Man of the House

by Abigail Graham

  And sit there some more.

  Traffic picks up around eleven a.m. I get my first speeder not long after that. He races past me going sixty in a thirty five. That’s a good one.

  I pull out after him and flip on my lights. He weaves to the shoulder and I pull up behind him, angled in case he decides to peel out and run for it.

  I approach from the passenger’s side with my sidearm unsnapped. I can’t be too careful. Doesn’t matter what they think of me.

  He rolls the window down and gives me an amused look. “Somebody send me a stripper? Are the cuffs part of the act?”

  I keep my expression neutral. “License and registration, sir.”

  “Honey--”

  “Now.”

  This guy--there’s at least one a day--driving a Mercedes, flying between whatever bedroom community he lives in and downtown Philly. Probably doesn’t even realize there’s a town here, that kids play on these roads. None of them care.

  “All right,” he says and produces the documents.

  They’re all bark, this type. He sits in the car, hands at ten and two on the wheel, wondering if I’m going to do the step out of the car routine.

  One of my august colleagues would respond to sass like that. They’d make him do a sobriety test, search him, whatever they could come up with.

  I’m a professional. Sassing me isn’t a crime. Speeding is. I write him up for it, hand him his ticket, and send him on his way. He says something I’m either supposed to or not supposed to hear, some wiseass remark, but I let it roll away, get back in the car, and get set up.

  Traffic is sparse today. The next several cars that pass me are all obeying the speed limit. Locals or people who’ve been dinged before. You only get two kinds that speed out here, the ones that don’t know or don’t care.

  I stop myself from nodding a few times.

  At first, I think it’s a mirage. Here comes this news van covered with all the antenna crap on the roof. It rolls right up to me, and a woman in a pantsuit gets out, followed by a guy with a camera.

  “What are you--”

  “Officer Maguire,” she cuts me off, “why did you arrest Broadside Wright?”

  “What? I didn’t, I cited him for a traffic…” Oh, damn it. “No comment,” I correct myself.

  “Can you give us any insight on--”

  “No. Comment.”

  As she talks, my radar gun bleats. A speeder goes flying past. “Get out of the way,” I shout. I put the SUV in gear and start to move, only to slam my foot on the brake and stop dead when the camera guy runs in front of the car. “What are you doing?”

  “Officer Maguire, how does it feel being the only woman in the Sylvester police department?”

  “What? I’m not answering any questions. You need to move or I’ll place you under arrest for obstructing an officer in the course of her duties.” The camera guy does not budge. “I’m not joking.”

  This is a nightmare.

  If it were anyone else, I’d call for backup and get ready to pull on them if I have to. You can’t just stand in front of my cruiser while I’m trying to pursue someone committing an offense right in front of my face, yet here this jackass stands blocking my path.

  I sigh and thumb the mic. “Jimmy, I need backup.”

  “Yeah, Feebs. Where at?”

  “My usual spot. Put a motor on it.”

  About five minutes later, Jimmy rolls up. He’s older than Bill, the oldest guy on the force. He was a cop in Sylvester when I was Carrie’s age, and looks mostly the same as he did then, except for a wider belly and whiter hair.

  I hate calling him in. It feels like calling my dad for help at work. He radios me before he exits his car.

  “Hop out and help me on this. I want you to look like you’re taking point in case this ends up on the news. You cuff the camera guy.”

  “Ten four.”

  I get out and they both rush over to me. Jimmy trips his siren.

  “Okay, folks,” I announce as loud as I can. “Camera and microphone on the ground, keep your hands where I can see them.”

  “You heard Officer Maguire,” Jimmy adds in his professional, even tone. “Ya’ll gonna comply, now.”

  The reporter and camera man look at each other a little incredulously, then realize I’m serious when I stare at them.

  “Go on then,” I add.

  He lowers his expensive looking camera to the ground, and Jimmy keeps an eye on the woman while I cuff her camera man. I cuff her and we put them both in the back of my Tahoe, then lock their stuff in their van.

  “Radio Chief. See if he wants this impounded,” I tell Jimmy. He nods and heads back to his car. I get in with these two.

  “You can’t do this,” the woman says, sharply.

  “Okay, listen up. You have the right to remain silent…” I want to get smartass about reciting Miranda to them, but I keep it by the book. It’s all being recorded.

  Jimmy comes up and leans on my windowsill. “Yeah, he called up Joe’s. They’re on their way out now. I’ll sit here with the property and follow him back to the impound lot.”

  “Thanks, Jim.” I give him a curt nod. He nods back, and I see a hint of a smile on his face when he turns away.

  Jim is the only one I know isn’t mocking me. When he smiles in my presence, we’re sharing genuine humor. I like that about him.

  He was the one who made me want to do this in the first place, even if I had other plans originally.

  The drive to the station is short. The paperwork, however, is not. I call my sister, Grace, on my lunch break.

