7
"Hurry up,”Liv said to her sister, three days later.
“You need to get laid.”
“Callie!” She cut a look at the door across the hall. “Keep your voice down.”
“If you’re worried about Brodie overhearing us, don’t be.” The twenty-two-year-old, recent college graduate blocked the bathroom doorway, wearing nothing but a towel and a scowl. “He’s in the Zone.”
Liv closed her eyes for a moment and pushed out a slow, slow breath. “You should be dressed by now. My boss warned me not to be late again.” She shouldered her way into the only full bathroom in her small, single-story bungalow and popped open the medicine cabinet.
Adding a master bathroom and walk-in closet was one of a dozen things she and Tyler had planned for this house when they had purchased it. Then life threw their budding family a curveball and all of their dreams were now buried in York Memorial.
Not for the first time, she considered selling this house and buying something that didn’t need renovation, especially now that Callie was living with her.
“Your boss is being a jerk,” Callie said. “Does he know how late you’re there, every night?”
Liv sent her sister a don’t-go-there glare. Last week, she finally had a breakthrough on a case she’d been working on for months, but that didn’t mean her late nights were ending. There was a great deal of aftermath work to do. Way too much for one person, but she couldn’t think about that right now. Especially now that Mitch had added handling Zeke Blackwell to her load.
She tossed back two ibuprofens and took a gulp of water to prepare for her next battle. Her boss.
“Which brings us back to you getting laid. You used to be fun when you were getting it on a regular basis.”
As it had a hundred times since the conference, an image of her body tangled with Zeke Blackwell’s surfaced. The intensity of his brown eyes as they trailed a hot path down her torso, the slight smile on his gorgeous face as she writhed beneath his touch, the shocking fullness as he thrust into her, again and again.
The transformation of his surprised expression to confused hurt to something else she couldn’t identify.
The boiling anger when he included working with her as one of his nonnegotiable conditions.
Liv rolled her fingers and dug her nails into her palms to tamp the torrent of emotions surging through her body. If he’d been so keen on working with her, why hadn’t he called to accept the job? His silence had everyone in the office on edge, especially after SAC Shanice Williams paid Mitch an unexpected and rare visit the day before.
Shoving away the Zeke problem, she glared at her sister. “Could you be any more crude?”
“As a matter of fact—”
“Don’t.” Liv left the bathroom and crossed the hall. “We’re leaving in ten minutes.”
“Arggh!” Callie slammed the bathroom door. “I can’t wait until my car is fixed,” came her muffled reply.
“That makes two of us!”
Liv knocked on Brodie’s door, but didn’t bother waiting for his permission. When her nine-year-old-soon-to-be-ten-year-old son was in the Zone, the world beyond his noise-canceling headphones ceased to exist.
Sure enough, he sat at his desk, headphones on, destroying ancient alien worlds. Or L.A. It was hard to tell with his screen moving so fast.
She tapped a fingernail against his left earmuff, causing him to jump. He yanked off his retreat-from-the-real-world device. “Mom!”
“You know the rules. No video games in the morning. They’re too distracting.”
“I’m dressed, my bed is made, and my pack is ready.”
“Teeth?”
He groaned, and mummy-walked toward the bathroom.
“Brush them all, young man.”
“Yes, ma’am.” He banged on the door. “Hurry up, Cal!”