remember how I said I recognized the handwriting from your note?”
She hated that it was her note, but she nodded.
“It was from a case a few months back. We never found the guy. But I’m going to look back into it, see if I can find a connection there. I’ll let you know if I find out anything more.” His blue eyes held hers. “Are you sure there’s nothing else you can tell me?”
“Nope.” She wasn’t about to tell Scott that her drug-dealing ex had invited her to a party of ne’er-do-wells where the guy who’d broken into her place may or may not be. Letting him pursue this lead was probably the best route. Who knew how much bullshit Hutch was full of, anyway. And telling him about Hutch and the rest would be revealing more than she felt comfortable sharing, especially since he’d already seen way more of her past than she wanted. He couldn’t just waltz in there, anyway. Even out of uniform, his posture and behavior screamed cop. The Yalies would scatter, and the bad guy would get away.
She could get into that party, though.
Not that she was going.
He studied her a beat more. “Okay,” he finally said.
Shit. He knew she was lying.
Keeping his eyes on her, Scott raised his voice. “I’m going to work, Lily.”
Lily’s head peeked out from her construction project, her hair messy and face pink. “Bye!”
“You listen to what Kim tells you, okay?”
“Okay!”
His expression warmed as their eyes met again. “Thank you for this.”
“No problem.”
He left for the station, and Kim joined Lily on the couch, where the girl schooled her on proper cushion castle construction, which was a lot more complex than she’d anticipated. It also included a blue towel laid on the carpet to be the “castle lake,” and a couple random toy frogs perched on Legos, because why not?
“Now that we have the castle, we can play princesses,” Lily announced.
“That makes sense,” Kim said. She saluted the girl. “Princess Lily’s guard, reporting for duty.”
~
After Princess Lily grew weary of her royal duties, Kim went to heat up the grilled cheese sandwiches, and they ate them cross-legged on the floor, their knees touching.
“Mm, your dad makes a killer grilled cheese,” Kim said over a mouthful of gooey, creamy cheddar on rye. You had to appreciate a man who didn’t skimp on cheese in his cooking.
“They’re my favorite,” Lily said.
“I think they’re mine now too.”
After dinner, Kim taught Lily to play a simple card game with a deck she found in the silverware drawer in the kitchen. Laughing when Lily won a round and took perverse pleasure in jumping around the house, gloating, Kim realized she’d gone almost an hour without thinking about the break-in. This was probably the most fun she’d had in months, actually. Little kids made for good company. They didn’t care if you had a police record or had left a trail of mistakes in your past, as long as you let them be the princess or fed them warm cheese sandwiches or made them laugh. Also, Lily appreciated her vomiting unicorn shirt more than any of her family members did.
The sun set, and the neighborhood quieted. As Lily reassembled the couch cushions, Kim peered out the front living room windows to see a car slowly driving in front of the house. Her body tensed, but then she noticed it was a patrol car. She couldn’t see the driver in the dark, but she knew it had to be Scott.
“Your dad loves you a lot, kid,” she said to Lily. Seeing the cop car jogged her memory, and she squeezed her cell out of her tight jeans and checked the time. “Hey, looks like we have to start getting ready for bed.”
Lily’s expression was devastated. “No!”
“Yes.” She walked over and ruffled Lily’s soft tresses. “C’mon, show me where your pajamas are.”
Glumly, like she was on her way to her teddy bear’s execution, Lily found her pajamas, which were pink with polar bears all over them. Kim turned off most of the living room lights while Lily dressed, then supervised her while she brushed her teeth. Lily was surprisingly, and suspiciously, quiet during the whole proceedings.
After she spit in the sink and climbed down from the stool she was teetering on, Lily said brightly, “Okay, now it’s time to watch my movie.”
“What?” Kim smirked. “I don’t think so. It’s bedtime. I told your dad I’d put you to bed at eight, and he’s a cop, so I’m supposed to listen to what he says.”
“Please, just ten minutes?” Lily pleaded. “I need to unwind.”
Kim laughed. “What do you need to unwind from? Are you a forty-five-year-old stockbroker?”
“Please, Kim…” Lily’s eyes widened as she looked up at her, appearing utterly vulnerable in her pink jammies. “Just ten minutes.”
Kim wagged her finger at her. “I see what you’re trying to do. You’re trying to cute me into it. You and your pink pajamas and your adorableness.” She put her hands on her hips. “Well, I’m not buying it. I know a thing or two about acting cute to get what you want.”
Lily’s voice went as light and delicate as blown glass. “But I want to spend more time with you.”
Kim’s heart turned into a hot air balloon in her chest, expanding towards the ceiling. Lily was something else. If she’d had half the girl’s skills at her age, she could’ve been on her way to a life of more sophisticated crime. She took her hands off her hips and sighed. “Okay.” She narrowed her eyes, trying to pretend like Lily wasn’t the boss of her right then. “Just ten minutes.”
