Page 12 of Philly
“Oh, thank god,” he said on an exhale when he walked in.
Ava snorted. “I kicked him out. He was looming over me. Normally, I like it. When we’re home and well, I can distract him, but the doctor said none of that. Not until after the babies are born,” she added, wrinkling her nose.
“TMI, woman,” Philly said, adding his bouquet to a vase half-full of dahlias, his nose twitching at the fragrant lilies sitting beside them. “How are you?”
“Bored.”
He stared at her.
She sighed. “Fine. It was a little startling, scary, when I realized what was happening. But the doctor has assured me it’s not uncommon with twins. Something they monitor, but unless other risk factors pop up—which they haven’t—it’s more of a yellow flag, not a red one.”
“How long till they let you out?” he asked, taking a seat in the tiny plastic chair beside the bed. He grinned, thinking of Mitch perching in the same spot. Mitch wasn’t huge—not like Monk—but he wasn’t small either.
“Tomorrow, if I promise to stay on bed rest for another week at home.”
“Is that possible?”
She narrowed her eyes at him. “I have a computer that works in bed. They didn’t tell me I couldn’t work.”
“Fair. You need anything?”
She snorted. “Between the Warwicks and my parents, I’m good.”
“Maybe some time alone, then?” he asked, only half kidding. The Warwick clan was huge and growing. And she was her parents’ only child.
“No, not yet. Let me tell you what I found.”
He frowned. “You only started looking into the Nolan family when all this happened.” He waved vaguely in her direction.
“But I’ve been here for almost two days. I had Sabina bring me a computer within the first few hours. Mitch tried to get her thrown out—then tried to take the computer from her—but my boss is wily.”
“And she has Chad on her side.”
Ava grinned. “That, too.” Sabina Warwick, married to Chad, the oldest of the Warwick cousins, weighed about a hundred pounds soaking wet, and Philly was sure 50 percent of thosepounds were in her brain. Chad, though intelligent in his own way, was the brawn in that situation. Although, as Ava said, Sabina was a wily one.
“So, what’d you find?” he asked, kicking his legs out and crossing his ankles.
“Nothing obviously unusual,” she said.
“Which rules out something triggering Callie’s interest. What about somethingnotobviously unusual?”
“A man after my own suspicious heart,” she replied. “As you said, they own several clothing brands as well as cloth-related home goods and textile supply businesses.”
“What the hell is a ‘cloth-related home good’?”
“Sheets, towels, dish towels, throw blankets. Those sorts of things.”
“That’s a separate business?” he asked. There was so much about the world he was fine not knowing.
“A lot of big brands have their own lines of those things, but yeah, it’s a business.”
“That doesn’t sound sketchy so far,” he said.
“And not sketchy in general,” she said.
He narrowed his eyes. “That’s not what you implied.”
“That’s the thing. From what I could find, they don’t seem sketchy. Books and records look in order. Deals seem aboveboard…”
