Page 26 of The Princess and the P.I.

Maurice woke to the dull ache of a crick in his neck, a relentless hard-on, and the disorienting sensation of his hand clutching something impossibly soft.

For a brief moment, he forgot where he was, his sleep-fogged mind trying to stitch together the fragments of a too-long night and a too-short rest. Then his surroundings sharpened into focus: Fiona’s hotel room.

God, this place looked like a college student’s—so much evidence of willful self-expression.

Sailor Moon posters, fresh laptop stickers, anime Black girls flashing the peace sign.

Even a dated We Can Do It Rosie the Riveter feminism starter pack blanket over the chair suggested a kind of newness to her thoughts and opinions.

Her suitcase lay open on the luggage rack, clothes haphazardly strewn around as she, probably frantically, searched for what to wear.

She would need new clothes too. Her old clothes didn’t fit her on multiple levels.

The small desk by the window was cluttered with notebooks, and primers on Maryland criminal proceedings.

Maurice looked down over Fiona’s sleeping form.

Her cotton nightgown had twisted around in the night, and the material stretched and gaped over her breast. The position of his mouth was diabolically close to the tight peaks of her nipples, which pressed insistently against the taut material.

It would only take a soft flex of his neck to cover those peaks with his mouth, to wet the thin, chaste material until the dark aureolae shone through.

He could wake her the same way she had put him to sleep—with exquisite tenderness.

She stirred and he lost his nerve, scurrying over to the other side of the bed like a roach when the lights flicker on.

He pulled at the leaking, pulsing hardness between his thighs and muttered a curse.

He wanted to bury this thing in every soft hot place Fiona had.

Instead, he pulled his shirt over his head and rose.

He couldn’t explain the wave of embarrassment that washed over him, but here it was all the same.

“The way you acted last night.” Tameka clucked her tongue.

This time she was in a silky bonnet with bruises at her neck.

“Clinging to her like that, crying like a baby. You think she’s still gonna look at you like she did in the car?

” Maurice closed his eyes, exhaling slowly.

“You should be protecting her, trying to get her off the hook, but you’re trying to get yourself off. ”

He was hastily getting dressed when he saw Tameka cuddle up next to Fiona, staining the white sheets with caked mud and old blood. He pushed the image away. The disgust of it was so thick he gagged.

Maurice was halfway out the door before Fiona stopped him.

“Why do I always catch you trying to sneak out?”

Maurice’s eyes bounced away from her mouth and decided to look at her forehead. “Yeah, I have to get showered and changed. I’ll call you a car.”

She looked like she was just about to say something else, but Maurice rushed the door closed.

—

When Fiona made it to the storefront, Maurice had recovered a tiny bit of his dignity.

New clothes, a filthy session of buffing his vampire slayer…

and sleep can really change a man’s perspective.

He had let things get too lax—let his protocol slip.

And if he was honest with himself, they were going slowly on the case.

How long would Amelia pay for him to make educated guesses?

He needed cold, hard proof, and it was high time he made some real moves. But first, legalities.

Maurice pulled out a stack of paperwork and pointed the head of a ballpoint pen to a typed-up document in seven point font. “Please sign here. And here.”

“What is this?” Fiona picked up the paper only to realize that it was printed on the front and back.

“An NDA. I should have done this weeks ago, but here we are. This case may have us in some unsatisfactory positions, long nights, maybe hotels, maybe stakeouts, possibly going undercover. I want you to be perfectly aware of what you are agreeing to. No spilling secrets to Reddit. No details about my sisters to paparazzi, no—”

“Talking about your inability to sleep,” she finished, sucking her teeth.

“You are in full self-protection mode. There’s no shame in feeling like a tough case is staying with you.

” She was misreading his trepidation, and he let her.

It was less his inability to sleep and more the method by which he was able to that scared him currently.

The piece of paper she was signing was very much a you-are-not-allowed-to-tell-people-that-I-fell-asleep-crying-in-your-arms-like-a-newborn type of document.

“When I sign this, I want to go back there.” She pointed to his surveillance room—his surveillance room !

He scoffed. “You gotta do a whole hell of a lot more than sign my papers to get back there.”

“What’s back there? Old girlfriends with their eyes scratched out? Taylor Swift tour swag?”

“No, normal, non-creepy stuff.”

She signed without reading, without even looking down as her neck craned hard to see the back room. “Show me,” she said.

Maurice took her in again, arms folded.

“If you don’t let me see, I’m going to have to assume there is a shrine to Goku in there.”

He exhaled and took the signed papers from her. Slowly he pushed the door to his cramped surveillance room open and nearly tripped like he always did on the labyrinthine entanglement of wires on the floor.

This back room was less a functional workspace and more an ode to piles.

Piles of photographs with blurry faces, mug shots, lovers entangled.

Piles of cloth scraps he’d found interesting enough to scavenge.

Towers of take-out containers and greasy meals consumed and forgotten littered the table, where four computer monitors blipped to life at the tap of his mouse.

This was probably way less glamorous than she had hoped, but her head was on a swivel, soaking up everything.

Along one wall, an overloaded corkboard was pinned with photographs, ticket stubs, business cards, and—somewhat inexplicably—a sample of the fabric from Fiona’s dress the night of Robert’s death. It was the type of thing his sisters would appreciate, but now it stood out like an admission of guilt.

They noticed it at the same moment, and she looked at him in open surprise.

“It was a lovely dress,” he said in explanation.

She nodded her head. “So this is a shrine.”

Maurice felt heat creep up his neck. He wanted to wipe that stupid smirk off her face, but thought it best to drop it altogether.

Multiple clocks, each set to a different time zone, ticked out of sync behind him.

