by Marika Ray
“Close the door,” he growled. One would think he was angry, or that I was about to be fired, but this was just how Sheriff Locke handled everything. With privacy and a bare minimum of words.
I closed the door, sat, and clasped my hands in my lap. I could feel one particular hair tugging on my scalp and causing my eye to twitch. Wearing my hair in a tight bun every day came second nature by now, and yet I always had that one hair that wanted to torture me. Guys had it easy with their buzz cuts that looked the same whether or not they combed their hair.
The sheriff shuffled some papers on his giant desk and then made eye contact. “You’ve got a new partner starting today.”
My entire body froze as I digested this unwelcome news. “Hell no,” I stated, the first thought that came to mind.
Sheriff frowned, his gray eyes heating in a way we all feared. Don’t get me wrong, the sheriff was fierce and gruff and a little scary, but he was always fair and an all-around good boss. We felt free to talk plainly with him, but he always made it clear when he was done negotiating.
“Yes, you do,” he said, enunciating every word. “You’ve been in here three times asking about a partner and now I got you one.”
My mind instantly rebelled. “Yeah, but that was just…” I stopped, realizing telling my boss I’d only asked because my daddy asked me to would make me look juvenile. And as a short, blonde officer, I have spent my entire career so far making people take me seriously.
His eyes cleared, and I knew that he knew what I was going to say, anyway. “And he’s right.” He nodded and his expression went soft. “You need a partner out there, Lee. Every one of my officers should have one, so this is not saying anything about you personally. His name’s Wyatt Smith, and he’s a lieutenant transfer from San Jose. I trust you’ll train him right.”
He broke my gaze and started clicking around on his computer. That was that. I’d been dismissed, and I now had a new partner. Just what I wanted to do today: babysit some asshat lieutenant who thought he knew better than me because he was from a big city. I swung the door open and may have let it bang against the wall as my final thoughts on the subject. The sheriff grunted from behind me and Betty’s eyes went wide again. She hated confrontation, which always made me shake my head at her occupational choice. All we did all day long was confrontation. You’d think she would have fared better as a librarian or something.
“Smith!” I hollered to the room at large, not bothering to sort through the officers standing around and slugging coffee before they got to work. If this guy wanted to be my partner, he better be willing to work for it.
I hit the front door to the office before I heard boots squeaking behind me, trying to catch up. The door flew open at my shove and I walked through, already headed for my cruiser.
“Good morning, Captain,” came a deep voice to my right.
I glanced over out of the side of my eye, seeing a man in the same uniform I wore, but wearing it entirely different. I hated myself for it, but I did a double take, needing that second glance to take in the fine form of a heavily muscled, tall, dark-haired officer who’d forgotten to shave that morning. He wore a heavy black watch on his tanned wrist, and he had the audacity to smirk at me. Deep blue eyes sparkled in the morning sunshine, and it pissed me off.
“Something funny?” I asked, stopping at the trunk of my cruiser.
His smirk dialed back a notch, and I rejoiced at the tiny win.
“Sorry?” He leaned in, as if to catch what I’d say next from such a great height was only possible with the crouch one does with a small child.
“Based on the smile on your face, Lieutenant, I asked if there was something funny you’d like to share,” I bellowed.
He snatched his face back and lost the grin entirely. I may have been small in stature, but I made up for it with my voice. Never, not once, had I ever been told to speak up. It was like I’d been born with a megaphone in front of my mouth, which I loved as it usually caught people off guard. As it had with Lieutenant Smith here.
Although my first question to him had been on the breathy side. In my defense, it was only because I’d been caught off guard by the sight of the handsomest male I’d seen in a long time. Partners shouldn’t be handsome. They should be capable. Dependable. An extension of one’s self. Jesus Christ. This guy was the one they called up to be in a cop calendar twirling a pair of handcuffs on his…but I digress.
Smith shook his head. “Nothing funny at all. Just happy to be here and excited to be your partner, Captain.”
