Finding Happily-Ever-After Read online

  Chris snorted. The actor’s name was vaguely familiar only because his mother liked to watch old movies when he was a kid. “That’s Hollywood back when things were oversimplified.”

  “True,” she freely admitted, “but it’s harder to kick a drinking habit than it is to laugh.”

  He supposed, in some twisted, convoluted way, that made sense. But he had a more basic question. “Do you get this involved in all your clients’ lives?”

  The answer to that was no. “Most of my clients are suspicious, sometimes vengeful people I wouldn’t want to get involved with on a personal level,” she told him. And then she smiled. “This is really a nice change from that.” She’d felt herself becoming involved the moment she looked into Joel’s sad brown eyes.

  “So the answer’s no?” he asked. He preferred things to be black and white.

  “No, I don’t usually get this involved,” she confirmed, then added, “I try very hard to keep my distance from people like that. Their lives are usually toxic.”

  “Then why do you do it?” he wanted to know. “You seem like a bright, intelligent person. There’s got to be something else you could do for a living.”

  Probably, she acknowledged. But nothing that she would have wanted to do. She felt that investigation was her calling. Briefly, after graduating with a degree in criminology, she considered joining the police force. But she never liked taking orders.

  “I’m good at this,” she told him. “Good at getting to the bottom of things, at seeing what other people miss. At tracking down cheating spouses,” she added with a sigh. Gathering evidence for divorces was, at the moment, her bread and butter. She could only hope that things would change soon. “It pays the bills, and every once in a while, I find a case that gets to me,” she admitted. Jewel paused, looking at the boy. And then she turned her gaze pointedly to the man walking beside her. “If you ask me, I think you both need each other.”

  “What I need,” he corrected, “is to get back to my work at the university. You can help me do that by finding his father.”

  It was what he had hired her to do. Who knew things would evolve to include another layer? Either way, it wasn’t her place to force her sense of values on him.

  “Right.” Her cone finished, Jewel wadded up the napkin in her hand. “Speaking of which, I guess I’d better get back to that.”

  She was about to call out to Joel to tell him that they were getting ready to leave, but Chris stopped her. “Wait.”

  Had she missed something? Jewel glanced around, but saw nothing that would make Chris want to pause. “For what?”

  Instead of answering her, Chris took the napkin she’d just balled up from her hand. Opening it, he raised a section to her lips and gently wiped away the trace of green ice cream from the corner of her mouth.

  As he eliminated the telltale drop, Jewel found herself holding her breath. Her eyes were on his. A warmth had slipped over her.

  For a split second she’d thought…

  But there was no reason to believe that anything out of the ordinary would happen. That was just her imagination running away with her.

  She blamed it on the romantic comedy she’d watched on cable the night before.

  “You had some ice cream there.” Chris felt he needed to explain. He gave the napkin back to her.

  She wasn’t aware of taking it. “Thank you,” she murmured.

  The words, the moment, seemed to hang between them. It almost felt as if time had stood still for just a heartbeat.

  Which was silly, because why should it? The man hadn’t kissed her. He hadn’t even touched her except through a napkin, for God’s sake. Why did she suddenly feel like some virginal adolescent at the end of her very first date, waiting with baited breath for her first kiss?

  She was light-years past that innocent, inexperienced girl. So why were her palms damp and her fingertips tingling?

  Chris was still looking at her curiously, so she fumbled for words to explain. And because she was who she was, she told him the truth. And tried to make light of it.

  “Funny, I thought you were going to kiss me.”

  She came so close to the truth, it caught him completely off guard. He had no idea that mind reading was part of her services.

  “Why would I do that?”

  She dismissed the idea with a shrug. “I don’t know. Because you wanted to?” she guessed, still trying to keep the exchange light.

  She didn’t know the half of it, Chris thought. He wasn’t sure why that was, either, but there was no denying—at least not to himself—that he had wanted very much to kiss her.

  The feeling was as much a shock to him as it would have been to her had he said anything out loud. It had come over him out of the blue without any warning, like some rolling earthquake that left people shaken long after it was over. Shaken and doubting their own reactions.

  “And if I had kissed you?” he pressed, wanting to hear her response.

  What was he asking? Did he want to know if she would have protested? Not hardly. She was a flesh-and-blood woman, not some heroine in an eighteenth-century melodrama.

  “That’s easy,” she told him. “I would have kissed you back.”

  He nodded, unaware that he was smiling. Broadly. “Good to know.”

  It left her wondering if he had just given her a glimpse of things to come.

  “Joel,” she called out to the boy. “We’re going home.”

  “Whose?” he asked as he joined her.

  Good question. “Yours.” At least it’s yours for the time being.

  “Thanks for coming on such short notice,” Chris repeated when she dropped them off at the house some twenty minutes later.

  Being ready at a moment’s notice was no big deal for her. Jewel considered it one of her assets. She laughed. “I’m a private investigator. The only kind of notice I get is short.”

  The sound of her laughter threaded through his system, putting him at ease. He realized that, without rhyme or reason, the sound created a feeling of well-being within him.

