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He walks the hall in bare feet and makes a beeline for me. “I smell coffee.” Burying his nose against my neck and sniffing noisily, the way a hound might when presented with something tempting, Archer carries a button-up shirt in his left hand and uses his right to steal my coffee mug. “You smell amazing, Mayet.” He presses a noisy kiss to my neck and adds a small bite, purely for my torment before pulling away.
He doesn’t move far, and his eyes don’t leave mine for a single beat.
Finally, his lips quirk up to the side. “Mission complete.”
Him. The shower. His hand wrapped around his cock, while I was out here entertaining his friends.
“You’re a horrible person,” I mutter.
Sniggering, he brings my coffee to his lips. “Agree to disagree.” Then he looks to our guests. “How did this apartment get so full so quickly?”
“Uncle Arch!” Mia jumps up from her place on the floor and sprints this way.
I snag the coffee cup before he thinks to catch the toddler with his bad arm, then I continue drinking when he does exactly that anyway.
He scoops the girl up and holds her so her legs wrap around his hips and her feet touch the counter behind us.
“Good morning, Uncle Archer!”
“Good morning, Moo.” He looks down when her fingers automatically go to the chain around his neck. “How are you doing today, beautiful? Are you good?”
“I’m good,” she singsongs. “Daddy said I could come to work wif him this morning since we didn’t get to hang out last night. Then Penny will pick me up so you can go catch the bad guy.”
“Oh, well…” He nods. “Sounds like we have our day all planned out. But first, we gotta figure out who our bad guy is, don’t we?”
“I know,” Fletch murmurs.
Behind him, Aubree raises her hand like a student in class. “I know, too. This one’s easy.”
“What?” I study her with a frown. “You know?”
“Supereasy,” she responds. “I figured it out at two o’clock this morning when we were buying best friend chains for each other.”
“You bought best friend chains?” Fletch’s eyes grow wider. “That’s so sweet and wholesome.”
Then, silently—so his daughter isn’t scarred by her filthy father’s antics—he points at me, then Aubree, then back to himself. Lifting three fingers, he grins.
Threesome?
I roll my eyes. “Disgusting.”
ARCHER
“Doctor Hector Brown. Thanks for seeing us.”
Taking a seat in his small, under-budgeted office, I peek around the room and study the furnishings—cheap—the art on the walls—roadside hotel-esque—and the degrees he’s had printed and framed—dude got his qualifications from the Online University of South-something-something.
Lifting my ankle and resting it on the opposite knee, I sit back in my chair and wait for Fletch to do the same.
“You’re a difficult man to find, Doc.” Fletch takes out a recorder and shows it to the man who wears khaki pants and sandals.Sandals. “For the sake of ease, I’ll call you Hector Brown. Do you mind?”
“Doctor Randall.” Brown clears his throat and watches the recorder the way a man might watch a snake readying to strike. “I’m known as Doctor Leopold Randall now.”
“Which is an interesting turn of events, right, Detective Malone?” Fletch meets my eyes and purses his lips. “A name change. A seedy office in the rough end of the city.” He turns back to Brown. “Sandals.”
“I want no trouble, Detectives.” Randall—Brown—raises his hands in surrender. “Whatever it is you want from me, my nose is clean. My books are straight. My life is better now than it was a decade ago, so whatever you think you’re here to discuss, you’re wrong.”
“You mention a decade ago.” Sitting forward in my chair, I stare deep into his eyes with disgust rolling in mine. “Talk to me about thirty-six years ago. Tell us about Holly Wade and why you diagnosed her with mental health labels that were never quite a good fit for her.”
