Falling for the Cop

by Dana Nussio

  * * *

  SHANE STARED AT himself in the mirror of the community church dressing room just four weeks later. Outside, a late-spring thunderstorm threatened, with the temperature dropping ten degrees in the past hour. But inside the tiny church, where he was surrounded by so many friends, it felt endlessly warm.

  He brushed off the shoulders of his dress uniform that he’d worn more often in the past few months than he had in all of his years of police work. He’d passed his physical and would return to full duty soon, but he no longer felt the desperation he’d experienced before. He would have a new wife and a honeymoon to enjoy first.

  “You okay, buddy?” Vinnie asked as he tightened the tie on his own uniform. “Are you ready for all of this?”

  “If I say I can’t wait, does that make me a total loser?”

  Vinnie nodded into the mirror. “Yeah. Pretty much.”

  “You know, I’m okay with that.”

  The dressing room door opened, and Trevor peered inside. “You guys about ready? The chaplain is waiting.”

  They followed him out and around the piano on the way to the pulpit where the chaplain had already taken his place. Shane stopped to the right of the chaplain, and Vinnie took his place at his flank.

  Because the prelude music was still playing, he had a chance to look out in the small crowd of family and close friends. Well, friends more than family, really. Natalie only had her mother, and he had no one. He scanned the groom’s side of the aisle. With so many of the guests in uniform, the few civilians among them stood out even more. Kent’s wife, Tammy, and their two kids sat a few rows from the front, and a few of their basketball players were there with their parents, their wheelchairs parked on the outside aisles.

  But at the sight of another couple near the back, his breath caught. His brother, Stephen, was there with his wife, Beth. Sure, Natalie had insisted on inviting them, but he’d never expected them to show. That Natalie was right again shouldn’t have surprised him. He was going to have to get used to that, though, because she would probably be right more than he would through their next fifty or so years of marriage. He nodded at the thought and smiled. Yeah, fifty years or more sounded perfect.

  It was good that the processional music started then, or he might have done something ridiculous and cried over his good fortune. Elaine appeared in the doorway first, her pretty pink dress arranged artfully in her chair. It had been Natalie’s idea to have her mother as maid of honor, and once again, she’d made the right choice.

  Just as the music changed, Natalie stepped to the auditorium entry. She was so beautiful that he could barely breathe. She wore a simple, silky gown that she’d told him was called a sheath. He definitely approved since it left her shoulders bare. Because she’d given him a vote on her hair, Natalie wore it loose about those beautiful shoulders, under a short veil.

  It was all he could do to listen to the chaplain as he said all of those words, but he didn’t care what the man said as long as it meant he could take Natalie home forever to be his wife.

  * * *

  NATALIE LIFTED HER head and stared into Shane’s mesmerizing eyes. It had been particularly important to him to pass his physical before the ceremony, so she’d helped him gain strength with his exercises. What he might not have fully realized was that it made no difference to her at all. She loved him—not the way he moved from one place to the other. But it had been so important for him to return to the job he loved and the place where he could make a difference, and she’d come to want that for him as much as he wanted it for himself.

  She stared into his eyes the whole time that the chaplain spoke about the responsibilities of marriage, and then it was finally time for the vows, the ones that Shane had insisted they should write themselves.

  “Natalie, I love you,” he began. “I had to get shot to meet you, but I would gladly do it all over again if it meant I could get to know such an amazing person. You are beautiful, kind and compassionate. You are my love. Whether I have to walk, ride or even crawl, I’ll always come back to you.”

  Tears already clogging her throat and trailing down her cheeks, Natalie stared into those eyes that had always seen to her very core. She glanced down in her hand at the tiny sheet where she’d copied the vows she’d written and revised dozens of times over the past few weeks. She crumpled up the sheet and tossed it over her shoulder, earning a laugh from their guests.

  “And I’ll be the luckiest woman in the world to be with a man like you,” she said simply.

  After the exchange of rings, the chaplain pronounced them husband and wife.

  “Kiss her already,” someone called out before the chaplain could even say the words.

  Laughter filled the sanctuary as Shane drew Natalie into his arms. Everything outside the two of them fell away as he brought his lips to hers. Even as he lifted his mouth away, Natalie stared up at him, mesmerized. She was amazed and so grateful to have him in her life. By opening her heart to forgiveness and stripping away layers of blame, she’d finally made room in her heart for hope and for a future with her own hero in blue.

  “Are you ready to go, Mrs. Warner?” Shane pointed to the back of the church. “The guys decorated one of the patrol cars, but you probably want to just take my car.”

  “Oh, I think we can take the car they decorated,” she said. “But on one condition.”

  “What’s that?”

