Ultimate Weapon (McClouds & Friends #6)(23)

But Erin was tough. Thick-skinned. She didn’t back down easily.

Erin’s car started up again, and Tam watched it glumly as it advanced up the road. The McClouds made big fun of all her security doodads, but she could care less. Daddy Novak would probably love to kill Connor and Erin and their spawn too, for their part in Kurt Novak’s death. But if they wanted to paint targets on their asses and hang them out in the breeze, that was their affair. She wanted no part of it.

She washed her hands and headed down the stairs to the entrance. Rachel was heaping towers of blocks with Rosalia on the floor in the big living area. The instant she saw Tam, she dropped everything and hurled her little body in Tam’s direction, squeaking, arms outstretched. Tam scooped her up and hugged her hard. She hefted the toddler, gauging her weight. A little heavier this week. Thirty grams, maybe, depending on whether the diaper was wet. Since taking on Rachel, Tam had become a human precision scale.

Erin was parked in the garage and getting little Kev out of his car seat when Tam opened the door. Kev was almost as big as Rachel was, even though he was two years younger, the snorting little piglet. Tam tried not to hold that against him. It was difficult sometimes.

Tam ran an appraising eye over Erin as she hoisted the chubby kid onto her hip. The other woman was finally slimming down from her baby weight, though she was still very soft and squeezable. Tam suspected that Connor liked his wife just that way. Whatever. To each his own.

“And to what do I owe the honor of this visit?” There was no way to modulate the bitchy edge in her voice, so she didn’t try.

Erin ignored her completely, saving her smiles for Rachel. “And how is this pretty little sweetheart today?” she crooned. She bent forward and gave Rachel a kiss on the back of her tousled, black-curled head. Rachel clutched tighter, buried her face in Tam’s neck, fingers digging in like little kitten claws.

Progress. Four months ago, that brief kiss would have sent Rachel into screaming convulsions of fear. She was mellowing. Her little body was tense, but not trembling much. As Tam reset the alarms, Rachel even lifted big dark eyes a little to peek out at the baby on Erin’s lap. Little Kev returned her regard with grave, oddly adult curiosity.

“You’re not quite so thin this time.” Erin’s voice was full of motherly approval. “That’s really great. You look better already. Much.”

Tam suppressed a sharp reply. Her appetite was as crappy as ever, but Rachel had this annoying new mealtime game without which she would not eat, called you-take-a-bite-and-then-I-take-a-bite. So, by brutal necessity, a certain quantity of butterfly pasta, banana slices, crackers, fish sticks, Cream of Wheat, yogurt, and turkey burger patties were introducing their fat and calories into her system.

She supposed it wasn’t so terrible. She’d been looking pretty damn haggard, not that she cared much. Rachel didn’t give a damn what her new mother looked like. Beauty had just been another weapon in Tam’s arsenal, but it was not one she cared to ever use again. It was only useful to attract and maniuplate men, and she’d aggressively phased that necessity out of her life. After that last revenge stint with Kurt Novak and Georg, she was so, so done with that groping, sweaty drama. She swallowed down a greasy clutch of nausea at the mere thought of it.

Rachel consented to being put down on the kitchen floor, where Rosalia was laying out coffee things and a plate of shortbread cookies. Cookies, for God’s sake. While Tam wasn’t looking, her house had morphed into a cozy, fluff-lined nest. That was what came of letting other people into it. Tam watched with something akin to horrified fascination as Erin dove face first into those lethal cookies. Look at the girl go. Cellulite city. No fear, no shame. It boggled the mind.

“Stop looking at me like that,” Erin said, reaching for her second cookie. “You make me feel like a captured space alien whose feeding habits are being studied by scientists. If you don’t approve of amazing homemade shortbread cookies, why serve them?”

“I didn’t,” Tam said, casting a speaking glance toward Rosalia. “She did. Can you see me baking cookies? I don’t do cookies. I’m not even on speaking terms with cookies.”

“True enough. I can see you cooking up deadly poisons to dip hairpins into, but not pastry,” Erin admitted as she unrepentantly poured a heart-clogging quantity of half-and-half into her coffee.

Tam winced. “Jesus, Erin. Watch it with that stuff.”

“Don’t be afraid for me,” Erin soothed. “Nursing makes you fearless. The cookies are fabulous, Rosalia. Can I have the recipe?”

Rosalia smiled her thanks and nodded as she herded the little kids into the adjoining room. Tam abruptly missed the noise and distraction. The sudden silence and Erin’s sharp, amber brown eyes made her twitch. After an endless string of stress nightmares and largely sleepless nights, she was too raw and rattled and frustrated right now to keep her shields properly up. She hated that.

“Are things going any better?” Erin asked gently.

Irritation made Tam lash into attack mode. “Is what going better?” she snapped. “What the hell are you referring to?”

Erin shrugged. “In general. Your health. Your sleep, your appetite, your daughter. Since you won’t tell me any specifics, I have to ask general questions.”

“You don’t have to ask questions at all. Where is it written?”