She had no frame of reference for that, didn’t know what to say. Her father and mother had never argued, their relationship close and loving to the point of cutting everyone else out. Even after her father had died, her mother hadn’t used physical violence against Jazz. No, her mother had used a much more effective weapon to batter Jazz’s psyche. Jane Oliver had simply ignored Jazz as if she didn’t exist.
Griffin pulled up in the driveway of a lovely ranch style home in an affluent suburb, slamming on the brakes and swearing under his breath. A sobbing woman, her eyes already starting to swell and turn purple, was trying to exit the house through the front door but a larger, red-faced man had a hold of her hair and was yanking it hard. His expression of sheer glee at the pain he was inflicting made Jazz wish she hadn’t promised Griffin to stay in the car. She’d like to smack that look right off his face. Bullies like that needed to be taught a lesson.
Her pulse pounded in anger as Griffin jumped out of the truck in a flash, yelling at the man to stop and step away from the woman. A string of obscenities fell from the suspect’s lips, clearly not scared of any consequences from his actions. Before she could catch her breath, Griffin had the man down on the ground and cuffs slapped on him. She gaped at the sheriff’s efficiency. There had been no long, drawn out struggle. No arguing. Just one smooth movement to the cushion of the grass.
Clean and simple.
Barely winded, Sheriff Griffin Sawyer was a total badass. Jazz had seen fearless stunt men jump from a car going eighty miles an hour or set on fire for the cameras, but they wouldn’t have been able to take a man down to the ground in less than three seconds flat.
Impressive.
“Holy hell, I wouldn’t want to meet the good sheriff in a dark alley.” Jerry whistled under his breath.
The suspect was bellowing loudly and the altercation had attracted attention from the neighbors who were peeking out from behind their drapes.
Sadly not one of them had come to the woman’s aid. The woman needed to find new friends and neighbors, although one of them must have called 911 at least.
Tires squealing, a vehicle pulled in behind theirs. Deputy Dare hopped out of his truck, dressed in jeans and a t-shirt but sporting a badge and his gun belt, and lifted the crying woman to her feet.
“Easy there, Alexa. I’ve got an ambulance coming to check you out,” the deputy’s voice was soft and soothing, his usual scowl softened with kindness. Jazz was seeing why Dare was Griffin’s second in command. Griffin himself was still holding the belligerent, howling man on the ground trying to get him to calm down. The window of the truck was down and Jazz could smell the alcohol wafting off the abuser from six feet away.
“Fuck you, Sawyer, you motherfuckin’ cocksucking cop,” the man growled, thrashing on the hard pavement. “This is between me and my goddamn wife. She was asking for it, I tell you. She hit me.”
Wow, this guy was a real charmer. He didn’t appear to have a scratch on him that wasn’t self-inflicted. Griffin had been careful to make sure the man wasn’t injured while cuffing him.
“Tell me another one, Lane. You and I meet like this too often,” Griffin muttered between clenched teeth. “I’m placing you under arrest.”
Alexa, still sobbing, shook off Dare’s help and fell to her knees beside Lane and started pushing at Griffin’s arm. “No! Let him go! You’re hurting him. He didn’t do anything.”
There was more crying and wailing before Griffin and Dare wrestled the couple to their feet, the man still yelling about police brutality and the woman screaming and crying about how everything was so unfair. The EMTs had shown up at some point and the battered and bruised woman rejected being taken to the hospital, but the man complained loudly of how he’d been injured by his wife and he’d had no choice but to defend himself.
Griffin and Dare managed to get the couple to quiet down so the EMTs could do their job. The woman was cleaned up and given a few butterfly bandages for a cut on her forehead. They wanted her to have stitches but she adamantly refused. Checking out the man, they shrugged at the absence of any real injuries, declaring him fit and heading back out into the night for their next call.
Now the real haggling began. Griffin and Dare wanted to arrest Lane but Alexa kept swearing she wouldn’t press charges. Lane blamed everything on his wife but didn’t want her to go to jail. Jazz wanted to smack some sense into both of them. How Griffin managed to keep his temper in check she had no idea.