  He forced himself to focus on her reply, not the effect she had on him. He still thought that hers was a strange choice of vocation for a woman. For so many reasons. “I never knew a woman who could get ready fast,” he told her.

  “How many women have you known?” She caught her lower lip between her teeth. That was a really dumb thing to ask, Jewel, she upbraided herself.

  Rather than get annoyed—or give her an inflated number—Chris resorted to an answer he thought she’d find acceptable, given her line of work.

  “You’re the private investigator,” he told her. “You figure it out.”

  She paused, debating whether or not to give voice to her thoughts, or just to take the easy way out and say she’d get back to him on that. But it had been a rather strange morning. She decided she had nothing to lose by being honest with him.

  “Your looks tell me that there should have been a lot of women in your life.” She let him mull over the compliment for a moment before concluding, “But your dedication to your profession would seem to make that unlikely.”

  The latter was far closer to the truth than the former. “So which is it? A lot? Or none?” he asked.

  “I’d split the difference.” She glanced at her watch. How had it gotten to be so late? She’d only planned to give up an hour, not half the day. “I’m sorry, I’ve got to get going,” she told him. Joel had stepped out of the vehicle and was now quietly standing beside his uncle, his beautiful brown eyes fixed on her. “I’ll see you Monday, Joel,” she promised. “You and I and your uncle have a date with Venado’s school principal.” She saw the concerned look create a small furrow between his eyes. The same one, it occurred to her, that Chris displayed when he was thinking. “Don’t worry. That’ll hurt even less than the shots.”

  Joel looked as if he doubted that, but he didn’t contradict her out loud. “Can we go for another walk on the beach when we’re finished?”

  S
he knew that there were things she needed to do and that she could have easily turned the boy down. But she didn’t want to. Just because she didn’t want kids of her own didn’t mean that she didn’t like the species, she thought with a grin.

  “Don’t see why not.” She looked over to her client. “Is that okay with you, Uncle Chris?”

  He’d almost kissed her on the beach. Only enormous self-control and the need for self-preservation had saved him from that huge mistake.

  But what about next time?

  Next time was going to have to take care of itself. Chris nodded. “I suppose it can’t do any harm.”

  Jewel flashed a grin. “It can only do some good. See you Monday, men,” she said as she threw the car into Reverse and pulled out of the driveway.

  She smiled.

  It was going to happen. She was certain of it. One way or another, it was going to happen. Either while the case was still in progress, or afterward—she wasn’t certain about the timing—but she knew it was going to be soon.

  And hot. Very, very hot. He might be a man of few words but she had a feeling that he was a man of many moves.

  She and Chris were going to make love. She could feel it in her bones and had never been so sure of anything in her life. Sure of that, and the fact that the person who had invented ice cream should be nominated for sainthood.

  Chapter Eight

  Always an early riser, Chris had already been up for almost three hours, and working for more than two of them, when he thought he heard the doorbell ring. Sitting on the sofa, deep in concentration, he looked up at the front door and frowned.

  It was Sunday. It wasn’t usual for people to just drop by unannounced during the week, much less on the weekend.

  And then he remembered.

  He wasn’t home. He was in Rita’s house. Maybe who ever was at the door had just come across one of the obituary notices that Jewel had sent out to the local newspapers and they were dropping by to see if it was true.

  Well, he wasn’t going to find out just sitting here, frowning, he told himself.

  With a sigh, Chris put aside the scrap of paper he was currently making notes on.

  First there was chaos, then there was order, he thought, looking around at the snowstorm of papers, envelopes and napkins he’d pressed into service, now scattered all over the coffee table. There were equations and/or notations on all of them. In their present state, he was the only one who could make any sense of what was there.

  As he began to rise, Joel ran by him, heading toward the door. The boy looked almost eager.

  “I’ll get it,” Chris called out to his nephew. He didn’t want him getting into the habit of throwing open the door whenever someone knocked or rang the doorbell.

  To his surprise, the boy didn’t attempt to open the door. Instead, Joel scrambled up on the love seat that had its back against the window and peered out to see who was on their doorstep.

  “It’s Jewel!” Joel announced with the first bit of excitement he’d heard in the boy’s voice.

  “Jewel?” Chris echoed as he approached the front door.

  What was she doing here? He didn’t recall the private investigator saying anything about meeting with him today. Last he’d heard, she said she was coming along with them on Monday to get Joel registered for school.

  Coming along.

  The words mocked him. The woman wasn’t “coming along,” she was leading the way and he knew it. And he was damn grateful that she was. He hadn’t a clue who to turn to for help when it came to doing all the ordinary things that having a five-year-old in your life entailed. He freely admitted that he would have been completely lost without her.

  Opening the front door, Chris greeted her with “Were we supposed to get together today?”

  “Hi, to you, too,” she replied, amused.

  Joel was right beside his uncle, shifting his weight from foot to foot, making no secret of the fact that he was happy to see her.

  “Hi, Jewel!” he exclaimed even before she walked into the house.

