Jose and his wife had had a baby girl four weeks before and they were deep in the abyss of sleepless nights that were written all over his face.
“Rough doesn’t begin to describe it,” he said, stepping into the elevator. “I think Luna has her days and nights mixed up. Heather and I are getting about three hours a piece. I feel like I can’t see color anymore.”
“Aw.” Alexa laughed and pushed the button for the ground floor.
Jose couldn’t fool her. His voice was weary but his eyes still held the light that had appeared there after Luna’s birth. He looked satisfied in a way he hadn’t when they’d both been young up-and-comers at the AG’s office, scrambling for good assignments and putting in long hours just to be the last one seen sitting at their desk at night.
He looked settled, at peace, and Alexa couldn’t help wondering what people saw when they looked at her. Did they think she was lonely? Sad? Destined to be alone forever because she was too focused on her career — too focused on not being vulnerable — to ever let someone love her, to ever love them in return?
And if so, were they wrong?
3
Nick came in after his rugby game a few days after his meeting with Kyle and found Ronan in the kitchen, stirring something on the stove with a worried expression on his face.
“Hey,” Nick said. Chief, Ronan’s dog, came over and nudged Nick’s hand with her nose. Nick gave her a pet, then hung his keys next to the others hanging from hooks on the wall.
“Hey.” Ronan didn’t look up from the skillet and Nick went over to the stove and peered at something that looked like tomato sauce and smelled oddly like cinnamon.
“What’s cooking?” Nick asked.
“Spaghetti.” Ronan put down the wooden spoon and slipped his hands into oven mitts, then lifted another large pot of boiling water off the stove. “Julia’s craving pasta.”
“Why didn’t you just order out?” Nick asked.
Ronan turned the pot over into a colander in the sink. “Because I’m trying to cook for my wife.”
Nick eyed the shells in the colander. Who used shells with tomato sauce? “Are you sure that’s a good idea?”
Ronan shook his head and tossed the oven mitts onto the counter. “No. No, I’m not.”
Julia and Nick usually did most of the cooking, but since Julia had entered her third trimester, Ronan had been trying to take over more of the kitchen duties in the house they all shared. Nick was pretty sure Julia would rather have just cooked herself, but she was probably too nice to say that to Ronan.
“Want me to call Fabricci’s?” Nick asked.
Ronan turned off the heat on the spaghetti sauce. “Probably a good idea.”
“Before I do that,” Nick said, “is that cinnamon I smell in that sauce?”
Ronan pointed at him. “Don’t say another word.”
Nick grinned. “Hand me a beer and you’ve got a deal.”
Nick called Fabricci’s and ordered enough food for everyone. He knew from experience that food had a way of bringing people out of their respective wings of the house.
He hung up the phone and Ronan handed him one of the two beers in his hand. They opened them and clinked bottles before drinking in silence, and Nick had a sudden flash of Ronan before he’d met Julia, his face set in a rigid mask, his eyes cold.
They’d been sharing the big house in Back Bay with Declan since they’d started MIS. They’d reasoned it would be wise to have a place other than the office to congregate, a place they could sweep regularly that would be safe from surveillance, one where they could speak openly about their business without having to worry about being overheard.
Two years ago, Nick would have said the arrangement’s success was questionable. Sibling rivalry aside, he and Ronan and Declan lived together peacefully enough, but they’d been on different planets orbiting the sun of home. They hadn’t spent much time together other than sharing an occasional beer before they went their separate ways.
All of that had changed when Julia — and then Elise — had moved in. At first it had been a matter of safety. Julia had been threatened by Manifest, the shadowy organization that had kidnapped Elise, and by then Ronan had already been head-over-heels enough to bring Julia home.
It had taken awhile, but they’d slowly gotten used to each other, and their unusual group had been completed when they’d rescued Elise. She still occupied one of the guest bedrooms, and while she often talked about getting her own place, Nick was glad she hadn’t yet made the move. They’d become good friends in the months she’d been living with them, even standing opposite each other at Ronan and Julia’s wedding, Elise as Julia’s maid-of-honor and Nick as Ronan’s best man, a job Declan didn’t want anyway.
“Where’s the food?” Julia’s voice pulled him from his thoughts. “I’m starving!”
Nick looked up to find her entering the kitchen. She stopped to pet Chief, who trailed her to the kitchen island where she sat carefully on one of the stools, one hand on her swollen stomach.