He thought he heard a note of relief in her voice and was smiling to himself when he opened the door and stepped inside.
Noelle got up from her art table with a grace he couldn’t even begin to approximate. She liked to sit on her chair with one leg tucked under.
How she managed to do that without having her leg fall asleep was beyond him.
“Hey, beautiful.” He opened his arms and she stepped into his embrace with a soft smile, laying her cheek on his chest. “Need a break?”
She groaned and he smiled.
“Yes,” she turned her face into his chest and rocked her face back and forth, “how did you know?”
“I’d like to say that I’m just that great of a guy, but your mom told me that you could use a break.”
She went still and then she lifted her head until her chin touched his chest. “You are that great of a guy, but my mom is still right. I definitely need a break.”
Duval wasn’t sure if he should ask to look at what she was working on, but she beat him to the punch.
“You want to see what I’ve been working on?”
He smiled and she lifted up her hands, smoothing her fingertips at the corners of his eyes toward his temples.
“You have the cutest little wrinkles starting here.”
Her voice sounded softer, dreamier than it had been moments before.
“Wrinkles, babe?” He sighed and leaned in for a kiss. She returned it, slow and gentle. “Are you saying I’m getting old?”
She rolled her eyes. “Old, no. But vain? Prob’ly.” She took a step toward the desk, and he kept a hand on her lower back as he followed her. “I’m kind of at a stand still on the image.”
He stepped up beside her to look at her work and was surprised in the best way possible at what she had done.
The problem was, they all looked good.
“I think you can see the problem, right?”
He turned to look at her and saw the exasperation in her gaze. “Yeah. I know this isn’t what you do-”
“But I wanted to try. I feel like... I feel attached to this. To her.” She walked him through the half dozen images she’d drawn using the old, grainy black and white image as a reference. “The first one was trying to clean up the original image. I used Donal and Bradley’s faces from that era as a reference, trying to gauge the distortion by their own faces from that time.” She moved that image to the side and took another image and put it beside the older photo. “I tried to figure out the skull beneath the image, but without more detail from the photo... It felt like I was working in the dark.”
She dropped her arm to her side and sighed.
“The rest are similar issues. Attempts using family resemblance, but that’s if he has a resemblance to his cousins. I’m... I’m... ugh!”
Noelle balled her fists up at her side. “I need a break.”
“I’ve got one for you. I already talked to your mom. She says CeeCee is likely going to sleep soon. Why don’t I take you out for food and a couple of beers. We can both take a few hours to relax.”
The smile that touched her lips... Well, it fucking touched his soul.
He needed this time with her.
Fuck.
He needed her.
She looked down at her clothes and then looked up at him with a grimace. “Do I need to change clothes?”
Duval looked at what she was wearing and had to bite the inside of his cheek. He wanted to tell her that he wanted her bare, but knowing that her daughter and her mother were in the room just beyond the door, he held back.