  Jewel grinned at the boy. “Now, that’s a welcome,” she pronounced. “Hi, yourself.” She glanced up at Chris. “And to answer your question, no, we didn’t make plans to get together today. But I like delivering my updates in person instead of over the phone.” That wasn’t entirely true, but he didn’t have to know that. Let him think that she believed in the personal touch at all times. “Besides,” she held up the two bags she’d brought with her, a warm, delicious aroma emanating from them, “I thought you might be running low on food, so I brought over breakfast. French toast, waffles, sausages and coffee,” she recited.

  She was about to place both bags on the coffee table, but she stopped before they made contact. The disarray registered. Her mother would have turned the mess into neat piles of paper in about five seconds. Ten tops.

  “Making yourself at home I see,” she commented. The next moment she was heading for the kitchen, which was still clutter-free, she noted.

  “I was just working on something,” Chris told her, following her into the next room.

  “So I see,” Jewel answered. She placed the bags on the kitchen table and turned toward him. “You want the food or the news first?”

  Joel answered for both of them. “The food,” he piped up.

  “Food it is.” That would have been her choice, too. Jewel’s mouth curved as she raised her eyes to Chris’s for a moment. He looked a little surprised. Obviously, the man wasn’t accustomed to anyone making choices for him. “You’ve gotta be fast around a five-year-old—even a superintelligent one.” Affection was spreading out long, slender fingers through her as she looked at Joel. The little boy in him was beginning to surface. There was hope.

  “I’ll keep that in mind,” Chris murmured.

  He opened first one cabinet, then another as he searched for plates. Rita’s so-called system still hadn’t quite sunk in yet, despite the number of days he’d already spent here. Cutlery took him a couple more moments to pinpoint as he opened several drawers before locating it. He finally placed plates and utensils on the counter in front of Jewel.

  Though he’d made no comment on the choice she’d offered, Chris realized that he was in no hurry to hear the news Jewel was referring to. It wasn’t that he’d settled in or gotten attached to the boy; it was just that if Jewel had managed to locate his ex-brother-in-law, it occurred to him that there would be no excuse to see her any longer. The thought of not seeing her anymore, he was surprised to realize, disturbed him.

  Which disturbed him even further. Ordinarily, he didn’t form attachments quickly.

  So Chris did what he’d always accused the rest of the world of doing—he procrastinated. Until yesterday, he’d been eager to receive any news that would lead him to Ray. Now, he wasn’t all that sure. There were mixed feelings swirling around in him.

  The woman was fast, he noted. Just like that, the food Jewel had brought over was out of the bags and on the plates, waiting to be consumed.

  With only minimal encouragement, Joel picked the French toast.

  “These are good,” Joel told her with wide-eyed wonder that she found both amusing and endearing.

  “Glad you like them,” she said. “French toast is my favorite breakfast, although I do like trying to fill up all the tiny spaces on a waffle. That way, when I eat the waffles, they’re always extra sweet. How do you like yours? With syrup? Fruit?” she prompted when Joel didn’t say anything.

  Finally, he shrugged as he speared another piece of the French toast. “I don’t know. I never had them before.”

  That was almost un-American, she thought, keeping the comment to herself. But if he’d never had waffles…“And the French toast?”

  Joel shook his head, but he kept on eating. “No, never had that before, either.”

  She frowned. Some of her best childhood memories had taken place around the breakfast table. “What did you have for breakfast?”

  He shrugged again, quickly maki
ng short work of the pieces on his plate. “Anything I could find. Cereal sometimes,” he added with an uncertain smile.

  Something else they had in common, Chris thought. “I was a freshman in college before I realized that people ate anything besides cereal for breakfast,” he told Joel.

  The boy smiled and, just for a second, Chris felt as if he and Joel were sharing a moment. Something inside him stirred.

  Meanwhile, Jewel was trying to relate and having a difficult time. Breakfast had always been there for her, as was love. She looked from the boy to his uncle. “You’re kidding.”

  “Hardly ever” was Chris’s deadpan response.

  It took her a moment to realize that he was making a joke. Jewel laughed. “Sorry, forgot who I was talking to.” Joel, she noticed, was already polishing off his portion. There wasn’t even any syrup or powdered sugar left on the plate. “Can I interest someone in seconds?” she asked, looking pointedly at Joel.

  The moment she asked, the little boy pushed forward his plate, a hopeful look in his eyes. He wasn’t nearly as shy as he’d been when she first met him and that was a very good sign. She knew that there was a real boy under all that solemnity and knowledge. He just needed to be brought out.

  “You got it,” she told him. This time, she gave him a waffle instead of French toast.

  Joel eyed the waffle for a moment, then hesitantly asked, “Can I have it your way?”

  “Coming right up.”

  Very carefully, Jewel filled each and every square hole on the waffle’s surface with maple syrup. There was just the right amount to accommodate one waffle. But that was enough.

  Joel happily started to chew his way to satisfaction, beginning on one end and working his way to the other side.

  “How about you?” Jewel turned toward Chris. “Can I interest you in seconds?”

  What she could interest him in, Chris realized, his eyes covertly sweeping over the curves of her form, had nothing to do with food for the body. Sustenance for the soul was more like it.