Page 6

CHAPTER 6

The condo felt very quiet 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 her something .”

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.”

“I—but—” Diana found that she was talking to herself. Taking a breath, she collected her choice of sheets and dropped them on the couch. Costa had vanished into the bedroom, where she could hear him talking idly to the baby, accompanied by rustling as he presumably made up a baby-sized bed.

She wanted to be in there too, and she couldn’t understand why.

Instead, she went into the bathroom. It was a typical bachelor’s bathroom, the edge of the tub and the sink cluttered with guy stuff: shaving things, a budget-sized all-in-one shampoo/conditioner, several different brands of muscle rub, some expired medication bottles. But it wasn’t a total mess, and it was clean enough that she didn’t feel bad about shedding her clothes and touching the floor with her bare feet. Although, Diana mused, her tolerance was probably higher than most; she’d been sharing close quarters with mostly-male flight and emergency crews for years.

As she stripped, she looked around curiously. She had been in Costa’s apartment plenty of times, enough to have used his bathroom on a number of occasions, but she never lingered. Now she found herself reading signs from the things around her, like a tracker noting its quarry’s behavior from paw prints. She wasn’t even sure what she was looking for. Even with the distance between them as adults, she was reasonably confident that he didn’t, say, have a secret wife and kids stashed away somewhere.

But she still felt an undefined yet intense urge to know , even though she wasn’t sure what exactly it was that she wanted so badly to know. She picked up the bottles on the rim of the sink, noting that most of them were for prescription painkillers. Work-related injuries? Pulled muscles?

Being completely naked, knowing Costa was right on the other side of the wall, also gave her a feeling she didn’t know how to interpret. She was used to showering with guys around, another aspect of her job. But this felt different. She could hear him through the wall now and then, occasionally saying something to the baby, and realized she was straining to catch the words.

Ridiculous. She drew the shower curtain and did the usual new-bathroom dance of “where are the shower controls, how does the temperature control work, how long does this take to warm up.”

Costa had a nice shower. Very hot water, great water pressure. Diana sighed in pleasure as dust and dried sweat washed off her skin. Then she found that it was very difficult not to think about Costa in this very same shower, head tilted back, the same hot water that was currently rushing over her body hitting his face and streaming down his muscular chest?—

Diana grabbed the shampoo bottle almost angrily and scrubbed it into her hair. Costa’s stupid all-in-one shampoo was going to leave her curly hair a frizzy mess. Maybe I should buy some decent shampoo, leave it over here so I can use it when ? —

She slammed the lid on that thought. When I take all the showers I’m definitely gonna be taking at my totally platonic not-a-boyfriend friend’s house?

Her unruly thoughts were taking all the fun out of this shower.

You know what would really be fun, would be if Quinn was in here with ? —

Diana groaned. She gave her hair a cursory rinse and stepped out. There were clean towels folded above the laundry hamper, into which she did not peek, and she rubbed herself down while definitely not thinking about Costa using the same towel before its last tour in the washing machine.

Her clothes were an unappealing sweaty and dusty clump on the floor. With the towel wrapped around her body, she cautiously cracked the door open and peeked out. Her mouth was open to say Costa’s name when she discovered he had left a small pile of folded clothing in front of the door.

She definitely wasn’t disappointed that she hadn’t had to call him over to bring her something to wear. Not at all.

He had left her a T-shirt and a pair of cargo shorts. Both were miles too big—she was going to need to hold up the shorts if she couldn’t find something for a belt—but they were pleasant against her shower-clean skin. The T-shirt was very soft, and she fingered the fabric, wondering if it was a well-worn favorite, or if he’d found her the softest shirt he owned. Maybe all his T-shirts were like this.

I could pet them and find out.

Why on earth was her brain doing this to her? It was all this solo proximity, she thought. Normally when she and Costa spent time together, they were around other people as well.

She told herself firmly, as she tried to tuck the waistband of the shorts in such a way they’d stay up, that if she and Costa were actual friends, they’d hang out together sometimes. They were friendly, but one-on-one hangouts were the kind of things you did with friends . Staying up late drinking. Listening to each other’s problems.

Friends do that kind of thing. That’s friendship by definition. And we aren’t.

We’re just people who call each other when we need a fake date.

For a sudden, startling instant she found herself near tears.

Shaking her head at her own folly, she finger-combed her hair, gathered her clothes, and left the bathroom. She found that the couch had been folded down into a bed, neatly made up for her. All the lights were off except for one in the kitchen, and Costa’s bedroom door was shut.

No good nights, then.

She climbed into bed, settling on the creaky sofa bed and trying to find a position where a metal strut wasn’t jabbing her in the back through the thin mattress.

