Sassy Blonde: USA TODAY BESTSELLING AUTHOR

by Stacey Kennedy

  Amelia and Penelope laughed.

  Maisie said, dead serious, “It could be worse. At least it’s not about killing things, ghosts, or his desire to cut anything open.”

  Clara scrunched her nose and slowly shook her head. “Seriously, Maisie, I don’t know how you do it, but I can always count on you to make me feel better in weird ways.”

  “Of course you can.” Maisie smiled. Mason, while a total handful, was a really good, sweet kid. And Clara was the reason for it. She was an amazing mom. Uptight and a little stressed at times, but a damn good mom, especially considering she was raising Mason on her own. Maisie had long suspected that the father was Clara’s high school sweetheart, Sullivan Kenne. Even Amelia was convinced the now-professional baseball player was Mason’s dad. But Clara wouldn’t ever admit to it. After a while, the conversation never came up again.

  “Mason Carter get back here right now,” Clara called in her mom voice. “We need to talk about the fart noises.”

  When Clara’s voice disappeared after she left the house, Penelope added to Maisie, “Honestly, I think you’d be doing Hayes a favor by asking him to go to the festivals with you. He doesn’t really seem like the type to just sit around and do nothing. Maybe a road trip is right up his alley.”

  “Maybe,” Maisie agreed. But the moment the thought entered her mind, her belly filled with butterflies. Three nights alone with Hayes…

  As if reading her thoughts, Penelope grinned. “Unless there is a reason you don’t want to be alone with him?”

  “Of course, there is isn’t,” Maisie said, heat rising to her cheeks.

  Amelia gave a sly smile. “Mm-hmm, sure. We all believe that.”

  “Oh, hush, both of you,” Maisie said, taking a muffin and putting it in a Ziploc bag, realizing that apparently she had been showing her feelings a little too much lately. Feelings she hadn’t even totally figured out yet, considering that mixed in with her attraction for Hayes was also a bucket load of guilt for feeling anything for Laurel’s husband. “Hayes and I are friends,” she said to everyone, including herself.

  “Right, just friends,” Amelia said. “Who’s that muffin for?”

  Maisie refused to look at them as she pressed the bag closed. “If I’m going to ask Hayes for a favor, I need to bring him a treat, don’t I?”

  She nearly made it out of the kitchen when Penelope burst out laughing and called, “Hate to break it to you, Maisie, but I don’t think that’s the muffin Hayes wants.”

  When the Lyft dropped Hayes off at home at a little after ten o’clock in the morning, his throbbing headache from being awakened every hour to ensure he didn’t have a concussion worsened. Waiting in the circular driveway was his father, leaning against the SUV with POLICE CHIEF written on the driver’s side door. The gossip train had obviously filled his dad in on the fall yesterday, but Hayes didn’t even want to know how his father knew he was on his way home from the hospital. Hayes shared his father’s strong build, only his dad was slightly shorter, with darker brown eyes and a salt-and-pepper beard that matched the hair on his head. There was nothing soft about his father, including his stare as he looked upon Hayes.

  “Thanks for the ride,” Hayes said to the driver before slamming the door shut.

  “Most people call their family when they’ve been hurt,” his father rebuked, arms crossed. He wore his typical small-town uniform of business casual pants, tan cowboy hat and a navy-blue polo shirt.

  “I wasn’t hurt,” Hayes reported, sidling up to him. “I had a fall. It wasn’t a big deal, but Nash requires the hospital visit for insurance reasons. A call wasn’t warranted, believe me.”

  His dad scanned Hayes from head to toe. “Not hurt, then?”

  “Not even a little.”

  His father’s frown only deepened. “I don’t know why you’re bothering with these wild horses. If you’re out to kill yourself, I can think of better ways to do it than putting yourself through repeated hospital visits.”

  Hayes did them both a favor and didn’t deny it. He took risks he knew he wouldn’t have before Laurel died. In the last sixteen months of working for Nash, he’d gone to the hospital for stitches above his eyebrow, a relocation of his shoulder, and to get fluid drained from his knee, and that was only recently. The first eight months after Laurel died, he couldn’t even leave his house until Maisie showed up. “Like I said, the fall wasn’t bad.”

