by Livia Grant
His speech, and promise of further discipline apparently had the desired calming effect. She somberly thanked Josiah, bid him goodnight, and got in the car without another word. Josiah was once again reminded of the reason he had moved to Corbin’s Bend. The exchange he had witnessed was a good example of the reasons he believed in a domestic discipline marriage, and he had seen many like it within his own family.
Beau lingered on the doorstep. “I’m sorry about that— all of it. Laney can be a bit of a hot button for Ginger sometimes. They love each other, but they drive each other crazy, and they are nothing alike. Ginger, she can be a bit tight, and Laney is a bit loose. If either of them could mellow to a happy medium, it would make all our lives a lot easier.” Beau shook his head grimacing. “Living with both of them, it’s interesting. Sometimes I feel like I have two wives, but I can only spank one of them. I do my best to keep Ginger under control, but I’m waiting anxiously for the day when Laney finds a good man to take her in hand. God knows she’s needed a good spanking for a long time, and there are times I’ve been tempted to say screw propriety and bend her over my own knee, but I’m a one woman guy, and I’m not too stupid to know that that would make things even more complicated than they already are.”
Josiah had to hold his laughter in at the two wives comment. If this guy only knew. Still, he was willing to concede that he may have misjudged Beau. He had obviously caught the guy at an awkward moment, and he was the new cop in town. People weren’t really used to strangers in Corbin’s Bend. It was too small a place for anyone to stay strangers for long. As Josiah’s dad had always said, “Strangers are just friends that you haven’t met yet.” It wasn’t Josiah’s favorite saying. As a cop, he saw the danger in thinking that way, but in small towns like Corbin’s Bend and Green Valley, he could see where it was appropriate.
“I feel for ya, man,” he said, losing his cop persona for the moment. “You have a good night, and I’ll see you around.”
Beau nodded, clapped him on the shoulder and got into the car where Josiah could see a still very pissed off Ginger waiting for him. Women.
Just as Ginger and Beau drove away up First Street, a cab pulled up to the curb from the opposite direction. This struck Josiah as odd, as he knew there was no cab services in Corbin’s Bend. Deciding to stick around, he got in his car and waited, watching to make sure that everything was okay.
He watched as a slightly tipsy redhead got out of the cab, bending down to pay the driver, before she made her way up the sidewalk towards him. She did a double take when she saw him, and he could have sworn he heard her whisper his name. Followed by a clearer, “You have got to be freaking kidding me! I do not need this right now!” As she stomped passed him, ignoring his polite greeting, he could see that she was a knock-out. Short red hair, high cheekbones, smoldering green eyes. He could also see that those eyes were clearly wet and laden with unshed tears. She turned and headed up the steps to the home he had just left, and his heart jumped in his chest. This was Laney? The one Julie couldn’t stop talking about, and who Beau thought needed a good spanking more than anything? She was gorgeous, and for a moment he entertained very un-gentlemanlike thoughts about his being the one to give her the spanking, that to hear tell, she so desperately seemed to need. Her ass, like the rest of her was perfect, and he had a clear view of its round firmness through her very tight jeans as she ran up the steps. He was tempted to stay where he was and enjoy the view for a few minutes before getting on his way and back to work. But she was clearly upset, and what kind of man or cop would he be if he didn’t make sure a pretty lady was safe and sound? She paused at the door, and stooped down to dig in her oversize shoulder bag. “Crap! Crap! Crap!” he heard her exclaim as she continued pawing through the bag, growing more frantic.
“Excuse me, ma’am, Miss?” Josiah saw his opening and took it. “Is everything okay? I couldn’t help but notice that you seem rather upset.” He crossed to the bottom of the steps in two long strides and peered up at her.
“I’m fine!” she cried, refusing to look at him.
He raised his eyebrows, contemplating his next step. These rumors he had always heard about redheads having the worst tempers were undoubtedly true if he counted tonight’s events as evidence. She was the second redhead tonight to yell at him in the span of twenty minutes, regardless of the fact that he was a perfect stranger and a cop to boot! And all he had done was offer his assistance! He chuckled to himself. Truth be told, he wasn’t turned off by her apparent attitude. To the contrary. This woman needed a spanking in the worst way, and somehow, someday, he vowed that he would be the one to give it to her.
