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“Thank you,” Quinn said. “I think. But yeah, Dad. My deputy and the bailiff were talking about him when he was in court. I’d only seen him a couple of times, and they already knew all about him and were lining up. Even my gay friends were talking about him. He got one of my running friends talking about black underwear with strings of pearls on them, and she’s married!”
“I did not know that,” Beckett said. “Also, I’m strangely intrigued by this underwear.”
“You were in court?” Cash asked. “Why?”
“Because he tried to race a train,” Quinn said. “Never mind that.”
Cash said, “Well, that’s some pretty piss-poor judgment right there.”
“Oh, right, Dad,” Quinn said. “Like you never did anything reckless. Like you don’t have way too much testosterone and it floods out your better judgment about three times a day, so you have to count on Mom to rein you in.”
“You’ve got a mouth on you,” Cash said.
“Yep,” she said. “I come by it honestly. I got it from you.”
“For the record,” Beckett said, part of him wanting to laugh, and the other half narked as hell, because who was this bloke to think he should be vetting his thirty-eight-year-old daughter’s partners? “I was a right drongo, with the train. A fool,” he clarified. “But, yeah, I’ve been known to take a risk or two. Not so much now. I’ve got kids.”
“Which reminds me,” Cash said. “What kind of example are you setting for those kids?”
“What,” Quinn said, “that we’re having sex? We aren’t having it in front of them. People do get into relationships and have sex. Before they’re married, even. How much did Aiden weigh when he was born, again? Eight and a half pounds?” She told Beckett, “My brother. He was ‘premature.’” She said it with air quotes.
“Ah,” he said. “Well, it happens.”
“Fine,” Cash said. “Just don’t come crying to me when your heart’s broken.”
“Dad,” she said. “You know that if I came crying to you, you’d hug me and tell me the guy’s a fool.”
“Well, yeah,” he said. “Of course I would. I’m your dad.”
38
ROLE PLAY FAIL
Beckett had self-control. Well, most of the time. Even when he lost his temper, he did it with control.
Some things, though, were more than a man could bear. Like, for instance, a woman dressed in a costume. Alacycostume. Who wouldn’t look at him.
It was Halloween, which apparently meant that kids went trick-or-treating and got more lollies than was good for anybody, even though it was Monday night and they’d probably be sick tomorrow, and adults stayed home and passedoutmore lollies than were good for anybody. After carving inedible pumpkins into jack o’lanterns, which Quinn had happily supervised on Saturday night, having Troy draw the face he wanted with a pen, then cutting it out, and helping him when scooping out the seeds got hard. Troy’s jack o’lantern face was snaggle-toothed and silly, because, he’d said, “I don’t like scary things.”
Janey had said it seemed stupid to do all that work just for one night, and Quinn had said, “Suit yourself. I always carve one, but it’ll be much more fun to have a few of them lined up down the steps. Want to do one, Beckett? I got this big one for you in case. It’s a lot of scooping, though.”
He’d said, “I think I can just about manage it,” and she’d said, “I know you can,” with the sort of extra intensity to it that told him she hadn’t forgotten last night. To be specific, when he’d been over her, her hands threaded through his, held down against the mattress, and he’d been moving so slowly inside her. When she’d already come twice, and had been so wet and swollen and all the way gone, she’d been gasping with it.
Sometimes, you had to go back to the basics, because bloody hell, but a woman looked good underneath you.
Oh, right. Jack o’lanterns. Yeah, Janey had carved one, too, eventually, and had sat back on her heels afterwards and looked satisfied. Hers looked a bit like a baby. A round, orange baby, with circles cut out on its cheeks, round eyes, a button nose, and a smile.
Beckett had done his best to make his scary. And what had Quinn’s looked like? When she’d finished, Troy had said, “It looks very surprised.”
Not what it looked like to Beckett. It looked to him very much like her pumpkin was having an orgasm. Eyes squeezed shut, eyebrows raised, mouth open wide in an O. He’d stared at Quinn, and she’d said, sounding only a bit flustered, “I thought that, uh, surprised would be funny.”
Yes, the judge had carved an erotic pumpkin. The woman knew how to keep a man on his toes.
Tonight, Janey, Violet, Micah, and Alexis were all taking Troy and Claire out for that trick-or-treating, because, according to Violet, “You have to trick-or-treat in town to get enough candy. And otherwise, Dad has to drive us, and there’s a football game on. It’s the Broncos and the Cowboys, too, so he refuses to watch it later. I said that all he has to do is not look at the score before he watches, and he says it isn’t the same, because he’ll know it’s over. Men are soillogical.”
“Well, obviously,” Alexis said. “My mom always says that, and Heaven knows she goes out with enough of them to know. I’m just surprised you came, Micah.”
Micah said, “I had to. Otherwise, older kids can steal the little kids’ candy. Somebody has to protect them.”
