Suddenly One Summer (FBI/US Attorney #6)

And . . . so much for that moment.

* * *

“SO WE’VE ESTABLISHED that he’s single, right?” Audrey asked at the restaurant after they had sat down at their table and Rachel had told her about the elevator encounter with Ford.

“He’s single.” Victoria took a sip of her sparkling rosé, then felt the need to clarify something. “Not that it matters.”

“Please. I was there, Vic. There was definitely something in the air between you,” Rachel said.

“Sure. Aggravation . . . irritation . . .”

“Flirtation . . .” Rachel added.

Victoria rolled her eyes. Flirtation. Please. “I hesitate to tell you guys this, out fear of adding more fuel to the fire, but Ford and I are sort of working together on this legal matter for his sister.”

“How did that happen?” Audrey asked.

“Long story. The point is, his sister is now my client,” Victoria emphasized.

Both Audrey and Rachel waited for more.

“And . . . so? There’s no rule that says you can’t hook up with the brother of a client, is there?” Audrey said.

Well, wasn’t everyone suddenly a legal expert? “Fine. He’s also my neighbor. Very bad idea, hooking up with a neighbor.”

“Technically, he’s only your neighbor for the summer,” Rachel noted.

“And think of the upside,” Audrey said. “You could knock on his door, have great sex with a gorgeous man, and be home in less time than it takes to get a mani-pedi.”

Victoria opened her mouth to scoff at that, but then paused.

Well, when you put it that way . . .

Then she shook off the thought and refocused. “Look, I get that he’s good-looking. But he has this way of getting under my skin, and on top of that he’s . . .” She searched for the right word.

“He’s what?” Rachel beckoned with her hand. “Come on, let’s hear it. I’d like to know what snarky comment even you could possibly make about the good-looking man who gives you smoking-hot looks across a bar, makes you smile—yes, I saw that when you two were standing outside the elevator—and who babysits his niece on a Saturday night so that his sister can go out with her friends.”

Victoria thought about that for a moment, and then finally answered. “He’s named after a car.” There. She nodded. Take that.

Rachel smiled. “Sweetie, if that’s the best you’ve got, you’re in serious trouble.”

Thirteen

THE NEXT MORNING, when Ford’s alarm clock went off at seven o’clock, he reached over and swatted it blindly until it went silent. He fell back asleep, thinking, after the night he’d had, that he could treat himself to a snooze.

Or four.

When his alarm clock sounded for the fifth time, someone pounded on the other side of his bedroom wall. Ford’s head shot up from the pillow and he blinked at the sound of a muffled, annoyed female voice. He couldn’t catch the entire speech, and probably that was for the best, but he was pretty sure he heard a Shut the damn thing off!

“You know, Owen was never this fussy,” he called out loudly. Granted, for the last year Owen had lived nearly full-time at his girlfriend’s place, but still.

For a moment, there was a silence on the other side of the wall. Then a single thud. Kiss off.

Of course she had to get in the last word.

Awake now, most reluctantly, he made his way into the bathroom and stood under the shower spray for over ten minutes, trying to remember why he’d ever thought it was a good idea to schedule a coffee meeting for eight thirty on a Sunday morning. Then again, at the time he’d made the appointment, he hadn’t realized what he was in for when he’d offered to babysit Zoe.

“It’s really important that you stick to the schedule,” Nicole had said last night, as she’d walked him through Zoe’s nighttime routine. “Bottle at six thirty. Keep her upright for at least twenty minutes; the pediatrician says that helps with the acid reflux. Read her a book at seven fifteen, and then put her down at seven thirty. She gets two pacifiers, one in her mouth and the other in her hand, or she won’t fall asleep. Oh, and she just started rolling over onto her tummy, but once she gets there she doesn’t like being on her tummy, and she hasn’t figured out how to roll back. So she cries when that happens and . . .” Nicole trailed off, and bit her lip. “Maybe this is a bad idea.”

“Nic. I’ve got this,” Ford had said, lifting Zoe up and getting a big smile out of her. How hard could it be? They were talking about one small baby who couldn’t even crawl yet.

No problem.

“I’m just saying, no one other than me has ever put her down before,” Nicole had said uncertainly.

“Go have fun with your friends. We’ll be fine.”

And for the first hour and a half, he and Zoe indeed had been just fine. As promised, he dutifully followed the schedule—Nicole having mentioned the importance of that only about twenty times. He did the bottle and the book, got Zoe zipped into some wearable blanket that looked like a potato sack, threw in a “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star” for good measure, and then put her down in the crib to sleep.

Eight minutes later, all hell broke loose.

Zoe began crying, so he checked the monitor and saw that she’d flipped over onto her stomach and, like Nicole had said, couldn’t roll back. Zoe seemed royally pissed about that, too, judging from all the yelling and the way she kicked her legs in the potato sack. Not knowing what else to do—since he was pretty certain that babies were supposed to sleep on their backs—he went into her room and rolled her back over.

Big mistake.

For the next two hours—yes, gasp, they strayed from the schedule—they played this game. Zoe would be quiet for ten or fifteen minutes, then she’d flip onto her stomach and scream bloody murder until he went back into her room.

“Listen, you,” he told her after Take Seven. “See here? It’s embroidered right on your potato sack. ‘Back to Sleep.’ You don’t like being on your stomach? Then stop rolling over.”

She chucked one pacifier out of the crib, unimpressed with the lecture.

After that, Ford decided to try a new approach—this “self-soothing” thing he’d heard his sister talking about. The next time Zoe flipped over onto her stomach, he let her cry. But after fifteen minutes he caved, because the crying was god-awful and he felt guilty as shit, and certainly no one in the damn apartment building was going to be soothed by that racket. So they went back to the flipping game. Eventually, it got to be so late that they’d moved into the time when Nicole had said Zoe might wake up for a feeding.