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Her voice sounded too serious, urgent even, and I wondered what had gone wrong. Wendy wasn’t one to panic unnecessarily, and it immediately put me on edge.
Did something happen with Danny?
I might have never thought much about children before, besides some off-handed comments, then learning I was a father already with the woman I loved, but I had enjoyed my little cousin from day one. Not only because Wendy loved him to bits, but because I was there for his birth and had been one of the few people to see him come into the world. He was so small and fragile I couldn’t help feeling protective over him.
Besides, he was family.
If something ever happened to him, his parents wouldn’t be the only ones devastated.
“Joshua,” Wendy said. Her voice was calm, but it sounded forced like she was hiding something else underneath. “I need you to come over to my house immediately. If you have something important, leave it to someone else just this once okay? Please.”
The please really got to me, because it was another thing that was uncharacteristic of my cousin. She never pled for jobs, she asked, or she demanded.
Fearing the worst, I put everything aside. I wasn’t working on anything crucial. It was a project that wouldn’t go into the planning phase for another month. I was looking over the information gathered on it, so while necessary, it wasn’t something I needed to finish right then.
I didn’t bother leaving the work to anyone else, logging out then shutting down my computer. I locked my office as I went, and told my secretary to reschedule anything else I had for the rest of the day. I made it out of the building and to my car and drove impatiently over to my cousin’s house.
The gates opened automatically for me, and I sped up the driveway. I practically shut down the car and jumped out in the same breath, then I ran up to the door and started pounding on the door.
“Wendy! It’s me, Joshua, open up!”
There was no immediate response, and I pressed down on the bell a couple of times before I went back to pounding on it. When I tried the handle, it was locked.
“Dammit!” I cursed under my breath.
I’d just taken a couple of steps back and started pacing a tight circle in front of the door when it opened, and the last person I expected to see stood there.
“Alessandra?”
She looked as surprised as I did, not to mention a little confused.
“Joshua? What are you doing here, knocking so wildly like that? Did something happen?”
I gaped for a minute, then shook my head. “Wendy called me and asked to come. Is she here?”
“Um, she left a while ago. I don’t think there was anything wrong before she left. She called me to look after Danny because she had something important to do today.”
It took a second, but I figured out what was going on.
Fuck.
This had to be a set-up.
What are you thinking, Wendy?
“Would you like to come in?” Alessandra offered hesitantly as if she wasn’t sure she should be inviting me in.
I hesitated myself. I wasn’t sure if I should go inside. I did like seeing Alessandra again. There had been silence between us ever since she showed up at my office over a week ago, but if it was a plan Wendy was setting up, I wondered if I wanted to be a part of it.
Not even giving me the time to make a decision, I heard the gates opening up and whirled around to see Wendy’s car coming up the drive. I scowled at her, up until she got to her car, smiling at the both of us, and came to join us at the door.
“What are you two doing at the doorway? Go in already.”
She showed us both inside. I frowned at her but went inside as well.
My little cousin was in the living room, in a comfy looking high chair, beside the couch. Alessandra went to sit back next to him and picked up the bottle on the coffee table.
“I was just feeding him when Joshua came in,” she explained.
