As the toxic green algae makes its way south, Floridians are urged not to go to the beach. More than one hundred reports of severe asthma attacks as well as minor allergy exacerbation have been reported in the last three days as the smell from the algae intensifies due to the heavy winds. If you suffer from allergies, the CDC is urging you to stay indoors or to use antihistamine and keep your inhaler close by.

Olivia had set up the spare room for Joey. She wasn’t really sure how to deal with a man sleeping in her house and what impression that would leave on Sophie. Joey had been on the phone with ICS for the last hour dealing with something going on with another job. Between all the chaos, she still had a job to do, which meant sneaking in Skype meetings, answering emails, working on budgets, and fielding calls. And Sophie hadn’t been feeling very well due to her allergies acting up. So she tucked her in, and to her surprise she’d fallen right asleep. Now Olivia was laying on her bed, restless. She wanted Joey in here with her.

“You didn’t expect me to really sleep in that other room, did you?” he said, locking the door behind him.

“Definitely not.”

She reached for the lamp next to the bed, clicked it on, and sat up. “Hi.”

“Hi,” he said, stripping naked as he went to get in bed with her.

“Wait. No. Stop.”

“What?” He looked around, confused.

“I want to see you naked and then I want to kiss you . . . everywhere.” She crawled to the foot of the bed and ran her palms up and down his pecs. He only had one tattoo and it was small, right by his heart. It said in simple script, like if it was typed by an old time typewriter, “Semper Fidelis.”

She kissed the tattoo. “You never talk about your time overseas.”

“It’s not the conversation I want to have before you suck my cock.”

She smiled as she kissed down the scattered trail of blond hair on his chest. “Who said anything about sucking?”

He grabbed himself firmly and stroked it up and down. “I did.” He guided himself into her mouth as she got comfortable on the bed. “And if you’re a good girl and make me come, I’ll lick your pussy before I fuck you.”

She looked up and pulled back. “You’ll lick me. Even if I’m terrible at this, you’re going to lick me.”

He laughed. “You’re right. I love the way you taste.”

She grabbed him and began to stroke the way she’d seen him do it. Long and slow movements but with a firm grip. He groaned, but for the most part kept quiet as she licked the head of his dick over and over again. Tasting him. Savoring him. Making him absolutely crazy. Just like he’d done to her every time he kissed her. She cupped his balls and then took him in as deep as she could. He grabbed her hair. “Stop. Fuck. Stop.” But she didn’t. She kept at it until she felt him swell further in her mouth.

He pulled out and reached for a condom he had magically left by the night table. Once it was on, he flipped her onto her stomach. “Plan B. I’ll eat you later. I have to fuck you now.”

And he did.

He fucked her from behind, over and over until he came hard, then he pulled out and made her come with his tongue and fingers, with her ass in the air.

She’d never—ever—had such wild, uninhibited sex.

And now that she’d had it, she didn’t know if she could ever stop.

* * *

Olivia stretched her arms and yawned. When was the last time she’d woken up feeling rested? Turning her head to the clock, her smile faltered and she jumped out of the bed when she saw it was almost noon.

Shit shit shit.

Stumbling out of the room, she ran straight in to find Sophie who’d never, not once in five years, slept past nine o’clock. And she’d been feeling ill when she’d gone to bed. Damn. What kind of mother had crazy monkey sex and then slept until midday without checking up on her sick child?

She opened the door to her daughter’s room. But the room was empty.

“We’re here, mum!” Sophie yelled from the kitchen.

Hustling to the kitchen she saw her daughter with two uneven pig tails, two large bows—one of Moana and one of Trolls—and a big chocolate mustache on her face.

“Joey made me choowate milk and pancakes and cereal for lunch.”

“I see that.” She smiled and turned to Joey. “I’ll thank you for that later when she’s jumping up and down from the sugar high, by the way.”

He chuckled.

“I drewssed all by myself.”

“I did the pigtails,” Joey said proudly.