  “I want the siren. I married a police officer, and I want everyone to know he’s all mine.”

  * * * * *

  Be sure to look for future books in

  Dana Nussio’s TRUE BLUE series,

  as well as her previous title,

  STRENGTH UNDER FIRE.

  Keep reading for an excerpt from HER SECRET LIFE by Tara Taylor Quinn.

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  Her Secret Life

  by Tara Taylor Quinn

  CHAPTER ONE

  “UH-HUH. YES.”

  Mike Valentine listened unabashedly to the half he could hear of his lunch companion’s phone conversation the first Monday in March.

  “I know. Mmm-hmm.” Her tone was more flirty than not. Glancing at Mike, Kacey rolled her eyes. And then mouthed, Bo.

  A guy she’d been talking to in LA for the past several months. She said she wasn’t in love with him, but she liked him a lot. He fit her life in the city. She’d never, ever bring Bo to Santa Raqu
el, which was where Mike lived, and where he and Kacey volunteered at a local domestic violence shelter, the Lemonade Stand. Bo was part of her Beverly Hills life. And, Mike assumed, her sexual partner.

  A subject that had nothing to do with Mike.

  “Okay, tomorrow night. But only if it’s just a few of us. I meant it when I told you I don’t want to go clubbing.”

  While she listened, she ate a French fry. Or as much of one as she’d allow herself. Just the tip. Off Mike’s plate.

  She fell for the wrong guys. It didn’t take a genius to figure that one out. Besides, she’d told him so herself.

  “No, I’m not going to change my mind...” Her tone of voice changed from playful to deadly serious.

  While she couldn’t seem to control her propensity to date the wrong types, she was determined to make serious changes to her life and had already.

  Like the drinking. She still did it. Socially. She might have been teetering on being a drunk, but she wasn’t an alcoholic. Her body didn’t have a chemical dependency on the stuff. And she hadn’t been drunk in ten months, not since she’d made up her mind to change her life. He knew...because she’d told him.

  “I do want to be with you! It’s the clubbing I don’t want.” She was smiling now—not at Mike. She’d never smiled at Mike that way.

  For which he was utterly thankful. That smile...it was the one reserved for the disposable men in Kacey’s life. The ones who were part of the soap opera star’s Hollywood life.

  He’d take friendship with her any day. Getting her inside scoop was a whole different kind of intimacy. A more lasting one.

  “No, I can’t do Thursday night. I have a class to teach Friday in Santa Raquel...”

  At the Lemonade Stand.

  She frowned. “Of course I can. I just don’t want to. The class is important to me, Bo.” Her lower lip got that pouty look—the one that had made her famous on The Rich and Loyal. “You know that.”

  Mike lowered his gaze and ran straight into the ample cleavage showing above her skintight cotton top. It wasn’t that she was an exhibitionist, she’d just spent her life in front of a camera and was used to making the most of her assets.

  That cleavage made him uncomfortable. He might value the friendship between them—and know that he wouldn’t change things for anything—but he was still a guy. A healthy guy.

  In the prime of life.

  Feeling like a creep when his body reacted to the eyeful he’d helped himself to, Mike glanced out the window. There wasn’t much to see. A bit of cracked asphalt, two commercial-size Dumpsters, one brown and one blue, side by side, and the chipping brick of the building next door. The old diner was...off the beaten path.

  The owner was a decent chef, and left them alone—which was why Little’s Diner had become Mike and Kacey’s hangout, if you could call it that. Partway between LA and Santa Raquel—in a small inland town that had seen better days—Little’s had become the place they met when she was in LA and needed a friend fix.

  He was the one who’d suggested the place. He’d found it by accident several years before when he’d needed to get out of the house but had had enough compassion for other diners not to expose them to his grotesque face. He’d been driving aimlessly on roads less traveled, and the diner’s half-broken sign had caught his attention, along with the Open sign and the lack of cars in the lot. He soon learned that the diner packed in folks during shift changes at a local manufacturing plant. After a “Wow, you look gross, man,” Lou Fancy, Little’s owner, had shrugged and shown Mike to a seat in a narrow alcove, facing away from the room.

  He’d been coming back ever since.

  “Of course you matter. And I want to meet your family. It’s just...”

  She’d turned away from the table, but not before he’d seen her stricken expression.

  “I know, you’re right,” she said next. And then, “Yes, of course. I’ll be there.”

  Mike could hear the other man’s voice but couldn’t make out the words as Kacey sat forward in her seat again. She was smiling. And hung up shortly afterward.

  He raised an eyebrow at her. She could talk. Or not.

  He was good either way.

  “His parents and little brother are in town Thursday night, just for the night. He wants me to meet them.”

