Kat, Knight Watch (Iron Orchids Book 11)

by Danielle Norman

  “Some hot guy that I can’t have sex with, and it’s been like a year; my vibrator is asking for overtime pay.” Everyone busted out laughing.

  The guys at the end of the table had opposite reactions, some leaned closer to hear more while Kayson covered his ears and tried to block me out.

  “And the ATM at the bank ate my debit card. Some punk-ass kid dumped their garbage on my bike while I was at the bank. Should I go on?”

  Bridget held up her hands, “No need to say more, I get it, today sucked, drink up, we’ll get you home safely.”

  The jukebox trilled and the sounds of Police and Sting’s epic whine as he called for Roxanne carried through the bar, officially cutting off my pity party. We slammed the shot, then had to refill because her name was being called again. Barely a breath later, we refilled again. By the end of the song, we were laughing so hard that the beer was also burning our noses. When “Jamming” got started we were all feeling buzzed.

  Somewhere between Jammin’ and downing a drink to the next Jammin’ several other motors deputies came through the door of the bar to join us. But none of us paid attention until the song was over. We were trying to drink and not choke while we laughed.

  Finally, both songs were over. I put down my drink and was feeling better about my shitty week when I turned to face the newcomers.

  Jackson

  I sat in the passenger seat of Max’s Jeep Wrangler; he was my neighbor and the only person in my neighborhood who I had met, and we were on the way to some bar he wanted me to go to.

  “I can’t tell you enough how much Julien and I appreciate all of your help. It’s been hard, but your sister has been a godsend.”

  After I’d met him, Max had told me about his sister and how she was going to school for early childhood education. Two minutes after she met my son, she was one of his favorite people in the world. The giant lollipop she gave him probably didn’t hurt.

  “She’s not bad for a kid,” Max joked. “Just kidding, nah, really, she really likes watching kids, especially ones Julien’s age.”

  The few days a week that she picks him up from preschool had made my life easier. And then tonight, she’d offered to watch Julien without my having to ask, and then told me to go out and have fun, get laid, and not to worry about coming home early. “Well, I owe her big time.”

  Max softly chuckled before his countenance changed to one that was more somber. “Can I ask you something? It’s about something Julien said to Mindy.” I groaned because knowing Julien, he could have said anything to Max’s sister.

  “Sure, go ahead.”

  “What happened to Julien’s mom? Is it something we need to worry about?”

  “No. She’s in Louisiana under house arrest.” Max let out a low whistle. “We’re divorced, and I have sole custody of Julien. Tammy has no rights whatsoever.”

  “Okay, just checking,” Max said. “By the way, where we are going is called Sixes, it’s pretty much a cop hang out,” Max said as he pulled into a gravel parking lot.

  “Speaking of cops, I met a deputy today. She came into the bank; she was pissed off.”

  “Orange County?” Max asked, turning to glance at me.

  “Yeah. Kallista.”

  “She must work in a totally different zone because I’ve never heard of her.”

  “Maybe, but she wore the same uniform you do, you know with your knee boots.” I tapped just under my knees.

  “She was a motorcycle deputy? I don’t know a Kallista.”

  “Last name was Lappis,” I added.

  “Kat? Stands about here”—Max held one hand to just under his chin—“long dark hair and even darker eyes.”

  “Yes, that’s her.”

  “I didn’t know Kallista was her full name. She just moved in with two of her sisters who live a few houses down from us.”

  “She has more than two?”

  “Yeah, she’s got like twenty or something,” Max informed me, and my jaw dropped. “Just kidding.” He laughed. “There are like five or six.”

  “That’s still a lot.”

  “Tell me about it. You ready?”

  “Yep.” I got out of the Jeep.

  Max’s phone dinged; he paused to read it. “What the fuck?”

  “Something wrong?” I asked.

  “It’s from an unknown number and it says that they just met you. Not they just met me, but they just met you.” He shook his head.

  “Ask them who they are? Maybe it’s a wrong number and you’re going home lucky tonight.”