I nodded, begrudgingly accepting that he showed some respect. The sheriff was all of our bosses, but as of now, in this partnership, I was his boss. And I wouldn’t let him forget it.
“Hop in. We can go over protocol while we wait for the first call to roll in.” I stepped back, needing some distance from all that maleness that seemed to pulse out into the airwaves.
He leaned forward and his hand shot out like he meant to grab the handle of my car door. Like he meant to open it for me. Like he thought we were on some kind of freaking date.
I reared back in horror. “Hut!” The weird noise just burst out of my mouth, and we both froze.
He snatched his hand back and walked around to the other side of the car, shaking his head while he looked at the ground. I almost felt bad, because while I actually enjoyed those gentlemanly gestures on a date, we were working. He and I were partners now. He had to trust that I could handle myself just as much as I trusted him. We didn’t open doors for our partners.
I slid behind the wheel and ignored the heavy silence, waiting for him to buckle up before I pulled out of the parking lot and headed on my normal route through the major county roads.
The crackle of the radio eventually came to life, saving us from actual conversation.
“We have a ten-ninety-one on Butte Canyon Road behind the prison.”
I rolled my eyes. I’d heard this exact call before and could just about guess what we were dealing with and who. I radioed back, “Got a lock on the animal?”
The dispatcher snickered before answering. “Heard it’s a bull.”
Smith shifted beside me. “Our first call is wrangling a bull?”
I grinned and put the lights on, zooming back to the far side of Auburn Hill. “Welcome to the country, Lieutenant.”
“Go over there by the oak trees and wave your arms in the air and make a bunch of noise. That’ll scare him over here to me,” I barked out instructions to Smith, grabbing a coil of rope out of the trunk of my cruiser. My 4-H skills from childhood were about to be tested.
Smith eyed the bull, snorting and pawing the ground, before taking in the knots I was creating with the rope. For a city boy, he caught on pretty quick.
“Shouldn’t we wait for Animal Control to hit him with a dart?”
It was a fair question, but what was the fun in that? Seemed like a tranquilizer dart was an unfair advantage over a wild animal. The least we could do was take him down fair and square.
I pushed him away and warmed up my shoulder. “You’ll soon learn Animal Control is asleep at the wheel most of the time. They’ll take forever to get here, so we’ll just keep them as our Plan B. Plan A is to rope that bad boy ourselves. Bain will protect Lucy in case the bull heads that way.” I tossed my head in Bain and Lucy’s direction.
When we’d pulled up, the pink stain on Lucy’s cheeks was a dead giveaway as to what they’d been doing out here in this remote pasture behind where Bain worked. He was the prison warden and husband to Lucy. He’d muttered something about never losing an opportunity when there was a babysitter as he folded up the picnic blanket and dodged the irritated bull. Lucy was surprisingly fast on her feet, cackling as she danced around. Apparently, this was a fun day away from her two kiddos—which made sense, given her friendship with my wild and ridiculous younger sister Amelia. The two of them were a few cards shy of a full deck. If I didn’t know better, I’d have sworn Danger was their middle name.
Smit
h shook his gorgeous head and scraped a hand across his square jaw. “All right. I’m up to give it a try.”
I tilted my head to the oak trees and gave him a look that said to hurry it up. He headed that direction and I noticed how nicely he filled out the backside of the uniform. The bull also took notice of him, for different reasons, which worked right into our plan. Smith got in position and put his arms out, waving them overhead and taunting the poor bull. The beast snorted heavily and pawed at the ground. When Smith lunged forward, the bull turned tail and stormed off in the other direction, toward me.
I tossed the lasso in the air and spun it around above my head. The bull came by and I leaped back, tossing the rope in the nick of time. The rope slid right off his back and settled on the ground. My heart rate thumped in my throat, threatening to cut off my airways. Jesus, the whites of the bull’s eyes were imprinted in my brain. What the hell was I thinking trying to rope a damn bull?