Lily perked up, skipping around to turn the television on, take a quick bathroom break, and collect her favorite blanket from her bedroom, a hot pink fleece throw that was big enough to cover them both on the couch. Kim knew, because when she settled on the couch next to Lily afte
r her own pee break, the little girl surprised her by plopping right on her lap, spreading the blanket over them both, and snuggling against her.
“Just so you know, I’m watching the time,” Kim said, pointing her finger at the DVD player.
The show started, and Kim was reminded of how squirmy small children were, as Lily constantly changed her position for the first few minutes. She was all elbows, but Kim eventually cuddled her into a spot on her left side, Lily’s head tucked under her chin.
As the first musical number began in the movie, the rumble of a car driving by came from outside. A beam from the headlights creeped through the blinds, tattooing the walls beside the television in slashes of shadow and brightness. The lights, then the crunch of the car’s wheels, paused for a minute.
“Must be a slow night,” she mumbled. Lily didn’t respond, as she was too enraptured by the screen, her thumb in her mouth. Either there wasn’t much crime happening in the area, or Scott was worried she was a crappy babysitter.
Kim exhaled, and a minute later, the car retreated and the headlights disappeared from the walls.
The show had been playing for ten minutes, but Lily was so warm and soft against her, Kim couldn’t help but cuddle her closer and think, Just one more minute. Lily’s head relaxed back against her, her hair impossibly soft against Kim’s face. She inhaled the scent of the girl’s head, which smelled like spaghetti sauce and dust. She remembered this from her days working preschool, how little kids always seemed scented with a strange mix of sweet and human. It wasn’t as precious as that newborn baby smell, but not as earthy as a teenager either. Something in the middle. Anyway, she loved it. It certainly beat the overpowering scent of coffee beans that permeated her work clothes or the stench of too much cologne on a bad date with wandering hands.
As animated characters danced and sang on the wide-screen TV, Kim let her mind drift, her body warm and relaxed after an exhausting couple of days.
Three minutes later, her eyelids fluttered and fell, and she was fast asleep.
Chapter Thirteen
Scott
They were slammed that Tuesday evening. Scott got called to respond to a domestic situation, then a drunk and disorderly man wandering downtown. He didn’t know if he’d even have a chance to talk to Carter Morales before his shift ended, but luckily he ran into her outside the precinct when he pulled up in his patrol car.
“The handwriting is definitely the same,” Detective Morales said. She was outside his vehicle, leaning down so they could speak through his open driver’s side window. The sun was setting in New Haven, the sky a brilliant pink behind the dark silhouette of blooming trees on the horizon.
“I knew it,” Scott said. “The way he writes his Ts.”
Carter Morales nodded. “Yeah, that slant. It’s unusual.”
“We need to talk to that woman again.”
Carter raised an eyebrow at the we. The force was large enough that detectives usually did their thing, uniformed officers theirs.
“Because I know the other victim,” Scott rushed to add. “And the circumstances of her case.”
The detective drummed her fingers on his patrol car. She was dressed in a light gray blouse and darker gray slacks, and though her smooth face made her appear young, she wasn’t naïve.
“Culpepper, what are you into?”
He swallowed. “Nothing I can’t handle.” He wasn’t so sure about that.
Carter sighed and spoke in her slow, southern way. “I already left the victim a voicemail, saying I wanted to speak with her again. But I’ll let you know what she says, and I’ll let you check out any leads she gives us.” She grinned at him. “I’m only doing this because I like you. If your friend Jimmy asked me this, I’d shut the door in his face.”
“Didn’t you and Jimmy go out a few months back?” Scott asked.
“Yeah,” Carter said. “Exactly.”
Scott grinned back just as Jimmy exited the station, frowning at the two of them.
Carter pushed away from his car, ignoring the other officer’s questioning look. Scott gave him a quick wave and started his patrol. As the sky darkened fully into night, he drove by Kim’s apartment, but he didn’t see anything suspicious. Maybe the guy who’d broken into her place just got his jollies off doing this occasionally. Maybe he’d moved on. That’s what Scott would’ve liked to believe, if he hadn’t been an officer for the better part of a decade.
He had been nervous to let Kim watch Lily, beyond her record and his inability to keep his cool around her. Somebody was threatening her, after all. But he reasoned that she was far from her place in New Haven, with her parents nearby—not to mention Scott’s security system around the house. Perps didn’t usually go near law enforcement officers’ homes.
Scott was tired when he shoved the key into the lock on his front door that night after his shift ended. He didn’t know what he expected to find—Lily asleep in her bed, probably, and maybe Kim casually rifling through one of the drawers in his armoire—but that wasn’t what he saw.