  He texted his reply. Instantly, they typed back. He read it aloud and scoffed. “This doesn’t make sense.”

  “Those are the lyrics to a song.”

  “What the fuck?” Max asked and texted.

  The next line appeared, and I read over his shoulder. “Yep. I can’t remember who the song is by, but the bank plays it several times a day, every single day. It drives me crazy. It is piped in on our approved bank music.”

  “I want to find out who this is.” Max furiously pressed the screen on his phone. “They keep replying with fucking lines.”

  “May I?” I asked and held out my hand for Max’s phone.

  “Be my guest.”

  I punched in the next line, hit send, and waited.

  Only there were no more three dots, no anything.

  “It stopped,” Max exclaimed. “What did you text?”

  “Finished the next line in the song.”

  Max laughed. “That was the stupidest thing ever. Let’s go.” He led the way to a bar that made me feel like I was back home in Louisiana.

  I smelled fried food, beer, and I could hear the light sounds from a real jukebox.

  “Come on, we always sit back here.” Max led the way to a large group who had pushed several tables together in the corner. “Hey, this is my neighbor Jackson.” He introduced me to everyone all at once and then turned back and waved a hand. “Have a seat anywhere.”

  I glanced around, and my eyes locked on to the same dark-eyed woman from earlier today. The one who had crossed my mind several times and whose mouth had begged to be kissed. Unfortunately, she looked like the marrying kind, and I was never doing that again anytime soon—at least not until Julien was off to college. Maybe, just maybe, by then Tammy would have moved on to some other poor, unsuspecting schlep.

  Kat

  I tapped Piper on the knee.

  “What?”

  “Holy fuck, that’s him. He’s the hot guy I was just talking about earlier.”

  “Max’s friend?” Piper asked, and I nodded. “Well, he certainly is hot.”

  “Tell me about it. Wait until he opens his mouth.”

  “Hey, I know you,” Jackson said, catching my attention from across the table.

  Piper and a few of my other friends sighed, and I wanted to shush them. “Yep. Mr. Boudreaux, right?”

  “Jackson is fine, and you’re Kal—”

  “Kat. Just call me Kat.”

  Max jumped in. “Yeah, he asked if I knew a Kallista—”

  “As in Flockhart?” Piper asked.

  “Sort of. Mine is spelled differently. But, really, do I look like a Kallista?” I asked the girls down on my end of the table.

  “It makes so much sense now,” Sadie added.

  “What does?” I asked.

  “I always wondered how you got the name Kat when your sisters have, like, really Greek names.”

  Piper was sitting at the middle divider of the tables, which kind of acted as the barrier that separated the girls from the guys, but she stood and offered it to Jackson. “Here, have my seat, Jackson.” Piper moved around the table and nestled between Harley and Sadie. “This way you can sit next to Kat, since you two know each other, and you’ll still be next to the guys.”

  “Smooth, real smooth,” I hissed.

  How convenient that she and Harley were the two sitting on opposite sides of the table right at the divider between women and men. Of course, none of us would
expect Harley to move, since she was sitting next to Aiden, who she had a thing for. Not that you could really tell by the way they were giving each other death glares, but the spark was there.

  I tried to ignore Jackson and the scent of fresh, clean man as I turned to my girls and listened to Bridget. “Have you heard about Sergeant Lang’s sister?” Bridget usually had the inside scoop on everything, because before she became a sworn deputy, she worked in dispatch and she was still a card-carrying member of their gossip circle.

  “No, what?” I waited for her to tell us the punchline.

  Bridget pulled out her phone, typed something, then turned it to show us a book on the screen. “She wants to stay home with the babies, so she decided to start writing.”

  “Comedy?” I asked. It was a logical choice, since Stella was fucking funny.

  “No, are you ready for this?” Bridget whispered, and we all leaned in. “Erotica. She’s writing under her maiden name, Stella Lang.”

  As if we’d choreographed it, we all made a mad dash for our phones. Harley turned her small purse upside down and dumped the contents onto the table to find her phone.