Finally he cut off any more conversation with a wave of his hand.
“Dare, take Lane into custody for drunken disorderly and resisting arrest. Mrs. Atwater you can bail out your husband tomorrow morning after ten.”
The wife moaned and wailed as if her husband was being dragged off to war or Siberia.
Dare nodded, his expression stony. “Alexa assaulted you, boss. You have cause to take her in as well.”
Griffin sighed and brushed the clinging grass off his uniform. “I know, but this situation is bad enough, don’t you think? No sense in making it even worse. Thanks, by the way. I didn’t expect you.”
“I heard the call on the scanner. I don’t live far and we’ve been here enough to know what to expect. It was no big deal to help out.” The burly deputy clapped a hand on Lane shoulder. “Let’s go sober up, buddy. You’ll feel worse in the morning.”
Dare led the man to his truck and put him in the backseat before driving away. Griffin was still trying to convince Alexa that she needed to press charges for domestic battery but the woman kept shaking her head.
“He doesn’t mean it, Sheriff. He’s real sweet when he’s sober. It’s the alcohol that makes him act like that. He loves me. I know he does.”
“The alcohol has control more often these days.” Griffin’s tone was calm and controlled but she could see the tension in his shoulders. “There’s a shelter in Harper, Alexa. I can take you tonight.”
“Leave my home and husband? I could never do that.” The woman sounded scandalized. “Tomorrow everything will go back to normal. You’ll see. Lane will apologize. He loves me.”
The kind of love Jazz had grown up with was looking better and better. Her mother might have ignored her but at least she hadn’t beaten the crap out of her. Finally Griffin got Alexa back into the house and returned to the SUV, climbing into the driver’s seat. He sat there for a moment and then turned to Jazz.
“Thank you.”
“Thank you for what?” Jazz asked, not sure if he was being sarcastic. He had a strange look on his face she hadn’t seen before – half sad and half exasperated.
“Thank you for doing as I asked and staying put. It allowed me to concentrate on dealing with Lane and Alexa. As you can see they’re a handful.”
Jazz wrinkled her nose in distaste. “I have to admit it was all I could do not to march out there, smack both of them, and haul Lane off to jail. You’ve got the self-restraint of the Dalai Lama.”
Griffin snorted and smiled a little. “No one has ever compared me to the Dalai Lama, that’s for sure. Seriously, I’m glad you didn’t give into that impulse. Lane is unpredictable when he’s drinking and Alexa can be too. I don’t want any of my deputies-in-training to get hurt. Especially not the first damn day.” He tapped her on the nose. “By the way, we may not have covered it yet, but we don’t smack our suspects no matter how much we want to.”
“As I said, I admire your restraint.” Griffin started the car and backed out of the driveway while she clipped her seatbelt closed. “I take it you and Dare make frequent visits here?”
“Too frequent. It’s worse around the holidays. Summer is usually a quieter time.” Griffin rubbed the back of his neck. “It’s escalating, which worries me. I used to come out here every couple of months, then every month, now it’s every few weeks.”
From the way Griffin was speaking freely, he appeared to have forgotten Jerry in the backseat getting all of this on tape. Jerry too seemed to understand that he needed to sit in the shadows and stay quie
t.
“She doesn’t seem to want to leave. Does she have money of her own? Family?”
“She’s got a sister in Bozeman but I’m not sure they’re all that close. As for money, hell, I don’t know those kind of details.”
Jazz looked around the upper middle class neighborhood as it zipped by her window. “I didn’t expect a call like that in a neighborhood like this.”
Griffin glanced at her quickly. “You thought it would be in some rundown neighborhood? I hate to shatter your illusions, but domestic abuse crosses all socio-economic boundaries. This is not a movie, Jazz. This is the real thing.”
“All these well-kept houses with their green lawns and pretty flowers. It makes you wonder what they all hide. Or at least it makes me wonder.”
