her.
Roux got up just as Luca came back from the bathroom. Maddy was a dawdler, but I’d wondered what had taken him so long, and now I saw he had already struggled into his borrowed Aqualung wet suit, still damp from yesterday. It was a little short, a slice of bare ankle showing at the bottom, but this time of year the water was still warm enough for it not to matter.
“Gym time,” Roux said, though she was still in her street clothes.
I didn’t breathe a sigh of relief. I didn’t react at all. She paused to drop a cool kiss on her boy’s cheek on the way.
“Have fun. Be good,” she told him.
“Always,” he said.
She saw herself out.
“You could have waited until we got to the pool. That can’t be comfortable,” I said to Luca.
“I know,” he said, sheepish, pulling at the wrist. He did look good in it.
Behind Luca I could see his jeans and T-shirt in a crumpled heap on the bathroom rug. Typical teen boy, thank God. Here was my chance.
I said to Maddy, “Let me run to the restroom and we can go. Watch the baby?”
I stepped into the guest bath. Once the door was closed, I leaned down and picked up Luca’s wadded clothes. I folded the T-shirt neatly and set it on the counter. Then I picked up the jeans and ran my hands around the pockets.
He had a wallet in the back one. I took it out and flipped it open. A crisp twenty in the money pocket. No credit card, no insurance card, but a Maryland driver’s license. I didn’t know enough about that state to know how real it looked. It couldn’t be real, though, because the name on it was Luca Roux. I put it back and checked the front pockets.
I found Luca’s key ring. It was a lightweight metal bull’s face, goofy and cartoonish. Probably something from a meme I was too old to get or care about. A single key dangled from the ring in the bull’s nose. No car key. So Roux hadn’t given him free access to the purring red monster she’d jacked from Boyce, which either represented a little bit of responsible parenting or she had control issues.
I slipped the bull in my pocket, then stacked all of Luca’s clothes except his T-shirt neatly by the sink. I flushed the toilet for cover and took the T-shirt out with me.
“Hey, kids? I have bad news. I just realized we’re short a couple of air tanks.”
“Oh, man!” Maddy said. “I can’t go? I mean, I know it’s just the pool, but . . .”
“We don’t even have enough for me. I was counting on the nitrox upstairs, but I burned that on the morning dive I did the other day. It’s no big deal, I’ll run pick up some more. Can you keep Oliver? You and Luca can watch the last video.” I handed Luca his T-shirt. “Take the wet suit off so you don’t swelter. I’ll be gone half an hour, forty-five minutes tops.”
“Sure,” Mad said. She reached one easy hand out to the back of Luca’s suit, pulling the drawstring to undo his zipper. Her eyes lingered on the bare skin of his back.
“And, Mads, let Luca pay attention to the video, okay? You watch the baby,” I said.
“I will,” she said, too offhand for my liking.
“He needs to know this stuff so he can dive safely,” I told her, stern. I didn’t like leaving them alone. Not with the way she looked at him and all the ways he did not look at her. I didn’t want her doing things that would mean the world to her and be nothing more than opportunity and hormones for him. He was a nice kid, but he was still a teenager.
Mad was grinning. “You’re so mommitty sometimes.”
“I’ll take that as a compliment,” I said. Oliver was yawning, but I hoped his nap would hold off until I returned. He’d make a pretty good chaperone. Since Oliver’s arrival Davis and I had learned firsthand how excellent babies were at preventing or at least interrupting sex.
Luca had struggled the rest of the way out of the wet suit, and Mad’s eyes slid sideways at his bare chest, lean and pale and smoothly muscled. He was oblivious, pulling his T-shirt on over his swimming trunks, but it didn’t set my mind wholly at ease. I’d stolen glances at Tig just like that a thousand times without him ever