  I pulled mine from my back pocket and quickly went to Amazon and downloaded the book. We were quiet as we all began flipping through the pages, trying to get to the good stuff.

  “Bam, two minutes in, and we have sex.” Harley fist-pumped the air.

  “Shh,” we all hissed.

  “What are you all doing?” Kayson asked.

  “Reading, shhh.” I waved him off.

  “Oh, god, not you all too,” he groaned. “My wife and all the women in my family have been reading that book.”

  “Aiden, want to come to my house and read me a bedtime story?” Harley asked.

  “Ahh, I’ll have to pass since that isn’t what I like to do in bed. Maybe if the offer had been better, I would have taken you up on it.” Aiden took a long swig from his bottle of beer and smirked.

  “No, no, no. Bedtime story was code,” Harley explained, and Aiden raised one brow. “Yeah, it was code for me being topless and you being between my legs.”

  Jackson choked on his drink. “You’ll get used to it,” I whispered.

  “Tempting, very tempting. But I’ve already passed and therefore have made other plans. Maybe next time.” Aiden dragged one finger around the rim of his beer bottle.

  “What other plans? There’s no way,” Harley huffed.

  I fought the urge to laugh. Harley proved that women could be just as sexually forward as men.

  “Can’t you all read that book later?” Aiden asked instead.

  “Yeah, I guess so,” I groaned and then tossed my phone back into my purse as Harley started gathering the contents of her purse and tossing them back inside her bag. She was just putting her hand on something when Aiden stopped her.

  “Umm, why do you have chalk?”

  Harley cackled at him. “I come with my own chalk to draw a line around your body after I murder you for pissing me off.”

  I was in hysterics as I glanced over at Jackson, whose mouth was agape. “She’s joking. Investigators don’t use chalk—that’s only for television. They use scanners.”

  “She carries chalk for the hell of it then?” Jackson asked.

  “I was doing OT and helping with illegal parking. We use chalk to mark the tires once we check them, and then if the car isn’t moved within six hours, it gets towed.”

  “That makes sense.” Jackson nodded then turned his gorgeous green eyes on me. “Small world to run into you twice in one day, but I’m really glad I did.”

  “Yeah, serendipitous, huh?”

  Sadie slid the rest of her drink over to me. “Keep drinking, we’ll order more.”

  Jackson turned in his chair to face our end of the table and listened in. “The damn ATM at his damn bank ate my card and wouldn’t give me my cash, so I had to go inside and get a new card. Then I came out and someone had thrown food all over my bike.”

  “They what?” Jackson asked. “In my bank’s parking lot?”

  “Yes.”

  “Did you see who did it?” He was genuinely curious.

  “Umm, no. If I had, I would have arrested their asses for criminal mischief.” I took a long swig of the vodka cranberry that was already watered down. “When I got home, my house was in the middle of promageddon.”

  “You don’t look nearly old enough to have a kid getting ready for prom.”

  “Thanks, and I don’t. I have two younger sisters who are still in high school and they decided that they needed to put on a fashion show and model what appeared to be forty dresses . . . each. It was okay by me because I was getting the hell out of there and fast.”

  Bridget laughed. “Oh, I can envision it, it must have been a sight.”

  “Let’s not forget the shoes. Oh, and then the, ‘Kat, which do you like best?’ ‘I like the blue one.’ ‘But the black one makes me look older.’ Then why the fuck did you ask me?”

  Sadie and Piper were cracking up.

  “And what is up with the tiaras? They both had tiaras on, like that is the new hair accessory for prom. They still look like babies to me so it’s odd to watch them trying to act all grown up.”

  “Oh my god, Toddlers and Tiaras. Have you ever thought about it? Toddlers and Tiaras is the only show that’s a prequel and a sequel”—Harley paused for a second—“to Sixteen and Pregnant.”

  “Holy shit, you didn’t just say that,” I said.

  “What? It’s true,” Harley defended.