“Why didn’t you wake me? My alarm didn’t go off.”

“I heard you get up at least six times the last few nights and the night before you were awake all night. I thought I’d let you sleep in a little. And I made sure she took the Benadryl and stayed inside.”

She didn’t even think about it. It was the nicest thing anyone had done for her in such a long time. As a single mother, sleeping in was a luxury she never ever got to have. It scared the hell out of her how much the gesture affected her. She got on her tip toes and kissed him.

“Ewww . . .” Sophie said from the kitchen table. “Only mums and daddy pigs can kiss on the lips.”

Olivia took a step away but Joey reached out and pulled her to his side by the waist. “Freckles, I’m going to tell you something you might not know. Sometimes friends can become girlfriends and boyfriends.”

She looked up and her face broke into a smile. “Like Minnie and Mickey Mouse? They’re girlfriend and boyfriend.”

“Exactly,” Olivia said, with a small laugh.

“And sometimes boyfriends and girlfriends kiss on the mouth.” Joey added.

Sophie looked up as if in deep contemplation. “Like Anna and Kristoff?”

Joey’s eyebrows furrowed and she elbowed him playfully in the side. “Frozen.”

“Yeah, sweets. Like Anna and Kristoff.”

“Like Belle and the Beast.”

“Right,” Olivia said.

Then she took a big spoonful of cereal. “Oh! Like Cinderella and the Prince!” Cereal fell all down her chin.

This was going to go on and on and on . . .

“So, yeah. You got it, sweets. All those.” Then she stepped away from Joey and took a napkin and wiped Olivia’s chin. “How do you feel about that, Soph? You okay about it?”

She shrugged. “Can we catch lizards all the time, Joey?”

“Sure,” Joey said.

“Then . . . yay!” She hopped off the chair and ran and hugged both Olivia and Joey. And that was that. Sophie was on board and apparently Olivia was now Joey’s girlfriend.

And oddly enough, it wasn’t scary. Instead, it was wonderful.

Her daughter grabbed his hand. “Yeah, Mommy, we got dis!”

* * *

A week went by and nothing had progressed. Colin had confessed to attacking Olivia and had said he wanted a million dollars because he knew she had it. Simple as that. But Joey wasn’t buying it. It was too big of an amount. When asked about Connor he denied knowing anything about the whereabouts of his brother.

Since things had calmed down a little, and Olivia was busy working from home with Mark via Skype, Joey decided to go into the office for a little bit. He had to catch up on a bunch of work. And he wanted to do some more digging into Colin and Connor behind the safety of his impenetrable firewall in ICS.

Sophie wasn’t feeling well again. She’d gone outside that morning and had come back in wheezing. Ben was going to be around doing rounds of the neighborhood, and her alarm was state of the art.

“I’ll be back in a few hours,” Joey said. “You sure you’re okay? You want me to have Annie stay with you?”

“I’m fine. Go.”

He bent down and kissed Sophie’s forehead. “I hope you can fix the algae thing if you win,” he said to Olivia, frustrated. “I hate to see her sick.”

“Oh, I will. I’ll at least try harder than McGregor has. If I have to fight the sugar industry my entire term, I will.”

“Good girl,” he smiled. “I miss fishing.”

“I didn’t know you fished.”

“Lots of things to still learn about each other.”

“I look forward to it, Joey.”

“Me too, babe.” And he did. He wanted to know all about her. Then he thought . . .”You think Sophie would like to go fishing?”

“She’d love it. She’d ask you a million questions. Get super excited, but she won’t touch the bait or the fish.”

He chuckled. “Sounds like something I should plan.”

“So, the plan is: capture the bad guys who are messing with me, win the election, and fix the Florida waterways so we can go fishing. Easy enough. I’ll get right on it.”

He chuckled. It was nice to hear her a little less on edge. It reminded him of how she’d been on their date to the go-cart place. “I gotta run, darlin’. Arm the alarm behind me.”

“Bye, Joey.”

