A Secret for a Secret (All In 3)

She tips her head, and a slight smile curves one corner of her mouth.

I pause to tell her, “My dad always sang ‘Happy Birthday’ twice when we washed our hands; then we’d know all the germs were gone. Do your parents do that?”

She shakes her head.

“Want me to keep singing?”

At her nod, I start over, thinking it doesn’t hurt for us to wash our hands longer, considering how ill her poor brother seems to be. Once we’re all done, we dry our hands with paper towels. Back in my office, I clear a spot on my desk for her and grab some paper from the printer while Lavender unpacks her knapsack.

I pull up a chair beside mine, and Lavender sits on her knees, shimmying forward until she can reach the desk and her crayons. She picks up a piece of blank paper and very carefully lines up the corners, her tongue poking out as she tries to get one side to line up and then the other. But her little hands make it impossible.

“Do you want to make a card for your brother?”

She nods.

“Can I show you a trick?”

Another nod.

“You hold the corners for me, okay?” I wait until her little fingers are pressed on each corner; then I pinch the center on both ends, helping her flatten it out. For the next half hour we sit side by side, quietly coloring. Every once in a while Lavender peeks over at my paper to see what I’m drawing.

Crayons aren’t the best medium for fine art, but I follow the contours of her face, sketching lines with a pencil first before I start filling them in with color. When Lavender is done with the card for her brother—she spells River without any vowels, although she’s barely four—she starts another picture while I continue working on mine.

Lavender tugs on my sleeve to get my attention.

“What’s up, kiddo?”

She points to the two crayons I’ve been using to shade in the area around the nose and then the picture itself. “How do that?”

She’s pretty shy around people she doesn’t know, but maybe since we’ve met a bunch of times, she’s getting more comfortable around me. “You mean the shading?”

“Yes. The sading.” She points at her own picture. This one has a big sun in the sky. “I want here.”

“Want me to show you how?”

We bend over her picture together, and I lightly run the yellow crayon around the edge of the sun, filling in the middle. Lavender hands me the orange crayon when I set down the yellow one and slips it back in the package.

She doesn’t have the manual dexterity yet to be able to manage it, but I can already see her eye for color in the way she sets up her pictures.

“Do you ever use paint instead of crayons?”

Her lips pucker and her fingers flex, lids fluttering rapidly. She exhales a loud breath and says softly, “At home. It’s too messy for here.”

“Mmm. Good point. But maybe we can find a time to paint together, when it’s okay to be messy. Would you like that?”

A huge smile breaks across her face, and she claps her hands. “Oh, yes!”

“I’d like that too.”

We go back to working on her drawing, heads bent together over her paper while we shade in her sun, then give it a silly face.

And that’s exactly how King finds us when he stops by, likely wanting to discuss our dinner plans for tonight. His eyes flare with surprise, and a wide grin makes his gorgeous face even more stunning. “Miss Lavender, what a wonderful surprise.”

She ducks her head and gives him a shy smile, peeking up at him from under her lashes as she waves.

“What are you two up to?” He tucks his thumbs into the pockets of his khakis and rocks back on his heels.

“Creating masterpieces, of course.” I hold up the card she made for her brother, where Lavender re-created a version of a puking emoji sitting in a sunny field, but instead of throw up, it’s a rainbow coming out of his mouth.

“That is definitely a masterpiece. We should call the Louvre and tell them we have the next Picasso on our hands.”

“I totally agree.”

Lavender blushes some more and snuggles into my arm.

The door to my dad’s office opens, and a man I’ve seen once before, when Corey was first brought to the team, steps out. I have to assume he’s Corey’s agent. I seriously hope he gets a decent cut of his salary for dealing with so much bullshit. Alex and my dad follow behind him. They all look a little worse for wear, and agitated. The men shake hands, and Corey’s agent nods at us, then rushes out like his ass is on fire.

Alex runs a hand down his face and sighs. “Well, that’s three fuc—” He stops just before he completes the curse, his gaze landing on his daughter, whose eyes are as wide as saucers, and a hint of a naughty smile flirts at the corners of her mouth. I’m sure she’s heard bad words before, since Violet often forgets to censor herself.