Plum Lovin' (Stephanie Plum 12.50)

“I'm babysitting for Charlene, and I've lost a kid, and two more are surfing porn sites, and it's going to look real bad if I have to shoot them.”

“I'm not actually a kid person,” Diesel said.

“I ordered pizza.”

“Honey, you need to come up with something better than pizza as a bribe.”

“Okay you can sleep in the bed… but you have to stay on your side.”

“Deal.”

Diesel and the pizza arrived at the same time. Diesel paid the delivery kid and brought the pizza inside. He dropped the three boxes on the table, opened one, and took a piece.

“You have one kid sitting at the table,” Diesel said. “Where are the others?”

“Two are upstairs and refuse to come down. I can't find Junior.”

Diesel stood silent for a moment. He turned slightly and looked around the room. He ate some of his pizza and popped the top on a can of soda. “He's under the sink,” Diesel said.

I opened the under-the-sink cabinet door and peeked in at Junior. “Do you want pizza?”

“Can I eat it in here?”

I gave him a piece of pizza on a paper towel and closed the door on him.

“Can I have a piece?” Ralph asked.

“Knock yourself out,” Diesel said. “I'm going to get your brothers.”

Ralph and I helped ourselves to pizza, and Diesel disappeared up the stairs. There was a lot of kid yelling followed by silence. Moments later, Diesel ambled into the kitchen with Russell and Ernie. He had both of them by the backs of their shirts, and their feet weren't touching the floor.

Diesel plunked Russell and Ernie down and selected a second piece of pizza. “Looks like I'm going to be here for a while,” he said to Russell and Ernie. “Might as well make it worthwhile. Do you guys play poker? Have you got any money?”

Diesel, Russell, Ernie, and Ralph were still at the kitchen table when Charlene got home. I was watching television. Junior was asleep on the couch next to me.

“How'd it go?” I asked Charlene.

“I think this was the first time in five years no one spilled milk at dinner. It felt weird. And he kissed me good night at the door. That felt weird, too, but I liked it. He's a really nice man.”

“Is he your true love?”

“Too early to tell, but he has potential. He's invited me and the kids to his house for dinner tomorrow night.”

Diesel meandered in from the kitchen. “Just in time,” he said to Charlene. “We were playing pepperoni poker, and we ran out of pepperoni.”

Ralph was trailing behind Diesel. “He won all the pep-peronis, and then he ate them,” Ralph said.

I raised an eyebrow at Diesel.

“I'm good at cards,” Diesel said.

“You were playing with kids!”

“Yeah, but they cheat.”

“He said if he caught us cheating again, he'd turn us into toads,” Ralph said. “He can't do that, can he?”

“What's with this toad thing?” I said to Diesel.