by Erin Wright
Arrested by Love
A Long Valley Romance Novel - Book 3
Erin Wright
Wright’s Reads
Copyright © 2017 by Erin Wright
This book is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places and incidents are products of the writer’s imagination or have been used fictitiously and are not to be constructed as real. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, actual events, locales or organizations is entirely coincidental.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any manner whatsoever without written permission from the author except in the case of brief quotation embodied in critical articles and reviews.
To Jasmine the Writing Cat:
Thanks for all the snuggles. This book literally wouldn’t have been the same without you…
Chapter 1
Wyatt
Quick Note: If you enjoy Arrested by Love, be sure to check out my offer of a FREE Long Valley novella at the end.
With that, enjoy!
Wyatt Miller wandered down the snack aisle of the Mr. Petrol’s at 11:30 at night. Nothing like trying to find dinner in the aisles of a convenience store. Did onion rings and beef jerky count as a balanced diet? He could consider the onion rings to be his vegetables, and the beef jerky to be his protein.
He grimaced. Some days, living in a small town really sucked, where the grocery store prided themselves on being “open late” – all the way until nine at night.
He pulled Lay’s Salt & Vinegar off the display.
Look, more vegetables.
He wasn’t sure a dietician would approve, but then again, there was almost nothing in this convenience store that a dietician would approve of. He really should just drive to Franklin and go grocery shopping there, but that was 30 minutes away and he just didn’t feel like it. When he died, his headstone was going to read, “Too lazy to drive to Franklin; died of a heart attack from eating junk food from Mr. Petrol’s.”
Just then, a vehicle pulled up outside. Well, “pulled up” made it sound like the driver was in control of their actions, but as Wyatt watched, his bag of chips forgotten in his hands, he saw the Jeep stop just in time to keep from crashing through the front windows of the convenience store.
Oh shit.
He knew that Jeep. There was only one orange camo Jeep in the valley.
The driver’s side door swung open and out swaggered Richard. Wyatt couldn’t tell if Richard was swaggering because he was so arrogant and full of himself – always a possibility – or because he was drunk – definitely another possibility.
Wyatt reminded himself to breathe in, and then out. And then repeat it all over again. He couldn’t react the way he wanted to – a punch to the face – so he needed to just stay calm. That’s what everyone would tell him, anyway.
He knew that. It was a matter of remembering that. And doing that.
No matter how good a punch to Richard’s face would feel.
Richard stumbled into the store and from two aisles over, Wyatt could smell the fumes rolling off him.
Drunk it was.
Richard managed to make his way over to the beer case without taking out an end-cap display, nothing short of a miracle really, and snagged a 24-pack of Budweiser.
A 24-pack? Really? When you’re already this wasted?
Wyatt was having a hard time breathing again and he realized that he’d smashed the bag of chips in his hands into a tiny ball, chips spilling onto the floor from the busted seams of the bag. Richard didn’t seem to notice the noise, though, swinging the 24-pack up onto the counter and swiping his debit card moments later.
Breathe in, breathe out.
Wyatt was hoping that at any moment, the cashier would stop him. Surely, he’d realize that giving Richard more beer at this point was a truly awful idea.
Right?
Richard took his beer and began stumbling towards the door.
The cashier wasn’t going to stop him. Wyatt could feel the rage begin to boil up inside of him.
“Why did you sell him that beer?!” The words burst out of Wyatt like gunfire. He couldn’t stop himself from asking any more than he could stop himself from breathing.
“Dude, do you know who that is?” the cashier responded with a shrug.
“Of course I know who that is,” Wyatt ground out.
“Well, my probation is almost up. Just a month more and I’m out of the system. I’m not pissing off the judge’s son.”
That was it. Wyatt threw the mangled bag of chips to the floor and sprinted for the door. He wasn’t about to stand by and let Richard take someone’s life because he happened to share genetic material with the only judge in town. Oh hell no.
He burst out the front door of Mr. Petrol’s. Richard had finally managed to get his key into the ignition and turn it. Wyatt grabbed the door handle and yanked it open.
“Whaddya want, killer?” Richard slurred, blearily focusing his eyes on Wyatt.
“Hello, brother. Nice to see you again.” Wyatt pulled back his fist and planted it squarely in the middle of Dick’s nose.
Chapter 2
Abby
“Good morning, Daddy,” Abby said in a sing-song voice as she walked into the sheriff’s office.
So, she may or may not have known exactly what he was going to say in response before he even opened his mouth. She’d opened with the “Daddy” greeting because the mood in the office told her that he was in a particularly foul mood, and, well, sometimes it was a little fun to screw with her father’s head.
“You know the rules,” he scolded her. “When either one of us is in uniform, we have to be Sheriff and Deputy. I get enough raised eyebrows for hiring my own daughter. Don’t make that worse, especially today of all days.”