“Okay, then if you’re fine, I’ll be on my way,” he said cheerfully, spinning on his heel and turning in the direction of his cop car.
“No, wait!” He could hear her sigh in frustration over having to ask him for help.
“Yes?” he questioned, with a smirk over his shoulder at her, still heading towards his car.
“Hey! You asked if you could help! I said yes! Why are you getting in your car?” She ran down the steps to catch up with him just as he opened the driver’s side door and got in. “You’re really something— you know that? You ask if I need help, and then you get in your car and leave! Fine! Whatever! I don’t need your help anyway! Just go, you…you big jerk!”
She attempted to slam his door shut, but Josiah grabbed her wrist, amused at her little rant. She was seriously close to seeing the error of her ways.
“One, I asked if you needed help, and you declined my help. In fact, not only did you refuse me, but you yelled at me, which might I add, is incredibly rude to do to anyone who offers you help, but especially to someone you just met.”
“Let go of me!” Laney yelled, attempting to break away from his grasp. “It’s also incredibly rude to grab onto people you just met! Let go now you big oaf! Or…or…I’ll call the cops!”
Josiah quirked his brow at her. “I am the cops,” he told her evenly. “Did you not notice my spiffy blue uniform or this fancy white car with lights on top?” He couldn’t hide the amusement in his voice as Laney stood there sputtering. She had no response for that one, so he continued. “Number two, I’m not stupid. It’s obvious, even to a big jerk like me, that you left your keys somewhere. I’m guessing in your car, which judging by the fact that you came home in a cab, and you’re a little bit tipsy, is at a bar somewhere. Now, my shift is rather quiet tonight, so I’m offering you a ride to get your keys. Now, get in the car. Unless of course, you want to wait for your cousin to get home from her restaurant which someone apparently forgot to lock up properly tonight, causing the doors to blow open in the storm, causing a cop to come knocking on their door at eleven o’clock at night, just in time to see your cousin in the corner with a very red bottom. In case you can’t guess, she’s more than a little mad at you, and she should be pulling in any moment. So, unless you’d really like to be here for that shit-storm, I suggest you get in the car.”
Josiah watched as a full range of emotions flashed across her beautiful features. For a moment, he feared she would cry again, but then her eyes darkened and her scowl returned. “All right fine! I’ll get in the car with you, but it’s not because you said to. It’s because I really need my keys,” she said, stomping around to the passenger side and opening the door.
“Whatever gets you through the day, sweetheart.”
“Don’t call me sweetheart. I’m nobody’s sweetheart— least of all yours!”
“Gee, I can’t imagine why,” he retorted, turning on the car and starting the engine. He was grateful for the piercing darkness of the night. It meant she couldn’t see him smile.
Chapter Four
Laney sulked as she stared out the window into the darkness. This night had started out good but had quickly gone from bad to worse. And now she was buzzed, and melancholy and angry sitting in a silent car with the infamous Josiah. He had yet to introduce himself, but Laney had known exactly who he was the minute she saw him standing on the
sidewalk outside the house. There were only four cops in Corbin’s Bend, and she knew the other three. Simple powers of deduction had told her that this man was the one Julie swore was made for her. And damn but if he wasn’t ten times hotter than Julie had made him out to be. No girly boy metrosexual leanings here. This was surely a man who knew how to dominate both in and out of the bedroom. Lean and muscular without being too much, he filled out his uniform in all the right places. And his eyes, she thought, fighting the urge to fan herself, his eyes were smoldering. It was too dark out for Laney to tell what color they were but it hardly mattered. She had blown her chance right out of the gate. “Stupid, stupid, stupid,” she muttered to herself.
“You know, it’s not very nice to name-call,” Josiah said calmly. “If you wanted to know what to call me, all you had to do was ask.”
Ugh, the man was infuriating! How could one manage to be sarcastic and charming at the same time? “I know who you are,” she snapped, still staring out the window. “Although for the record, next time it wouldn’t kill you to at least introduce yourself before you force a woman into your car.”
