“Dani,” he warned her. His sister might tolerate public mouthiness, but he sure as hell wouldn’t.
“You don’t even want to know what we were going to do?” Dani’s tone turned sweet when she faced him and stared up at him with eyes that remotely resembled the beautiful, intelligent eyes he remembered before she insisted on covering them up with all that black eyeliner. “You’ve got to be just a little bit curious, Uncle Perry.”
“Dani, it’s okay.” Kylie shook her head at him and laughed softly. “There’s nothing to be curious about.”
Perry easily noticed his niece was working him. That didn’t spark any curiosity. What did intrigue him was how suddenly Kylie didn’t want him to know. In fact, to the point where she made eye contact with him for the first time and held it, while he focused on her bright blue eyes. They were intense, almost the color of sapphires, and they didn’t change color the longer he held her gaze, no darkening or lightening or anything that often happened when moods changed in people. It hit him that she might be wearing contacts-the kind that changed a person’s eye color.
“Uncle Perry is one of the best cops in the Kansas City area,” Dani bragged, shifting her attention to Kylie. “He’s always curious about everything.”
“Is that so?” Kylie’s voice returned to its soft, alluring, come-fuck-me tone.
He’d give her this: she was one unique woman. As much hesitation and trepidation as he swore he read in her body language, there was something else there, too. In the way she watched him, the tilt of her head, the way her hands moved from clasped in front of her to her palms brushing over her thighs. Perry made his living reading people, and this woman either didn’t know her own mind or was intentionally covering up sexual interest with other emotions to throw him off guard.
Dani shifted her attention from him to Kylie and then back to him. “Kylie’s never seen how people chat on YouTube, you know, in the comments section?”
“Dani, your uncle doesn’t care about this,” Kylie whispered.
He cared now. “Better show her before someone else takes your computer,” he said.
Dani looked surprised and Kylie wary. All the more reason to witness this little scenario play out. “You can show me, too.”
“You already know,” Dani grumbled, and turned, grabbing her backpack off the table and then leading the way through the stacks toward stairs that took them to a row of computers set up for public use.
Kylie glanced at him and he gestured for her to follow his niece. He brought up the rear, and didn’t mind the view of her miniskirt swishing back and forth and her ass swaying in front of him. He didn’t doubt for a moment that she gave him a show intentionally. And he found it interesting that as he watched, he imagined what Kylie would look like in tight-fitting jeans, high heels, and found that image much more arousing.
Dani hopped down the stairs and Kylie followed, her sandals slapping against each stair as she ran her painted fingernails over the banister like she was stroking it on her way down.
“Why do you care about comments on YouTube?” he asked her before they reached the bottom of the stairs.
“For my thesis.” Kylie didn’t look at him until she reached the bottom of the stairs. “It helps hearing Dani explain in her words.”
“How so?” He walked alongside Kylie now but focused on his niece, who was several paces ahead. “She really knows something about YouTube that you don’t?”
“I’m about to find out,” Kylie said, glancing up at him with a sly smile before moving around Dani, who’d already plopped into a chair at a computer. Kylie pulled the chair from the table behind them over and sat next to Dani. “I really appreciate you doing this, Dani,” she said quietly.
“It’s no big deal,” Dani said, shrugging off the gratitude. “I just wish Uncle Perry weren’t making it feel as if it was.”
He stood behind them, fixing his attention on the computer screen, and crossed his arms. His niece and the college lady sat close, heads almost touching, and whispered to each other. He managed to catch almost everything they said.
“You’ve been to YouTube before, right?” Dani asked Kylie, turning her head so the two of them stared at each other briefly.
“Of course,” Kylie said in that soft, sultry tone of hers.
“What videos do you watch?”
Kylie’s grin was almost apologetic. “I check to see if episodes I like are on there. Sometimes there are news reports or different angles on current events.”
Dani rolled her eyes. “Boring,” she drawled, and then shook her head while making a tsking sound with her tongue. “You have so much to learn about being a teenager,” she began.
There was something akin to a satisfied smile on Kylie’s face, her expression pulling more curiosity out of Perry as he studied her while she focused on Dani.
“What would I watch?” Kylie asked.
“Music videos, dude.” Dani opened the main page to YouTube and then clicked so the cursor blinked in the search bar. “And the videos linked to our Facebook profiles or Twitter.”
Perry growled and Dani quickly waved her hand dismissively in the air. “I don’t have a profile of me on either site. But I can show you one we all made up and use it to link to YouTube videos. Personal videos are the bomb, though.”
“Personal videos?” Kylie asked.
“Yeah. Some of them are so obviously bogus.”
“Okay,” Kylie said slowly. “What are personal videos?”
Dani looked over her shoulder at Perry and then leaned back to survey Kylie. “Dude, you know what personal videos are. Everyone knows what personal videos are.”
“Show me,” Kylie suggested, nodding to the screen.
“Okay.” Dani placed her fingers over the keyboards and then her fingers moved expertly, proof again that teenagers these days seemed to be born with secretarial skills intact. A new page opened and then the video began. “I don’t know these people, so don’t throw a fit, Uncle Perry,” Dani said, and pointed at the screen. “Some guys I know know the people who made this.”
“These are the kids’ names in the video?” Kylie pointed to a description of the video on the side of the box where a group of boys and girls danced in a parking lot to a rap song.
“Beats me.” Dani shrugged. “But this is what I was talking about.”
She scrolled down the page while the video continued playing. The sound was low enough that Perry couldn’t quite catch what was being said. He had a feeling he didn’t want to hear it, though. He moved closer, resting his hands on the back of Dani’s chair, and leaned over her to read what she pointed to. “See, people talk on YouTube.”
Underneath the video, there were posts, individuals making comments about the video and commenting on what other people said in response to the video. It was similar to reading a printed conversation, although the posts were typed in slang with intentionally incorrect grammar and spelling. Several of the comments came from people who appeared to know those who made the video. There were several others, though, that seemed to come from strangers, with comments typed that suggested how they would love to do sexual acts with some of the girls in the video. Perry fought a growl as he read through some of the lewd and incredibly inappropriate comments made toward high school girls who were most definitely underage, judging just by the looks of them.
“Learn something new every day,” Kylie said, and then moved her chair to the side, away from both of them. “Thank you, Dani.”
“No prob.” Dani X’d out of YouTube and turned sideways in her chair, sliding her backpack over her arm. “I guess I’ll see you around.”
Dani slid out of her chair and walked into Perry. He backed up as she grabbed his arm and started guiding him to the stairs.
“Bye, Kylie,” she said over her shoulder.
“Suddenly in a hurry to leave?” he grumbled under his breath, noticing how obvious his niece was being in dragging his ass out of there.
“You’re in the hurry.” Dani didn’t let go of him when they reached the stairs.
But Perry stopped her and then turned to see Kylie slowly raising the strap to her purse up her shoulder. She
