Page 45 of Tangled
“You guys want any coffee or something hot?” Scarlett asked. When they all asked for coffee, she rose. Brad motioned for her to stay seated, but she’d been reading for hours and wanted the break. She also hadn’t felt sick all morning. She was still tired, but she didn’t feel like a hulled-out shell of skin and bones, and she wanted to take advantage of it.
“Finding anything interesting?” Chad asked.
“So far, the only thingI’vefound is that I think Gracie missed her calling as an author. Her handwriting is atrocious, but when she starts to philosophize or dig into people’s psyches, her prose is beautiful,” Sabina said.
“Did she opine on anyone who might have killed her?” Ethan asked as Scarlett brought out three cups of coffee. She handed one to him first, then to Chad. When she made it to Brad, he took it, then pulled her onto his lap. She’d never sat on a man’s lap before, not even her father’s when she’d been a little girl, and she landed stiffly on his thighs.
“Relax,” Brad said quietly in her ear. She glanced around the room. No one seemed to be looking at them as if they were weird, so she leaned back.
“I don’t know if you noticed, but she mentioned a colonel a couple of times,” Kara replied.
Scarlett nodded. “And Lupita as well. I assume that’s the same Lupita from the texts.”
“Based on what I read about Lupita, I agree. They seemed to have an ongoing relationship,” Sabina said. “She mentions a cat a few times. Did she have any animals?”
Scarlett shook her head. “I saw a couple of references as well. I dismissed them, thinking she was talking about a neighborhood cat or something. Now that you ask, I wonder if ‘cat’ is her word for a specific person. Maybe the pimp, or madam as the case may be, who runs Sussurri?”
“Like the colonel,” Brad said.
“Could they be the three people we’re looking for?” Chad suggested.
“Lupita, the cat, and the colonel,” Ethan said, mulling it over.
Silence fell, punctuated only by the sound of one of the boys letting out a brief, though loud, whimper. The room seemed to collectively hold its breath, waiting to see if it woke the other boy. When no more sounds came from the room, the parents all relaxed.
“Lunch, anyone?” Brad asked.
“I thought you’d never ask,” Ethan muttered. Kara elbowed him with a laugh. He grabbed her and pulled her to him, liftingher chin for a kiss. “A man’s got to keep up his stamina,” he muttered.
“That’s my sister, so just no. Please,” Sabina said, rising from where she’d been sitting on the floor by the coffee table. Chad chuckled, then hooked his foot around Sabina’s ankle, and she went tumbling into his lap. He muffled her shriek of surprise with a kiss.
“I feel a little left out,” Brad muttered in her ear.
“But joining in now, we’ll feel like we’re followers,” Scarlett said on a laugh.
“And unimaginative,” Brad murmured.
“Which we most definitely are not,” Scarlett said, facing him. She held his gaze as memories of them together filtered through her mind.
His pupils dilated, and his hand on her waist twitched. “No, we most definitely are not,” Brad repeated.
Ethan cleared his throat, and Scarlett jerked around. He grinned. “So, lunch?”
***
The men had finished clearing the table when the doorbell rang. The boys had woken up thirty minutes earlier, and Scarlett was lying on the floor, building a tower with Jasper as Will cruised around the edges of the coffee table.
Brad glanced through the eyehole of the door, then said, “Mitch and Ava. And Eleanor.”
“The raccoon?” Scarlett asked, a little alarmed. The stories she’d heard made him seem harmless, but having him around the babies seemed unsafe.
“Don’t worry about it. He hangs out with them at daycare. He’s like a dog. Or something,” Kara said as Brad let the couple in.
Will started squealing as soon as he saw the animal, incongruously attached to Mitch’s chest in something that resembled a baby carrier. At the sound of Will’s voice, Eleanor started squealing in return and waving his arms and feet.
“Hold your horses for a hot second,” Mitch grumbled, going through some complicated process of unsnapping his pet. As soon as Eleanor was free, he ran across the floor to Will, stood on his back legs, and wrapped his short little arms around Will’s shoulders.
“Did they just hug?” Scarlett asked. By now, Jasper had spotted Eleanor, too, and was babbling. Eleanor nuzzled Will one more time, drawing a belly chuckle from the boy, before ambling over to Jasper and sprawling across his lap. Delighted, Jasper patted the creature.