“Good night,” she whispered into the dark.

* * *

She hadn’t expected to sleep well, but it had been an exhausting day. The next thing she knew, pale gray predawn light was filtering into the room, and soft, furtive sounds came from the kitchen, as of someone trying not to make too much noise, punctuated by an occasional muttered remark or exclamation.

“I see you still get up at zero dark thirty,” Diana said into her pillow.

There was a muffled curse from the kitchen. “And I see you still have ears like a bat—no, sweetie, not there—Di, look out!”

“What?” Diana said, a second before something bounded over the back of the couch and slammed into her spine with what felt like the business ends of several tiny shovels.

“She turned into an antelope in the night,” Costa said—unnecessary at this point, as Diana had rolled over in time to receive a faceful of tickly antelope kisses.

Diana sat up and cuddled Emmeline, who flailed with her knobby-kneed legs and then settled down in Diana’s lap. Costa turned on a light in the kitchen.

“Sleep okay?” he asked over the sound of running water.

“Better than I thought I would,” she admitted. “I hope you’re making coffee.”

“Happy to report that you’re in luck.”

The coffeemaker began to sputter, and Costa came over to lean against the back of the couch. Diana firmly crushed an almost overwhelming urge to smooth down her hair, which even without the help of all-in-one shampoo had a tendency to dry into a shape that looked like it was going to detach from her head and tumble past a stagecoach at any moment. But she did tug the loose T-shirt a little higher on her shoulder—it kept trying to slip off—before she looked up at him.

And instantly regretted it. Somehow she had failed to remember that Costa would be in his sleeping attire too, which was roughly similar to hers (a T-shirt and shorts), except it fit.

Boy, did it ever fit.

The T-shirt wasn’t quite tight enough to be pornographic, but she could make out muscle definition that was going to have a starring role in her fantasies for months. The shorts that came down almost to her knees left most of Costa’s powerful thighs bare, and she got an excellent view when he went back into the kitchen to attend to the coffee. He was barefoot, which somehow made it hotter.

It wasn’t like she had never seen Costa in a T-shirt and shorts before; it was a hot climate, after all. But she had very rarely seen him like this : tousled and sleepy, bare-legged and barefoot.

“How about you, how did you sleep?” she asked, trying to be polite, but then it just sounded like she was either trying to make pointless small talk, or thinking way too much about Costa in bed. Which, okay, she was doing both of those, but she didn’t want him to know that. “I mean, did she keep you—oh, honey, don’t do that.” She detached Emmeline from chewing on the edge of the blanket.

“She was up and down all night,” Costa said with a sigh. “Probably should have expected it, she was so deeply asleep earlier.”

“I think she’s hungry,” Diana said, as Emmeline switched from chewing on the blanket to sucking Diana’s fingers. “The formula I got for her is in my bag. It’s by the door.”

“I know. I gave her a bottle last night. Hopefully we didn’t wake you up.” He added thoughtfully, “If she stays this way, do you suppose we ought to feed her like an antelope, or a human baby?”

“She does have teeth,” Diana remarked, separating Emmeline from her fingers. “I would think a bottle should be fine, though. They feed baby animals at zoos from bottles, don’t they?”

“True,” Costa said. “She’s probably old enough to eat solid food anyhow. Or soft food. I guess I’ll ask Mavis about it. I need to see if she’s found anyone to hand the kid off to yet.”

Right. The baby was someone else’s, and neither Diana nor Costa could take care of her full-time. Diana looked down at the baby antelope curled up in her lap, looking up at her with wide, dark-lashed eyes. She ran her fingers lightly across the small wings, feeling them flutter.

“—doing today, Di?”

“What?” Diana asked, jolted back to reality.

“I said, what are you doing today?”

“Working, obviously. The first thing I need to do is check in with the sheriff’s office.”

“Do you have anything pressing other than that? I’d like to commandeer you for part of the day, if you don’t mind. I need to send a team out to look at the crash site, and I’d like you to fly them there. You know where it is, and you can show them where you found the kid.”

“Oh.” She thought her way around her feelings on it; she didn’t want Costa to think she would drop everything for him. But her initial reaction was eagerness. She did genuinely want to go back to the crash site. The mystery had personal significance for her now.

And, if she was to admit it to herself, she liked the idea of being able to bring a solution to Costa, or at least part of a solution.

“Di?” Costa prompted.

“Yes, of course. I’ll make sure I’m not needed urgently, but I doubt I am. Just put your team in communication with me.”

Costa nodded, then nearly spilled his coffee as Emmeline sprang from Diana’s lap and bounced to the back of the couch in a single wing-assisted leap.

“And that,” Diana said pointedly, “is your problem for a while..”