But he was still a deputy. His first priority was to make sure that Hamlet was safe.
“This trouble of yours… is there anything I can do to help you? I’d hate to see it follow you into town.”
“Thanks, but it’s okay.” Grace gave her head a royal shake, her long dark hair rippling as it fell over her shoulder, settling against her back. “I’ve got that part under control, Deputy.”
It was on the tip of his tongue to ask her to call him Rick. He stopped himself in time. He was a deputy, and now he’d be her teacher. He needed to remember that.
“Okay. In that case, let’s start with the first lesson. The best kind of self-defense? Prevention.” Lifting his big, meaty hand up high, he started ticking things off on his fingers. “Don’t make yourself a target. Always be aware of your surroundings. Avoid dangerous places, dangerous people, and especially the dark.”
She nodded in agreement. “That makes sense.”
“Right? Okay. Now, forget I said all of that. The outside world’s a shitty place. I know. You can be the best at prevention, and you can still be attacked. I’m going to show you how to take care of yourself in case the worst happens. Step onto the mat for me.”
Once she did, Rick told her to turn around. The second she had her back to him, he swooped her up in his arms, bent his knees so that he was low to the ground, and tossed her right onto the mat.
He gentled his toss so, when she landed flat on her back, he knew there was no way it hurt her. Her soft exhale had more to do with surprise at being caught off guard than because of any pain. She didn’t stay down for long, either. Within seconds, she popped up, rising to her knees as she glared at him. With her teeth clenched and her hands curled into fists, Grace let out an angry hiss.
It was the cutest damn thing he’d ever seen.
He tried to bite back his smile. Shame, though. It had been so long since he found anything to smile at. “Did you… did you just hiss at me?”
“That shot was dirty. I wasn’t expecting it and you know it.”
“No one’s going to warn you before they attack, Kitten. If you want to be able to defend yourself, you’ve got to be prepared for shots like that. Second lesson.”
“I don’t know anything about self-defense which is why I thought you were here. To teach me.” Grace continued to glower up at him. “And don’t call me Kitten. My name is Grace, and it’s pretty demeaning to call me anything else without my permission.”
“Even when it fits? You’re the one who hissed at me, remember?”
She muttered something under her breath.
“What was that? Didn’t hear you.”
“I said, call me Kitten again, and I’ll show you just how sharp my claws are.”
Did she think she was attracted to this guy?
Sure he was hot, and when he took off his hoodie and stripped down to his tee shirt, it was all she could do not to drool. But he was gruff, and he was rude, and she wasn’t kidding. If he called her Kitten one more time, she was going for his beautiful, beautiful eyes.
They were one of his best features. And then there was his muscles, and his hard jaw, and his unruly hair, and—
Ugh. Okay. So she was still attracted to this guy.
Didn’t mean he wasn’t a jerk! What kind of man just tossed someone to the floor like that?
The deputy leaned in, bending over to offer her his hand. She slapped it away. Annoyance rode her hard; the sting of embarrassment was just an unwelcome bonus. She wanted to prove that she was worth teaching, that she could do this. But what happened? He knocked her on her ass with his first move.
“I got it.”
Rick backed away, giving her space to rise up off of the mat. “You really are like a kitten, Kitten. So tiny and cute, but, hell, you’ve got quite a pair of claws on you, huh?”
Beneath the curtain of her hair, she glared at him. “I told you. My name is Grace.”
“Don’t want to be called Kitten? Prove it. Prove you’re made of stronger stuff.”
She would. Oh, she would. “How?”
“Third lesson. There’s no such thing as a fair fight. If you ever need to use what I’m going to teach you, you’re in a fight for your life. You fight fair, or you fight to win. And you never, ever give your opponent any advantage. You ready? Let’s try again.”
Once again, the deputy assumed a position behind her. When she gave the nod that she was set, he reached out and gripped her wrist, jerking it back. Grace couldn’t break the hold. His taunts ringing in her ears, the dismissive way he called her Kitten setting fire to her blood, she snapped. He wouldn’t let go? She’d make him.