  “What’s this, the second hospital visit in six months?” his father countered.

  “Third, actually,” Hayes corrected.

  His father’s expression softened, his strong hand cupping Hayes’s shoulder. “I’m not exactly sure what you’re doing with these horses other than punishing yourself, but don’t you think it’s time to stop it?”

  Hayes glanced out to his red brick bungalow, with black accents and a matching roof. The flower bed hugging the walkway had been Maisie’s touch, as was the flowerpot resting by the front door—with the gold lion door knocker—that she repotted every spring. When Hayes returned home to River Rock, he’d bought the property with half of Laurel’s life insurance policy. The rest of the money was sitting in an untouched bank account. The only reason he bought the property was for the mature weeping willow tree that rested on the edge of the creek. Weeping willows were Laurel’s favorite, and Hayes had spread her ashes there, exactly where she would have wanted, giving her the perfect resting place that, in life, she would have loved. “This is my life now,” Hayes finally said, glancing back to his father. “You’re going to have to accept that.”

  Dad frowned, slowly removing his hand. “Laurel wouldn’t want this. Getting yourself hurt all the time isn’t going to bring her back.”

  “I know that,” Hayes shot back, heat building in his chest.

  “Then come back to the force,” Dad countered gently. “You don’t need to work in Denver. Come work for me, in town. You’re a damn good cop, Hayes. That’s where you belong.”

  The radio in the SUV crackled, and the dispatcher’s voice rambled off a radio code. That high-pitched voice was like an anchor, yanking Hayes back to the night when Laurel’s life ended, reminding him why, no matter how much he missed being a cop, he couldn’t ever go back.

  “10-32 at 420 Mill Street,” the dispatcher called along the radio waves.

  Hayes and the other cops were celebrating the arrests of five punks who unleashed a reign of terror on Denver. Men and women had been beaten and robbed. A few cars set on fire. The last of their crimes involved a banker, who had been abducted for the money he had access to at the bank. Now those bastards were behind bars, and the residents of Denver could sleep soundly again. Well, mostly. They still had cops out searching for the leader of the gang, Earl Falik, who’d gotten away with a gunshot to his shoulder from Hayes’s weapon.

  Hayes had a split second to decide if he’d kill Falik or disarm him. Hayes went with the latter, and the second after the bullet sliced through Falik’s shoulder, Falik said through gritted teeth, his ice-blue eyes dead and cold. “You’ll pay for that.”

  Falik smiled a deadly promise, and it looked like the devil was grinning at Hayes, when Hayes was suddenly hit from the side. He hit the pavement…hard, his head smashing against the concrete. Darkness crept into his vision as Hayes fought against Falik’s cousin, watching as Falik ran away.

  Hayes never should have let Falik run. He should have shot him dead.

  In the station, when Hayes heard the address come across the radio, he finally understood what Falik meant, and Hayes’s fucking world blew apart. The code the dispatcher used meant man with a gun. And that address was Hayes and Laurel’s home.

  Not knowing if his fellow cops were following him, Hayes sprinted to his cruiser and pressed his phone to his ear while he gunned it down the road, the blue and red flashing lights cutting through the darkness. “Answer, Laurel. Dammit, answer.” Four times, he’d tried calling. Four times, she didn’t pick up. “Fuck.” He threw his phone to the car’s floor. He’d t
hought he’d felt fear, pain, and worry before in his life, but not until this moment did he truly understand those emotions. And they left him reeling.

  When he reached his house, he drove up onto the grass of his lawn. His neighbors screamed at him from their houses as he ran from the cruiser. They were obviously hearing the gunshots, but too afraid to come any closer. Hayes couldn’t make out what they said past the thundering of his heartbeat. Gun drawn, he noted the front door was locked, so he moved swiftly around the back of the house. There, he spotted the back door open. He slowed his breathing, shoving hot emotions down deep into his gut as he entered the house.

  Each step he took felt like a lifetime until he reached the bedroom. Time stopped, then. Everything stopped. His life ended when he spotted the blood dripping off delicate fingers and onto the hardwood floor.