“Come on, Oakley,” Smith hollered at me across the field.
“You try roping a wild bull!” I hollered back, incensed over his impatience. Hell, even professional ropers at a rodeo sometimes need a few tries to get it right.
The bull came charging back my way, and I didn’t have time to chew out Smith’s ass for snapping at me. I twirled the lasso and told myself I’d get it this time. The beast came close and I could have sworn the ground shook beneath my boots. It huffed, and I felt the air on my skin. Tossing the lasso, I squeezed my eyes shut and jumped back, feeling the whoosh of air from the bull’s hulking body narrowly missing me.
A yank on the rope had my eyes flying back open. The lasso was around his neck, and if my knots held, I’d roped a freaking bull! Elation soon turned to panic as that beast kept right on running, now even more freaked out to have a rope around its neck. My hands ached from gripping the length so tight, my shoulders burning from the tension. I crouched down low, trying to stop the bull from running, but it was no use. A short female human was no competition for a male bull. He started to drag me across the dry scrub brush field, my heels digging in and leaving two skid marks across the earth.
Shouts followed me, but I couldn’t hear them over the pounding of my blood. It was me and the bull in an awkward dance toward death. My own, most likely. Whose stupid idea was it to rope a damn bull?
Strong arms came around me and the clean scent of soap that only men seemed to know about hit my awareness. My heels quit eating dirt and the burn in my forearms lessened.
“I got him, Captain,” came a low voice right in my ear.
I turned my head and saw that Lieutenant Wyatt Smith now held me in some weird hug, his own hands now holding the rope steady and our bodies pressed tightly together like two nestling spoons.
Lucy cheered from over by my cruiser. The bull stood still, only turning to look at us with one baleful eye. I wanted to tell him we had no intention of hurting him, but the rope around his neck probably contradicted anything I could say. We just had to get him back into the wild land outside of town where he couldn’t hurt any citizens.
Animal Control pulled up right as a tingle of awareness and something else I couldn’t identify shot straight between my thighs. My hands spasmed, and I let go of the rope, to hell with the damn bull, and ducked under Smith’s arm. My backside instantly chilled without his heat pressed against me. Good Lord, did the man shove a furnace down his pants? His jaw clenched in determination while he held steady. My eyeballs defied me and took a trip across the muscles straining, enjoying their travel indeed. How could male forearms be so delicious?
“I didn’t bring my firearm, which I now see was a mistake, but I’m glad you could get him under control without harm coming to him.” Bain clapped me on the shoulder, and Lucy took a picture of the scene with her phone.
I frowned.
“Amelia is never gonna believe me unless I have photographic evidence,” she explained sheepishly.
I shrugged because that was a fair assessment of my sister. Amelia was as hardheaded as they came. The Animal Control guy lined up his shot, and the dart hit the bull right in the flank. The beast gave me one last nasty look and then sank to the ground in a dead sleep. I shook my head, wondering how people hunt and shoot animals for real. Guilt ate away at me just knowing the poor guy was taking a snoozer.
Smith let go of the rope and wiped his hands on his pants. Bain stuck his hand out. The two guys did some weird guy handshake, which just pissed me off because I was the one who’d roped the bull. Where was my hand-slapping, knuckle-tapping handshake?
We eventually got my rope off the bull and back into my trunk. Just another day in the sheriff’s department. Figured I’d show Smith the full county we patrolled while letting him know I didn’t need his help back there. If we were going to work out as partners, he couldn’t be second-guessing my directions, or swooping in to save the day. I didn’t need that kind of help. He needed to handle his shit, and I’d handle mine.
This was exactly why I didn’t want a partner.
“Something wrong, Oakley?” Smith asked as I pulled out of the lot so quickly I left a plume of dust.
I took a fortifying breath to keep from snapping at him. “First of all, no one but family calls me Oakley. It’s either Lee or Captain to everyone else. Got it?”
The fucker just smiled. “I think it says a lot about your character that you consider me family already. Thank you. That means a lot to me.”
