I turned back to look at him, a smirk playing on my lips which I seemed unable to hide. He raised an eyebrow at me, a small smattering of pink in his cheeks. I was momentarily stunned immobile. The big bad goatee wearing detective blushes.
"Marie?" he asked, after what was an embarrassingly long time filled with silence. "Daisy?"
"Ah, yeah, Daisy," I said, turning on my heel and cursing my idiocy right then.
I found Daisy and Abi in an empty room, after Ben gave directions on how to find them. It was obviously going to be a guest room, but the wallpaper had been stripped and the plasterboard left unfinished. Obviously not much progress had been made yet. The floor was covered from corner to corner in a dust sheet, taped down at the edges to avoid any loose drops of paint. And there was paint here. A dozen opened test pots of various colours, with small brushes leaning on the side of each one.
Abi was stirring the last opened tin, while an old borrowed t-shirt covered Daisy was chattering away about King Penguins and the Antarctic and her plans to migrate there. A genuine, not indulgent, smile graced the woman's lips as her head tipped up when I walked in.
"Mummy, look at this!" Daisy exclaimed. "Abi says I can paint it all!"
I arched a brow at that. "Are you sure?" I asked Abi.
"Absolutely. Ben and I have had so many arguments about what colour to paint this room, that I think we need a third opinion now."
"You know she'll use every single colour you've got," I pointed out.
"That's the idea," Abi said happily. "Then when I suggest boring old 'biscuit' or stuck-in-the-mud 'merino', Ben will think I'm a genius."
"Ah," I said on a laugh. "Good move."
I suddenly realised she'd stopped stirring and was looking at me, head cocked to the side, face pinched.
"What?" I asked, immediately checking over my shoulder to make sure no one else was there. Searching for the real reason why she looked pained.
Abi shook her head and smiled again, the moment gone.
"Is Ryan staying for dinner?" she asked instead.
It sounded strange hearing Pierce called by his first name. I'd come to think of him as only Pierce, or the Detective.
"I guess so, he said he'd stay for a beer when Ben asked."
"Ah, Ben and his beers on the deck. Do you know he used to live in a garage flat when I first met him," she offered, a seemingly personal bit of information. "None of the windows were low enough to look outside. Now we have a deck and a garden and all this space and he wants everyone to share it." She sounded so proud of him, like this was an enormous accomplishment.
What had these two been through to bring them here?
"How long have you lived in this place?" I asked.
"Two months. He couldn't wait to find a home for us to both live in, he made an offer on the first house he viewed."
I smiled at the roll of her eyes.
"Did you want to live here?" I couldn't help asking.
"I would have lived with him in the garage flat if he'd asked," she said softly.
I blinked my eyes a few times to wash the sting of tears away. Why her story affected me so much, I couldn't say. But there appeared to be a depth of love between the two of them that I could only dream about. The sort of love that gets you through the hurdles life throws at you, gets you over the mountains you sometimes have to climb. Makes it possible to survive anything.
Makes you place the other person first, above all else. Above money and lifestyle. Above greed.
"Are you OK, Marie?" Abi asked softly, from right in front of my face.
"Just remembering," I said, the first thing to enter my head, thankfully wiping the images away.
"Does that happen a lot?" she asked carefully.
I sucked in a deep breath, feeling like I was on uneven ground. But she seemed so caring, so familiar, so nice. I found myself answering, without an ounce of my customary shield of confidence at all.
"Lately, yeah."
"Because of McLaren?" She almost spat the drug lord's name out.
"You know him?" I asked, flicking a gaze towards Daisy who was busy outlining her penguin mural on the other side of the room and humming to herself.
"You could say that," she offered, and then I saw something flash across her face. Something real and visceral. Something I recognised in myself. Something that sucked all the air out of the room and made me take a stumbling step back.
"You... you've," I stammered. Swallowed thickly, then felt a heat brace my spine and across my shoulders, as Pierce's hands came up to grip my upper arms and still my backwards escape.
"Shhh," he said in my ear soothingly, hot breath across my cheek. "Tell her Abi," he instructed quietly, so as not to garner Daisy's attention.