When he sat, Maurice’s chair protested with every shift. He clamped a pair of headphones—possibly stolen from his sister ages ago—over his ears and signaled for her to do the same.

“ Cowboy Bebop poster? Naruto playing cards?” Fiona shook her head.

“Not enough yearning for their boyfriends in those for you?”

She narrowed her eyes at him. “ Naruto I’ll accept, but Cowboy Bebop is objectively bad. Samurai Champloo is superior.”

“First, anyone who doesn’t understand what Cowboy Bebop is actually about cannot stand here and tell me it’s objectively bad. Second, I’m watching Naruto again with my nephew, and I’m teaching him magic with these cards.”

“Phew, I thought you were gonna quiz me on my Naruto ,” she said, and he picked up her meaning immediately.

“Oh, you’re calling me the asshole anime guy because you have objectively bad taste?”

“Taste is…a matter of taste.” She pointed to the Naruto deck. “Does magic help with your cases?”

He shrugged. “Misdirection does. If I strike up a conversation—bonus points if the mark thinks we might get romantic—this draws their attention to the dialogue. A flashy gesture or deep eye contact are ways to control the gaze of your mark.” He flitted his left hand over her eyes.

“Meanwhile, the trick is being set up with the other hand.”

He tickled underneath her chin with a soft long-stemmed velvet rose, and she absolutely refused to giggle, but her cheeks tightened with the effort.

She flicked the flower away. “How many times have you used that move on some poor receptionist?”

“Lost count. You said yourself—I have a thing for paper pushers.”

Her gaze caught his, and he was surprised at the heat in it.

“We’re listening to the tape now, going over the data we got last night,” he said, trying to wrangle this conversation back to something sensible. “That’s all I do back here. Nothing glamorous.”

She slid an extra pair of headphones over her ears and sat as close to him as humanly possible.

When he scooted away, she inched closer, as if they were straining to see an imaginary TV set.

He squeezed his eyes shut, but it didn’t help.

The images burned hotter. Fiona, pinned against the wall at the club, while he slid the wire down the length of her spine, then upward, catching on the curve of the underwire.

She was unaffected by his nearness, but Maurice could still feel her.

Her velvety skin, impossibly warm, yielding and swelling between his fingers as he desperately gripped her all night.

Fiona watched him make a note, a nonsense scribble he did to look busy, then made a note of her own.

“Did you find the video at different angles?” Fiona asked, standing to lean into the screen.

Maurice squeezed his thighs together and fumbled for another place to look. “Yes, I’ve run through seven and have nothing so far.”

“How many cameras were on the floor?”

“Twenty-three,” Maurice said, standing in frustration and leaning on the wall on the far edge of the room.

Fiona whistled.

“Did any other church folk attend the TechXpo?” Maurice asked. “Other than your father?”

“Why would any church folk attend?” she asked and started to walk toward him, but he put his hand out like he was waving a white flag.

“Why were you there?” Maurice asked. Recovering as she moved in the other direction, he said, “Surely to steal the vest. Maybe your father was your getaway? Someone else on the lookout?”

“No, my dad didn’t know what I came there to do, wouldn’t have allowed it if I told him anyway. He likes to think his son never existed. It was my plan and mine alone.”

Maurice pulled the shimmering material off the board and pinned it to a square of muslin. He needed to do something with his hands. It was either Fiona or—he glanced at the sewing needle jammed into the side of the Inuyasha plush doubling as a pincushion.

He flexed his fingers. Make a baby or a craft.

He pulled a small square of organza taut over the backing. His hands moved instinctively, the leather thimble snug on his middle finger, the needle slipping in and out with a rhythmic precision that felt more meditative than mechanical.

Maurice could see the tension in her jaw, the way her fingers fidgeted against her lap. She looked like she needed to speak.

“Fiona, tell me about your brother.” Maurice’s own pulse was beginning to slow. The sewing settled the restless heat rolling through him in waves, the distraction he needed to stop thinking about that translucent dress.

Fiona blinked, startled by his change in subject. She looked at him like she was waiting to be shut down or rushed, but Maurice didn’t push. He simply kept stitching, his eyes on the fabric, his attention wholly hers.

At first, her words came in stumbles. “Kwesi was…he was brilliant,” she began. “He was kind. Too kind, maybe.” Her voice wavered, but Maurice didn’t look up, didn’t risk breaking the fragile thread of her story.

She nodded, a bitter laugh escaping her. “And my dad…he turned all of it—Kwesi’s death, our grief—into some kind of Bible story.”

Maurice thought of the picture he’d found hidden. “Did he react the same way during the Tameka scandal?” Maurice asked. He wanted to know if Kofi had led the charge in smothering the evidence and giving him the runaround.

“The Tameka case busted up church leadership. That’s how you and my dad are alike. He couldn’t let the church sweep Tameka under the rug.”

Maurice’s lips twitched at being compared to Kofi, but he said nothing.

The square of muslin-backed organza in his hands was beginning to take shape, its edges neatly stitched, the delicate fabric reinforced by the sturdier backing.

He liked the feel of it, the way something so fragile could be made strong with the right support.

Fiona’s words spilled out in a rush now, as if she couldn’t hold them back any longer. “I’m sorry, I don’t think I’ve ever talked about him out loud. Never mourned him out loud. Isn’t that crazy to say?”

After a few more minutes, Fiona wiped her face with her sleeve, and she looked startled at how long she had been talking.

“I wasn’t trying to make you feel sorry for me.”

Maurice leaned back, setting the square aside. “I don’t,” he started. “I like to listen to you.”

Fiona only swallowed, looking anywhere but his eyes.

“I want to put you on finding Sara.”