Pretty Baby novel · Chapter 4 of 24

Chapter 4: The Study

I caught her before she reached the first step down.

Mabel was warm and boneless in my arms, and she smelled like crayons and baby shampoo.

"Shh," I whispered. "I've got you. I've got you."

She stopped humming and put her cheek against my collarbone.

Stefan came out of his room in shirt sleeves with his tie hanging open.

"She hasn't done that since she was three," he said quietly.

"It's okay. She's asleep."

I carried her to her bed and tucked Pickle under her chin.

Stefan stood in the doorway and watched me do it.

"That song," he said. "Where does she know it from?"

"Every kid knows a lullaby," I said, and hated myself for the lie.

He studied me a moment longer, then nodded.

"Good night, Lydia."

I waited until his bedroom door closed.

Then I waited another forty minutes, because I'm not stupid.

At one in the morning I took off my heels and went downstairs in the dark.

The study was at the back of the house, behind a heavy door that wasn't locked.

Whoever built Stefan Hartwell's privacy hadn't expected the woman in the green dress.

There was a long oak desk, a leather chair and a wall of shelves.

I went straight to the drawers.

The first held pens.

The second held tax files.

The third was locked.

I was bending over it with a hairpin in my teeth when the lamp clicked on.

"You're very bad at this," Stefan said.

I straightened up slowly.

He stood in the doorway in black trousers and an open white shirt, with his sleeves pushed to the elbow and his hair rumpled.

He looked less like a CEO and more like a man who'd been pacing his own house.

"I was looking for a pen," I said.

"In a locked drawer."

"It's the best kind of pen."

He crossed the room without hurrying and stopped close enough that I felt his heat.

"Who sent you, Lydia?"

"Nobody."

"My mother?"

"God, no."

"Then what do you want in my desk?"

I could have told him.

I could have said, your lawyer stole a child from me, and she might be sleeping upstairs.

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