Fries Before Guys
Page 1
Fries Before Guys
Book 2 of The SWAT Generation 2.0 Series
By
Lani Lynn Vale
Text copyright ©2020 Lani Lynn Vale
All Rights Reserved
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the author. The only exception is by a reviewer, who may quote short excerpts in a review.
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Dedication
To all of those people that love reading those ‘forbidden’ love stories like me.
Acknowledgments
Golden Czermak- Photographer
Jason Estes- Model
Ellie McLove - My Brother’s Editor & Ink It Out Editing
Cover Me Darling- Cover Artist
My mom- Thank you for reading this book eight million two hundred times.
Kendra, Penney, Laura, Kathy, Mindy, Lisa, Barbara & Amanda—I don’t know what I would do without y’all. Thank you, my lovely betas, for loving my books as much as I do.
Table of Contents
Author’s Note:
Blurb
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Epilogue
What’s Next?
What else is next?
Other titles by Lani Lynn Vale:
The Freebirds
Boomtown
Highway Don’t Care
Another One Bites the Dust
Last Day of My Life
Texas Tornado
I Don’t Dance
The Heroes of The Dixie Wardens MC
Lights To My Siren
Halligan To My Axe
Kevlar To My Vest
Keys To My Cuffs
Life To My Flight
Charge To My Line
Counter To My Intelligence
Right To My Wrong
Code 11- KPD SWAT
Center Mass
Double Tap
Bang Switch
Execution Style
Charlie Foxtrot
Kill Shot
Coup De Grace
The Uncertain Saints
Whiskey Neat
Jack & Coke
Vodka On The Rocks
Bad Apple
Dirty Mother
Rusty Nail
The Kilgore Fire Series
Shock Advised
Flash Point
Oxygen Deprived
Controlled Burn
Put Out
I Like Big Dragons Series
I Like Big Dragons and I Cannot Lie
Dragons Need Love, Too
Oh, My Dragon
The Dixie Warden Rejects
Beard Mode
Fear the Beard
Son of a Beard
I’m Only Here for the Beard
The Beard Made Me Do It
Beard Up
For the Love of Beard
Law & Beard
There’s No Crying in Baseball
Pitch Please
Quit Your Pitchin’
Listen, Pitch
The Hail Raisers
Hail No
Go to Hail
Burn in Hail
What the Hail
The Hail You Say
Hail Mary
The Simple Man Series
Kinda Don’t Care
Maybe Don’t Wanna
Get You Some
Ain’t Doin’ It
Too Bad So Sad
Bear Bottom Guardians MC
Mess Me Up
Talkin’ Trash
How About No
My Bad
One Chance, Fancy
It Happens
Keep It Classy
Snitches Get Stitches
F-Bomb
The Southern Gentleman Series
Hissy Fit
Lord Have Mercy
KPD Motorcycle Patrol
Hide Your Crazy
It Wasn’t Me
I’d Rather Not
Make Me
Sinners are Winners
If You Say So
SWAT 2.0
Just Kidding
Fries Before Guys
Maybe Swearing Will Help (3-10-20)
Ask Me If I Care (4-14-20)
May Contain Wine (5-12-20)
Jokes on You (6-9-20)
Join the Club (7-14-20)
Any Day Now (8-11-20)
Say it Ain’t So (9-8-20)
Officially Over It (10-13-20)
Nobody Knows (11-3-20)
Depends Who’s Asking (12-8-20)
Valentine Boys
Herd That
Crazy Heifer
Chute Yeah
Get Bucked
Author’s Note:
If I had used this KPD premise as a whole new series, I could have happily written what I wanted, but I wanted to incorporate my Kilgore guys and their families. I love writing about the SWAT team and their families, so I may have taken some liberties with the space time continuum. Enjoy!
Blurb
Sometimes people come into a person’s life and make their heart skip a beat.
Those people are called cops.
Well, one cop in particular.
A SWAT officer for the Kilgore Police Department, to be specific.
The first time Avery Flynn saw Derek Roberts, she was photographing him for the first annual Kilgore Police Department SWAT calendar. He was leaned back in his squad car, shirtless, and giving her a smile that was completely between them. A smile that hinted at what he wanted to do to her later.
When she scrounges up the courage to ask him out after the photoshoot, he laughs in her face.
Well, screw you, too, Mr. February.
***
Derek Roberts never really paid attention to the photographer.
She was a mousy girl who dressed like a twelve-year-old. Her tight leggings, extra baggy Star Trek t-shirt denoting her a Klingon captain, and her surprisingly clean Chucks didn’t leave much of an impression.
