Devious by Lisa Jackson

Author:Lisa Jackson
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Reuben (Fictitious character), Mystery & Detective, Bentz, Nuns, General, Romance, Suspense, Crimes against, Fiction, Montoya, Rick (Fictitious character)
ISBN: 9780758225658
Publisher: Kensington Books
Published: 2011-03-28T10:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 32

The baby was fussy.

Again.

“Teething,” Olivia said, and Bentz believed it, walking his tiny daughter around the house, jostling her as she cried. “Here, let me take her,” Olivia said as she put aside her book, a paperback guide to the first year of a baby’s life. She walked into the kitchen where, from his cage, Chia, the parrot she’d inherited from her grandmother, Virginia “Ginny” Dubois, the baby’s namesake, squawked.

“Hey, there, sweetie,” Olivia whispered. “It’s okay.”

It was definitely not okay, and Ginny let her mother know it. But Olivia was calm, though this was her first child. Bentz had another daughter, a grown woman now, from his first marriage. Kristi was a quarter century older than her half sister, and Bentz had the battle scars to prove it.

Kristi was a firecracker—trouble from the get-go. Just like her mother. Bentz loved her fiercely, despite the fact that Kristi had taken years off his life with her antics, everything from teenage angst and rebellion to life-threatening injuries . . . Oh, God, he hoped Ginny’s life was calmer and easier.

Now, Kristi was married to Jay McKnight, who worked for the state crime lab and taught classes on criminology at All Saints’ College in Baton Rouge, the place he and Kristi had met again after being high school sweethearts.

The baby stopped crying and began to coo in her mother’s arms, and Bentz’s stupid old romantic heart swelled when he witnessed Olivia holding Ginny; their gazes locked.

“See, it just takes the right touch,” Olivia said, and Bentz couldn’t help feeling a wave of happiness. God, he loved this woman and this child, even thought he knew any kid was going to put him through the emotional wringer. It was humbling how much he cared for this tiny, new little person.

Funny, he thought now, how he’d been against having another child, how he’d argued with Olivia, but when she’d ended up pregnant, his life had changed for the better. Now he couldn’t imagine a world without little Ginny, fussy thing that she was. Blond, like her mother, her scalp visible through her wisping pale curls, her eyes wide and interested in the world, she was crawling all over the place, terrorizing Hairy S, their aging little dog—another animal inherited from Olivia’s favorite grandmother’s menagerie.

Bentz saw years of happiness on the horizon.

“Okay,” he said, “you win. You are the better parent.”

Olivia laughed and he walked into the den where he picked up the phone to dial his son-in-law. Maybe Jay could push things through a little faster on the Camille Renard case. They still needed a tox screen, and Bentz wanted to double-check the blood work on the unborn child against that of Frank O’Toole’s again, just to be safe.

An uncharacteristic pang cut through him as he settled into his worn desk chair. He thought of Camille and her baby, the child’s life cut off before it drew its first breath.

Little Ginny, free of her mother’s grasp, had made her way in that speedy crawl of hers into the den.

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