“Oh yeah? What’s going on?” She sat down in front of his gigantic desk, intrigued. Usually, her dad didn’t let stuff get to him, but the way he was pacing back and forth in front of the only window in the room, she was starting to think something bigger than dispatch showing up late, as always, was going on.
“You might as well hear it from me because it’s about to become your problem,” the sheriff said.
“Hold on. You’re the guy in charge. Aren’t problems your department?”
“Actually, my job is deciding who problems belong to and making assignments accordingly,” he retorted.
She stifled the urge to roll her eyes. Some days, being the daughter of the sheriff could be more than a little annoying.
“So, what’s causing such stress in the squad room?”
“You’ll never believe who’s in the back.”
“You’re right, I have no clue. I actually turned my radio off last night and since no one called, I assumed everything was fine.”
“Wyatt Miller,” he said.
“Wow,” Abby said, just as shocked as he’d thought she’d be. She stared at him for a moment, trying to process what he’d just said. She suddenly felt awful for being bratty when she first came in. As his daughter, she needed to be more supportive, a little less sarcastic. “Are you okay?”
“You’ll never believe why he’s in here,” he said, ignoring her question.
“Did he tear up O’Malley’s over a game of pool again?”
“No, he beat up Richard Schmidt in the parking lot of Mr. Petrol’s.”
“He what?!” she exploded. “How in the hell could he do something like that?!”
Dad just stared at her and that’s when Abby got past the shock of Wyatt beating Richard up – although really, that was going to take a while, if she was being honest with he
rself – to how hard it must be on her dad to be dealing with this. This was like a maelstrom of every shitty possible circumstance, thrown together.
“Oh my God, Dad, are you okay?” She jumped out of her chair and went to give him a hug.
“Abby…” He held up his hands defensively, warding off her hug, something that stung her more than she would’ve guessed it would. She changed directions and headed for the open office door instead.
“Don’t give me that,” she said, shutting the door and turning back to him with a sympathetic look. “There are times that you’re still my father, no matter how many badges you stack between us, and this is one of those times.”
“Okay, fine.” He took a deep breath and looked her in the eye. “To be honest, I’m not doing that well. That’s why I want you to be the one who handles this. I kept it together for the most part when I talked with his brothers. However, I could feel my restraint slipping,” he said, rubbing his forehead. “This seems very cut and dry. I should want him to get what's fair, but given everything that's happened, I can’t stop feeling like he should get more than what's strictly speaking ‘fair.’ That’s the problem. If I can’t control my personal feelings and I screw this up, he won’t even get what he rightly deserves.”
“So…you want me to take this on?” At his nod, she asked him, a bit sarcastically, “What makes you think I can control my temper better than you can?”
“You’re a better person than I am,” he said simply.
“That’s not true and you know it.”
“Well, everyone will have to deal with him at some point, but I’m trying to remove myself from the situation as much as possible. I don’t want my personal feelings to get in the way. I’m hoping that because you have some distance and you’re the shift commander, you’ll be more effective than I would be in making sure nothing goes wrong.”
“Are you okay?” She knew she sounded like a broken record but she couldn’t help worrying as she studied her father. His blood pressure could get too high and—
“Yeah, I’m great,” he said, trying and failing to act happy and normal, and then he slammed his fist down on the desk. “No, I’m pissed as hell right now. I cannot believe that it was that asshole who beat up the judge’s son. That’s Wyatt Miller for you – he thinks he can solve all the world’s problems with his fists, and he never stops to think about whether or not he should be involved, and especially whether or not his fists should be involved. Next, he’ll be down at the bar, telling yet another round of people that he knows how to run their farms better than they do. I’ve never met such an arrogant, know-it-all piece of shit in all my life.”
He stopped and stared at Abby, breathing heavily.
“I’m pretty sure it’s clear that I shouldn’t be involved with the day-to-day business of keeping Wyatt here,” he said, and Abby thought she could hear just the barest hint of sarcasm in his voice when he said that.
She just bit her lip and nodded. Even though Wyatt’s comment to the whole town about how her dad didn’t know how to run a farm and he could show him how to do it had happened what felt like eons ago, it was obvious her dad still hadn’t gotten over it. She wasn’t sure if he ever would. At least her dad realized that he needed to keep that space between them.
“All right, Sheriff, what do you need me to do?”
“Just do your job as shift commander and jail supervisor. Treat him like any other detainee, but if you have any problems, just take care of it. And for hell’s sakes, don’t give his lawyer any wiggle room. You have my full authority to just act as you see fit, as long as you leave me out of it.”
“So can I ask the obvious question?”
“Which is…?”
“Why not just declare this to be a conflict of interest and ship him over to Ada County?”
“The last thing that I need is that jackass proving that I can’t run my own jail.”
“Right,” Abby said. She really didn’t have anything else to add to the conversation, a new one for her.