“Later, Livie.”

* * *

Apparently breaking into the federal prison database wasn’t hard. Joey spent the next three hours running queries on last known addresses, phone logs, anything, that involved the Mather brothers, but there wasn’t anything unusual. Well, nothing more unusual than what a scumbag lowlife would do. Some of the searches were going to take all night, so he decided to call it a night and come back early the next day.

But before he did that he decided to fuck with McGregor one last time. Sophie being sick because of a neglectful act from the governor was an act of aggression, one which McGregor would not get away with. It took him less than twenty minutes to do what he wanted to do, and once he’d finished he felt pretty happy with himself.

He locked up his office and said goodbye to his employees as he walked out.

As soon as he got into his car his phone rang and the caller ID said Chief Martinez.

“Hello.”

“Clad, it’s Martinez. We got a problem.”

“What?”

“The parole officer from Ocala. The one assigned to Connor Mathers? He just called. Connor’s been missing for the last forty-eight hours. A BOLO has been put out.”

Fuck!

* * *

Olivia was stirring the vat of sauce when she heard shuffling behind her and turned around. There were days she wanted to pull out her hair and stuff her ears with cotton balls, but there were moments, like this one, where she took a mental picture of her daughter and wished time would stand still. Her daughter had an old blanket in one hand, her hair was a mess, and she was rubbing the sleep from her eyes. Normally she didn’t allow her daughter to take naps this late in the afternoon, but the poor girl hadn’t been feeling well, and Olivia had let her sleep—knowing that she’d regret it later when she couldn’t get her to bed. Her allergies were acting up and it was, no doubt, from the horrible stench coming from the water nearby and that damn toxic algae.

Her daughter, sleep still in her eyes, walked into the kitchen and headed, full impact, to her mother and wrapped her sleepy body around her leg.

Olivia turned the stove down and lowered herself to Sophie’s eye level. “You have a good nap, sweets?”

“I don’t wike elevators.”

“It wasn’t too bad. That doesn’t happen often.” What else could she say? Olivia had never liked elevators either. She lifted her daughter and tucked her on her hip. It had been almost two weeks and she still brought it up every few days. “I made your favorite. Spaghetti with sauce.”

“Where’s Joey?”

Her daughter liked Joey. That much was obvious. He’d been gone for the last few hours, but he’d texted at least half a dozen times asking about Sophie. Every time he asked, the emotions she felt for him bubbled up to the surface. She didn’t want to think about him and how perfectly he fit into their lives. None of these things she wanted to think about, but all of them were constantly running through her mind.

Telling him her secrets had felt oddly refreshing, as if unloading all that onto someone else took the big burden off her shoulders.

Connor.

She couldn’t stop thinking about him since his name had come up during the lineup at the police station.

After all these years why would he want anything to do with her? No reason. Which is why she was sure he didn’t have anything to do with anything going on. Why would he want to hurt her? They had been best friends at one time. They’d loved each other, of that she was certain. But she knew firsthand how drugs could change a person, and that worried her.

“Why don’t you set the table?” Olivia instructed Sophie as she brought down three plates and three sets of silverware and glasses and placed them on the table. “Carefully.” Her daughter perked up, loving the task.

“Is Joey almost home, Mommy?”

Home? How was she going to explain it to her daughter? This was not his home. Even if he hadn’t left and for the last month, since meeting him, they’d been practically attached at the hip.

“I’m not sure, sweets. But, we’ll save him some food, okay?”

“Okay.”

The front door opened and closed and her heart rate immediately picked up.

“Hey, baby,” Joey said from behind her, giving her a kiss on the cheek. Her stupid immature ridiculous heart was going to come out of her chest.

“You hungry?” She turned around in his arms.

“Yes.” He leaned in and looked over her shoulder. “Smells good. Thought you only made frozen lasagna?”

“Har har. I can cook a few other things. This is Sophie’s favorite.”

