She planted a similar kiss on his other cheek. Then she got out of bed and started putting on the clothes she had left draped over a small sofa. Rachel could feel him watching her but didn’t mind. She didn’t make a show of it, but didn’t rush to cover up either.

When she had finished putting herself together, she turned to see he was sitting up in bed—still watching her. The sheet covered him from the waist down, but his naked sculpted frame was tempting her to think about another go-round.

“That isn’t exactly fair,” she told him.

“What’s that?”

“Me all dressed—and you sitting there like—that.”

“I’m not meeting your father until nine-thirty at the Yard.”

“Dear old Dad.” She rolled her eyes and smiled. “Had to bring that up, huh?”

“This is going to be rather awkward, isn’t it?” he asked.

“Oh yeah,” Rachel said as she climbed back onto the bed.

As Rachel approached the house in Maida Vale, she considered climbing up the trellis to her second-floor bedroom. More than once in secondary school Rachel had done just that when she had stayed out past curfew—until the time she found her mother waiting by the bed. She moved on to a method suggested by her best friend Matilda (Mattie for short). Rachel would dial home and as soon as one of her parents answered, she’d say “Don’t worry, I’ve got it—you can hang up”—pretending like she was actually in the house on a different extension. It had initially worked with her father, but when she tried it again, her mother had just remained on the line.

“I suppose you find this amusing, Rachel Michele Grant,” Allison had said. “Your father and I are here waiting for you.”

Mattie’s Folly, as Rachel came to think of it, resulted in her being put under Grant House Arrest—no telly or socializing for the better part of a month. Sometimes Rachel thought her father might have only been the second-best detective to reside under the roof of the small Maida Vale house sandwiched among the posher ones on the Grand Union Canal.

Rachel reconsidered the trellis as she walked down the street. Less nimble and daring than in her adolescent years, she abandoned the thought when she saw it. It looked rather rickety, and Rachel suspected dry rot had set in; further proof that her father wasn’t the same since her mother had passed away. Allison never would have let it get to that point.

She headed up the stone walk and through a barren garden (another sign of Austin’s increasing neglect) and pulled out the key he’d given her the day before.

Before she could place it in the lock, the door was thrown open from inside.