Hot Winter Nights Read online

  Her second boyfriend had bailed even faster.

  It’d left her leery of revealing too much of herself, naked or otherwise. The funny thing was, in spite of everything, she still felt whole. Or mostly, anyway. But while she was okay with her body just how it was, she couldn’t expect anyone else to be. “It’s residual nerve damage from an old injury when I was fourteen.”

  “What happened?” Lucas asked.

  “I was stupid.” She pointed out the windshield. “If you turn here instead of at the next light, it’s faster.”

  Lucas looked frustrated at the subject change but didn’t comment further as he made the turn. He parked in front of an apartment building that looked like its heyday had long ago come and gone. “Which apartment?”

  “It’s 105, bottom floor.” She got out of the car, not at all surprised when Lucas moved fast enough to come around and offer her a hand. He didn’t say anything when she straightened her leg and gave it a minute before trusting it to hold all her weight. Soon as she nodded, he stepped back.

  They headed up the walk of the apartment complex, a steep set of stairs that left her in the unhappy position of dragging her leg where it didn’t want to go. She could tell Lucas had set his pace to hers which piqued her pride, but facts were facts. It was a bad nerve day, it happened, and she’d long ago learned to deal with it. She was still working on accepting it.

  Night had fallen, and while there were lights on the street, the building itself seemed dark. She glanced around, trying to be aware of her surroundings, but felt grateful to have Lucas with her. “Seems a little sketch.”

  “The whole street is sketch.” He took her hand, walking very slightly ahead of her, clearly in protector mode. Fine by her, she wasn’t going to ever be the stupid chick in the horror flick.

  “Let’s walk around back,” he murmured, leading the way along the side of the building. In the back was an alley and a few dark windows and one lit.

  The lit window was suddenly raised and a woman stuck her head out. She was a hundred years old if she was a day, and had a been-smoking-for-six-decades voice. “What are you two up to?”

  “We’re here to visit a friend but he’s not home,” Lucas said smoothly. “In 105.”

  “St. Nick?” the woman asked.

  “Yes,” Molly said. “You know him?”

  “I play bingo at the village, even though I have yet to win, that fucker. Now’s not a real good time to catch him. He’s probably sleeping. He’s nocturnal, you know. And he had a long night last night with his latest girl.”

  “Long night?” Lucas asked.

  “Yeah, and either he’s great in bed or he just likes her to agree with him. A lot.”

  Lucas grimaced, thanked the woman, and walked silently with Molly back to the car.

  “I’m not sure what it says about me that a sixty-year-old Santa is getting more than I am,” she said.

  “Money or sex?”

  “Probably both.”

  Lucas was wise enough not to comment as he drove but she sensed amusement. When his phone buzzed an incoming call, he glanced at the screen and blew out a breath. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I have to take this one too. Brace yourself.”

  Before she could ask why, he’d connected the call. “Hey, mom. You’re on speaker.”

  “Don’t you hey me. And you’re on speaker too.”

  “Hi, Lucas,” came another female voice.

  “Sis,” Lucas said.

  “Where are you?” his mother asked. “And don’t say at work!”

  “Okay, I won’t say.”

  “You suck,” his sister said. “I’d say worse, but your nephew’s asleep on me right now and he has tender ears.”

  “Laura,” Lucas’s mom admonished and Molly caught a very pleasing to the ears hint of her Portuguese accent. “And I know you haven’t forgotten that it’s game night,” she said to Lucas. “Tell me the truth. Did you take on another case just to avoid it?”

  Lucas nodded his head yes to Molly but to his mom, he said, “Of course not.”

  “Fine,” she said. “I get it. You hate game night. But Laura says you still have the Cards Against Humanity game in your trunk from when she borrowed your car a few week ago. Drop it by?”

  “You have other games. A whole cabinet of them.”

  “We want that one.”

  “Or this is a trick and you just want to see me.”

  “Are you calling your mama a liar?” she asked sweetly.

  Lucas blew out a breath. “Fine. But I can’t stay.”

  “Baby, you have to eat dinner.”

  “No can do tonight, sorry.”

  “I made cozido a portuguesa.”

  Lucas groaned. “The big guns.”

  “No, the big gun is the bolo de bolacha I made for dessert. And if you don’t come by, I’m going to let Laura and my grandbaby take them all home.”

  “You’re evil to the bone.”

  “And don’t forget it. You love me anyway.”

  “I do.” Lucas glanced Molly’s way and she did her best to look like she hadn’t been very busy eavesdropping. “I’m five minutes out, but I can’t stay, I really am on a job.” He disconnected and blew out a breath.

  “Don’t not stay on my account,” Molly said. “I don’t know what it was she was cooking, but it sounded amazing.”

  “Portuguese stew and cookie cake.”

  Her mouth watered. “Well, far be it for me to be the reason you miss out.”

  Molly could cook. If she had to. But she didn’t enjoy it at all and tried very hard not to do it unless she had no other choice, such as it was the end of the month and she was low on funds or if there was a zombie apocalypse. Joe cooked, but only because he’d discovered women thought a man in the kitchen was sexy. Molly had inherited her dislike of cooking from her dad, whose idea of cooking was opening a can of Chef Boyardee. “Sounds like you’ve got a nice, normal family.”

  He glanced over at her and caught her looking at him. A small smile touched his lips as he turned his attention back to the road. When she didn’t say anything more, he glanced over again. “Was that a personal question?”

  Was it? “No.” Liar . . . “Maybe.”

  “Well for starters, I wouldn’t exactly use ‘normal’ to describe my family,” he said. “They love loud, but also fight loud. At any given moment, my mom could throw her shoe at you or hug you. It’s always a calculated risk to let her get too close until you know if you’re in good standing.”

  Molly smiled. “Sounds nice.”

  Again he looked over at her. “You and Joe are close.”

  She shrugged.

  “I’ve seen you smack him upside the back of his head so hard that he nearly swallowed his tongue,” Lucas said. “I’ve also seen the look on your face when he’s hurt. Like on that job last year when he took a bat to the skull, you lost it. Understandably, of course.”

  It’d been one of the scariest moments in her life, and that was saying something. He’d fully recovered, but there for a while it’d been touch and go, and the memory of that, the gut-clenching, heart-wrenching fear that her brother might die and leave her alone in this world with no one but her dad, had terrified her to the bone. “Yeah, we’re close,” she said. “But it’s a different kind of close. It’s like we’ve had to be in order to survive.”

  He glanced over at her. “I get that. More than you might think.”

  It was her turn to look at him, but he was concentrating on the road. He made a few quick turns and ended up on a street that was well lit and lined with older Victorian homes, well lived in but all extremely well taken care of, many of them decorated for the holidays in holly and garland and twinkling lights.

  Lucas stopped in front of a house that was lit up from top to bottom, complete with reindeer cutouts on the grass. The driveway held six cars. Two more were parked on the lawn with the reindeer. The street was filled with cars.

  “Holy cow,” Molly said.

  Lucas squee