“Since I want dessert,” Joe said, raising a hand to their waitress.
“What about backing me up?” Lucas asked.
Joe tapped the comm he had in his ear. “I’ve got your six, man. Tiramisu, please,” he said to the waitress.
Lucas shook his head and moved down the hallway. The men’s room was empty, even the stalls. He waited a minute outside the women’s room, not wanting to surprise any patrons, but when no one came out, he slipped inside.
One of the stalls was closed. He could see a pair of men’s dress shoes facing out, trousers pooled around the guy’s ankles. It was that along with the rhythmic pounding against the door, accompanied by a male voice that was moaning and panting out, “Bill’s doing a great job, a really great job! Watch Bill do it, tell Bill he’s doing great!”
“Wow,” Joe said in Lucas’s ear. “Sounds like he’s giving himself his own evaluation. Wonder if he’s going to get a raise.”
There weren’t many days where Lucas missed working for the DEA, but this was definitely one of them. Several hours later, they’d delivered the needed evidence to the HR director, closed up the case, and were back at the office.
Molly had locked up and was gone.
Shit, Lucas thought. She was working the Christmas Village tonight. Not bothering to change, he left again, calling her on her cell as he strode across the courtyard. “Come on,” he muttered, listening to her phone ring in his ear. “Pick up.”
She didn’t. Shaking his head, he stopped and texted her:
Where are you?
He could see that she was responding to the text, so he stopped walking to wait. She took her sweet ass time, too. It was three full minutes later when he saw that she’d stopped texting.
And yet nothing came through. Shaking his head, he tried her again.
Lucas: Tell me you’re not heading to the Christmas Village alone.
Molly: Going through a tunnel, bad connection.
“Dammit,” he muttered.
“Problem?”
Lucas turned and found Old Man Eddie sitting on a bench in front of the fountain, tossing a coin up and down in his hand. “Women are insane.”
“Son,” Eddie said on a laugh. “Tell me something I don’t know.” He tossed the coin to Lucas, who caught it automatically, reflexively.
“What’s this for?” Lucas asked.
“To make a wish.”
He laughed and shook his head. “You’ve been eating your homemade brownies again if you think I’m going to bet on this fountain. I know what it does. Look what it did to your own grandson Spence.”
“Hey, I haven’t made any brownies in a while now,” Eddie said. “Archer went directly to my . . . er, um . . . supplier and told him if he delivered to me again, Archer would relocate him. Permanently. So I’m annoyingly sober, which means you can take it to the bank when I tell you that what this fountain did for Spence was bring him Colbie and give him a life he’d never dared dreamed of.”
“You’re going to feed me a line like that and seriously expect me to believe you’re sober?”
Eddie smiled. “You’re scared. I get it. I’d be scared too. Wishing for love on this fountain has been wiping out the single community here one unsuspecting lonely soul at a time. Might as well stop fighting it and toss in the coin and wish.”
“Not going to happen,” Lucas said, knowing that Molly wasn’t going to fall in love with him. She wasn’t going to let herself.
“If you’re so sure it’s dumb,” Old Man Eddie said, “then why not just give it a try?”
Lucas rolled his eyes, a gesture he was aware he’d picked up from Molly. Which made it all the more ironic when he held his closed fist above the water and closed his eyes.
And wished . . .
He let the coin fall from his hand into the water, where it hit with a very small splash. He stared at it as it sank to the bottom and wished . . . wished he believed in the fountain.
Eddie just smiled. “It works in mysterious ways, you know. Going to be exciting to see what happens.”
“Yeah.” Not willing to believe, Lucas went through the pub intending to grab an order of something to satisfy his gnawing belly before hunting down Molly, but he found her at the bar paying for an order to go.
Some of her friends were there eating and talking, and when he moved closer, he heard Sadie say, “They really should put prizes in our tampon boxes, like ‘hey, your period sucks, but here’s a fifty percent off ice cream coupon, you cranky bitch.’”
The girls all laughed and Molly spotted him. She grabbed her bag of food and headed over.
“Going through a tunnel, huh?” he asked.
She shrugged.
He grabbed her free hand when she went to walk away. “Talk to me, Molly.”
“Okay,” she said. “I’d never go to the village alone. I’m not completely stupid, you know.” She paused. “But I do have a shift there tonight that I promised to take, so if you’re ready, I’m driving.”
“Not necessary. I’m parked closer.”
She craned her neck, eyes narrowed at him. “Let me guess. Women can drive in your bed but not on the job?”
He found a smile in the shitty day after all. “You’ve driven me before. When we first went to your dad’s house.”
“We weren’t on the job that night.”
“Okay, first, let me just say that you’re welcome to drive in my bed any night of the week,” he said. “But when we’re on the job and you’re the one going undercover, that makes me the getaway man. Makes more sense for me to be behind the wheel.”
“Fine,” she said.
“To which? In bed or on the road?”
“Keep dreaming,” she said.
Yeah, he had no doubt he’d have to make due with just that, dreams. He eyed the bag of food in her hands. “Bringing your dad dinner first?”
“Yes. But not you.”
“Liar,” he said on another smile. “You won’t be able to help yourself. You’re a caretaker.”
She slid him a look. “Guess it takes one to know one.” She paused and took in his surprise. “Come on,” she said. “You already know this about yourself. You take care of your family. You take care of the guys at work. You’re every bit as much of a caretaker-slash-worrywart as I am.”
He thought this over and then shook his head. Damn, she just might be right. “If you tell anyone, I’ll deny it.”
“Don’t worry,” she said dryly. “Your secret’s safe with me.”
A few minutes later, Lucas pulled up to her dad’s duplex. He eyed the building. “Joe home?”
“No, he’s staying with Kylie tonight. They’re marathoning some show they’ve been saving up. It’s their only night off together this week.”
Lucas snorted.
“What,” she said. “Did he lie to me? That son of a bitch. What are they doing instead?”
“If I had to guess? They’re not watching TV, they’re having wild gorilla sex.”
She thought about that and sighed, sounding a little wistful.
Lucas took the bag of food from her hands and set it on the car. Then against his better judgment, he nudged her up against it. “Say the word and you could have the same thing for dinner.”
“I thought you were . . . done,” she said.
He met her gaze. “I thought so too, but apparently my brain and body aren’t in accord.”
The sound of someone ratcheting up a shotgun stopped him in his tracks. They both turned to the porch and, yep, there he was, Alan Malone sitting in his wheelchair on the porch. “How sure are you that thing isn’t ever loaded?” Lucas asked Molly.
“One hundred percent. But that isn’t a comfort if he decides you’re a threat because the military trained him how to kill a person with his bare hands without breaking a sweat.”
“Right. Something to remember,” Lucas murmured and lifted his hands off the man’s daughter and sent what he hoped was a reassuring smile as they walked up the path to the duplex.
“Hey, Dad,” Molly said in greeting.
“Baby,” he said, eyes never leaving Lucas.
“You remember Lucas?”
“Uh-huh.” Her dad casually lifted his gun and checked the site.
“Dad, stop that. He knows there aren’t any bullets in this house. You can’t intimidate him. And we aren’t staying. I’m going to put the food inside for you. Behave.”
Her dad didn’t answer, but she went inside anyway.