Instead of struggling against his grip, she went loose and limber as if she’d given in. He relaxed. Might’ve only been for a second. It was enough. Yanking on his arm, twisting it so that it was in front of her, Grace bit him. Just opened wide and sank her teeth right into his flesh. She didn’t try to break skin or anything. A small nip and Rick let go of her.
It was instinct. If Grace stopped to think about what she was doing, she never would have had the nerve. It was the way he dared her to prove it. Rick wanted her to fight to win? She could do that.
Of course, she regretted it as soon as she was wiping the salty taste of his skin from her mouth. What was she thinking? Forget her strange attraction to the brawny deputy. She’d be lucky if he even wanted to teach her anything else after that.
To her surprise, Rick’s dark eyes gleamed in approval before she could even make an attempt at an apology.
“That’s what I’m talking about.” He lifted his arm up, nodding at the marks she left there. “Could’ve been deeper. Don’t be afraid to hurt me, Kitten. I can take it, and it’ll help you learn.”
Grace couldn’t stop herself. Brushing her hair out of her face, she snarled.
He laughed. “You’re right. You’re more of a Tiger, aren’t you?”
“It’s Grace, damn it!” Then, as she realized who she had just snapped at, she quickly added, “Deputy.”
He wasn’t looking at her, his dark eyes turned down as he ran the edge of his thumb over the imprints from her teeth. “That’s fair, Grace. But I’m not a deputy when I’m here with you. I’m your instructor.”
“So you’re still going to teach me? Really? Even after I tried to take a chunk out of your arm?”
A brisk nod.
“Thank you… uh—” He didn’t want to be called Deputy. Teach sounded ridiculous, and Sir was way too formal. And though he introduced himself when she opened the door, she didn’t feel right using his first name. It was too intimate somehow. “What should I call you then?”
He finally tore his gaze away from his injury. “Rick,” he said, taking the choice away from her right as he gave her his permission. “Just Rick.”
13
“That’s a bad habit,” Boone noted. It was the first thing he’d said since he parked the Jag about a mile into the strait that led to Hamlet.
Tommy glanced down at the cigarette perched between his ring and middle fingers. So it was. A habit, at least. He’d kick it if he cared enough to.
He took a deep drag on the filter, his cheeks hollowed, his lips thinned. His cobalt eyes flashed murderously. The nicotine did nothing to calm his anger—or his nerves.
Sometimes he thought he picked up the act of smoking this last year because of Grace. Not because she drove him to it, but because he wanted her to say something about it. To tell him it repulsed her. To ask him to stop. To show him that she cared.
The embers on the tip burned bright, a fiery red glow. He exhaled the smoke roughly through his nose.
Yanking the half-spent cigarette from his mouth, he glared at it as if it had insulted him, huffed in frustration, and tossed it more than four feet away from him with a careless motion.
Boone calmly unfolded his large body from his position leaning up against the driver’s side door. Stalking over to the smoldering cigarette, he placed the heel of his dress shoe over it, savag
ely extinguishing its light before silently returning to his post by the car.
His bodyguard was so quiet, Tommy wanted to scream.
Where was she?
Two weeks. For two weeks, he left her alone in there. Not even a single flicker from her phone. Pope reported that, in the time they spent scoping out the entrance, there had been a grand total of ten cars that left through the coned-off exit. Those same ten cars returned within hours.
No one else entered.
Grace hadn’t left.
A couple of days ago, he ordered Pope and O’Dell to risk visiting the small town. It was a ballsy move. If Grace got wind of it and no one was watching the exit, she might manage to slip out of the mouse hole. She’d proven time and time again that she’d bolt whenever he got too close.
He thought it was cute in the beginning. Now he grew tired of it. If she kept this up any longer, he might start to doubt that she was as devoted to their future as he was.
At least one good thing came out of their trip on the inside. Their intel gave his guys two strong leads. First? There was an inn not too far into Hamlet. Tommy scoffed. The Hamlet Inn, because the yokels who lived in this hole were oh so creative when it came to names. The Hamlet Inn, the Hamlet School, the Hamlet fucking Pizzeria. He couldn’t wait to get Grace away from there.
