JULIA’S PHONE, AUTOMATICALLY switched to vibrate at night, jumped in her pocket.
Her breath caught. Her stalker?
She withdrew it cautiously and held it away from her, afraid of what she might see. But the screen showed Dom’s number. She punched it so hard the phone nearly flew from her hand.
“Julia? Are you there? Am I calling too late?”
He sounded anxious, afraid.
“I’m here. And it’s not too late.” She glanced at the clock. Ten PM. Not too late, but getting close, given her five-thirty alarm. She’d probably missed the window for a hot bath. “Is everything all right?”
“Fine. I mean, nothing new. I just. Well. I thought. Of you, I mean. I was thinking of you. This is probably crazy. I’m going out on a limb here.”
She let him stammer on a moment longer. “Dom! Just spit it out.”
“Remember the other night when you asked me if it was a booty call?”
She almost laughed, recalling her irritation when she thought it had been, and the slump of disappointment when she realized it wasn’t.
“Yes?”
“Well.” He cleared his throat, and laughter bubbled up within her again as she imagined him squaring his shoulders, stiffening his spine, preparing for whatever momentous pronouncement—one that apparently wasn’t a disaster of some sort—had occasioned this late-night communication.
“Consider this a booty call.”
Her laughter broke free, even as her mind ran through the obvious: Calvin asleep upstairs. The dog, prone to barking and leaping on the bed at inopportune moments. The neighbors, the neighbors, the neighbors. But it had been so goddamn long.
Misery leaked through the airwaves. “I’m sorry. That was inexcusable. I just …”
She grinned at the phone. “Shut up, Dom.”
“I’m really sorry—”
“Dom. Seriously. Just shut up and get your ass over here.”
They’d broken the main rule in the very slender book guiding their relationship: no sex with kids in the house.
Indeed, mere seconds after they’d finished—Julia’s teeth clenched on a fat fold of quilt to muffle her cries of joy layered with a healthy dose of relief—she’d tiptoed from the bed and peeked into Calvin’s room across the hall to ensure that he was indeed fast asleep, arms thrown above his head, eyelids twitching in some childhood dream that she hoped was a happy one. Beside him, Jake raised his head, then flopped back down at the sight of Julia, reassured that all was well.
Jake had gone briefly hysterical at the sight of this barely remembered intruder so late at night, then had succumbed to the offer of another dog biscuit, snatching it in his teeth and bearing his trophy to Calvin’s room, where he’d remained—at least, Julia assumed he had—throughout their too-brief romp, thus earning absolution for the destruction of shoes and other household objects.
She slipped back into bed and Dom’s embrace.
“All clear?”
“Yes. But you have to go soon. We shouldn’t have.” Even as she hugged him tighter, reluctant to abandon the luxury of touch, of shared pleasure, of—could she admit to love?
He stroked her hair. “You’re right. But I’m glad we did. I promised myself I wouldn’t do this. Now I’ll promise that I won’t do it again anytime soon. But Christ, Julia. The time we’ve had together has made it so hard to go back to going it alone.”
“I know.” She wanted to tell him about her frustrations with the case, her puzzlement over whatever relationship Leslie Harper’s death might have to do with it, her suspicions about Mack Coates and lingering unease about Cheryl Hayes. But those were mere incidentals compared to the possible loss of custody of his daughter.
“Any word from Susan?”
“Not a peep. But Elena and I are talking again. Just barely—you know how those conversations go. ‘How was school?’ ‘Fine.’ ‘What’d you do today?’ ‘Nothing.’”
She laughed low, remembering her own sullen responses to even the most innocuous questions from her parents during her teenage years.
“I don’t want to do anything to jeopardize it.” He started to get up.
“And yet here you are.”
“And yet here I am.” He fell back into bed, and though she should have shooed him out, she didn’t.
Dom didn’t leave until two in the morning, and then only because Julia briefly woke, triggered by a flash of light through the one-millimeter gap where she’d failed to completely lower the shade.
She held her breath, trying to hear over the pounding in her chest. Her stalker?
But the motion-activated light dimmed immediately and stayed dark. Probably an animal, she told herself, and finally looked at the clock.
“Holy shit. We fell asleep. Dom, you’ve got to go!”
He scrambled from the bed and into his clothes, his uncoordinated haste an echo of the panic in her voice.
“I’ll let myself out.”
“No. I have to throw the deadbolt behind you.” She wrapped herself in a blanket, peeked into Calvin’s room again—still asleep, thank God—and followed him down the stairs, the dog tumbling sleepily behind.
“Back door,” she hissed.
He opened the door. The motion sensor light flashed, illuminating him as he sprinted across the backyard toward the alley’s dark shelter. She watched until he faded from view, then twisted the lock until she heard the deadbolt’s reassuring clunk.
She sighed again, touching a fingertip to her lips, still warm from the final, fierce kiss he’d bestowed, before she closed the door behind him.
“Good-bye, love,” he’d said.
That word again, first in her mind, then spoken aloud by Dom.
Was it?
She cast a final look at the clock before collapsing into bed. The morning—the whole coming day—would be a brutal slog through a morass of exhaustion. But at this moment, she didn’t care.