“I can take Annie to the dance party,” Jo said, sitting forward.
“No way,” Nico said. “If we show up with our social media manager, then it looks like we staged it for the publicity.”
“Isn’t that what you’re doing, though?” Jo asked.
“Yeah, but we don’t want anyone else to know that. We want it to look like a totally spontaneous decision. Just us and the fans,” Nico said.
Annie folded her hands beneath her chin and turned big puppy dog eyes up at Derek. “So, can I go, Daddy?”
He glanced around the group. Why did he have the distinct impression that everyone was in on some joke except him? But was he really going to turn down the opportunity to spend another night alone with Jo? His pulse jumped at the thought of another night of having her all to himself.
“If Kat’s sure...” He waited for her to nod. “Alright. You can go.”
Annie fist pumped, then turned and gave Kat a high five.
“What’s that about?” Derek asked Beckett, tilting his head in the direction of Logan and Jackson still talking on the court, Jackson seeming to grow increasingly agitated.
“Nothing,” Beckett said without looking. “Like I told you, Jacks is fine.”
“What’re you going to do with your night off?” Nico asked Jo, snagging another one of Annie’s chicken nuggets. Annie jumped out of her chair, lunging for the nugget, as Nico held it out of her reach, taunting her without ever taking his eyes off Jo.
“I don’t know,” Jo said, her cheeks turning pink as she squirmed on her lounger. “Probably go to bed early.”
Annie finally succeeded in rescuing her nugget from Nico, popping the whole thing in her mouth without even pausing to dip it in ketchup. She was hard to understand around that much chicken nugget in her mouth, but that didn’t stop her from saying, “Jo and Daddy went to bed early last night too.”
Beckett’s eyes darted between Derek and Jo. “Did theynow?”
“Mmhmm,” Annie confirmed. “Grown-ups get tired easily.”
Zach stifled a laugh behind his fist, unconvincingly turning the sound into a cough. “I’m sure they do.”
Derek swung his attention to Annie, but she didn’t seem to have noticed the innuendo in Zach’s response.
Jo rolled her eyes, though the furious blush coloring her cheeks and throat belied her bravado. “I’m sure you guys have gone to bed early plenty of times at these types of things.”
Nico guffawed. “Oh yeah. Every night if I can swing it. Sometimes more than once.”
Annie glanced between the adults as Zach and Nico laughed and she realized there was something going on she didn’t fully understand, a joke she’d somehow missed. And if she figured it out?
Shut it down.
“That’s enough,” Derek barked. “You don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“No?” Zach glanced at Jo, her brow furrowed as she shrank back on the lounge chair, adjusting her sarong to cover her legs more fully. “Shame. My mistake.”
But as the conversation moved on, Nico and Zach teasing Beckett about the volley he’d dropped before the break, Derek’s eyes drifted to Jo. She shrank in on herself in her chair despite the plastic mask of a smile curving her lips. His stomach dropped, slimy, cold realization slithering down his spine as he realized the mistake was, in fact, his.
Chapter 13
“It was Professor Plum in the conservatory with the pipe!” Annie declared.
“Nope.” Jo flashed Annie the Professor Plum card.
Clue had been one of the only board games still available to check out in the Hotel Bellwether library, but Jo had to admit it was much more fun when she was playing with her friends and their partners over bottles of wine than it was stone cold sober with a seven-year-old.
Annie deflated, tossing her cards down on the coffee table. “I don’t want to guess anymore. What’s a conservatory anyway?”
“It’s a kind of glass room. Some people keep plants in them, or sometimes they sit in there because it’s sunny.”