  Hayes’s stomach roiled, and he sucked in a harsh breath, yanking himself back from the memory he’d tried to forget. The night after he found Laurel dead in their bedroom, Hayes had hunted Falik, and after a shoot-out, Falik was dead. Hayes left law enforcement after that. He couldn’t go back to it. Face that old life. Face his pain. “I left the force for a reason,” he reminded his father. “Please don’t make me explain this again.”

  His father studied Hayes and then sighed. “I know, but you can’t keep running from this and working yourself into the ground because of it. You need to forgive yourself for what happened. Laurel would want that.”

  Hayes couldn’t forgive himself. Laurel was gone. Had he taken the shot he should have, Laurel would not have been targeted. She would still be alive. The thought left a sour taste in Hayes’s mouth, and his stomach knotted as he caught the sound of tires crunching against gravel. He glanced over his shoulder, finding a black MINI with a red roof coming up his driveway. An unexpected release of tension rushed over him. He shoved his hands into his pockets, hiding their shaking.

  Maisie parked next to the SUV and got out of her car. “Hi, Mr. Taylor,” she said, a ray of sunshine. “How are things?”

  “Doing good, Maisie.” Dad returned the smile and gave her a quick hug. Everyone loved Maisie; she was impossibly happy. Always. Her smile was infectious, and even Hayes felt an unexpected grin pull at his lips.

  “Glad to hear it,” she replied to his father. Then she glanced at Hayes and she bit her lip, studying him intently. “Everything okay?”

  Hayes nodded. Better now that you’re here.

  Obviously, done with the fatherly lesson he’d come to give, Dad tipped the rim of his cowboy hat at Maisie. “I better be on my way.” To Hayes, he added, “You’ll think about what I said?”

  Hayes inclined his head as his answer, instead of flat-out refusing. His life as a cop was in his past. No going back.

  Once his father’s SUV was halfway down the driveway, Maisie whistled. “Wow. The tension between you two was near stifling. What’s up?”

  Hayes gestured for Maisie to follow him over to the Adirondack chairs on the small stone patio near the flower garden. “He wants me to come work for him.”

  She sat next to him, her eyebrows raising over her sparkling baby blues. “I had no idea you were considering being a cop again.”

  “I’m not,” he clarified, stretching out his legs, resting a boot on the big rocks around the firepit. “My father thinks I’m wasting myself at the horse farm or determined to kill myself.”

  “You won’t hear me disagreeing with him there.”

  Hayes’s brows shot up. “You think he’s right?”

  She gave a little shrug. “Only someone looking to punish themselves would take the risks you do.”

  Most times he liked that Maisie always cut through the bullshit. Whatever came to her mind came out of her mouth. For him, being so tightlipped, he found her openness refreshing. Only he didn’t much like it directed at him. “I’m not punishing myself.”

  She gave him a knowing look. “What would you call it, then?”

  “Doing the job no one else wants to do,” he managed.

  She snorted a laugh. “Yeah, because it’s really dangerous, and seeing that you’re doing it without wearing full body gear like Beckett told you to, I’d say you’re doing it to hurt yourself.”

  “You think I’d hurt myself on purpose?”

  “Yes.”

  He recoiled. “Seriously?”

  She gave a firm nod. “Sometimes when we hurt inside and can’t deal with that, we make our outsides hurt instead.” She glanced away and changed the subject. “Do you think you’ll ever go back to the force?”

  He still reeled from her earlier statement and barely managed, “No.”

  “That was a quick answer.”

  He shrugged. “I don’t need to think about it. Being a cop was another life.”

  “Did you tell your father that?”

  Hayes nodded. “He just happens to disagree with me.”

  She watched him a long moment. “Well, I knew you as a cop, and I know you now, and you know what?”

  “Do I even want to know?”

  Her smile filled the hollowest parts of his chest. “I liked you as a cop. And I like you as a horse trainer, even if I seriously question your sanity. So, I say you just keep doing you. Your dad will simply have to deal.”

  Hayes felt the tension slowly melt away. “Want to tell him that?”

  “Ha,” she said with a grin. “Don’t dare me. You totally know I would.”

