HIS EMOTIONS

“Is that wrong?” she asked, still grinning.

He scowled at her, then shook his head and wrinkled his nose. “Fine, fine. Big joke. But you have to admit, I’m not doing badly.”

“I suppose,” she conceded with a nod. “But smells to me as if you’ve got a little problem facing you at the moment.”

“And I’ll handle it,” he said firmly, as though he was trying to convince himself, as well as her.

“Okay then, get to it.”

He scrubbed one hand across his face, looked down into the crib and murmured, “How can someone so cute smell so bad?”

“Yet another universal mystery,” she told him.

“Another?”

“Never mind,” Lucia said, thinking back to her conversation with Maxie when Lucia was still on the ship. Before the redhead. Before she’d left in such a hurry. Oh God. Lucia straightened up and closed her eyes. Maxie. Wait until she found out that Dave was here.

“You okay?” he asked.

Opening her eyes again, she looked at him, so out of place there in her sons’ nursery, and told herself that this was just w