“How’s she doing?” He placed a bag from the pharmacy store on the table. “I got her everything that I found at the drug store to help with allergies.”

I love you! I love you! I love you!

She wanted to scream it! Shake him and make him understand how sweet it was that he’d done that.

But it was too soon, and she wasn’t even sure it was love or just an intense attraction.

He smiled and then heard “Joey!” as Sophie ran to him as if she hadn’t seen him for a month. He released Olivia, and oddly the casualness of him holding her in front of her daughter didn’t make her feel weird or uncomfortable. He lifted Sophie up and flung her up. “Hey, freckles. How are you feeling?”

“Better.” But she wiped her nose with the back of her hand as she said it and probably got snot all over Joey, who didn’t seem grossed out in the least.

He put her down and then looked closer. “Is that a new freckle?” he pointed to her cheek.

“Noooo, silly.” She giggled hard and then took his hand and pulled him. “Look. Look. I set the table,” she said excitedly. “You sit here. Mommy sits here, and I sit here.”

“Thank you, m’lady,” he said as he sat down and Sophie took the napkin and instructed him to tuck it into his shirt like a bib.

“Soph, why don’t you sit so that I can serve you.” Once her daughter was seated Olivia scooped pasta and sauce into her plate, then did the same with Joey’s and lastly with her own.

She noticed that Joey hadn’t started eating until she’d sat down to eat. He’d been waiting on her to sit, which made her almost swoon. He reached over and helped Sophie spoon the spaghetti with the fork.

“This is delicious, Livie.”

“Mum makes good chocowate cake, too,” her daughter said, slurping spaghetti into her mouth. “Mum, can we have cake?”

“She does, does she?” He looked up. “So you bake?”

Again she laughed. “It’s store-bought.” Then she looked at her daughter. “If you eat all your dinner, we’ll talk about cake.”

“I see we’ve been watching Peppa Pig today.”

Olivia took a sip of her wine to hide the smile.

“Yes, today the daddy pig took them to school and he let the piggies eat as much cake as they wanted.”

She rolled her eyes, and took another sip of her wine as Joey chuckled.

* * *

After dinner while Olivia cleaned up with Joey’s help, he said, “She’s awesome, Livie.”

“She’s a handful sometimes. But she is sweet, and so funny you tend to forget how tired you are and give in to her whims.” She finished washing the dishes. “All right, so what did you find out?” She rested her hip against the counter and put down the dishrag.

He went around the island and hopped up on top of it. They were now face to face. “You’re not going to like it, but I’m going to make sure you both are okay.”

“Spill it, Clad. I’m getting more scared.”

“Connor is missing.”

Her eyes widened and she began to bite her nails almost instantly. “Missing?”

“His parole officer called. He was supposed to report two days ago and never showed. They can’t locate him. There’s a search out for him.”

She slumped. Maybe Joey was right. Maybe she was a shitty judge of character.

“You don’t go anywhere without me until Connor is behind bars, got it?”

She nodded. “Got it.”

It saddened her to know her friend’s life had wandered that far down the wrong, dark, path. She knew it was bad, he had spent the better part of the last eighteen years in and out of prison.

“Mommy?” Sophie called out, coughing. “I don’t feel well again.”

She pushed off the counter and went to find her daughter in the living room, looking miserable. She bent down to touch her daughter, the conversation about Connor was effectively over.

“Come on, sweets, time for some medicine and bedtime. You feel a little warm.”

“I want Joey!” her daughter cried. “Joey!”

Joey picked her up and carried her to her room, rocking her and soothing her until she fell asleep.

* * *

Joey paced around the living room waiting for Olivia to finish changing an asleep Sophie into pajamas.

“Is she okay?” he asked, the moment Olivia stepped out of Sophie’s room.

“She’ll be fine. This damn algae thing is going to be my first order of business. You better pray I win.”