  Yeah, she would. Nothing stopped her, even when faced with a situation where she knew she might not come out on top. “I’m afraid of what you’d do if you unleashed on him. My father hasn’t met honest Maisie.”

  “He probably wouldn’t like her,” she agreed with a laugh. “You know, you being the son of police chief and all, I’d probably get in a whole lot of trouble.”

  He winked. “Don’t worry, I’d bail you out.”

  “Good,” she said. “I’m glad to know you wouldn’t let me rot in jail.”

  “Never. You’ve got me. Anytime you need me.”

  She smiled.

  Hayes looked at his boots on the rocks lining the firepit. Even if Maisie knew he missed being a cop, she couldn’t know why he would never go back. He couldn’t stand the heartbreak that would fill her eyes when she found out Laurel hadn’t died because they’d been robbed. He couldn’t hurt Maisie like that, not after she finally seemed happy again. She smiled all the time like she used to. She laughed just as much. But most of all, Hayes needed her. “How’s that finger?” he asked, changing the subject.

  She blinked and looked down at her finger, stuck between the metal brace and tape. “It’s a reminder that I really suck at this whole brewery thing.”

  “Accidents happen,” he offered. “Nothin’ you can do about that.”

  She lifted her stare to him again and gave a cute smile. “Funny you should mention that, because there is actually something I can do about it. And that something involves you.”

  “Me? How?”

  “Yup, you,” she said with a nod. “Penelope sort of mentioned that you had some time off. So, I’ve got a mega favor to ask, and please don’t say no.” She pressed her palms together as if she were praying, holding them tightly to her chest. “Clara already tried to fire me, but she’s agreed to give me one more shot. I’ve got three beer festivals to do over the next four days, starting tomorrow.”

  “All right,” he said. “But how does this involve me?”

  She grinned. “Because I need muscles. Big, strong muscles.”

  He couldn’t fight his smile and arched an eyebrow at her. “Are you inflating my ego to get me to agree to go to these festivals with you?”

  “Is it working?”

  He chuckled, shaking his head at her. Yeah, it kind of was. “What exactly would you need me to do?”

  “Oh, good,” she said, bouncing in her seat. “Okay, so you’d help set up the booth and take it down at the end of the night.” She waved her broken finger at him. “Let’s be honest here, I struggled
setting up before. I’m clumsy on a good day. And now with a broken finger, there’s just no way I can pull this off by myself.” She gave him puppy-dog eyes. “So…what do you say?”

  He took in those sweet eyes. That desperation on her face. The way both of those things ruined him. “Does anyone ever say no to you?”

  She gave a firm nod. “Yes, Clara does all the time.”

  He wasn’t sure how. Hayes couldn’t find the strength to refuse her anything. He sighed. “When do we leave?”

  She squealed, jumped up from her chair, and threw her arms around him, bringing her soft curves against him like they belonged there. Heat blasted through him, making him fully aware of every spectacular inch of her body. Her coconut-scented shampoo infused the air, and he restrained his groan at the soft press of her breasts against his chest, of how damn good she felt there.

  When she backed away, he noted there was heat in her eyes too. “Come to the brewery tomorrow morning at nine o’clock, we’ll leave from there,” she said.

  “All right.” He forced his attention onto her face, instead of letting his gaze sweep over her as he so desperately wanted. “See you tomorrow, then.”

  “Bye.” She turned, and he could have sworn she put an extra wiggle to her hips.

  The groan he’d been fighting slipped free, and he immediately stood, heading for the house to deal with what she did to him.

  4

  “Sweet home Alabama, where the skies are so blue,” Maisie sang to the music blasting through the speakers the next morning. She sat next to Hayes in his big-ass loud truck, while he drove down the sunbaked road, looking like some hunk out of a country music video. She’d offered to drive the brewery’s truck but got a flat no. He hooked his truck up to the trailer with the THREE CHICKS BREWERY logo written on the side and off they went to their first stop, Fort Collins. He’d rolled down the windows almost immediately, forgoing the air conditioning on the blistering hot day, so she stuck her feet out the window, the sun warming her toes. “Sweet home Alabama. Lord, I’m coming home—hey!” She shot Hayes a glare when he turned the volume down. “I love that song. Turn it back up.”