The Hamlet Inn was the luxury hotel for the handful of morons who might actually want to visit the place. If Grace stumbled on the blocked exit accidentally, taking it only because she needed somewhere to run to, somewhere to hide, then the Hamlet Inn made sense.
Except Pope went in and sweet talked the woman who ran the counter. While she offered him his pick of any of their rooms, he got her to admit that he would be the only guest. No one else was checked in at the Hamlet Inn.
But that’s when they got their second lead. Because, as it turned out, the Hamlet Inn wasn’t the only game in town. For anyone who was after a homier place to stay, there was a quaint bed and breakfast named after a character in Shakespeare’s Hamlet. Ophelia. A little heavy-handed, Tommy felt. At least it was better than the Hamlet Inn.
Pope and O’Dell were working on a plan to surveil Ophelia without drawing too much attention from the rest of the locals. As lead on the ground operation, Pope asked for a little more time.
As frustrated and angry as he was, Tommy was also feeling generous. His plans for their upcoming wedding were going well enough. There was still some time left. He could afford to wait a little longer before he finally snapped.
“I’ll give her two more weeks,” he announced to Boone, reaching inside of his suit jacket for another cigarette. He’d gone from an occasional smoke here or there to a pack a day habit in the last few weeks. Having her so close—having her right there—was grating on his nerves more than he wanted to acknowledge. Add that to his father’s daily requests for wedding prep updates and Tommy was clinging to the edge of his patience. The cigarettes helped. Barely.
Boone loomed behind him, his ever-present shadow. “Say the word, sir. Give me the mission. I’ll get your bride for you.”
Tommy appreciated Boone’s desire to prove himself. His bodyguard had done that countless times. But with this? He needed a softer touch. Boone was big, but he had a special set of skills. He was more of a stealthy sniper, sneaking in under the cover of darkness. If he was going to finesse Grace out of this trap, he needed someone who knew how to work with people—and how to work them.
“Give Pope the two weeks. If he hasn’t succeeded by then, you take lead on this part of the operation.”
“I won’t let you down,” Boone vowed.
“You never do.”
Rick set a timetable for their lessons. He would come by Tuesday mornings and Saturday afternoons, an hour at a time. Keeping that in mind, Grace decided to host her classes on Fridays.
Because it was happening. She was doing this. The first Friday in November, she planned on hosting her first ballet dance class for anyone who wanted to show up at Ophelia.
She had three sign-ups which, if she was honest, was three more sign-ups than she actually thought she would get. Even with the promise of the lessons being free, she couldn’t shake the feeling that the Hamlet locals were being kind when they feigned an interest in taking ballet lessons from an outsider.
Sure, Addy buzzed Maria the day after Grace visited the coffeehouse, asking for more details about the lessons. Her fifteen-year-old daughter, Sally, wanted to learn. She convinced her two best friends to join her: Serafina, Isabella from the beauty boutique’s daughter, and Beverly, whose mother Wilhelmina worked with Sylvester and Rick at the HSD.
Then, on that Friday, the trio arrived. Sally, with her page-boy haircut and a sweet little gap between her teeth. Beverly, who brought a notebook and a pen with her so that she could take notes. And Serafina, a beanpole of a teen girl who had the beginnings of her mother’s crazy good looks. Grace’s first impression was that she’d be a real looker as soon as she learned how to use her height to her advantage. Considering she tripped over her own two feet within a couple of minutes of being led into the foyer, Grace figured the poor girl wasn’t used to it yet. That, or she was super clumsy.
Maria seemed to know the girls pretty well. She introduced each one to Grace, then disappeared into the kitchen to make a snack for the trio for when the lesson was over. Grace nearly snagged her by the sleeve and begged her to stay. Cold feet had nothing on her. Those suckers were blocks of ice, that’s how much she was suddenly regretting this.
Three pairs of earnest eyes. Three girls who looked up at her as if she had all the answers.
Was this what it was like for Rick to teach her?
