Dark Lava: Lei Crime Book 7 (Lei Crime Series) (35 page)

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Authors: Toby Neal

BOOK: Dark Lava: Lei Crime Book 7 (Lei Crime Series)

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Lei put the baby on her hip, and took one of his chubby hands in hers and pretended to waltz around the kitchen. Kiet yelled with excitem
ent.

“
Don’t get him too riled up before dinner, or he’ll throw the food. Remember what happened last time,” Wayne said.

“
Oh yeah.” Lei snuggled her face into Kiet’s neck and blew, and he giggled again. “He’ll calm down. I have to go shower anyway, in a minute.”

“
He’s not going to want to let you out of his sight.”

“
Is that so?” Lei swung Kiet around in front of her, and he laughed again.

“
I’ll give him his bath in the sink. That’ll distract him,” Wayne turned on the water.

“
Until Daddy gets home,” Lei said. Stevens had a different way with Kiet than she did, but the baby seemed to enjoy being with his dad just as much.

Wayne ran the sink full of warm water and Lei undressed the baby, stripping off his onesie and diaper
. Wayne, his smile indulgent, checked the water temperature with his wrist, and gestured for Lei to bring him over.

“
Come on in, the water’s fine, little man,” he said, taking his grandchild, but the minute Kiet’s feet touched the water, the baby drew them up against his body, squinching his face. “Oh, not warm enough?” Wayne added more hot water, holding the baby close.

Lei left them sorting that out and went back to the bathroom off the master bedroom. She showered, and as she did these days, checked in
with the changes in her body. Her breasts were a size larger and tender, and her belly had a fullness to it that had tightened the waistband of her jeans. Another thing no one had told her about pregnancy—how taut her uterus was, like she was growing a coconut in there. Other than occasional nausea and an acute reaction to smells, Lei felt great.

It was a strange feeling that her body knew what to do all on its own. She still felt surprised that this was the direction her life had gone
—marriage, motherhood, living in a house with her dad as the ‘manny’—but she couldn’t imagine another life, now. The grief that she wasn’t sharing this with her beloved aunt still came over her in waves, and this time she shut her eyes and turned her face into the flow of water from the shower, letting the sorrow move through her.

She was out of the shower and playing with Kiet out on the porch when Stevens drove up in his Bronco. Sitting in the old porch rocking chair, she turned Kiet outward as Stevens got out of the truck. T
he baby flexed his legs, hopping and reaching toward his father. “Ba-ba-ba!”

“
Hey, little man.” Stevens came up on the porch, leaning down to kiss the baby. Lei drew back, sniffing, before he could kiss her.

“
Yuck. Shower first. Been near a fire?”

“
Yeah. You saw the smoke earlier?”

“
Sure did. Another cane fire. It was out by the time I passed it.”

“
Fire caught a body this time. I’ll tell you when I’m out of the shower and you’ll let me kiss you.” He winked as he went inside. Kiet bounced and strained after his father as Stevens disappeared into the house.

Lei spun the baby around. “
He’ll be back. In the meantime, you’ll have to make do with me.”

Kiet grinned, grabbing a handful of her hair and putting it in his mouth. She was still detaching it as she ma
de her way back to the kitchen. “Can I help you with anything, Dad?”

“
Nope. Tell that husband of yours dinner’s ready in fifteen minutes.” Wayne was tossing a salad. He’d learned kitchen skills in prison, and been on kitchen duty for a year, he’d told her one day. He prepared healthy meals for the family five nights a week, kept the house picked up, and took care of the baby during the day. Lei insisted on paying him a small salary and he had his own cottage. So far, the arrangement seemed to be working out. As far as Lei was concerned, it was close to perfect, and the busyness seemed to be helping Wayne stay distracted from the loss of his sister.

“
I’ll go tell Stevens,” Lei said. She tried to put the baby in his bouncy seat, but he grunted and writhed and arched his back, so she toted him back into the bathroom, opening the shower to say to Stevens, “Dinner in fifteen. Is your brother still coming?”

“
Said he was,” Stevens said, not turning around, and she took a minute to enjoy the view of his long, muscular back as he rinsed his hair under the flow of water. Then Kiet pulled her hair again, and Lei sighed as she turned away. Chances to join Stevens in that oversized shower were few and far between nowadays, with the baby to keep entertained and her father always around.

She heard the beep-beep-beep on the control panel by the front door that told her someone had punched in the code and activated the gate
—probably Jared. Only a handful of friends had the code. Lei felt her spirits lift—she enjoyed Jared’s company, and his presence at their family dinners livened things up.

She walked out onto the porch as Jared drove up in the lifted tan Tacoma he drove, pipe racks on the truck stacked with his
‘toys’—a couple of surfboards, a stand-up paddleboard, and a single-man canoe.