Well, shit. How could I put him in his place now? I bared my teeth and hazarded a glance over at him when I should have been watching the road. His smile only grew, and I instantly knew he was playing me.
“Call me whatever, but what you absolutely cannot do is undermine my authority while we’re on a call. Is that clear? I don’t need you babysitting me because I’m a woman. I can hold my own and you need to trust that.”
He nodded seriously, but I wondered if even that was just him telling me what I wanted to hear. “You got it, Oakley. That was pretty impressive back there. I’ve never seen anyone rope a bull before.”
A warm glow of pride hit my chest, despite his name usage. My lips tugged upward, thinking about telling my dad about the call and having him laugh that deep guffaw of his.
“Even if you looked like you were waterskiing behind him afterward.”
Like a freezing splash of water to the face, the pride vanished and anger had taken its place. That motherfucker. Making fun of me when I’d roped a goddamn bull while all he did was jump around and flail his arms? The man was gorgeous, but he had a serious ego on him. And he wasn’t afraid to poke the bear. The bear being me.
This wasn’t turning into a solid partnership.
This was war.
I’d barely gotten in the door after a very trying day at work when my cell phone rang. It was a video chat with three of my sisters, Izzy, Esme, and Vee. Amelia was missing from the list, so I knew this had to be about the baby shower we’d all promised to host.
I answered, dropping my helmet on the table and slamming the door behind me. “Hey, girls.”
“Oakley!” Vee squealed, a face-splitting smile filling the screen. “We were hoping you’d be home. We have a baby shower to plan.”
All the plans I’d had to come home, eat something frozen, and soak away my irritation in a hot bath went down the drain. I felt guilty for being grumpy about planning a baby shower for Amelia, the first of us sisters to have a baby, but damn. A girl needed some downtime to wipe off the residue of a day spent apprehending lawbreakers, roping wayward animals, and dealing with the giant ego of Lieutenant Wyatt Smith.
“Amelia is just starting to show,” Izzy said quietly.
The rest of us paused, needing a moment to process the heart-lurching emotion of knowing one of us was baking up a freaking human being. A true miracle was happening in our family. My eyes misted and suddenly I didn’t mind spending the evening on the phone with my little sisters, hashing out all the ridiculous things we could do at a party honoring Amelia and the baby
that would be spoiled rotten by his or her aunts.
“Never in a million years did I guess Amelia would be the first.” I set the phone down on the countertop and reached into the freezer for a frozen meal. My hand found a foil container instead, with a note on top.
Homemade meatloaf and gravy, side of veggies. xoxo Mom
I smiled, even as I shook my head at her ridiculousness. I wouldn’t die of malnutrition via frozen meals, but I appreciated her coming over with food just the same.
“Okay, let’s assign who’s doing what,” Esme piped up, her pen and leather-bound notebook at the ready.
I let the sound of my sisters bickering flow over me, the warm, home-cooked food fill my belly, and I wasn’t so grumpy anymore. The new partner might be a pesky irritation, but my sisters—my best friends—were only a quick phone call away, and I had my nights all to myself in my own house.
3
Wyatt
* * *
“I think we need to set some things straight here.”
Day two of partnering with Captain Oakley Waldo and I’d already gotten my ass handed to me more times than I could count on two hands. The woman was a damn perfectionist with a chip on her shoulder the size of this sprawling county.
I hadn’t actually done anything wrong today. All our calls were answered and attended to in all the right ways. The suspect was talked to, arrested if needed, and all was done by the book. So, really, she had nothing to criticize, but criticize she did.
“What’s that?” I asked wearily.
Oakley spun the wheel, and we headed back down the east side of the county, just patrolling while waiting on a call to come in. The brown hills flickered past my window. It had been a relatively dry winter, leaving the threat of summer fires to look forward to.
“In these situations, let’s go with you being the good cop and I’m the bad cop. You smile and flirt too much to be the bad cop.”