Now, the outfit that she was in weeks after he rebuffed her? Yeah, now that caught his attention.
Too bad that happens when he’s trying to save her from what’s sure to be death thanks to an unhinged native Texan who’s convinced she was the reason he lost his last chance at a million dollars.
When he tries to save her, she tells him she’d rather take a cattle prod to the forehead than go anywhere with him.
Challenge. Accepted.
Prologue
I really don’t mind getting older. But my body is taking it badly.
-Coffee Cup
Derek
I don’t want to do a fucking picture for a calendar, Dad.
Those had been the words that I’d said to my father, the chief of police, two weeks ago.
Yet here I found myself, get
ting myself photographed, in a motherfuckin’ bed.
Or, at least, there was a fucking bed in the room.
“I am not getting in that bed,” I said to no one in particular.
Dax, who was coming out of the room as I was going in it, rolled his eyes. “Don’t worry. I got in the bed. I’m sure she’ll make you do something else… like get naked in the shower.”
I snorted. “I’m not doing that, either.”
“Don’t get too excited,” a soft, feminine voice said from somewhere in the room. “I’d planned on a totally different look for Mr. February.”
Dax slapped me on the shoulder and shut the door behind him as he left, leaving me giddy to see the owner of that voice.
Except, when I finally got a good look at the lone figure sitting on the bed, her back to me, my excitement deflated.
Because on the bed was Avery Flynn.
A teenager.
The nineteen-year-old photographer who was doing this photoshoot today for free.
That wasn’t to say that she wasn’t very talented. She was.
But she was also in high school and dressed—as well as acted—like a nerd.
Avery Flynn was well known to the officers of Kilgore Police Department. But not because she was bad or anything—at least not to my knowledge.
The reason for her notoriety was that Avery Flynn was a cop’s kid.
A cop’s kid times two.
Her mother, Rhonda Flynn, had been killed while heading home from a shift by a drunk driver. She’d died after two harrowing days on life support.
She would’ve died the first day, but Rhonda had always been a helper. A person of quality and life. And Avery had decided that Rhonda’s viable organs needed to be donated.
It’d taken her twenty-four hours to convince Rader, her father, to donate.
Rhonda had saved eight lives in the following days. Her heart, kidneys, lungs, liver, small bowel, and pancreas had all been donated to seven different people. The heart even to a young man right here in Kilgore, Texas.
A young man who had been the boyfriend of a town mean girl who didn’t like the attention that Avery got from the young man after his surgery. The young girl had then set out to make Avery’s life a living hell before she’d filed a restraining order against her, forcing the girl to stay five hundred feet away from Avery at all times.
Which was tough seeing as they both went to the same high school.
Avery’s father hadn’t been around for the bullying. But it hadn’t mattered.
When Kilgore had lost one of its own, the town had rallied around his only child, making sure that the case was taken on pro bono by the lawyers. Then going even further to attend each and every trial day. Sometimes the judge would look into his courtroom and see more than half of the seats occupied by an officer.
So yes, to say Avery Flynn was loved by the cops of this city would be an understatement.
Which was why I looked at her and immediately dismissed her.
She was a cute girl, but cuteness only got you so far.
And she was still in high school.
So yeah, I was staying very far away from that.
I was so caught up in what I was thinking—Avery to be specific—that I didn’t pay attention to the girl who was no longer sitting on the bed.
“Ready?”
I blinked, looking down at the woman—no, teenager—who was staring at me.
She reminded me of one of those nerdy anime chicks. The ones that were fabricated and staged.
She had on a pair of black leggings that fit her shapely legs like a glove. They came to a stop right below her calves, exposing about four inches of milky white skin before her black Chucks with red skulls printed on them came into view.
I had to admit, the skulls were pretty cute. Even if a bit childish.
And why the hell was I having a problem looking away from her ankle bones? Ankle bones weren’t sexy… at least they hadn’t been before Avery.
“I’m thinking we’ll go outside to the cruiser for your shoot,” she said, startling me out of the contemplation of her ankle bones.
I reluctantly slipped my way back up her body, pausing slightly on her t-shirt.
It was black like her leggings but had bold white lettering that said ‘Klingon Captain’ on it.
The shirt was so fucking baggy that I couldn’t make out a single thing.
Not the shape of her waist, or the curve of her breasts. Hell, I could almost make out her collarbone, though. Her shirt was very nearly hanging off of one shoulder. But her long, thick black hair was blocking it from my view.
Long black hair that was falling in waves around a beautiful face. Perfect, kissable lips.