  “You all are having too much fun,” Vivian, the owner of Sixes, said. “I’m sorry that you’ve had to wait so long for me to get over here. What can I get you guys?” Vivian had dark black hair that she wore in sort of a long bob. It usually looked adorable on her, but right then, it was only managing to emphasize how pale she seemed.

  “I can’t wait until the new girl starts. Mikki and I are going crazy.”

  “Give me that.” I took the order pad from her. “My parents own a restaurant, remember? My first job was as a hostess and then I ran circles around everyone else as a server. Go, I’ve got our group, you take care of the rest of the crowd.” Vivian looked as if she were ready to cry, but Jackson was smiling at me. It was a different type of smile: not happy, but rather, impressed. He winked, and the simple gesture warmed me all over.

  “Okay, let’s do food first. You’ll catch on.” I directed the last part to Jackson. I counted the number of people in our group. “What do we want?” Appetizers were hollered to me, and I wrote them down.

  Calamari, wings, fries, nachos, flatbread, and potato skins.

  “Now drinks.” I flipped the sheet. “I’ll get several pitchers of water and glasses. What else?” I wrote down as they called them out, from bottles of Yuengling to vodka cranberry, and then I took the orders up to the bar.

  “Hey, Kat, what can I get you?” Danny asked.

  “Hey, Danny. Here’s the order for our table. Just flag me when it’s ready, and I’ll come get it. And before you ask, yes I can carry a tray.” I grinned when his eyebrow rose.

  “Okay, I’ll have your drinks ready in about five.”

  By the time I had grabbed and passed out the drinks, the food was ready, so I grabbed that and then made sure everyone had plates before settling back in my seat. Jackson finally relaxed enough to find his groove with the gang.

  I flicked my hair back over my shoulder and absentmindedly scooted my chair closer to him. I swore it was absentmindedly, since I didn’t realize it until I could feel his warm breath on the back of my neck. I leaned away, not all the way away, just a tad away. I had to give off the right vibe, which was, I was up for some good-ole-fashioned play time, but I wasn’t long-term.

  In my head, I heard the squishing sound of saliva as I sucked on the inside of my cheek. This required serious contemplation. What kind of signal said sex no strings?

  Finally deciding to dive into food and give the thought some more time to simmer, I took severa
l bites before asking, “You had mentioned Cajun earlier today, where exactly are you from? All I know is New Orleans. Some of the girls and I went to Mardi Gras one year.”

  “I grew up in Morgan City, Louisiana. Ever heard of it?”

  “Sorry, nope.”

  “It’s about an hour outside New Orleans. My parents still live there.” Jackson wiped his hands as he finished eating and then rested his right arm on the back of my chair. I wanted to lean into him, but I refrained. “Were you born in Orlando?”

  “No, Tarpon Springs. It’s about two hours from here.” I stopped talking when Jackson nonchalantly started finger-combing the ends of my hair. Absentmindedly, I leaned back and reveled in the feel of his fingers as they slid through the strands and gave a slight tug. It tingled my scalp, and I relaxed a tad bit more.

  “Are you going to purr?” he whispered into my ear.

  “Keep it up, and I just might,” I quipped, deciding bluntness was the best solution to my ‘should I, shouldn’t I’ quandary. In a soft whisper while tapping his left ring finger, I asked, “Bruised?”

  “No, absolutely not. We’ve been separated for three years and divorced for two. But I only recently took off my ring. Not because I was pining after her but because it saved questions at my old job.”

  “Makes sense.” I bit my bottom lip and tried to drag my eyes away from his. It was hopeless.

  “You’re gorgeous, do you know that?” he asked. I shook my head.

  “Your hair is so soft, god, I could just run my fingers through it all night.”

  “I like you doing that.”

  Jackson shifted in his seat a little, edging closer to me. “Then I guess I shouldn’t stop.”

  No, no, he shouldn’t. I did not want him to stop. My whacked-out brain at that moment was internally quoting Dr.Seuss: I did not want green eggs and ham. Shit, that didn’t sound right.

  I leaned back in my chair and leaned a little closer to Jackson, then glanced around to my friends, who were intensely watching us. They all were wearing shit-eating grins.