“You sound like you might have an idea what goes on behind closed doors. Want to share?”
She glanced back at the cameraman in the backseat and Griffin seemed to pick up on her thoughts.
“Turn off the fucking camera,” Griffin ordered in a tone that couldn’t be ignored. It appeared to work pretty well on the young man in the back seat. He dropped the camera to waist level but shook his head at the same time.
“I’m not supposed to do that,” he protested. “I’ll get in trouble.”
Griffin pulled the SUV off on the side of the road. “Then get out.”
“What?” Jerry shrank from the car door as if he could be magically sucked out of the vehicle. “You can’t leave me here, dude.”
Jazz studied Griffin’s profile, trying to see if the man sitting next to her was truly serious about leaving Jerry to walk back to the hotel. In the waning light he appeared to be ready to do just that.
“I’m the law in this town and I can do anything I want. Secondly, I’m not going to leave you here. I’m just asking you to stand on the side of the road while we talk. It you want to stay in the vehicle you know what to do. Shut the fucking camera off. You got your titillation for the evening already. Just be sure to get Lane and Alexa to sign a release before you show that tape to anyone.”
Indecision warred across Jerry’s features but finally he sighed and pressed the button on the side of the camera. The green light went dim.
“Tony is going to kick my ass.”
Griffin looked Jerry up and down. “You can probably take him. I think he was wearing nail polish.”
Laughter bubbled up and Jazz couldn’t hold it in. “That’s not uncommon in Hollywood. Men get manicures.”
Griffin was looking at her like she was crazy again. “What for?”
“For about thirty dollars,” she giggled. “Seriously, haven’t you heard the term metrosexual?”
“No,” he said shortly. “Honestly I’m afraid to ask what that means.”
Even Jerry was laughing now. “Men who care about how they look and dress.”
“I don’t even know how to respond to that,” Griffin retorted.
The radio crackled and the fun was over. Griffin turned on the sirens and lights and pulled out into traffic.
“You can turn that camera back on. We’re headed to another call.” Griffin glanced at Jazz. “You can answer my question another time.”
This time Griffin’s expression and body language were relaxed. “Where to now?”
“Mrs. Mulvaney’s cat Snowball is up a tree again. She wants me to climb up and get it down.”
He was smiling now.
“For real?”
“For real,” he confirmed, looking over his shoulder at Jerry. “Mrs. Mulvaney is going to be very excited about being on television so be sure to get her in every shot.”
With the sun going down, they headed to the other side of Hope Lake to rescue a cat. Saved by a feline, Jazz wouldn’t have to explain her thoughts or past to Griffin.
For now, anyway. She had a suspicion that once the sheriff honed in on something he would be like a dog with a bone. Relentless.
And she wouldn’t—no—couldn’t let him in. He was too attractive, too dangerous, too wonderful. Jazz already liked Sheriff Griffin Sawyer far too much.
Somehow, some way she had to avoid him. She had her future planned and nowhere was there a small town sheriff in that plan.
Chapter Seven
Griffin dropped the stack of manila folders into the middle of the conference table. He had all of the contestants in the interrogation room of the station to begin going through cold cases. Each person would select one case to work and belong to them solely. Griffin or one of the deputies would help and guide them but ultimately the contestant would lead the investigation.
It had been a compromise with the producers, who had wanted Griffin to give them “real” law enforcement work. He hadn’t wanted to do anything of the sort but had conceded that he couldn’t keep them in the classroom or on the obstacle course forever. Some of these cases were decades old and weren’t so much cold as downright frozen. It was doubtful any of them would find a new lead but it would keep them busy.
“These are cold cases.”
Griffin pointed to the pile in the middle of the table and tried to forget the camera was capturing his every word and movement. Last night when he’d been with Jazz he’d forgotten. There was something about the cute blonde that made him think of only her. When she was in a room, his gaze naturally went straight to Jazz first. Maybe it was that charisma that people talked about when speaking about people in show business. Whatever it was she’d taken up some real estate in his brain. He wasn’t sure what to do about it or even if he needed to do anything about it.