“The sugar industry will castrate you. You need to take some of their land to build it, plus you’d be regulating the fertilizer run-off into the waterway. You’ll lose the election if you even talk about it.” The problem had been that the sugar industry, which had a lot of money and lobbyists, did not want their land used for the reservoir and they absolutely didn’t want regulations tightened. Also, a lot of their pesticides ran off into the lakes and bay, which was the cause of most of the toxic algae.

“There was federal funding already earmarked for the reservoir after last year’s outbreak, but even after I’ve petitioned the McGregor a dozen times to account for the money, no one seems to know what happened to it. And now we’re having a worse year. Something’s gotta give. I’m hoping the people are mad enough to ignore the lobbyists and vote for me.”

“Going after them isn’t going to be easy, darlin’.”

“I don’t care. It needs to get done. Have you actually gone to see it for yourself? Drive up about forty minutes and you’ll see how bad it is. You can’t even see the water with the thick level of algae and the smell is putrid. Wildlife is dying.”

“I can listen you talk about this all day.”

She smiled and tipped her head coyly. “Everglades preservation turns you on, huh?” She tucked her legs under her, looking relaxed, her hair in a knot behind her head, not a drop of makeup.

“You talking about something that is important to you turns me on. Now come here, woman.” He grabbed her arm and pulled her to him. “Have I told you that you are the most amazing woman I’ve ever met?”

She smiled and playfully pushed his shoulder. “We’re already sleeping together, you don’t need to lay it on so thick.”

“I’m being serious. You are the smartest, bravest, most beautiful woman I’ve ever met. I’m scared out of my mind about Sophie, but you have your shit together. You’re such a good mother, Livie.” He reached behind her and pulled the rubber band from her hair. It fell over her shoulders and her dark brown hair made her skin look lighter.

Her cheeks pinked a bit. “Well, thank you,” she said shyly.

“You know I wasn’t supposed to be at that electronics store that day? It was Annie’s job, but she was away with Rocco and I ended up going. Best thing that ever happened to me.”

“I’ve never been so happy to have a broken computer.”

He shifted her so she could straddle him. “I want to tell Sophie about us.”

She leaned back a bit, her brows furrowed. “You already did.”

“No. I prepared her for what I really want to tell her.”

“Which is what?”

“Which is that I’m falling in love with her mommy and with her, and that I want to be around all the time.”

Her eyes widened and there was a sheen of moisture on them. She swallowed. “That’s . . .” She cleared her throat.

“It’s a lot. It’s fast. But it is what it is. Why tiptoe around it? I don’t make spur of the moment decisions, I think things through and find logical reasons and solutions. This isn’t any different. I’ve never felt this way. I’m not going to sit on it and go slow just because of some misplaced societal notion of appropriate timing. When is it appropriate to feel a certain way? After a month, two months, a year?” He shrugged. “I feel it now and I’m choosing to go with it.”

She was biting her nails, and he pulled her hand out of her mouth. She paused, then spoke. “I don’t really know how to handle Sophie. She likes you, I like you, I guess that’s enough, right? Yes, I want this too.” She leaned forward and wrapped her arms around his neck. “Let’s do it. I want to talk to her alone first, though.”

“Okay,” he said.

“You really don’t think it’s too fast? How could you be so sure? I dated Neil for a year before we got married.”

“But how long did it take for you to know that it was real? That it wasn’t just a fling? That you were headed into serious relationship territory? I bet it didn’t take a year.”

She shook her head. “No. It took about two weeks.”

“There you go. You wasted a year. Could’ve been on a honeymoon by week three.” He smiled and shifted her tighter against his body.

“I feel the same way, Joey.” She was serious now. “I’m scared because the thought of losing someone else I care about is . . . it’s just too much to bear. But I’m willing to try. With you . . . I want to try.”

“Why’s that, baby?” he said, kissing her cheek and then moving down to her neck. God, he loved her long neck. He wrapped his hand around her hair and pulled it back a little in order to give him better access to her neck.

“Because with Neil it took me two weeks, but with you, I think I knew you were someone special within two minutes of meeting you.”