“Duly noted,” he said, and she could have sworn he was smirking. “Also, for the record, my name is Josiah, not stupid.”
“Are you sure about that? Because I’m pretty sure I just told you that I already know your name. You may not be stupid, but you must be deaf.”
The car jerked to a stop in the middle of the road, letting her know that she had finally gone too far. But, as was her way, she just kept going. She had never been good with warnings, or big glaring, flashing stop signs for that matter.
“You know you can’t just park in the middle of the road. It’s dangerous, and I happen to know there are laws against it.”
“Hmmmm,” was his only reply before he turned to gaze at her, his face stone cold with disapproval.
“Don’t stare. It’s rude,” she admonished, meeting his gaze defiantly, crossing her arms over her chest in a weak gesture of insolence.
“I’m just trying to gage how much alcohol you had tonight. You seem to be having trouble remembering that I am the law in Corbin’s Bend now, and currently I’m the only officer on duty. I’m trying to be nice and offer my assistance to the citizens of this town, one in particular at the moment, but she seems determined to fight me at every turn, and to be honest, I’m just not quite sure how far my duty extends here. See, if you would have asked me, I would have guessed that this qualified as falling into the above and beyond category, but we seem to have a differing opinion here, I’m guessing, because you seem anything but grateful.”
He sat there watching her, eyebrows slightly raised, mouth set in a flat line, and she just knew he was waiting for her to come to some sort of epiphany and sing praises of his wonderful virtues, but it would be a cold day in hell before that happened.
“Great. Just great, not only did I get forced into a trip in a cop car, but I got stuck with a cop on a power trip.” She matched his facial expression for a moment, raised eyebrows and all, before throwing him a disgusted look. “Dude, you need to get over yourself. I was just fine until you came along.”
He gave her the look. She didn’t quite know how else to describe it, other than it was a look she saw around the ‘Bend on a regular basis. She knew its meaning solely by the way her body reacted to it. Her heart dropped to her stomach and turned into a flock of dancing butterflies. Her cheeks flamed, and she felt the heat creeping from her neck up to her hairline. It wasn’t until the heat shot lower, pulsing and throbbing underneath her thin satin panties that she realized the sheer ridiculousness of her reaction, and became incensed with anger. She sat there stewing, racking her brain for a good insult, or snarky comment in vain. The throbbing in her pussy was making it impossible to concentrate. Josiah, apparently, was having no such problem, much to her dismay.
“Okay, I’ve had just about enough of your piss poor attitude, missy. And, to freshen your memory to the actual sequence of events that took place tonight, I didn’t, as you keep insinuating, come along and force you into my car! In fact, if anyone just came along, it was you!”
“ME? I just came along? You have got to be kidding me right now! It’s my house!”
“You know what? You’re right. It’s your house, and I wouldn’t have been there at all if not for your irresponsibility and failure to complete a simple task like locking a door!” Josiah, who until this point had handled everything she threw at him with a touch of humor and an even tone, was finally starting to show his anger. His cheeks were red underneath his dark facial hair, and his voice was getting louder with each word he spoke. The fact made her feel oddly pleased with herself, and egged her to continue.
“Oh, sure, throw that back in my face!” she roared, leaning forward to smack her hand on the glove box for good measure.
“Right, because I’m the one who started this!” Josiah roared back, finally getting as angry as she herself was acting. “Again, might I remind you, that I was only there because you left the door unlocked and the storm blew it open, and someone had to take care of it and be the responsible one while you were out getting wasted tonight. So not only was I cleaning up after you, but doing so put me in a very uncomfortable situation when I apparently interrupted something between your cousin and her husband. But instead of apologizing for that, or God forbid, even just accepting my offer of help with a simple ‘thank you’, you have done nothing but insult me and attack my character since the moment you met me! And then, on top of all that, you have the audacity to accuse me of being ‘just another cop on a power trip!’” He paused then clearly the most insulted about that over anything else she had said tonight, and she had to wonder if that spoke to the measure of the man, or only to the size of his ego.
