Page 60 of Dancing in the Dark

“You said you was working with that scoundrel mayor last night, that’s all! So then I didn’t want to call you when you was working. Then I forgot to tell you, and now you came to say hello, and I wasn’t even here!” Diving forward again, she wraps me up tight. “I’m sorry, Fifi! Did you have to wait long for me?”

“Honey. It’s totally fine. I promise.” Snickering, I rub soothing circles against her back and avoid meeting Cato’s smug expression as he closes the door and wanders across to poke at Charlie’s breakfast.

He picks up Charlie’s coffee and takes a sip, then trades it for Charlie’s juice and grins his approval. “Smells like…” He sniffs the air. “Scrambled eggs and fornication in here.”

“Hey!” Charlie pegs a balled pair of socks across the room and misses Cato’s head by… a lot. “Don’t.”

“What?” He laughs. So loud, so obnoxious. I want to die. “She doesn’t know that word. And besides, I like that smell.”

“Oh my gosh.” Mortification becomes a pulsing, boiling beat in my veins, so I spin on my stool and stand, hugging Mia to my chest. “Let’s go get ready for school, baby. How was your sleepover? Did you have a good time?”

“I had such a good time! And I took up Cato’s whole bed.” She leans closer and whispers, “I was a bit scared he would go somewhere else to sleep, so I told a lie and said I was afraid of the dark.”

“Really?” I carry her along the hall and into her room. Lowering into a crouch, I set her on her own feet. “Lying is a bit cheeky, don’t you think?”

“Yeah! But I didn’t want him to leave me all alone, so I said my lie, and then I said how I like to hold hands while I sleep.” She claps her palms over her mouth. “He slept on the floor beside me allllll night! And he held my hand. And when I woke up to go pee and got a bit nervous, cos I forgot for a minute I was someplace else, he held my hand again as soon as I was done.” She extends her arm between us, palm side up. “He stroked my wrist for a long time, cos he finks it feels kinda nice and helps him relax, so he thought it would feel nice for me, too. And guess what?”

My sweet, sweet Mia Charlotte Fletcher. I love you so friggin’ much. “What?”

“It worked! I went right back to sleep. Now I’m home and you’re here, which means today is even better than I already thought it was gonna be.” She fingers the soft lapel of my blouse and purrs, similar to how her father purrs when he’s happy. “You always wear the softest clothes, ya know?” She drops her hand and fingers the hem of her shirt. “Mine don’t feel like how yours feel.”

“That’s because mine are made for grown-ups to wear to the office, and yours are made for little girls who want to play and climb and do all sorts of fun things during the day.”

“Do you fink, when you grow out of yours, you can save them for me?” She nods, as if doing so will convince me to do what she wants. “Please, Fifi? I’ll keep them safe, and when I’m a grown-up, I’ll wear them to my office job and be as beautiful as you.”

“You can have my clothes. I promise.” I take her wrist and turn it over, then I press a kiss to her pounding pulse. “Any outfit, any time, and it doesn’t even matter if I’ve grown out of them yet or not.”

“Really?”

“Mmhm. We could swap back and forth, so even if you take something of mine, and then I want to wear it again, I’ll borrow it back.”

“Sharing,” she breathes. “Mrs. Greene says sharing is kind.”

“Exactly. And I can’t think of anyone else on the whole planet I’d rather share with.”

22

FLETCH

“So, I wasn’t gonna say anything, and it’s not like I sit around gossiping all that often, but…” Arch brings our car to a stop ten feet from a long line of police tape already strung up around a crime scene. Breakfast was consumed this morning, Sera excused herself, Cato Cato’d, we blew through a few hours down at the station, and then dispatch attached us to a case. Now here we are, and a dead body awaits us on the rocks of the bay. “I guess I’m just saying I heard some stuff before I left the house this morning.” His lips quiver in my peripherals. “As your best friend, I wanna know if I’m supposed to say congrats, or… Ya know… be careful?”

“Shut up.” My stomach tingles with anticipation. With pleasure and desire and, fuck, there’s that small sizzle of ‘please don’t let any of this scare Sera away’ pulsing in my blood. Pushing my door open, I slide out and drop my phone into my back pocket. “We’re riding a case hot-streak right now, so why don’t you get your head on straight and focus?”

He slams his door and swaggers arrogantly around the car. “Cato said you and Miss Fifi were macking on each other over breakfast.”

“Yeah? Well Cato has a big mouth and a flair for the dramatics.” I nod to the uniformed officer waiting by the tape, then I duck low as he lifts it and step onto my crime scene.

Behind me, Archer follows.

“So you’re saying he was lying?” Neither of us walks as quickly as we normally would on our way toward a dead body. We’re in no rush to arrive, nor to flip the recorders on, because once that happens, private discussions are typically set aside. “You’re calling my baby brother a liar, Charlie Fletcher?”

“No, I’m calling him a big-mouthed drama queen, and I’m saying Sera’s like a wild horse. I’m genuinely terrified if everyone gossips about this and makes it into a huge deal, she might spook and bolt.”

“So there’s something to gossip about?” Still thirty feet from the body I’ve already picked as female, young, and relatively fresh, considering her lack of bloating, Archer grabs my shoulder and pulls me around. “If there was nothing to discuss, there’d be nothing for her to run from. That means there’s something, right?”

I swear to Christ, I haven’t blushed like this since I was a sixteen-year-old punk flirting with a beautiful ballerina. And hell, I married her and made a baby, so…

“Fletch?”