He froze.

That was the most meaningful thing anyone had ever told him. I love you wouldn’t have been as powerful.

“I want to make love to you,” he said, running his fingers through her hair.

She swallowed and looked breathless but nodded. “I’ll meet you in my room.”

He stood up and made sure the entire house was locked up for the night.

Before going to the room, he went to check in on Sophie and he couldn’t help but brush the hair off her face and check for fevers. It’s something that his mother used to do when they were sick and seeing Sophie feeling unwell made him anxious. He wished he could somehow snap his fingers and just make her feel better. She was cool under his hand, so he lifted her covers, made sure she was nice and tucked in and the padded to his room.

“She had kicked off the covers,” he whsipered, locking the doors behind him.

She kneeled on the bed when he spoke, the sheet sliding off her body revealing she was naked. “You checked on my daughter?”

“Yeah. It’s no big deal, just wanted to make sure she was okay.”

“You checked on my daughter.” This time it wasn’t a question. She crawled forward until she was at the edge of the bed and they were practically nose to nose. “You are a good man, Joey.” She reached for his shirt and pulled it up. “The best man I’ve ever met.”

“I’m basically doing it to get into your pants.” He winked, throwing her words back at her, playfully.

She undid his jeans. “That’s not true.” She wasn’t smiling, she was watching him intensely. Something had shifted in her, it was astonishing to watch it happen.

“No, it’s not true,” he admitted. Because it wasn’t. He’d just told her he was falling in love with her. The time for being coy had long since passed.

He’d never—not once—thought himself lonely. But now, in this short time, he couldn’t imagine coming back to an empty house. The chaos, the noise, the cooking, the coloring, Peppa Pig . . . all of it—he would miss it all if they were gone. And he needed her to understand that.

“You like us.” She moved forward and kissed along his collarbone, forcing his head up, her hands roaming his back. “We like you, too.” She moved down, her mouth licking a trail lower and lower until she bit gently at his nipple, her hand tracing down his chest and into his pants until his rock-hard cock was tightly in her grip.

He groaned when she squeezed and quickly pulled his pants down, stepping out of them. Removing her fingers from the tight grip he shuffled the two of them back onto the bed. “Keep touching me.” He put her hand back on him. “Your mouth, I want it on my cock.”

Without hesitation, she got on her knees, her bare ass by his face as she slowly slipped him into her mouth. With a small gagging sound she took him so deep, he felt the back of her throat. It felt so good, he almost thrust his hips up in ecstasy. “Fuuuuck. Again.”

She licked up and down his shaft, loudly, sloppily, deliciously. It sounded like she was licking her favorite ice cream cone. And then she took him in deep again. A few more times and he was going to come. Not wanting to stop the sensation but also wanting to make her feel pleasure, he lifted her and put her pussy right on his face. “Oh my God. What are you doing?” she yelped.

“Shh . . . put my dick in your mouth, darlin’, or I’m gonna come on your face,” he said, burying his tongue deep inside of her. It didn’t take much, a few firm flicks of his tongue on her clit as he pushed two fingers inside of her, and she was contracting and pulsating on his face. Her grip strengthened on his dick at the same time and he came hard in her mouth, completely spent of all his energy.

“Damn,” he said, sleepily. “I haven’t done that in years.”

“Why isn’t 69 a thing anymore? It should be a thing. People should be 69-ing all the time!” She yawned against his thigh and he laughed and moved her so she was tucked underneath his shoulder.

“I think it is a thing, babe. It’s fun and feels fucking great, but not as great as having my cock in you, so let’s make that a thing instead of 69.”

“Sounds like a plan.” She yawned again. “Stay here. Sleep with me.”

“Are you sure? Sophie is in the next room.”

“One of us can leave before she wakes up. Just put on some clothes.” She reached down to the floor blindly and threw his T-shirt to him, but he took it and slid it onto her, then went to his bag, took out some gym shorts, and slid those on. Unlocking the door in case Sophie needed them, he went back to bed with Olivia, feeling sated by the sex, but more than that . . . feeling as if this was exactly where he belonged.

