God, was all Eve could think. She must look pathetic. “I got it, go on. I want to put a couple hours in while I’m here. I’ll see you tomorrow.”
“It’ll take you three trips, at least.” McNab pulled out his communicator. “I’ll tag a couple of uniforms for the hauling.”
Eve started to object, then shrugged. It would take her three trips, and that was a waste of time and energy.
“Sure you don’t want to grab a bite?” Peabody asked. “You didn’t even snag a brownie today.”
“I’ll grab something here.”
Peabody’s hesitation told Eve she wanted to push, but she backed off. “If you change your mind, the place we’re going’s only a couple blocks down. Beijing South.”
She wasn’t going to change her mind, but Eve found, after the evidence was logged, she wasn’t going to put in a couple hours either. She was done, finished, out of steam.
But neither could she face going home.
So she went where she supposed she’d known she’d end up. She went to Mavis.
It had been her apartment building once, and one Roarke owned. Just one more of the links between them, she supposed. Not long after she’d moved in with Roarke, Mavis and Leonardo had set up house in Eve’s old apartment. They’d worked a deal with Roarke months before, and had expanded their unit by renting the one next to it, and taking out walls, building more.
With Mavis a hot-ticket music star, and Leonardo a major fashion designer, they could have lived in any exclusive building, bought any trendy house. But this was where they wanted to be, with Peabody and McNab as their neighbors.
She’d never been attached to the apartment, Eve thought as she headed up to it. She’d never been attached to any place she’d lived. Just a place to dress and sleep between shifts.
She’d tried not to become attached to the warm and magnificent glamour of Roarke’s home, but she’d lost the battle. She loved it, every room, probably even those she hadn’t been in yet. She loved the sweep of the lawn, the trees, the way he used the space.
Now, here she was, back at the start, dragging her heels about going back to the house she loved. And the man.
Leonardo answered. She saw it in his eyes, those big, liquid eyes of his, the sympathy. Then he simply enfolded her. The gesture had tears rushing to her throat that had to be brutally swallowed down.
“I’m so glad to see you.” Those enormous hands rubbed, gently as bird wings, up and down Eve’s back. “Mavis is just changing Belle. Come in.” He laid his wide hands on her cheeks and kissed her. “How about some wine?”
She started to refuse. Wine, empty stomach, stress. Then she shrugged. Fuck it. “That’d be good.”
He took her coat, and bless him, didn’t ask how she was or where Roarke might be. “Why don’t you go back and see Mavis and Belle? I’ll bring you the wine.”
“Back? Back to…”
“The nursery.” He beamed a smile. His face was big, like the rest of him, the color of burnished copper. His at-home wear was a pair of brilliantly blue pants with legs as wide as Utah and a silky sweater in snow-blind white.
When she hesitated, he gave her a little nudge. “Go on. To the right through the archway, then left. Mavis will be thrilled.”
The apartment looked nothing like it had under her style. There was so much color it was dizzying, and yet it was cheerful. So much clutter it was impossible to see it all, and yet it was happy.
She passed under an archway that struck her as probably Moroccan in style, then turned into the nursery.
She thought of Rayleen Straffo’s pink and white and frothy bedroom. There was pink here, too, and some white. And there was blue and yellow and green and purple in flashes and streaks, rivers and pools. There was everything.
It was Mavis’s rainbow.
The crib was swirled with color, as was the rocker system chair Eve had given Mavis for her baby shower. There were dolls and stuffed animals and pretty lights. On the walls fairies danced under more rainbows or around fanciful trees bursting with glossy fruit or flowers.
And Eve saw stars sparkling on the ceiling.
Under them Mavis stood, bent over a kind of high, padded table, singing in the squeaky voice millions loved, to a wriggling baby.
“No more poopie for Bella Eve. You have the prettiest poopie in the history of poopies, but my beautiful Belle’s butt is all clean, all shiny. My beautiful, beautiful Belle. Mommy loves her beautiful Bellarina.”
She lifted the baby now, who wore some sort of dress in pale pink that fell in soft folds and flounces. There were bows in the shape of flowers in the baby’s soft crop of dark hair.
Mavis nestled and swayed, then did a little dancing turn.
And saw Eve.
Her face, soft with mother love, went bright and happy, and told Eve everyone had been exactly right. She should have come here before.
“Poopie?” Eve commented. “You say poopie now?”
“Dallas!” Mavis rushed over in green slippers that were made to look like grinning frogs. With the baby cradled in one arm, she hugged Eve hard with the other. She smelled of powder and lotion. “I didn’t hear you come in.”
“Just got here.” Eve made the effort, and found it wasn’t as hard as she imagined. She took a good look at the baby. “She’s bigger,” she observed. “Looks more…”
Mavis lifted a glossy black brow. “You were going to say human.”
“Okay, yeah, because she does. She also looks like some of you, some of Leonardo. How do you feel?”
“Tired, happy, weepy, thrilled. Want to hold her?”
“No.”
“For one minute,” Mavis insisted. “You can time it.”
“I could break her.”
“You won’t break her. Sit down first, if you’re nervous about it.”
Trapped, Eve avoided the rainbow chair and took the traditional rocker in neon pink. She braced herself when Mavis leaned over and laid the baby in her arms.
No poopie, at least, Eve reminded herself, and stared down as Belle stared up. “I don’t like the way she’s looking at me. Like she’s planning something.”
“She’s figuring you out, that’s all.” Mavis turned and beamed as Leonardo came in with drinks.
Where he was big-redwood big-Mavis was a pixie. A little ball of energy with an explosion of hair currently the color of ripe apricots. She wore a lounge suit with more frogs hopping over her legs and a crowned one in the middle of her chest.
“You can rock her,” Mavis suggested.
“I’m not moving. Something may happen.” And at that moment, Belle poked out her bottom lip, then scrunched up her pretty face. Then let out a pitiful wail.
“Okay, time’s up,” Eve decided, absolutely. “Come and get her, Mavis.”
“She’s just hungry. I was going to feed her before, but she needed changing first.”
To Eve’s relief, Mavis took the baby and sat in the rainbow chair. Then to Eve’s astonishment, Mavis tugged at the frog prince. Her breast popped out, and Belle’s mouth latched on like a hungry leech.
“Wow.”
“There you are, my baby. There you go. Mommy’s milk train is in the station.”
“You both really got the hang of that.”
“We’re a mag team. Leonardo, would you mind if we had a little all-girl time?”
“Absolutely not.” But he bent first to kiss his wife, then his daughter. “My beauties. My angels. I’ll be right out in my studio if you need me.”
He set something frothy in the holder of the system chair, then gave Eve her wine.
In the ensuing silence all Eve could hear was an active sucking sound.
“So…” Mavis nursed and rocked, nursed and rocked. “Why haven’t I heard any media dirt about a blonde fuckhead found floating in the East River?”
Eve lifted her wine, set it down. And did what she’d needed to do all day. She cried like a baby.
“Sorry. Sorry.” When she had herself under some control, she scrubbed her face. “That was bottled up, I guess.” She saw Mavis had tears of sympathy on her cheeks, and had shifted Belle to the other breast. “I shouldn’t be here like this. It probably screws up the milk or something.”