Page 109 of Cruel Lies

I hold still and let her.

In the morning, I'll make pancakes. I told a little girl I would, and I don't break promises to children.

After that, I'll decide the rest.

29

CALI

A week later, I'm sitting in a red velvet seat at the Metropolitan Opera, a place I never, ever thought I'd be, having the time of my life.

I don't even like opera. Or I didn't think I did. But Ronan has a private box, to nobody's surprise, way up high with a view of the whole stage and the whole gold-and-crystal room. There's a little curtain he can pull if he wants privacy, and champagne in a bucket, and the singing is so big and so sad and so loud that I keep getting goosebumps whether I understand the Italian or not.

"You're crying," Ronan murmurs beside me.

"I am not!"

"Your tears beg to differ." He hands me a handkerchief. "It's alright. It's supposed to make you cry. That's the whole point."

I dab at my eyes. "She's dying down there, Ronan. And he doesn't even know yet. He's still singing to her like everything's fine."

"That's opera for you." He takes my hand and holds it on the armrest between us. "Everyone always finds out the truth too late."

Something about the way he says it makes me look at him. But he's watching the stage, his face still, the light catching the half-gray, half-blue of his eyes. So I let it go.

I've decided this week that I'm going to stop reading meaning into everything the man says. It's exhausting, and it's usually me projecting my own baggage onto him anyway.

The kids are once again with my mom. It's been a lot of Grandma time lately, which triggers my maternal guilt, but all three of them seem thrilled with the arrangement. Hayden recovered from his stomach bug by Monday and immediately went back to being his normal cheery self. Isabella has appointed Ronan an honorary member of Doctor Fuzz's medical team, a title she takes very seriously.

He made pancakes that morning after the bug, by the way. He actually did it. He stood at my stove in his rumpled henley and flipped pancakes while Hayden read him the ingredients off the syrup bottle.

I stood in the doorway and thought,This is the most dangerous thing that has ever happened to me.

So here we are. Date six. The soprano hits a note so high and so pure that the whole room seems to hold its breath.

And then Ronan's phone rings.

He pulls it from the inside pocket of his tuxedo jacket. Strange—he must've gotten a new case, because his phone is usually red, but this one is black.

He looks at the screen and his whole body changes. It's subtle. Anybody else wouldn't catch it. But I've learned a few things about him since he crash-landed in my life.

"I have to handle something," he says.

"Now?"

"It'll only take a few minutes." He stands and buttons his jacket. "Stay here. Enjoy the show. I'll be right back."

"Ronan—"

"Stay put,kotyonok." He touches my cheek once. "I mean it. I won't be long."

Then he slips out through the curtain at the back of the box, leaving me alone with the dying soprano, the champagne, and a feeling in my gut I don't like one bit.

I sit there for maybe ninety seconds.

Todd used to say I was nosy. But it's not nosiness that's prickling at me right now. It's the same thing that made me good at my job: I just cannot leave a question alone. I can't sit in a red velvet chair and pretend I didn't just watch the man I'm falling for change his whole face over a phone I didn't know he had.

He keeps secrets,I remind myself.You know that. You decided you were okay with it.