A loud cough and wheezing sound woke them up sometime early the next morning. They were both up and rushing to Sophie’s room a moment later. “Mommy.” She coughed twice. “I don’t feel good.”

“Top drawer of my night table, I have an inhaler. Grab it.” Joey ran to Olivia’s room, grabbed the inhaler, and ran back into the room. “Relax, Joey. She’s okay. Here, honey,” she said, placing the inhaler into the little girl’s mouth and pumping it once and then again.

After a while of rocking her back and forth in her mother’s arms, Sophie’s breathing got better and she fell back asleep. “I may have to take her to the doctor if she wakes up worse.”

“Let’s take her to the ER now.”

“She’s fine, Joey. She’s not wheezing anymore, and her breathing is back to normal.”

“Are you sure?”

“I’m positive.”

Joey looked at the clock. It was four in the morning. Sophie would be awake again in two hours.

“Let’s go to bed,” Olivia said, looking tired.

“How often does this happen?”

“What? Allergies, asthma?”

“No, that she wakes up in the middle of the night.”

“All the time. Couple times a week. Normally it’s because she’s scared, not because she feels sick. Why?”

“I can’t imagine how you do this alone. When do you sleep?”

“When I can. You get used to it.”

He was wide awake, his heart in his throat. How did you get used to it? How could she sleep with her daughter sick? “I’m going to sleep on the couch just in case she wakes up. I don’t want her to catch us in bed together.”

“You sure?” Olivia’s eyes were practically closing on themselves.

“Positive.” He kissed her lips and led her back to bed, then went to the living room, turned on his laptop and went to work. He spent the rest of the night looking up Connor Mathers, in between checking in on Sophie every few minutes.

It was early in the morning and he was pouring himself a mug of coffee. Olivia was showering, as far as he could tell from the sound of running water. Sophie padded to the kitchen, a ragged purple blanket in her hand, her hair tousled, still partly asleep. “Good morning, freckles, how do you feel?”

She didn’t answer. She just kept walking and crashed into him and wrapped her arms around his leg, something he’d seen her do every morning to Olivia. God, the way his heart hammered in his chest when she was around. It was an overwhelming surge of protectiveness and affection he’d never felt before. He lifted her up and she put her head on his shoulder.

Pulling a chair out, he sat down and just let her rest against him while he drank his coffee. She didn’t feel warm but she did keep sniffling. He wanted to wrap her up in a bubble of safety and make sure nothing got in—not bad guys, not germs.

Walking into the kitchen with her hair wet, in shorts and a T-shirt, Olivia kissed the top of his head then Sophie’s before walking to the coffee. “She tackle-hugged you, huh? She does that. Wakes up, still sleepy, and wants to be held.”

Huh, was that what it was?

“I can get her,” she said, sitting down and extending her arms.

“Nah, I’m good.”

“Okay,” she said, sipping her coffee. “What’s the plan today?”

“I have to go to the office for a little bit. I left some searches running and I want to check in on the results.”

“No problem. I have a ton of work to do anyway.”

He’d seen her working endlessly, answering questions online, working on emails, spreadsheets with budgets laid out on his kitchen table, Skype sessions with Mark . . .

The press were being relentless about interviewing her, but she refused. Mark had suggested she make a statement to appease them, but even that she refused. She didn’t want to be on television while Mathers was on the loose. She was keeping a low profile, using the fact that she’d been attacked and was recovering as an excuse.

She was trailing in the polls, but not by much, she’d told him yesterday.

He kissed the top of Sophie’s head and passed the sleepy girl to her mother. “I’m going to get going. Ben is doing rounds and I’m just a few minutes away if you need me.”

“Don’t worry about us, we’re fine.”

Since meeting these two, worry was all he could do.

But it was worth it, because they were worth it. They were worth everything.