“Look through them. Decide which one you’d like to take ownership of. Remember, whichever one you choose will be your case. We’ll help and guide you, of course, every step of the way but try to pick a case that you find interesting or fits with a particular strength or knowledge base you may have.”
They were all looking at him again as if they were statues. This group had a bad habit of needing to be told things more than once.
That could get you killed when you were a cop.
“Go ahead and get started.”
This time the six of them moved and pulled folders off the stack one by one. There wasn’t much sound in the room except the turning of pages and a few murmurings.
“Sheriff, can I speak with you?”
Tony, the producer and sometime director was standing there with his shadow, Gordon the assistant producer, who seemed to do all of the real work. Tony liked to tell people what to do but didn’t like to get his manicured hands dirty from what Griffin had seen. If Gordon wasn’t around, Tony would be up shit creek without a damn paddle.
“Sure, we can go to my office.”
Griffin led the two men across the hall and waved for them to sit down while he took the chair behind his desk. Tony gave Griffin a smile that was probably meant to be encouraging but came off kind of smarmy.
“We just finished watching the dailies from yesterday’s shoot and I have to say it’s even better than I’d hoped for. The footage of you and Jazz last night was particularly spectacular.”
Griffin didn’t trust Tony as far as he could throw him, and even less at the moment. Just what was this guy trying to say? Did he want Griffin to let the contestants carry guns and wrestle suspects to the ground?
Not going to happen.
“That’s good…I guess,” Griffin said carefully. “Right?”
“It’s excellent,” Gordon enthused, then went silent when Tony gave him a quelling look.
“What we’re trying to say,” Tony said, scowling at Gordon, “is that there seems to be some chemistry between you and Jazz. The screen crackled with it when you were talking. We’d like to keep that going.”
Yep, his instincts had been right. Tony was up to no good.
“And what do you mean by keep it going?”
“Viewers love characters they can root for and they love nothing more than to cheer for love.”
“And?” Griffin prompted. He was going to make this son of a bitch say
it out loud. “What does that have to do with me and Jazz going on patrol last night?”
“It’s obvious you two are attracted to each other,” Gordon broke in before Tony could speak. “Go with it.”
Tony glared at Gordon but didn’t correct him. Griffin stroked his chin and gazed over their heads as if he was actually entertaining these thoughts.
“Go with it,” he repeated. “What did you have in mind?”
This time Tony was the first to speak. “Take her out on dates. Spend time with each other. If something naked happens, it’s all the better. We wouldn’t film that part, of course,” he added hastily when Griffin sat up in his chair. “Let the audience watch you two fall in love. They eat that shit up.”
There was no fucking way Griffin was going to sex up Jazz for the cameras. No matter how much he was attracted to her.
“What if we don’t fall in love?” Griffin asked. “What if we end up hating each other?”
Tony’s face split into a grin. “That’s almost as good. Tension and animosity make for great television. Besides, I don’t expect you two to really fall in love.” The producer snorted in derision followed by Gordon. “Just ham it up for the cameras a little bit. After all, when this is over Jazz is heading back to L.A. and her career. It would be a bad idea to fall in love for real.”
Nice of Tony to worry about Griffin getting his poor country boy heart broken.
Griffin nodded and the two men looked excited but he quickly dashed their hopes. “No can do, I’m afraid.”
“No?” Tony repeated the word as if he’d never heard it or didn’t know what it meant. “What do you mean no? This is a great opportunity, Sheriff.”
Griffin leaned forward in his chair, his gaze affixed to the men. “For whom?”
Tony’s mouth opened and closed a few times, his face turning red. Finally he pulled himself together enough to answer.
“Okay, fair enough. It would be great for the show, therefore great for me. But it’s also great for the town. They get a cut of the profits. It’s a win-win, Sheriff. Think about it.”
Cowboy Famous: Book 4 (Cowboy Justice Association) Page 5