“What I need you to do, and I do realize that I’m laying a lot on you, is keep this all together and keep me out of trouble at the same time. Just take this on and act as you feel is appropriate. I’ll back you in whatever you do.”
She nodded.
“From afar,” he added.
She left him sitting there and headed for her problem in the back.
Chapter 3
Wyatt
Good hell, I feel horrible.
He was sick and felt like he’d lost a fight with a grizzly bear, and to top it all off, he was dreaming about his brother Stetson yelling at him to wake up. If there was one way to ruin a day from the start, it was to deal with his sniveling little brother in his dreams. The snotty little bastard couldn’t even leave him alone when he was trying to sleep.
Finally, his brain made the connection that Stetson wasn’t in his dream, but actually was yelling for him to wake up.
His eyes finally opened and dear God, it was bright. His head roared in protest. What the hell had he done to himself?
He didn’t recognize the room. He could hear Declan and Stetson arguing about something and he didn’t care what it was about. All he cared about was getting them to shut up.
“This isn’t the time for your petty bull, so knock it off,” he heard Declan saying.
“Whatever, Mom,” Wyatt managed to say but it didn’t sound quite right when it came out. “Where the hell am I?”
“You’re in jail,” Declan said, in that patronizing voice he used when he was trying to calm his older brother down.
Wyatt hated that voice so damn much, but he let his brother get away with it for some reason he couldn’t recall at the moment. It’d come to him later.
He swung his legs over the edge of the bed he was lying on and tried to stand up. The whole world shifted to the right and Wyatt decided to sit back down instead. Just for a minute.
“Why the hell am I in jail?” he finally got out.
“You decided to be a one-man vigilante justice squad and beat the hell out of Richard Schmidt,” Stetson said, glaring at him, arms crossed across his chest.
Oh.
Right.
He remembered that now.
He was pretty sure that admitting this to a counselor or a judge would just prolong the time spent behind bars, but on the other hand, smashing his fist into Dick’s nose was the best Wyatt had felt in a long time.
“He was drunk. I tried to talk him out of driving and he would have none of it.” Wyatt shrugged, which sent more pain surging through him. The world had gone red with that first punch, and looking back on it, he wasn’t quite sure what’d happened. It was all just a haze of anger and retribution. Maybe “tried to talk him out of driving” wasn’t exactly true, unless one considered “punching with fists” to be talking, in which case he did a lot of talking.
Asshole called me Killer. He deserved every punch he got, and then some. If there was ever a shitty trick to pull, that was it.
“Listen, I know after what happened, you two aren’t exactly bosom buddies,” Stetson said sarcastically. “But that doesn’t mean that you get to punch him when you get a hankering for it. Perhaps a phone call to the police would’ve done the trick.”
“Why? So he could get thrown in jail for the night and then walk away scot-free, like he always does?”
Declan pushed himself between the two of them. “Wyatt, we’ve talked about it and we think that maybe just having you hang out here for a day or two might be useful.”
Wyatt swung his gaze back towards Declan. Out of all of the people in the world he thought would be on his side, Declan topped that list. Declan was that list.
He never thought Declan would betray him like this.
At the look on Wyatt’s face, Declan put his hands up defensively. “Wyatt, you put him in the hospital. He has three broken ribs and they’re probably going to have to do plastic surgery on his face to put the bones back where they’re supposed to
go. I know you think that you were justified, but you can’t just let loose and whale on people like that.”
“No one died and made you the king of the world,” Stetson said flatly. “You have to figure out that you can’t punch your way through life.”
“Yeah, whatever. Leave me the hell alone,” Wyatt said. “You two just want me to fail and are using this as a chance to make that happen. God, even my own family is turning against me. Without me, you two would be nothing. I am the one who thinks about all the stupid shit you don’t even know about. Go ahead, leave me in here. You’ll be back in a day, begging me to save your sorry asses.”
He turned his back on them and waited for them to leave.
“I’ll watch your farm. Jorge is taking care of most of the work, so I’ll just make sure he gets the help he needs,” Declan offered. “You can get the help you need in here.”
“Yeah, don’t do me any favors,” Wyatt said sarcastically and then changed his mind. “Actually, do me one favor. Keep Stetson off my place. I don’t need to clean up his messes when I get out of here.”
Neither of them said a word. He waited for Stetson to have something smart to say, but he stayed silent. Finally, Wyatt couldn’t handle it anymore.
“Just leave. You two are pissing me off.”
He listened to the clicking of their cowboy boots on the concrete floor fade away and for the heavy clunk of a door shutting before he lay back on the cot and closed his eyes.
Why do people always pull this shit on me?
Chapter 4
Abby
Abby walked down the jail block to Wyatt’s cell. It was his big day, and she was the lucky officer who got to take him down to the courtroom. He’d spent the last week split between snarling at her every time she walked by, and reading western novels. She figured that this hearing was going to go as well as could be expected, which was to say horrifically awful.
