Page 16 of Red Boar's Baby

“I remember now,” Costa said, a little impatient with himself, as the details of that case dropped back into his mind. It had been relevant to the other departments as one of the bigger things the Seattle bureau had worked on in recent years. “Thank you. How about for tonight—do you have?—?”

He hadn’t realized he’d made a slight move to hand the baby over to Mavis until she took a quick step back. “Good God, no. My house is the exact opposite of baby proof. I’m definitely not set up to take on tiny houseguests.”

“Well, neither am I. Caine—” Costa began.

“No!” Caine said, so sharply that his low, raspy voice rose to a pitch Costa wasn’t sure if he had ever heard from him before.

“You’re all a great bunch of team players, aren’t you?” Costa said. It was with both reluctance and a kind of strange, gut-deep relief that he resettled the baby against his chest, where she nestled down as if she felt she belonged there. “I’ll keep her here overnight, on the condition that I am tasking both of you weasels with finding a placement for her tomorrow night. If nothing else, we can put her with one of our agents who has kids. We can give someone a couple of days off if we have to.”

“I’ll get on that,” Mavis said, collecting her medical items back into her kit. But then she turned to look at the baby for a long moment. “And maybe soon we’ll have some answers to what she was doing on that plane, and how she got out there.”

CHAPTER6

The condo felt veryquiet after they left. Diana rubbed her eyes and began clearing away the leftovers of the pizza and wine, since Costa’s arms were full.

She knew she ought to get back in her car for the nearly two-hour drive home. But she was struggling to muster the energy.

“You have two bedrooms, right?” she asked Costa.

“Yes, but the second one is an office. There’s no bed in it. The couch pulls out, but I’m not sure if I have sheets that fit it. I don’t have guests over much.”

As he spoke, Costa was walking around slowly, jiggling the baby against his chest whenever she stirred a little. He seemed to have settled into that cadence without even being aware he was doing it.

“You’re good with kids,” Diana said without thinking. She couldn’t help remembering Mavis’s comment:breaking hearts and exploding ovaries all over the building. It was true. Diana was absolutely not a domestic person, and had never really considered kids as a thing she was interested in. But there was something about Costa’s big, muscled arms with a little baby nestled in them that turned her insides into strange new shapes.

“I was the oldest,” Costa said.

“I remember,” Diana half-whispered.

Costa cleared his throat. “I’m not just talking about—Marco.” Diana rarely heard him mention his younger brother’s name, and instantly regretted saying anything, but after a brief faltering note, Costa continued more strongly. “The cousins, too. Younger kids absolutely scampering around the place, and me the only responsible one in the bunch.”

“And me an only child,” Diana said with a lopsided smile.

They had grown up side by side on neighboring ranches, separated by a dry gully that frothed with water a few times a year. It was a strange thing sometimes, to know almost everything about Costa that you could know about someone you’d known your whole life—and yet as an adult, he was nearly a stranger to her.

What do you dream of? Do you love your job? Is this what you wanted to do with your life? Why do we never talk about these things?

But then he turned away and the moment of connection passed, leaving her feeling even farther away from him than before.

“I can take the couch,” she said after a minute. “Where are we going to put—uh—you know, we can’t just keep calling that baby ‘she’ and ‘the baby.’ We don’t know her name, but we need to call hersomething.”

Costa was briefly quiet, then he spoke suddenly, almost explosively. “We can call her Emmeline.”

Diana’s heart did something uncomfortable. “Your mother’s name.”

Costa looked away, not meeting her gaze. “I always thought I’d name my—well, that’s not happening, obviously,” he said gruffly, “so we’ll just call her Em for now. Better than Jane Doe.” He lifted the newly christened Em against his shoulder, turning away from Diana.

The tension in the room had grown palpable. Diana brushed her hands on her thighs, although there was nothing on them, but it made her realize suddenly that her jeans were filthy. She hadn’t changed or cleaned up from scrambling around on the mountain. “You know what? I need a shower before I wallow all over your clean sheets.”

“That’s assuming there are any,” Costa said, but the corner of his mouth quirked up a little.

There were quite a lot of sheets in his hall closet, as it turned out, mismatched and different sizes. Diana supposed it wouldn’t be hard to find some that fit the sofa bed. “And what about Em? We don’t have anything like a crib. I guess we could put her in a box or something.”

“I was thinking I’d make a pallet on the bedroom floor,” Costa said. “With the door closed and nothing down where she could grab it, she’ll be fine. I remember plenty of times one of the smaller cousins slept on a blanket on the floor while the rest of us did something else.”

“Okay, so we already established I don’t know anything about babies,” Diana said defensively.

Costa looked at her, and she couldn’t read his expression at all. “But you are good with her. You are—” He seemed to give himself a little shake, and his voice turned businesslike. “Okay, listen, if you want something to wear after your shower, you’re welcome to borrow one of my T-shirts. I probably don’t have much else that’ll fit you. I’m going to go put down the little lady here so I have hands free to make up the beds.”

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