Read Online Force of Nature by Suzanne Brockmann - Free Book Online

floors were clean.
    Someone in here obviously cared about
some
things.
    So Annie took a gamble. She held out her hand. “Hi. My name’s Louellen Jones. I work for a local private investigator. He hired me as his assistant, and I thought he meant
assistant
assistant, but I’m really just his secretary. This is my big chance to impress him, so I’m hoping you can help me…”
             
    Robin’s sister, Jane, always got a little crazy when her husband went, in macho-SEAL-lingo,
wheels up.
All of SEAL Team Sixteen had gone overseas this time, their destination kept secret even from their long-suffering wives.
    Janey was pretty convinced that her husband was heading to Afghanistan, where support from the other branches of the military was not always available, thanks to the unending fiasco in Iraq. She was never a happy camper when Cosmo was gone, but this time she was even less happy.
    Robin sat in his sister’s kitchen, watching her go through contortions to find child care for tonight for his nephew, Billy, who sat in his high chair, happily drooling on a tray filled with Cheerios, chewing his own tiny fist.
    Jane was a movie producer, and tonight she was being given an award by the director’s guild. It was some kind of Important Women in Hollywood thing that she really couldn’t miss. But Cosmo’s mom, who lived not too far away in Laguna Beach and usually sat for Billy, had tickets to a touring-company production of
Aïda.
    “I don’t have to go,” Robin told her as she scrolled through the address book on her cell phone. “I can stay with Bill.”
    Jane looked surprised. “You were planning to go?” she asked. “I thought you were still doing press junkets for
Riptide.
”
    “No,” he told her. “I’m done. We did the last of this round before noon. I actually have a night off. Tomorrow, I start the film-festival appearances. It’s crazy, but a lot of them picked us for their lineup.”
    “That’s because you’re good. Even when you sell out and do a popcorn movie.” She went back to searching through her address book.
    “Seriously, Jane,” he said. “I can sit for Billy tonight.” How hard could it be? He smiled at the baby, who was a total clone of his sister. Same dark hair, same green eyes, same Mediterranean complexion. He was going to be a good-looking kid, a drop-dead handsome man.
    The baby gave him a very soggy, toothless grin.
    Of course, Jane looked nothing like Robin—they’d had different mothers. Their father had liked variety in his women. Jane’s mother was Greek, his own was Irish. Robin had darker hair than Jane, but much paler skin and blue eyes. Black Irish, it was called. Although for
Riptide
, makeup had once again dyed his hair and eyebrows blond. He’d been blond in four out of the five pictures he’d done. This time, after the film had wrapped, he hadn’t bothered to get his hair dyed back.
    “I’m not going to do that to you,” his sister told him. “Not on your one night off.”
    “I really don’t mind.”
    “Really, Robin, I’ll find someone else.”
    And suddenly dawn broke. “You don’t want me to babysit for Billy,” Robin realized.
    Jane closed her cell phone. Exhaled. “You’re right, I don’t.
We
don’t. Cos and me. We’ve talked about it, Robbie and…” She shook her head.
    The kitchen tilted. “Are you serious?”
    She was. It was obvious that she was. She finally looked at him. “I’m sorry, but…”
    Robin stood up. This was surreal. “Wow, so much for the diatribes about tolerance that I’m always hearing when I come over.
Gay, straight, or bi, you’re my brother and I love you. But I don’t want you near my kid.
”
    Janey actually laughed. “This isn’t about your being gay, you idiot.”
    “Shhh,” he said. It was an automatic reflex, which was stupid, because there was no one here to overhear them.
    “You drink too much,” Janey told him. “Cos and I don’t want you to sit for Billy because