Page 54 of The Murder Between Us
Cole walked slowly to the door, staring at Noah, his eyebrows raised.
Noah smiled.
Cole’s heart melted as his lungs started to work again. “Hey,” he said, smiling back. He shoved his hands in his pockets and leaned against the glass.
Katie turned to him, her brows raised and forehead furrowed, an absolute mirror image of the way her father had looked at him. God, they were so alike, reflections through time. Even the way they sat, elbows spread wide on the tabletop, leaning forward. The sun shining on their coffee-brown strands, glittering mahogany and cherry highlights sparking. The colors of the moment froze in his mind, a perfect snapshot: emerald grass, crystal sky, golden corn. Two faces gazing at him, soft smiles warming their features.
“Hey, Dr. Kennedy.” Katie waved, her smile turning shy. Her pencil eraser tapped a fast rhythm on her notebook paper.
Noah scooted over on his side of the picnic bench, making room for Cole. “We’re doing Katie’s pre-calc homework.”
Katie rolled her eyes. “We’retryingto do pre-calc homework. Neither of us are any good at this stuff, so it’s like the blind leading the blind.”
“I’m pretty good at math. I did a lot of statistical analyses in grad school. It’s been a while since I did any calculus, but I might be able to help.”
Katie wordlessly slid her textbook to him and jabbed her finger at one of the problems. Ithadbeen a while, but the mechanics of it started coming back. “Okay, start here.” He slid her binder to him and set up the first step of the equation. “Can you solve this piece?”
She started working, and they went back and forth, breaking the equations down into smaller elements until she started to outpace him, move ahead to the next step without prompting. “You’ve got it.” He grinned.
“Dad, you’re fired,” Katie said, scribbling formulas. She didn’t look up. “Dr. Kennedy is going to help me with all my math from now on.”
Noah chuckled. His hand stroked over Cole’s lower back, out of sight. “Fine by me. You inherited my genetics in the math department, K-Bear. I’m sorry.”
“Mom’s not any better.” Katie rolled her eyes. “At least you try to help me. She was always too busy.”
“Being an AUSA is hard work.” Katie didn’t seem impressed with Noah’s attempts to defend his ex-wife. Cole kept his mouth shut. Noah leaned into him, their shoulders brushing. “Have you eaten?”
Had he eaten? He arched an eyebrow at Noah and shook his head. How could he have eaten after how their morning had ended?
“I’ll get you something.” Noah rose and disappeared into the kitchen. Through the windows, Cole could see him moving around, grabbing a plate and reaching into the refrigerator.
Katie’s pencil stopped scratching over her paper. She turned to him, her focus suddenly transferred from her pre-calc to Cole. She stared, searching, the intensity of her hazel-honey gaze identical to Noah’s. As with Noah, Cole was helpless before that look.
“My dad really likes you.” Her eyes darted from his face to his chest to his hair and back to his eyes.
“I really like your dad.”
She bit her lip. Looked back at her textbook. A breeze curled the page around her fist.
“You know what I’ve learned about your dad? There is one thing that his whole life revolves around. One thing he loves more than anything else.” Brunette strands swept across Katie’s eyes. “You.” He smiled.
She tried to smile back, looking down as she fiddled with her pencil. “I want him to be happy,” she said. Her foot was jiggling, bouncing up and down beneath the table enough to rock the deck. “He hasn’t been happy for a while. Not really. I thought I could help him, kinda.”
“You’re his daughter. Everything about you makes him happy.”
She snorted. “Not everything.”
“Well, he really doesn’t like Trevor.”
Katie rolled her eyes, but she was smiling. “Trevor is an idiot.”
Cole almost reached for her but stopped. His hand landed on the table. “You make your father very happy. He has been unhappy in some ways, not because of you—”
“Because he wasn’t being himself. And he didn’t have anyone.” She looked away, her jaw jutting forward as she watched the corn sway. “He needs that,” she said. “He needs someone to love him.”
“You arevery observant, Katie.”
“Not really. I didn’t know my dad was gay.”
