“Neil?” Rick called out as he walked through the large home to the source of the sound. “Gwen?”

The crying grew louder as Rick walked up the back stairs to the nursery.

The explosion of pink and purple always made Rick smile. The room resembled a tower in a castle, complete with a mural of a turret behind the crib.

The smell hit Rick before he realized what his friend was dealing with.

Neil stood over his infant daughter, his back to Rick. “Not sure what you’re crying about. I have to deal with the mess.”

Emma cried harder.

Rick leaned against the doorframe and folded his arms across his chest.

After a few attempts at using those wet wipe things, Neil abandoned the traditional diaper-changing route, picked Emma up at arm’s length, and turned toward the adjoining bathroom. “Are you going to stand there and watch or are you going to help?”

Rick chuckled. “Didn’t think you saw me here.”

“I knew you’d follow the noise. Or the smell.”

Emma’s tiny cry grew silent as the two men worked their way into the bathroom. “Where’s Gwen?”

“Helping Sam with a new employee. Turn on the water,” Neil instructed Rick while holding his daughter over the tub.

“Isn’t she a little young for a bath in a full-size tub, Dad?” Rick opened the flow of water.

Emma’s wide eyes blinked several times and a tiny smile lifted one side of her lips. At only seven months old, the girl had her daddy wrapped around her itty-bitty finger. Truth was, Rick was pretty wrapped himself. Blonde hair had barely started to fill her once-bald head, and her blue eyes always seemed to take in everything around her. She watched, just like her father, appeared to assess the world around her, then reacted to have her needs met.

“Grab that.” Neil nodded toward the removable wand that doubled as a shower head.

“I take it you’ve done this before,” Rick said as he pointed the spray away from all of them and checked the temperature of the water.

“How so much comes out of such a tiny thing is beyond me.”

“Maybe you’re feeding her too much,” Rick teased.

Neil leaned farther over the tub. “I’ll hold, you spray.”

“Let the kicking begin, eh, Em?” Rick let the water hit her tiny feet first and slowly let the spray move up to the mess. Instead of letting out a war cry, Emma giggled and kicked at the water while Neil turned her around so Rick could get her backside. After a little soap and a washcloth finished the cleanup, Emma was wrapped in a fluffy pink towel.

“Seems you have diaper duty down,” Rick offered while Neil redressed and laid Emma in her crib.

“Easier than scrubbing toilets with a toothbrush.”

Rick would never forget his first few weeks in the service, when the joy of his ass being kicked by his commanding officer often ended with him scrubbing toilets.

The service had been one of his only options. His size, speed, and intelligence landed him with the elite. The Marines. He hadn’t grown up with much so living out of a duffle bag wasn’t a hardship. His dad was a broken-down dockworker, his mom worked odd jobs off and on his whole life to help where she could. Rick wasn’t sure if their marriage was happy or just routine. The two of them fought more than he thought they should . . . or maybe they just fought when they were around him or they fought about him.

Neil paused for a moment and stared down at his daughter. A rare smile met his lips and he turned and led them both out of her nursery.

“That’s it?” Rick asked. “No fussing or pitching a fit to go down for a nap?”

Neil shrugged. “It’s nap time,” he said as if the explanation was complete.

“Babies fuss.”

“Emma cries for her mama, not for me.”

Rick laughed. “I’ll bet Gwen loves that.”

Neil shrugged again and walked them into his security office. Monitors filled one wall with all the houses they monitored, including their own. A new set of monitors was dark and waiting for the next system to be installed.

“Looks like you’re all set up for Karen and Zach’s place.”

Neil sat behind his desk and opened a file drawer. He tossed a manila envelope filled with papers across the desk in Rick’s direction. “Everything you’ll need is in there. Kenny will supervise his team at Parkview Securities while they fit the house with the new system.”

Rick took the envelope, glanced inside. “What made Karen change her mind?”

“Combination of Zach and the courts.”

Karen’s safe house for kids had been an uphill battle with the courts. All she wanted to do was have a large home where kids from dysfunctional families or homeless kids could live without the fear of violence and hunger. The space had been the easy part. Getting Child Protective Services to license her was another story. At the current time, she had two teenage kids, one sixteen and one seventeen. The kids were brother and sister and had the emancipation of the courts after their mother was killed by their father and Dad landed in jail. The seventeen-year-old brother had left school to work full-time to try to keep it together for his sister. The kids came to Karen’s attention through the Boys and Girls Club where she volunteered her time. They now lived full-time at The Village, the Victorian home with more rooms than occupants.

“I take it the court wasn’t quick to grant them the ability to house a bunch of needy kids.”

“Not at all,” Neil replied. “The security system will help give the court a level of safety . . . or at least they think it will.”

“Anyone wanting to get at the kids inside will breach the system.”

“Not without evidence. And that seems to be all the court worries about. A trail of evidence if anything bad happens.” Neil sighed. “Anyway. I need you to set everything up on this end. Gwen’s mother expects everyone home for her birthday.”

Everyone meant Blake and Samantha and their two kids as well as Neil, Gwen, and Emma, and home meant the estate at Albany, outside of London.

“I have ya covered, Mac.”

Neil chuckled with the use of his nickname.

They both paused. Rick reflected back to when Neil was introduced to him as Mac. Back then, everyone on their team called Rick Smiley. Life was too short to frown all the damn time. He pushed away the memories that always threatened to remove the smile from his face and forced the smile again.

“How is the ol’ mother-in-law?”