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His smile gave away what was on his mind, and even though sex wasn’t why I was on his doorstep, seeing him now, it wasn’t off the table. “Intimate time?”
Levi shrugged and took a step back, motioning for me to enter. “I won’t say no, but it looks like you have something else on your mind.”
An intuitive man that could shelve sex in favor of conversation? I needed to keep my head on straight because this man was dangerous. “I do.”
“Mickey conked out on the sofa, so let me get him put to bed upstairs and then I’m all yours.”
All yours.
Why that sounded so appealing was another topic to be shoved away until a later date.
A much later date.
Chapter 14
Levi
Something was on Lacey’s mind, and I was sure that whatever it was had to do with the reason she’d been a ghost in the office today. She hadn’t shown up and hadn’t called, only sent me an email with the publishing needs for tomorrow’s edition. Yet she’d come to see me, to talk.
I left her downstairs to gather her thoughts while I removed Mickey’s clothes and traded them in for pajamas. He was so sweet and quiet when he was sleeping, but not nearly as fun as when he was awake.
This is my life now, I thought with a smile, and the truth was that I didn’t regret it at all. The traveling was the only thing I missed, but now I could travel for fun, maybe find beauty and enjoyment in parts of the world where I’d only found chaos and destruction previously. Mickey was a great kid, not to mention a reminder of what I’d missed while Michelle grew up.
At the top of the stairs I listened for signs of Lacey browsing photos of Michelle and Mickey, or giving herself a tour and heard nothing but silence. She was stuck in her head, and I gave myself a few moments of deep breathing before I went to hear whatever it was she needed to talk about.
“Hey, is everything all right?”
She stood at the fireplace staring with unseeing eyes for a long moment before she turned to me with a too bright smile that didn’t quite meet her baby blue eyes.
“Hey yourself. How was your day?”
I shrugged casually at her question. If Lacey needed some small talk to get her started, I could do that. “Boring without something pretty to look at. GG was grumpier than usual, which gave me time to work up a few story ideas. How was your day?”
She sent me a playful, lopsided smile. “Boring without something pretty to look at, but otherwise productive.”
“That sounds good. And ominous.” I dropped down on the sofa and patted the seat beside me, but Lacey took the seat at the end of the sofa and tucked one foot underneath her, blue eyes glued to my face.
“What was your first story, and how did you choose it?”
“I didn’t choose it, it was assigned to me. It was about the bodies that lined a street down in Mexico, suspected cartel murders.” It was a crazy time, those cowboy days when thousands of journalists from around the world worked hard days and long hours to get their story told first. “It wasn’t what it seemed, at least not to me.”
“I remember it. You figured out that the majority of the victims had no relation to the cartels or associates. You theorized it was a serial killer. How?”
“By talking to the families of some of the victims. Many were too poor to have any real association with the cartel who pays for work and loyalty. Someone living the way many of those families did would have no reason to be loyal to them.” I shook my head thinking of the poverty many of them lived in. “And the ones that couldn’t be associated to a cartel were too similar to be anything else.”
She nodded soaking up every word as if they were gospel. “And how did you choose the slant of that article, or any article really?”
I knew what she was asking, but she hadn’t quite phrased it to indicate she knew what she was asking. “I don’t have a slant to the story until after I’ve gathered all the facts.”
She smiled softly. “You wrote Adrienne’s story about the women who didn’t get the justice they deserved until Adrienne became another victim of the men who’d been victorious in court, on both sides. It was a brilliant way to write the story, and not at all the story I expected you to tell.”
I smiled, flattered at the compliment. “You gave me the bones of the story, but only after speaking with Adrienne at length and hearing her side of it, her perspective about losing in court, did the story reveal itself.” It was an article I was proud to put my name on, and brought home the realization that I could do the same work without traveling the world. “What’s with all the questions Lacey?”
