“Do not presume to tell me that flagrantly frequently flouting the law—”
Flagrantly frequently flouting, can she say that three times fast? I can’t even think it three times fast. Fragrant flou— Nope. Not even once.
“—is not a big deal. Especially given what we’ve been up to today. We just got back from seeing your severely incarcerated father and your go-to move once we left was to break the law? How did I miss the fact that the father of my child has a criminal mind?”
“I don’t know,” Archer admitted. “I did help you kill a guy, remember. After your dead mom hired me to spy on you.”
Argh, don’t bring that up! I warned the Horde not to ever bring that up!
“It’s been his go-to for years,” Jack broke in, possibly to shift the subject away from murder, or to stick it to Archer. Though there was no reason it had to be one or the other. “You know he did that the day after he passed his driver’s test, right? Think about that for a second: The guy didn’t even have the laminated license yet, yet his thirst to flout the law was that strong. Tragic.”
Leah jabbed a finger in the boy’s direction. “This brother or cousin of yours is helpful and makes a great point!”
“I have a name,” Jack huffed. “It’s Arianna Kissmybutt. The second ‘t’ is silent.”
“Get bent, Arianna,” Archer snapped.
“Whoa! Do you kiss my mother with that mouth?”
Archer turned back to his fire-breathing fiancée. “Leah, you’re acting like you’ve never been in a car with me before.”
“Ha! I wish. And putting up with something isn’t the same as condoning it.”
“Those two things? Are exactly the same thing,” Jack pointed out.
“Jack, enough,” Angela muttered. “This is not the time to instigate loved ones into a full-blown WWE wrestling match.”
“That’s never true, cuz. Particularly now. It’s the perfect time.”
“I’m telling you right now, Archer Asshat* Drake, I’m not tolerating your— Oh shit!”
Wow! So irked she can’t even finish sentences now! She just randomly swears. Jack was right: I should be filming this.
Leah had frozen in place, then looked down and grabbed her belly with both hands like she was trying to tickle herself. When she looked up, she looked astonished and thrilled and afraid. “There it is again! I felt her, she’s kicking!”
“You can tell it’s a foot?” Archer managed to look impressed and puzzled at the same time.
“Well, kicking or punching. It sounds malevolent if it’s a punch, though, so I’m not sure that’s fair.”
“Wait, what do you mean ‘again’?”
“I didn’t know for sure the first time,” Leah replied defensively. “I’d just had a lot of ginger ale. I didn’t want to jump the gun.”
Ginger ale = maybe not a kicking or punching baby. Got it.
“In that case, I’m thrilled you’re temporarily gas-free.” Archer reached out and pulled Leah to him, which was tricky since she was still frozen in the act of tickling herself and she’d set her feet.
“Hey!” she snapped, but let herself get grabbed. “You’re not off the hook, you scofflaw bastard.”
“I know, I know. I’m sorry.” He gave up on the hug attempt and patted her stiff shoulders instead. “You’re totally right, my first instinct after leaving a prison should not be to rack up misdemeanors.”
“That’s all I was saying.”
“Because things are different now.”
“That’s all I was saying, too!”
“I’m agreeing with you.”
“And apologizing.”
“And apologizing,” he soothed.
“Because you were totally in the wrong.”
“One hundred percent.”
“And this isn’t about hormones!”
“Nope.”
“Okay.”
“Okay.”
“It’s great you two made up,” Jack said, “but this is boring now.”
Archer by now had sort of snuck an arm around Leah’s shoulders in a stealth side hug, which didn’t prevent him from frowning at the youngest Drake. “Why aren’t you making frosting right now? Those brownies are brazenly naked. C’mon, Leah, let’s lay—”
“Lie,” she corrected.
“—ourselves down and marvel at your lack of gas.”
“You’re ridiculous.”
“Irrelevant!”
Angela watched them go, not a little jealous. Not about the baby—there wasn’t a single detail about pregnancy that didn’t sound ghastly and she was in no hurry to experience any of it. But she was definitely envious of Archer’s connection with Leah. They’d fallen in love while protecting each other. They had taken life, then made it. Made a person. Well, they were working on a person. They were workshopping a person. And yes, it was overly simple but no less true: Things were different now.
“So I can’t,” she finished aloud.
She heard twin clicks and saw Jack was fitting the beaters into his hand mixer. “Yeah, figured you’d see it that way.”
“What way? I didn’t let any details drop.”
“Didn’t have to, because you were thinking the same thing I was. You don’t want another generation of Drakes growing up in ICC visitation.”
“Damn right I don’t.”
“Not that we did because Uncle Dennis usually wouldn’t let us visit, but you get what I mean.”
“Yes.”
“So you’re still in.”
“Yes.”
“And we’re all still in.” He thumbed the power button and started whirring cocoa powder, powdered sugar, and vanilla together in the bowl.
“Yes!” she shouted over the mixer. “And you are way too young to have that much insight into people!”
“And I barely put any effort into it!” he hollered back. “Think about that!”
“I can’t! It’ll keep me up at night!”
Newly energized, and not yelling over the hand mixer, Angela headed for her laptop. There had to be something there. Or something that was already there would lead in a new direction. If not at first glance, maybe later tonight. Or later this week. Either way, her self-indulgent daydream was over, and it was past time to get back to work.
She’d come back later for the bowl.
FOURTEEN
“I picked up the mail.”
“Okay,” Angela replied absently, engrossed in the minutia of legal jargon.
“You didn’t have anything. Just some catalogs.”
“Thanks for the update.”
“So. How was . . . everything? Um . . .”
Angela looked up. It had finally happened, the thing she had long foreseen: Her mom had forgotten her only daughter’s name. Dammit! Jordan wins the pool.
“Angela,” she prompted.
“I know that,” the older woman snapped. “For heaven’s sake.” She was standing in the doorway to Angela’s office in her long yellow robe, the one Jordan and Paul insisted made her look like a sleepy banana. Her short brown hair, streaked with silver, was damp from her pre-bed shower and she was in fret pose number two: one hand on her hip, the other reaching up to fiddle with the neckline of her nightgown (also pale yellow, so sleepy banana—times two).
Huh. Six p.m. already? And did she just snap at me? Careful, Mom. You’ll sound engaged. What’s next, raising your voice?
Mom coming in (well . . . not exactly in, since she almost never crossed the threshold) was a rarity. To be fair, all the Drakes respected Angela’s office, formerly her father’s office.
At first she’d kept it as a shrine: leaving his diplomas up, never switching out the old pictures of his kids and nephews, working around his paperwork rather than filing his away to make room for hers. She saved the chewed pens. She didn’t empty the recycling. She left his coffee cup on the desk blotter for more than a year, and finally threw it away (coffee, she had learned, gets cold, scums over, shrinks, gets sludgy, gets moldy, and eventually disintegrates, ruining the cup in the process).