Page 66 of Kiss Kiss Bang
“I see that.” She smiled and turned to Joey. “I’ll thank you for that later when she’s jumping up and down from the sugar high, by the way.”
He chuckled.
“I drewssed all by myself.”
“I did the pigtails,” Joey said proudly.
“Why didn’t you wake me? My alarm didn’t go off.”
“I heard you get up at least six times the last few nights and the night before you were awake all night. I thought I’d let you sleep in a little. And I made sure she took the Benadryl and stayed inside.”
She didn’t even think about it. It was the nicest thing anyone had done for her in such a long time. As a single mother, sleeping in was a luxury she never ever got to have. It scared the hell out of her how much the gesture affected her. She got on her tip toes and kissed him.
“Ewww . . .” Sophie said from the kitchen table. “Only mums and daddy pigs can kiss on the lips.”
Olivia took a step away but Joey reached out and pulled her to his side by the waist. “Freckles, I’m going to tell you something you might not know. Sometimes friends can become girlfriends and boyfriends.”
She looked up and her face broke into a smile. “Like Minnie and Mickey Mouse? They’re girlfriend and boyfriend.”
“Exactly,” Olivia said, with a small laugh.
“And sometimes boyfriends and girlfriends kiss on the mouth.” Joey added.
Sophie looked up as if in deep contemplation. “Like Anna and Kristoff?”
Joey’s eyebrows furrowed and she elbowed him playfully in the side. “Frozen.”
“Yeah, sweets. Like Anna and Kristoff.”
“Like Belle and the Beast.”
“Right,” Olivia said.
Then she took a big spoonful of cereal. “Oh! Like Cinderella and the Prince!” Cereal fell all down her chin.
This was going to go on and on and on . . .
“So, yeah. You got it, sweets. All those.” Then she stepped away from Joey and took a napkin and wiped Olivia’s chin. “How do you feel about that, Soph? You okay about it?”
She shrugged. “Can we catch lizards all the time, Joey?”
“Sure,” Joey said.
“Then . . . yay!” She hopped off the chair and ran and hugged both Olivia and Joey. And that was that. Sophie was on board and apparently Olivia was now Joey’s girlfriend.
And oddly enough, it wasn’t scary. Instead, it was wonderful.
Her daughter grabbed his hand. “Yeah, Mommy, we got dis!”
* * *
A week went by and nothing had progressed. Colin had confessed to attacking Olivia and had said he wanted a million dollars because he knew she had it. Simple as that. But Joey wasn’t buying it. It was too big of an amount. When asked about Connor he denied knowing anything about the whereabouts of his brother.
Since things had calmed down a little, and Olivia was busy working from home with Mark via Skype, Joey decided to go into the office for a little bit. He had to catch up on a bunch of work. And he wanted to do some more digging into Colin and Connor behind the safety of his impenetrable firewall in ICS.
Sophie wasn’t feeling well again. She’d gone outside that morning and had come back in wheezing. Ben was going to be around doing rounds of the neighborhood, and her alarm was state of the art.
“I’ll be back in a few hours,” Joey said. “You sure you’re okay? You want me to have Annie stay with you?”
