“Nothing but trouble, kid. Nothing but trouble.”
Juliette looked at her. Nora laughed.
“You want blue, you can have blue,” Nora said. “I’ll do stripes, squares, polka dots of blue. But…you have to promise Kingsley won’t kill me. I have just gotten off his shit list. Please don’t put me back on it.”
“You said a bad word, Tata Elle.”
“I say a lot of them,” Nora said. “Especially where your Papa is concerned. And what are you doing to my dog?”
“Making him pretty.”
“Gmork, are you getting a makeover?” Nora asked her dog. Gmork made a happy rumbling sound and licked Céleste’s face before settling down again.
“I think I want blue,” Juliette said. “He’ll have to live with it.”
“What does he have against blue anyway?” Nora said.
“He doesn’t want a boy.”
“That die’s been cast. And I think that’s the first time I’ve ever compared sperm to dice.”
“What’s sperm?” Céleste asked.
Nora rolled her eyes. “Kid’s got ears like a bat, I swear. Why did we teach her English?”
“I’ll explain later, princess,” Juliette told her daughter. Céleste seemed satisfied with that, although knowing Juliette, “later” meant “in ten to twenty years.”
“What’s wrong with boys? Other than the whole pissing-in-the-face thing they do.”
“He says we should have just cloned her.” Juliette nodded at Céleste. Nora couldn’t blame Kingsley there. Céleste was about as easy and endearing a child anyone could ask for, even if she was in that incessant question-asking phase.
“You think it’s a boy, don’t you?” Nora asked.
“That one,” she said, pointing at Céleste, “was a lamb. This one.” She patted her stomach. “This one’s a lion. She felt like part of me. This one feels like someone’s in there planning a prison break. She’s me. This one is all him.”
“What do you think it is, baby?” Nora asked Céleste. “A boy or a girl.”
“I don’t care,” Céleste said. “I want a kitten.”
“Talk to your Oncle Søren about that,” Nora said. “He’s the cat person in the family.”
“Speaking of,” Juliette said and lowered her voice. “Any news?”
Nora raised her hands, both empty. “I got a postcard from Idaho last week,” she said. “Idaho.”
“Any idea when he’ll come home?” Juliette said, her voice hopeful.
Nora’s stomach clenched. Her heart, too. She shook her head. “He just took off,” she said, mostly to herself. “Without a word. I still can’t believe he did that.”
“You can’t complain,” Juliette said in her most motherly chiding tone. “You run away all the time without telling us where you are. You didn’t even send a postcard a few of those times.”
“I wasn’t complaining. I’m just worried about him. Don’t tell him I said that.”
She knew she shouldn’t worry. Søren was an adult. He had a big cushion of family money and brains to spare. There was absolutely no reason for her to worry. But she did anyway.
“‘He whom one waits is, because he is expected, already present, already master,’” Juliette said, quoting a famous line from Kingsley’s favorite novel, Histoire d’O.
“Fine. He can be the master. As long as he gets his ass home and fucks me. I haven’t gotten laid in a month. My pussy has cobwebs.”
Juliette started to laugh but then stopped and pulled a white lace handkerchief out of her blouse, pressing it over her mouth and nose.
“Paint fumes?” Nora asked. Juliette nodded behind her handkerchief. “Go outside and get some fresh air. I’ll figure out the paint.”
Juliette waved her hand dismissively. She hated being fussed over just because she was pregnant. Since Kingsley couldn’t stop fussing over her, he’d been banished from the house between the hours of ten a.m. and five p.m. Juliette said the banishment had saved both their minds and, quite possibly, his life.
“I’ll open a window.” Juliette walked to the large street-facing window in the nursery and parted the curtains. “Oh, bonjour, monsieur.”
“What is it?” Nora asked, walking over to her.
“We have company. Very handsome company.”
“I’ll be the judge of that. You’re so hopped on up hormones you flirted with the UPS driver yesterday. That’s my job.”
Nora peered out the window and saw a man on the sidewalk staring at his phone in the shade of a magnolia tree—a trim black man with a tight fade. He wore a tailored brown suit and aviator sunglasses. Nora put him at about thirty, thirty-five years old. He took off his sunglasses, and she had to admit he wasn’t bad at all. Tall but not too tall. Strong build like a former high school quarterback who’d stayed in fighting shape. Something about his strict posture, his confident bearing, put her in mind of the sort of man she’d had dealings with before.
“Handsome, yes. Bad news, definitely.”
Juliette looked at her from the side of her eyes.
“Police?” Juliette said under her breath so as not to scare Céleste. No woman lived with Kingsley Edge for ten years without learning how to pick out a plainclothes detective in a crowd.
“I definitely get that vibe from him,” Nora muttered in reply. “Don’t see a badge on him, though.” The man had put his hand in his pocket, which revealed nothing—no badge, no gun. “I better talk to him. He’s either here for King or he’s here for me.”
“Why would he be here for you?”
“Why wouldn’t he be?” Nora replied.
“Ah, true,” Juliette said, patting Nora on the back. “You’re so good to us, sometimes I forget how bad you are.”
Chapter Four
Cyrus tried to never go into a new situation blind, a habit that had saved his ass more than once. In the shade under the magnolia tree, he took a moment to search for this Nora Sutherlin. Supposedly she was a professional dominatrix, according to Katherine, but the only hits were for her dirty books.
He clicked on the one with the most reviews on Amazon. The Red: An Erotic Fantasy. There was a half-naked lady on the cover, which he did not object to in the least. He bought it with one click, smiling at the idea of it sharing space on his digital bookshelf with Carl Jung and Walter Mosley. He doubted either gentleman would mind.
He found the About the Author section in the table of contents. Nora Sutherlin lives in New England. Find her online at www.norasutherlin.com.
That was it? Just one line? Okay. He went to her website. Not much more there. Her bio had been updated to read, Nora Sutherlin lives in New Orleans.
Great. So the lady liked her privacy a little. He could respect that. How many cheating husbands had he caught because they were sloppy online with their social media pages, leaving geo-markers on, claiming to be on a work trip while their phone tattled on them? Just out of curiosity, he went back to her book, picked a chapter at random and started to read.