“I’m wholeheartedly against it.”
At that, he busted out laughing.
I liked to make him laugh, but I was confused.
“What was that about?” I asked when his laughter died down.
“Dad tried to find out where we were at by making mention I didn’t know what kind of martinis you liked. Instead of just asking about you. About us. About how I feel about you. Where I met you. What it meant that you were at his house, meeting him and Mom and having dinner with them. Sometimes, being his son is like being on a witness stand. He tries different tactics to get the answers he wants. Even though I’m not a hostile witness. I’m his son. And he can just ask.”
His dad was really a trip.
A bad one.
“Yeah,” I whispered.
“I told him I didn’t know if you liked celery or how you felt about the ice caps because we hadn’t been married for five years. But I intended to find out.” He took a sip and then finished, “Now, I know.”
“Now you know.” I gave it a second and then queried, “You heard from your mom?”
“She’s dodging calls and her return texts are vague. We got your dad and the Rockies Sunday. We’ll figure her out next week.”
I wasn’t sure he should wait.
But I nodded anyway.
He bent to me and touched his mouth to mine.
When he pulled away, he said, “I gotta get to Cleo before I go to work.”
“You want me to go take care of her?” I offered.
“Babe, she already likes you more than me because I’ll baby-talk … maybe … when I have a baby, not before. Don’t take my role as breakfast slave away.”
That had me chuckling.
It also had me thinking about giving Axl ice-blue-eyed babies.
He lifted his mug. “Can I nab a travel mug?”
“Help yourself. Top shelf over the—”
“I saw ’em.”
Another lip touch before he got up and I got to watch his ass in his black cargos as he walked to the living area.
I pulled myself out of bed so I could give him a proper goodbye kiss at the door.
I gave it and good before Axl was off.
Then, since I was up in a way I was up, I went about my usual morning business (during which I saw I had a faint mark on my neck from Axl, which made my toes curl).
I decided I’d do an early rehearsal so I could get to the studio. My order wasn’t in for the materials I’d purchased, but I could start constructing the mold.
After my shower, in order to give my hair some time to dry naturally before I hit it with the diffuser, in my robe, I sat down on a stool at my kitchen counter with my laptop to check the tracking for the stuff I ordered, and pulled up email as a matter of course.
That was when the texts started coming in about Lottie’s shower, which Jet was throwing for her sister, but we were all coordinating presents so we didn’t double up on teddies or the like.
I copied and pasted a photo of the racy red number I got her (that was a stop at the mall Sly didn’t mind), along with a couple’s spa collection (I wasn’t sure Mo could fit with her in a bath, I was sure he’d be down to try), and a nice bottle of champagne.
And that was when I noticed my email was hanging.
I hit the send/receive status, and it was churning, but …
A message downloaded with the subject SOMETHING TO LOOK FORWARD TO.
I clicked on it and it had two .mov files.
So that was why it was hanging.
Movie files.
Big ones.
Huge.
Two of them.
One was titled “For You” and the other “For Him.”
There was nothing in the body of the email.
A chill raced down my spine and I instantly called Axl.
“You good?” he asked as greeting.
“I think I got an email from my stalker,” I told him.
His voice was different—crisp but cautious—when he asked, “Why do you think that?”
“Because there are two rather large movie files on it, one is titled ‘For You’ and one ‘For Him,’ the email address is obviously a bogus gmail, because it starts with whowantsyou, there’s no message and the subject says ‘SOMETHING TO LOOK FORWARD TO.’ ”
“When did it come in?”
I hadn’t checked emails in a while, so I scanned the date.
Dang.
“Saturday,” I told him.
“You go through your postal mail since being home?”
“Yes.”
“Nothing?”
I shook my head regardless he couldn’t see me and told him what he had to know since I would have shared if there was.
“Nothing.”
“You open those movie files?”
“Not yet.”
“Everything you got on your computer that’s important backed up in the cloud?”
“Everything.”
“You good to open them and tell me what you see, or you want to wait for me to come get your laptop?”
“I can open them.”
“Okay, I’m on my way, but open the ‘For Him.’ ”