“If you can call chips cooking,” Steven muttered.
I gritted my teeth and nudged Delia toward the kitchen. “Go on and eat your breakfast. Take your brother with you. You’re going to be late for school.” Delia pouted, dragging her feet. I waited until they were out of earshot before taking Steven’s arm and turning him toward the door. “Thank you for the tree. And thank you for the offer to take the kids, but it’s really not a good time.”
“What the hell is this about?” he asked, holding the door shut. “Every time I call, you’ve got some excuse why I can’t see them.”
“I’m not making excuses. We’ve just been busy.”
“This is about Theresa, isn’t it? You’re freaked out because of the bodies they found on the farm.”
“What do you want me to say, Steven?”
“Whatever Theresa was into had nothing to do with me. You know me, Finn. You know I would never have been involved in something like that.”
“Do I? Because after everything that’s happened between us, I wonder if I ever knew you at all.”
A muscle worked in his jaw. “That’s not fair. You’ve known me a lot longer than you’ve known her,” he said, pointing at the kitchen. “You’ve got some stranger you met less than a year ago living under your roof, driving Delia to school, and spending all day with Zach! What do you really know about her?”
“She’s their babysitter, Steven!”
“And I’m their father! I want to see my kids.”
I couldn’t argue that. He had every right to spend time with our children. I didn’t want to keep him from Delia and Zach any more than he wanted to be apart from them. But the truth was buried in a can of worms I couldn’t afford to open. “You will see them. Just not this morning.” I reached around him for the door.
“I want them this weekend.”
I gave an ambiguous nod. “I’ll call you later this week and we can set up a time for you to come over and visit.”
“No, Finn.” He stood over me, his blue eyes seething. “I’m picking them up after school on Friday. No baby monitors. No spying on me from your car. They’re spending the weekend with me—the whole weekend—or else I’m calling Guy.”
He gave the tree one last look as he threw open the door, slamming it behind him. I started as Vero placed her hand on my shoulder. “I knew we should have bought an extra shovel.”
CHAPTER 8
The mall was busy for lunchtime on a Tuesday. Christmas songs pumped through a speaker in a potted plant beside me, the crooning lyrics drowned out by the bustle of holiday shoppers in the food court and the clatter of plastic trays. I sipped on a fountain drink, watching the ebb and flow of the crowds. Vero had suggested I get out of my office. That maybe a change of scenery—some good old-fashioned people watching and Christmas shopping—would lift me out of my slump and light a fire under my muse. Or at the very least, take my mind off the fact that Julian had been gone for four days, and he hadn’t so much as texted. All I had so far was the seed of a story—a missing lawyer who’d fallen in love with his client, a hit woman on trial for a murder she didn’t commit. But no matter how many hours I spent staring at my keyboard, I couldn’t imagine this story having a happy ending.
My phone vibrated on the table. I reached for it, wilting a little when the number on the screen wasn’t Julian’s.
I pressed the phone to my ear, plugging the other with a finger. “Hey, Syl.”
“I’ve got great news,” she exclaimed. “Your editor loved your idea. She wants to see a sample. How quickly can you get me twenty thousand words?”
Twenty thousand was almost a quarter of a book. “I don’t know. Maybe by the end of the year.” At the rate I was going, even that was a stretch.
“Good! I told her you’d have it to her by Monday.” I choked on my soda. “That should give you plenty of time to make one tiny, little change.”
“What change?”
“She wants the hot cop back in the story. Just hear me out,” Sylvia said when I started to protest. “You can keep the lawyer—she liked that angle—but your readers will be expecting the cop to be in the book. It’ll add some internal and external tension, and a second love interest will spice up the plot.”
“Love triangles are too hard to juggle,” I argued.
“Then kill one of them off in the third act. Let the other one save her and give her a steamy happily ever after. Pick whichever one you want. Just make sure the hot cop makes it into the sample. Twenty thousand by next Monday, Finlay. Don’t let me down.”