Page 26 of Paternal Instincts
A minute and a half later, he plucked one of the printed pages from the pile and tilted his head to the side before glaring at Ruiz. “A filthy affinity for redheaded twenty-year-olds, huh?”
He turned the page around, displaying a picture of Clementine Prescott.
Ruiz gawped a few times as though searching for words before closing his mouth and throwing up his hands in defeat. “What?”
“I may be gay, Costa, but I’m not blind. She’s very pretty.”
I bit the inside of my cheek to keep from laughing at the shame and discomfort painting Ruiz’s face, but my clairvoyant husband, who wasn’t even looking in my direction, whipped around and pointed a finger at my face. “Stop looking so smug. I know you, Aslan Ronan Doyle, and you’re as guilty as him. You should both be ashamed.”
“We are,” I croaked.
“Are you?” Quaid held up the photograph, aiming it purposefully in my direction. I wasn’t supposed to look. I knew that, but my eyeballs drifted.
Quaid snagged my chin in a pinching grip. He brought his face within inches of mine. I was trapped by his baby blues. Humbled, yet enraptured. There was no anger. No hidden agenda. No uncertainty or hostility over my ogling a pretty girl. He was not fraying at the seams like he would have done at the beginning of our relationship. I didn’t see a hint of jealousy. We’d come so far.
Instead, I was met with a smile, grand enough to enhance the moon-shaped creases beside his mouth and bring out the sexy crow’s feet he hated beside his eyes.
“You’re such a pig.”
“I can’t help it.” Ioinked, and his quiet laughter tugged at my heartstrings. “I love you.”
“I know.” He kissed me, right there in Ruiz’s office, in front of his boy friend—two words—who groaned and cursed and hated every second of the public display of affection.
Chapter 7
Aslan
No one multitasked like my husband. Partly dressed, face foamed with shaving cream, he dragged a razor over his jaw while updating his boss on the case he and Frawley had landed the previous day. He’d inserted an earbud in one ear so he could hear Edwards’ side of the conversation without putting it on speaker, and I’d been warned to keep myself in check if we were sharing a bathroom.
I moved around him, brushing my teeth and copping a feel down his unbuttoned pants whenever he was too distracted to stop me. In my defense, I couldn’t help myself. Since we started dating, I couldn’t keep my hands off him. The taste of his skin did something to me on a molecular level, and when he gave in and let himself ride the sensations of lust and love, it was sensory overload.
That morning, I earned a record number of sneers because of my lack of self-restraint, but Quaid wasn’t as upset as he let on. He’d have lingered in bed if a child’s life wasn’t at stake.
Snagging a handful of his bubble ass, I whispered in his unadorned ear, “I’ll make coffee and food. Don’t be long.”
“Take the cat.” He deposited the ball of fur into my arms, returning to his call. “Yes, sir. I’m here… No. District police are taking care of that. Yes, sir.”
Oscar had been pacing along the counter, meowing for breakfast, purposefully knocking things over, and continuously getting in Quaid’s way as he tried to get ready for work. On a typical Saturday, Oscar came first, and the cat had a sixth sense about these things. He was not happy at being ignored.
Quaid, taking a case on what should have been the first day of his parental leave, was a prime example of his passion for the job. How could I fault him for caring?
“Come on, you little rascal. Daddy’s busy saving the world. You’ll get yourself in trouble at this rate. Do you want canned food?”
Oscar yowled and squirmed until I put him down and shooed him from the bathroom.
“Make him eat the rest of the one in the fridge,” Quaid hissed. “No, sir. We haven’t yet. The judge didn’t sign off on the warrant until after nine, so it wasn’t delivered until close to ten. Hopefully this morning.”
Oscar darted between my legs and back into the bathroom. Much to the cat’s dismay, I scooped him up and wedged the wiggly pest under my arm. I pecked my husband’s cheek and slipped out the door.
Quaid kicked it closed behind me as he explained to Edwards about the camera footage he’d assigned Ruiz and me to view once the Soccerplex owner delivered it. This after a five-minute session where he’d pleaded to stay on the case when Edwards insisted on finding someone else.
I started a pot of coffee, fed the demanding cat, and puzzled over food options, keeping in mind that when Quaid dove deep into a case, he rarely remembered to eat. His abject refusal to slow down and fuel his body had diminished with therapy, but it wasn’t gone. His hungercues weren’t like everyone else’s, and he could subsist for days on coffee alone if no one was there to remind him otherwise.
I settled on waffles—Quaid’s healthier version of waffles. We’d come to a compromise a few months back after he accidentally-on-purpose forgot to buy my favorite breakfast treat when grocery shopping three weeks in a row. After an excruciating conversation, we agreed that I would give up my highly processed frozen chocolate chip treat in exchange for purchasing a waffle iron and making waffles from scratch. It didn’t sound so bad at the time. Alas, I had endured a four-hour lecture on how to use the waffle iron, how to clean the waffle iron, where to store the waffle iron, and of course, a list of Quaid-approved recipes he swore he would never wrinkle his nose at. They lived in a pristine folder in the recipe drawer.
So far, he’d kept his promise. Not a single sneer.
Were the waffles as good as the ones I got at the grocery store in the frozen food aisle? Surprisingly, yes, but they had taken some tweaking. Quaid’s folder of recipe options had personal notations written down the side, adjustments I’d made to improve on the overly healthy versions he preferred.