“
Hey bro,” Lei called as he got out of the vehicle. She held up Kiet’s hand and waved it at him. Jared grinned, walking toward her with the swift grace he shared with Stevens. He had similar height and blue eyes, but more regular and chiseled features, a leanness that looked whipcord strong, and as a firefighter he spent time working out that Stevens didn’t put in. When he wasn’t at the station he was out enjoying the ocean sports of Maui. All of that added up to spectacular.

“
Hey sis. Hope you weren’t the one cooking,” Jared said, with that wicked grin that Lei knew had kicked a lot of hearts into overdrive. She pretended to punch him in the rock-hard midsection and he folded comically, making Kiet laugh.

“
You know better than that,” Lei said. “Take your nephew, please. He’s eating my hair again.”

“
He has good taste,” Jared said. “Hey, buddy.” He pried Kiet’s hands out of Lei’s hair and lifted him up. “How’s my favorite future firefighter?”

“
He’s going into something safe. Like accounting,” Stevens called from inside the house. “Stop that evil talk.”

Jared grinned again, heading into the house with the baby, and Lei racked her brain for who she could set him up with. Sophie Ang? Her friend was still single, though it had seemed like there m
ight have been some sparks with Alika Wolcott, Ang’s MMA fighting coach… Lei tried to imagine her serious tech-agent friend with daredevil, fun-loving Jared. They were so different, it just might work.

She followed Jared into the house and helped set t
he table while Jared and Stevens discussed the fire and the “human chicken wing” found on the side of the road. “What do you think of the new fire investigator? Tim Owen?” Stevens asked.

“
Seems to know his stuff. I’ve taken him out stand-up paddling. Since we’re both new to the island, we’ve been getting out on the ocean together.”

“
I envy your schedule,” Stevens said. It wasn’t the first time he’d said that, Lei thought. Maybe the time had come for the two of them to just work the hours they were supposed to—but she doubted they would be able to stick with those kinds of resolutions the next time a big case came along.

“
Thanks for making dinner, Dad,” Lei said, kissing her father’s leathery cheek quickly as she took a large casserole dish swimming with teriyaki chicken from him. “This looks so good.”

“
Easy stuff,” Wayne said. “Hard to go wrong with good ingredients.”

“
Hey, Mr. Texeira, this looks great!” Jared said. He’d handed Kiet off to Stevens and took a pot of rice from Wayne. “Thanks so much for having me.”

“
Always room and food for family,” Wayne said. “It’s past time you started calling me Wayne, already. Hope you brought that dessert you promised me last week.”

“
Oh yeah, thanks for reminding me. I left it in the truck.”

Jared took off, and Lei quir
ked a brow at her father. “What’s he bringing?”

“
Surprise. Let’s go to the table while the food’s hot.”

They sat down around the picnic table on the covered back deck, mercifully screened from mosquitoes, and Stevens was able to get Kiet into his bouncy se
at. The baby still needed too much support to sit in the high chair, so he was positioned on the seat on the bench.

“
My turn to feed you, tonight,” Stevens said to Kiet, tying on the boy’s bib. Lei loved how they traded everything off with the baby.

“
His rice cereal’s in the microwave,” Wayne said, carrying a big wooden bowl of salad past Lei to set on the table as she fetched the baby’s bowl of cereal. Jared returned, with something in a brown paper bag that he stowed in the freezer.

They ate, sharing sni
ppets about the day. Jared told them about the rash of arson cane fires. “There’ve been four of these, as you guys must have seen in the news. But now that there’s been a homicide, it takes things up a notch. With you guys working with Tim, hopefully we’ll get the arsonist sooner rather than later.”

Wayne shook his silver-shot, curly head. “
Homeless guy had to be pretty desperate, sleeping in a cane field.”

“
Just what I said,” Stevens replied. “It’ll be interesting to see if there’s more to it than that.” Lei watched him feed Kiet a mouthful of rice cereal with the soft plastic baby spoon. Kiet smacked his thighs in excitement, then tried to grab the spoon. “Catch it with your mouth, little man,” Stevens said, smiling as he got another bite into the baby.

L
ei put her hand on Stevens’s thigh, kneading the muscles there. His patience and tenderness with Kiet made her love him in new ways. But happy scenes like this always reminded her of Anchara, Kiet’s murdered mother, Stevens’s ex-wife. The baby’s presence with them was wholly due to tragedy. Her killer had been caught, but Lei still thought there was more to the picture than the man had ever confessed.

But, maybe he
had
been the shroud killer. After he was taken into custody, things had gone quiet. In four months, there had been nothing further after an escalating series of events. Lei took a bite of salad, wondering if she could get away to her computer after dinner. She had a secret she was working on, and there would be hell to pay if Stevens found out about it.

To Be Continued, Fall 2014.