“Is that okay, Mr. Roberts?” Avery asked.
My eyes finally met hers. Eyes that I’d been avoiding since I knew they were so fucking pretty.
This was the real reference to anime, in my opinion.
Avery’s eyes were so fucking blue—an intense blue that just rocked you when you looked into them—that they reminded me of those girls on anime. Where their single most defining features were their eyes.
Eyes that were slightly covered up by large, black-framed glasses that looked as if they took up her entire face.
And then there was the dusting of freckles right underneath those big, beautiful blue eyes.
“Derek?” she pushed. “Are you okay?”
I blinked, snapping out of my thoughts.
“Yeah, outside is fine,” I finally settled on, trying to get my shit straight.
I couldn’t be having these kinds of thoughts about a woman this young.
I certainly couldn’t be having these thoughts about a woman that was still in high school. I know there weren’t that many years between us, but just the idea that she was only a senior made me feel old.
“Where do you want me?” I asked curiously.
“Do you have a police cruiser?” She finally looked up.
My breath caught once again as I caught sight of her eyes.
“I do,” I said, surprised that my voice had come out sounding so even.
“Then that’s what we’re going to take your photo in,” she said, going back to her camera. “I just have to switch out the lens.”
I nodded but didn’t reply, too busy berating my body for doing things that it shouldn’t be doing for a nineteen-year-old.
“How’s your dad?” she asked conversationally.
And that was a very good way to get my mind out of the gutter and back to the matter at hand.
“My dad’s good,” I said. “Going on a cruise in a few months. So I’d say he’s stressed seeing as he’s trying to figure out how to delegate tasks while he’s gone. But what he does is too much for one person to do, so he’s struggling with it.”
Avery snorted. “Your dad works too much. And he should already be delegating a lot of those things without having to take a vacation.”
My sentiments exactly.
“I agree.” I crossed my arms over my chest.
Avery got her lens switched out and gestured for the door.
I followed her, then had to take over because she stopped and looked confused.
“This way,” I said, leading her out the back door.
I nodded at the two men that were at the back door smoking.
Avery, on the other hand, started to cough.
“Oh, God.” She coughed again, waving her hand in front of her face. “That’s awful.”
Both officers froze as they saw her.
“Officer Morre.” She tilted her head, looking at the officer on the left. “I didn’t realize you started smoking again. Didn’t your wife say you quit?”
Officer Morre winced. “I only do it upon occasion.”
Avery raised a brow at Morre. “Is that right?”
Morre immediately dumped his cigarette onto the ground and stomped it out with his boot.
“And you,” she said. “Tuscon, is it?”
Tuscon nodded, his smile slipping away.
“Don’t you have a pregnant wife at home?”
Tuscon nodded. “Four months.”
“Hmm,” Avery said. “Did you hear about that little baby, she was three years old, that got lung cancer? From secondhand smoke?”
Tuscon froze.
“It’s not just you anymore, my man.” Avery patted him on the shoulder. “Gotta think about that.”
Avery followed me down the steps and to the front of my cruiser, and I couldn’t help it. I had to ask.
***
Avery
Holy. Shit.
I was standing next to Derek Roberts, and I was about to take his photo.
How was this my life?
“Did you have someone close to you die of lung cancer or something?” Derek asked, looking at me curiously.
I shook my head.
“No,” I admitted. “I just like to spread my ‘it’s not good to smoke’ vibes everywhere. Plus, Morre’s wife, Natalie, has a family history of lung cancer. He should be doing better than he is with that hanging over his head.”
Derek grunted.
“Did you really know a three-year-old that got lung cancer?” he pushed.
I snorted. “No. I didn’t know them. I only read about it on the internet.”
He grunted again, making me think he didn’t like that I’d told the men that smoking was bad.
Smoking was bad.
It wasn’t my fault if they didn’t like to hear the dangers associated with it.
“What do you want me to do?” he asked, and the vibe I was getting from him was a whole lot more formal now.
“I want you to get in your cruiser and act natural.” I paused. “With your shirt off.”
He lifted a brow at me, making my heart race.
“Do you honestly think it’s ‘natural’ for me to be in my cruiser shirtless?” he wondered.
I looked at him.
“I’m just doing what I was told to do,” I said. “If you don’t want to take off your shirt, fine. Not my business. I was just told to make you take your shirt off and make it look ‘hot’ but ‘tasteful.’ Those are direct quotes from the man in charge. So completely up to you, you’ll still look good with all of your clothes on, but Dax, who was before you? He was able to do it shirtless in the bed. Just sayin’.”