She had to admit, when he put it like that, she finally saw that okay, maybe this comedy of errors really was slightly more her fault than his. But, only slightly. Still, she opened her mouth, ready to swallow her pride and force out an apology of sorts, when he started up again.
“Let me tell you something about trips, missy. I’m not on a power trip of any sort so you can rest easy on that one. However, one more ill spoken word from you and you’ll be the one on a trip— a trip over my knee!”
Eyes flaring with hurt and rage, she turned back to the window. “Please take me to my car,” she whispered, afraid that if she spoke any louder she wouldn’t be able to hold back the tears threatening to spill. She closed her eyes in relief as the car started moving again, and he turned onto the road that Amore sat on.
She refused to speak another word, and not for the reasons one might think. The empty threat of a spanking she so desperately needed and god knows even deserved had been the final straw. She had no fight left in her after that. What was it about Corbin’s Bend men that made them think they could just go around randomly threatening to spank her when they had no intention of ever following through on it? Didn’t they know that every empty threat was like a knife in her back reminding her of what she didn’t have?
Thankfully, it took only a few more minutes to reach her car, and by some miracle she was able to convince Josiah that she was sober enough to actually drive her car home, rather than just retrieve her keys. He made her blow into a breathalyzer just to be on the safe side, but when she blew out a .02, he conceded to let her drive, provided she let him at least follow behind her. She grudgingly agreed, desperate to get out of his car, and away from him, and she could see on his face that he felt the exact same way.
* * * * *
The rest of his shift was quiet and uneventful, and when he pulled into his driveway the next morning at eight, Matt Renton was sitting in his truck in the driveway waiting for him.
He nodded at his friend with a smile as they both exited their vehicles simultaneously. Matt was a bit faster and met him at the top of the driveway.
“Are you beat after your first night shift, or could I coerce you into inviting me in for a quick cup of coffee?” Matt asked with a
n easy smile.
“No, I mean, yes,” Josiah faltered. “I mean, I’m fine and would love to invite you in for a cup of coffee, but er…I don’t have any. It is…was…against my religion.” He was a little embarrassed at having to admit such a small thing, but it was just another thing that set him apart from the real world.
“Oh, gosh, I’m sorry, man, I wasn’t thinking. I just wanted to talk to you about something real quick, I don’t need coffee.”
Josiah sighed. That, like most things, had come out wrong. “Don’t be sorry. I do, on occasion, drink coffee on shift. I just don’t have a coffee pot, or any coffee to offer you. But honestly, I would love a cup right about now, it’s been a long night.”
“Great, well hey, let’s run over to my house and grab a cup there. Julie is running the kids around right now, school, doctor’s appointments, and grocery shopping, so we might be able to get a little peace.”
“Sounds good.”
They made the short walk to Matt’s house in silence, and Josiah was grateful for a friend who lived so close by. They went inside, and sure enough it was unusually quiet. Josiah sat down at the kitchen table, watching while his friend brewed a pot of the once forbidden drink. It smelled amazing, and he felt instantly alert as Matt slid a cup in front of him, and the heady scent filled his nostrils. He made a mental note to buy a coffee pot as soon as possible.
“So, listen, I wanted to warn you, and apologize to you, but Julie seems to have it in her head that you are perfect for her friend Laney. I’ve talked to her, and warned her off, but I’ve got to be honest. I don’t really think it did much good. She seems to be determined to do some match-making here, and as much as I want to do the responsible thing and nip it in the bud, I can’t actually say that I disagree with her on this one.”
Josiah closed his eyes, the weight of the events of the night heavy on his heart. It meant so much to him that two people whose opinions already mattered so much thought he would be a good match for Laney, someone they obviously cared for a great deal. She was a beautiful and spirited woman, and he would have loved to get to know her better. Too bad he had already blown it. The people of Corbin’s Bend had no idea how hard this dating or relationship stuff was for him, and how unnatural it seemed. It was something that ninety percent of the world took for granted, but arranged marriages were all he knew. You found out who you were to marry, then you courted and fell in love. To do the latter first felt a bit like putting the cart before the horse to his line of thinking. It was undoubtedly what he wanted, but that didn’t make it any easier.