Lily was curled up on Kim’s lap on the couch and they both were completely asleep. They looked like they’d been that way for a while. The television was rolling credits on a movie, instrumental music playing in his otherwise quiet home. Lily was in her polar bear pajamas, her blond hair tousled and her thumb in her mouth. The other hand was somehow inexplicably connected to Kim’s head. As Scott crept closer, he realized one of Lily’s fingers was intertwined with several locks of Kim’s hair.
He couldn’t help but grin at that. His daughter was besotted with her babysitter.
Kim leaned back on the couch, hugging his little girl. Her head tilted to the side from Lily’s hold and some of her brown hair curtained her face. She was breathing deeply, her full lips both more innocent and wicked in slumber. Something turned in Scott’s gut at the sight of her, this beautiful woman holding his daughter so close. It was a shame to wake her.
“Kim,” he whispered when he finally found his voice. “Kim.”
“Hmm?” Kim mumbled sleepily, her hair slipping out of Lily’s grasp. She shifted position, but her eyes didn’t open and she didn’t wake. She hugged Lily tighter and pouted to have her sleep disturbed.
He couldn’t keep the smile out of his voice. “Kim,” he whispered again. “Wake up.” He reached a hand to gingerly touch her shoulder.
At that, her eyes flew open.
“Oh. Sorry,” she said softly, her brown eyes blinking at him. She noticed Lily in her arms. “We both crashed out.”
His lips still curled in a smile. “I can see that.” He removed his duty belt and set it aside.
She shifted, still holding Lily to her. “You make a kick-ass grilled cheese,” she mumbled sleepily.
Scott chuckled softly. “Thank you.” He reached out his arms. “Here, let me pick her up and take her to her room.”
Awkwardly, his hands scooped under Lily, grazing Kim’s warm thighs. He lifted his daughter up and carried her to her bedroom, balancing her like a plate of fine china lest she wake. Though her head lolled against his shoulder, she didn’t stir, not even when he set her down in her bed and pulled her purple comforter up to her chin.
“Goodnight, Lily bird,” he said as he gave her a light kiss on the cheek.
When he reached the end of the hall, Kim was sitting straighter on the couch, rubbing the sleep from her face.
He leaned against the doorframe to the room. “You two have fun?”
Kim smiled sleepily. “Yeah, I actually did.” She gave him a teasing glare. “You didn’t have to check up on us, you know.”
“I was in the area.”
“Yeah, but twice?”
“It was only once.”
“Sure.”
Her bright unicorn shirt was wrinkled, and despite her hands finger-combing and smoothing it, her brown hair was rumpled, still crimped in parts and flattened in others. He could tell she was self-conscious about it by the way she was preening, but he liked the way s
he looked, vulnerable and unkempt, without guise and like she’d just been thoroughly bedded. On his couch.
His mouth dry, he was having trouble forming words, and after an awkward pause, she stood.
“Well, thanks for everything,” she said.
He uncrossed his arms, surprise at her leaving so quickly mobilizing his mouth. “Thank you. Lily really seems to like you. I’ve never seen her fall asleep with someone else before, besides me.”
“Oh?” She was pleased. “Well, I like her.” There was something sad in her voice, but before he could fathom its source, she was reaching the front door.
“Wait.” He walked until he stood beside her. The doorknob was already in her hand.
Kim studied him expectantly.
He didn’t know why he’d told her to wait, exactly. There was something he’d wanted to say, but it’d slipped his mind at the sight of her. It probably wasn’t important. There wasn’t anything to say at this late hour, not with Lily fast asleep and the knowledge that he should be headed in that direction, too. But something in him didn’t want this to be it, didn’t want this woman to be leaving. In the long moments where he furiously tried to think of something to say, her large brown eyes stared at him, her pretty pink lips pointed upward. They were like two ripe petals—or, something, he couldn’t figure out what—and they drew his eyes down and his body like a magnet and she was so sleepy and pretty, and before he knew it, he’d touched his lips to hers. Lightly, just once, like he’d only meant to kiss her goodnight.
In response, Kim’s eyes widened. She was wide awake now, and she reached up and drew his head to hers and deepened the kiss.
As her eyes fluttered closed again and her lips parted underneath his, he drew in a quick breath at the sensations that ripped through him. The obscene softness of her lips, the heat of her mouth. The sudden urgency that gripped him and made him tug her forward by the waist to press against him, his free hand bracing against the door to hold them both upright. Her tongue darted in his mouth, feverish and wicked. It was just a kiss, but damn it if he didn’t want it all then, everything, her pink mouth and crimped hair and curves and her naked on his couch with his kid sleeping down the hall.
