Page 28 of Born to Sin
Beckett shot a glance across at her and thought,Huh. I wonder if it was that easy to stop.Probably not. Things usually weren’t that easy.
“But Dad?” Janey said as Beckett was unbuckling his seatbelt.
“Yeah?”
“My throat hurts,” she said. “I probably yelled too much or something.”
He paused a moment, then opened the car door and said, “Let’s go inside and check it out.”
Five minutes later, he was sitting back from where he’d been shining a flashlight down Janey’s throat and saying, “Bugger. That’s red.” He looked down Troy’s throat for good measure. “Yours isn’t,” he told his son. “So I’m pretty sure it’s not meant to be that red.”
“Dad,”Troy said. “You’re not supposed to say that word.”
“Oh. Right.” He passed a hand over his hair, then pressed it to Janey’s forehead. “Feels warm to me. OK. Sunday night. Huh.” The kids had had the odd cold since he’d entered his single dad phase, but not much more than that. Why hadn’t he read more about caring for crook kids?
Quinn said, “I can go home. That’s no problem.”
“What?” he said. “No. I just—”
She said, “Or I can stay and help.”
* * *
She made the “chicken parmy,”in the end, while Beckett drove to the pharmacy for over-the-counter meds and a thermometer, Janey took a shower in the kids’ bathroom, and Troy took a bath in Beckett’s. Which meant she was doing a first/second/whatever-this-was date and seeing the man’s bedroom and bathroom, which was a first. Both were neat and clean, but then, Roxanne had told her that men changed the sheets and might even clean the bathroom before a date, “just in case.”
The orthodontist probably held that against her, too.
She used the time while the chips and casserole dish of breaded chicken in tomato sauce were cooking—smothered in mozzarella, which was her kind of meal—to research sore throats in kids, so she was able to tell Beckett when he walked through the door, “If she does have a fever, it could be strep. You probably want to take her in for a throat culture tomorrow. Do you have a pediatrician here?”
He looked a little startled, for some reason. She started to wash lettuce and asked, “What? If you don’t, that’s OK. Take her to Urgent Care. MedNorth is good. That’s where I usually go if I have something wrong. I don’t like the whole doctor thing much.”
“Uh … thanks.” He hefted a white plastic bag. “Got Janey some soup.”
“Good idea,” Quinn said. “She can eat that on the couch, or in bed. You probably don’t have a tray, but we could—”
Janey asked in a pathetic voice, “Did you get ice cream? And if I’m ill, I should get to pick the movie. I want to watchTwilight.Alexis said it was awesome, and Troy just wants to watchMinionsagain.” She paused, then said, “My throat hurts when I talk.”
Beckett said, “We’ve got some ice cream. You can have it after the soup. And I guess you can watch that film.” He glanced at Quinn.
“Don’t ask me,” she said. “All I know is that it’s a teenage movie about sparkly vampires.”
“Vampires are scary,” Troy said.
“It’s notscary,”Janey said. “It’sromantic.His skinsparkles.”
Beckett muttered, “Brilliant. A romantic movie with my daughter. My date’s not exactly going to plan.”
“You have a TV in your bedroom,” Quinn said, wanting to laugh. “If you don’t want to join the viewing, she could eat her soup in there. I’m not sure I’m up for romantic movies about sparkly vampires, either. Now, a good superhero movie …” He laughed himself, and she said, “And we should make Janey some tea with honey and lemon. If you had any lemon. We could do tea with honey, though. If you have any tea. Or honey.”
“I’m an Aussie,” Beckett said. “Of course I have tea and honey.” He pulled down the packet and switched the electric kettle on. “And, yeah, I have a TV in my bedroom. Surprised you know that.”
“Not because I was scouting it, or whatever you’re thinking,” she said. “Because the kids were having their baths.” Now she was talking about his bed in front of his kids. Maybe she’d looked at that big bed, the duvet pulled up tight, the sheets tucked in neatly, and thought,Are you lonely there? Two years is a long time, or maybe it’s not. I have no idea how long widowers wait. Or even if they wait at all.She was pretty sure he was interested, or why would he have asked her out, but really? She was his first choice, sexually? Hard to believe.
“Oh,” he said, and gave her some more lopsided smile as he poured water over the tea bag. “A man can hope.” Which, yes, was an answer, and she got a stupid rush of heat just from that, and the look in his eyes.
She’d kicked him in theballs.That look was probably, “Please don’t hurt me again,” or possibly, “I suspect you are an awkward sexual partner,” which could be true, so she should just stop thinking about the whole thing.
“Let’s heat up this soup,” she decided to say instead, “and set Janey up in your bedroom with soup and toast and her movie, and you and Troy and I can have dinner without sparkly vampires.” The oven timer beeped, and she lunged for it at the same time Beckett did, which meant she bumped into him.