Just the thought of her gruff instructor, of how he’d seemed to grow more comfortable over their last few meetings, had her warming up. Suddenly, this didn’t seem so scary.
She cleared her throat and then, with a hint of a smile, she let herself remember the way that Rick began their first class. Standing in Ophelia’s foyer, Rick’s mats spread out on the floor like when they did their training, she could almost pretend this was one of theirs. Only, so long as she did this right, none of the girls would end up flat on their back.
“Okay, ladies. Take a seat on the mat, point your toes, and stretch out your leg. This is lesson one: how to warm up and stretch...”
“Evening, Willie.”
Wilhelmina glanced up from her paperwork, her eyebrows creeping high when she spotted Rick sauntering into the station house. She glanced behind her, saw that the clock read a couple minutes past seven, and nodded. “Didn’t realize it was so late. Shift done?”
“That’s right.”
“Mine, too. Here. Let me get the book for ya.” She shuffled a stack of papers to the side, finding the big white binder underneath last month’s payroll report. Flipping it open, she turned it so that the sign-in sheet was facing Rick, then slapped a pen on top of the page.
Rick found his name beneath Willie’s, jotted down the time, and signed his name. He passed the time log back to Willie so that she could do the same. There were still two other names left open on the log: Sly and Natalie. Tonight was one of Sly’s overnight patrols. He signed in at five-thirty. Nat was doing a mid. She’d been on duty since noon, and now that Willie was off, there was a good chance Natalie was on her way back to the station house to do desk duty for the rest of her shift.
Normally, he liked to shoot the breeze with Willie when they both had the time for it. She reminded him of his mom and it was… it was nice to have someone looking out for him. For too long, he’d been on his own.
Not entirely on his own, he amended. Sly had had his back the last few years, ever since they met while on their first deployment, and he would take a bullet for the guy. He was the closest thing to a brother Rick ever had. It was the only reason he gave Sly a pass when he admitted that Maria had intended him to teach Grace self-defense all along.
Well, that and because he kind of liked teaching the outsider. And, hell. He kind of lik
ed the outsider, too.
Shit.
He had to get out of there. When Willie got in one of her mother hen moods, she could keep him at her desk for what seemed like hours. Normally, he was good with that. But not when he needed to get out before Natalie popped her head in. He might have gotten away with limiting their recent interactions to conversations over the radio. His luck wasn’t going to last. It never did. He wasn’t about to push it, either.
As he went to the coatrack to swap his uniform jacket for his coat, he heard Willie call out behind him.
“Radio still on, Ricky?”
Rick chuckled under his breath. The laughter was coming more and more easily to him these days. He knew why, too. “Of course, Wil. I told you I would.”
And he did.
Ever since his first training session with Grace Delaney, he kept it on. Sure, it meant he had to answer more than a few buzzes that were basically Natalie checking up on him, but he humored the kid. It was worth it if it meant that he didn’t miss a single time Grace borrowed Maria De Angelis’s radio to check that they were still on for their next class.
“Glad to hear it, sug.”
As he threw his thicker Carhartt coat on—his only nod to the dipping temperatures as November crept in—Rick had to admit that Grace didn’t contact him as much as he would’ve liked. He knew that she didn’t have a communicator of her own. Sly mentioned how Maria wanted to get her one but, because of the trouble she refused to elaborate on, she continued to decline the offer. She only ever buzzed when she had a question about their lessons.
Okay. So maybe he was the one who had to come up with ridiculous reasons to track Maria down and try to get Grace on the radio. To double-check that there wasn’t a change of plans. To make sure she still had the mats. Was it ten o’clock or eleven for their morning training? He’d even gone out and bought her a book from an outside bookstore. It was a guide for women’s self-protection, and its purpose was to add to the classes. Like a true instructor, he gave her chapters to study in advance of their next session. And, whoops, sometimes he forgot to tell her which ones to read while he was in Ophelia. So, of course, he had to buzz her. How else would she be prepared?
I'll Never Stop (Hamlet Book 4) Page 14
