Page 41 of Baby Take Me Home

He opened the back car door, pulled out a sunhat, and popped it onto my head. He handed me a tube of 50 SPF sunscreen.

“What are you doing?” I asked.

“Preventing sunburn. Hurry up, put that on your face and arms, and then we’ll start our date.”

“Wait, we’re having a real date?”

TJ nodded. “We have to keep appearances.”

“I see,” I said as I rubbed sunscreen on my nose and cheeks. “So this is just for Luka’s sake.”

He raised an eyebrow and I knew Luka was just our cover. TJ was taking me on an honest-to-god date.

“Where are we going?”

He shook his head. “You’ll find out when you’re finished with the sunscreen.”

I handed the tube back to him. “I’m done. Now it’s your turn.”

“I’m not worried about burning.”

How could someone so good at taking care of me be so bad at taking care of himself? I sighed dramatically. “Are you not worried about skin cancer?”

I shoved the tube toward him again while I tapped my sandal on the sidewalk.

He relented. “Anything to keep the lady happy.”

I thought about the public sex fantasy that wouldn’t stop playing in my head. “Hmm. That remains to be seen.”

* * *

TJ

Ashlee had toldLuka we were going to special local places, off the beaten, touristy track. I meant to make an honest woman of her, at least in that respect. We walked along the downtown streets, wandering in and out of some of the city’s hundreds of triangle parks, small green spaces full of trees and shrubs and flowers. Our date was like one of those tiny parks, a hidden treasure, a small capsule of time tucked amongst the frenetic tempo of HEAT ops and Carbonados threats.

We stopped at a street vendor for ice cream cones, then walked to the Southwest Duck Pond and sat on a bench in the shade. We watched a handful of kids feed the ducks as we talked about everything and nothing.

“Tell me something about your childhood,” I said. “A happy memory.”

The skin around her eyes crinkled when she smiled. “There were so many, it’s hard to choose. There was a pond something like this a couple of blocks from my house. I remember carrying the heels of bread loaves there on Saturday mornings, my sister and I holding hands the whole way, with our parents several steps behind us. Every couple of yards, one of us would glance back over our shoulders to make sure they were still there. They always were.

“When it was too cold or raining, we’d go to the children’s library. We were so small and the stacks were so high, and we would pretend we were princesses and our castle was completely made of books.”

“God, I bet you were adorable.”

“Of course I was.” She sneaked a bite of my peanut butter cup ice cream cone, which had started out as hers. “And of course, we spent hours on end in my mother’s kitchens. The professional ones. She or one of her sous chefs would set us up at a small table with pencils and crayons and library books. Sometimes Emily and I would write stories—well, mostly I would write them and force her to help act them out. And in the background, there was the hustle and bustle of the kitchen. I always thought it was the safest sound in the world, until...”

“Until what?”

She hooked her pinky with mine and peered up at me with her big, blue eyes. “Until I heard your voice over that comms unit telling me I was safe, that everything would be all right.”

I pulled her hand the rest of the way into mine. “It wasn’t totally true, though. Everything wasn’t all right. Aiden—”

“I know, but that doesn’t change how safe you made me feel. Now it’s your turn. Happy memories. Childhood. Go.”

“Mine was like yours, generally happy. Lots of great times with my parents and my brother. Hmm. It’s hard to pick. We were world-class sledders. There was a really steep dead-end street in our neighborhood, and by about the third day after a big storm and all the kids sledding there, the whole thing would turn into a big sheet of ice. And almost no one was brave enough to go down it then.”

“Almost no one? So you and your brother did.”