  He’d known that she couldn’t continue living two lives. They’d talked about it. If she wanted to work in LA and have a room in her sister’s home in Santa Raquel, she could probably pull it off. But this living two parallel lives—work, friends, social life—in both places just wasn’t healthy.

  Or natural.

  “You’re a volunteer at the Stand, Kace,” he reminded her. Not because he wanted her to choose LA, but because he believed that enough of her heart was there that she should pursue what a Beverly Hills life without the drinking would be like. “You don’t have to be there every week...”

  The women she helped—all victims of domestic violence—benefited from the gentle way she showed them how to enhance their outer beauty with fashion and makeup advice, makeovers and impromptu fashion shows. But they’d been surviving and healing for years without her.

  And there were others who knew about fashion. And makeup. Maybe none as famous as Kacey, but he’d learned one thing a long time ago—life went on.

  “Of course I’m going to be there,” she said, frowning at him as she took another bite of her cranberry-something salad. “I’m helping. I’m just going to have to get up early Friday morning and drive up. It means I won’t get to spend the night with Lacey and Jem, get my Levi fix, or my walk on the beach...”

  Because she had a thing to attend in Beverly Hills Friday night—something for the show, something to which Bo would be escorting her—and would have to drive back to the city after her class at the Lemonade Stand. She’d already told him as much.

  “You coming back Saturday?” he asked her now, more for reference than anything else. He didn’t expect to see her.

  “I hope so.”

  With such an innocuous response, he didn’t think so. It wasn’t like she spent every weekend in Santa Raquel. But more often than not she stayed from Thursday night until at least Saturday. Sometimes she even made it through Sunday.

  “You said you had a favor to ask,” he reminded her. It wasn’t all that unusual for them to meet like this, but when she’d called that morning, just three days since he’d seen her at the Lemonade Stand, she’d said that she wanted to talk to him in person.

  She’d sounded...wary.

  So unlike the Kacey who charged into life with a smile on her face and all lights blazing. Full of energy and ready to spend it.

  He’d been much the same back when he’d taken life—and everything he had—for granted.

  “Someone’s posting stuff about me on the internet,” she said, leaning forward. “I need you to help me figure out who it is.”

  Right up his alley. He sat forward, too, his hands resting on the table beside a half plate of French fries. The Philly steak sandwich he’d ordered was long gone. When he visited the place alone—for old times’ sake—he finished the fries. But when Kacey was there...

  She picked one up. Put it to her lips. Took the tiniest bite. And dropped it on top of what was left of her salad. She had to work that afternoon, her call was at two, she’d said, and she was a bit fanatic about not having a potbelly show on camera.

  Her words.

  She’d have to have one to have it show.

  Even if the camera did add pounds. She’d still have to have one to have it show...

  While Mike was busy trying not to think of the numerous glimpses he’d had of Kacey’s tanned, completely flat stomach over the year he’d known her—a result of the short shirts she wore with low-waisted jeans and shorts—she was busy flipping through something
on her phone.

  “Here,” she said, handing it to him. “My agency sent this over this morning.”

  Her sudden frown got his complete attention. He’d thought they were dealing with a minor issue—an excuse for them to have lunch together since she had a late-call day.

  As owner of MV Cyber Solutions, a successful-beyond-his-imaginings private IT investigative firm with clients in law enforcement—meaning they offered investigative work involving computers and the internet to law enforcement and lawyers—Mike was his own boss with trusted employees. And he could pretty much always squeeze an hour out of his day for Kacey.

  He read the email warning her of something that had popped up on the internet over the weekend.

  “The agency has someone who watches over us,” Kacey was saying. “Part of her job is to search the internet on a daily basis for any media hits, good or bad, on their clients. And they had us all set up Google Alerts, as well. I just don’t generally pay attention to mine.”

  He looked over at her. Didn’t like that she was still frowning. Kacey’s smile lit up the world. Not his world specifically—but whatever space she occupied. He’d been around her enough to be ample witness to that fact. It didn’t matter who she was with, from women with damaged spirits to her five-year-old step-nephew—people gravitated to her. Responded to her...

  “I didn’t know talent agencies did that,” he said, scrolling slowly down to see whatever had Kacey concerned.

  “Maybe most don’t.” She shrugged. “I’m just glad mine does.”

  The photo wasn’t sexy in nature, which was what he’d feared. It was more of a head shot. She looked...questionable. Her eyes were shadowed, half-shut. Her mouth was hanging open.

  “When was this taken?” He wasn’t relaxed anymore.

  “I’m not even sure,” she said. “It doesn’t show what I’m wearing. Could have been anywhere. But I know it was after Christmas.”