  “Hey,” she answers.

  “Hey. I need a favor.”

  She sighs. “Pick Carrie up and watch her, yeah.”

  “Yeah.”

  “I got it. I’ll see you after work.”

  “Thanks, Gee.”

  “You got it, Feebs.”

  I can’t rely on her forever. She’s going to be moving away, sooner or later.

  I sigh and get back to work on the write-up. I swear it takes longer to describe something than the amount of time it took to actually happen.

  The reporters give me a forlorn look as I pass by the holding cell with the paperwork.

  “This is a gross violation of our first amendment rights,” the woman shouts.

  I let it roll down my back and submit my work to the boss.

  “You realize we have to let them go,” Bill says without even reading the write-up.

  “Yeah.”

  “Mayor’s going to crawl up my ass and lay eggs over this. He’s already pissed at you and that judge.”

  “Tell him to be pissed at Wright. He’s the one who was speeding.”

  He waves his hand dismissively. “Can we skip the Dirty Harry routine today, sugar? We’ve all got work to do. If you think this counts as giving out tickets, you’ve got another thing coming.”

  I huff.

  “Don’t get all petulant with me with your soft rosebud lips.”

  I look past my boss at the shelf next to his desk. The chief of the Sylvester Police Department reads romance novels. In paperback. And keeps them on a shelf in his office. He buys a dozen at a time at the used bookstore and there’s a Sylvia Day novel sitting on his desk right now. It’s seen better times.

  “Chief, I couldn’t do my job with these idiots sitting in front of me.”

  He turns to face me. “Maybe you shouldn’t have arrested an internationally famous football star then. Did you think of that, Phoebe?”

  It grates on me when he uses my first name. He calls everyone else by their last name. Only I get the first name treatment.

  “What was I supposed to do, let him go? He should be in jail, not moving in next door to me.”

  His eyebrows rise. “What?”

  “Yeah, the dickhead rented the house next to mine. He’ll probably start harassing me now. I was doing the right thing.”

  “I know, I know,” he says in his “humoring you” tone. “Equal justice unde
r the law and all that. At least it was a big fine. I should give you a sticker.”

  My colleague Howard once demanded an award for bringing in what he called a huge collar, that is, intercepting an old Subaru with a pound of weed in the trunk. The boss bought a sheet of stickers at the dollar store and put a gold star on Howard’s badge. Howard was not amused.

  He would do the same, now, but I think he’s afraid I’ll sue him if he touches my chest.

  “Right. I’m off shift in a couple hours, or did you want me to put in overtime on traffic?”

  “Nah, finish up with the due diligence and go get your kid. Sylvester will survive without Officer Maguire patrolling the land on her steel horse for a few hours.”

  I give him a curt not and storm past the locker room and out to the Tahoe.

  Grace answers her phone on the first ring. “Feeb, you better get over here.”

  “What, why?”

  “I couldn’t take Carrie back to the house. I’ve been circling the block for the last--”

  I toss the phone on the seat, pull out my sidearm, check the chamber, reholster it, back out, throw on my lights and sirens, and make for my home like a bat out of hell.

  Since it’s about four blocks, it takes all of two minutes.

  I jam up on the brakes when I see what Grace meant. My house is surrounded by news vans like the one we impounded earlier. They’re set up with broadcast towers on my lawn.

  Rage seethes up my face, burning to my hairline. Yeah. I flip off the lights and siren and roll up slowly. They run up to me and I roll my window down.

  “Get out of my way,” I snarl.

  They just ignore me.

  My chest tightens. I start to feel helpless. I’m surrounded, they’re pressing in from all sides, surrounding the car. I don’t know where Carrie is. Where’s my baby?

  Suddenly, they rush away from me, crossing the neighbor’s lawn.

  Oh, Alexander’s lawn.

  I’ve come to think of it as “the neighbor’s” house, using a generic term since I don’t know the owners. It’s Alexander’s now, until he leaves.

  Great.

  That clears enough of a path for me to pull into my own driveway.

  Grace must have been circling. She pulls up to the end of the driveway. I step out and run to the side of her little Beetle and pull the door open, and scoop Carrie into my arms.

  “Go,” I tell Grace. “I’ll call.”

  She nods and pulls off. I make a direct line for the door. I’m not fast enough. Here they come.

  “Officer Maguire,” they all say, but out of order so it sounds like a gibberish chant. The questions buffet my ears.

  Carrie is a tough kid, a real tough kid. She’s smart, she’s resilient, and she’s level headed.

  When she’s surrounded by strangers pointing cameras in her face, after her aunt panicked and scared her shitless, she starts wailing, and buries her face in my shoulder.

  “Let me through,” I bellow, but my voice is thin and reedy.

  Then the loudest voice I’ve ever heard thunders in my ears. “Everybody, move,” Alexander roars.

  It’s like a freaking dinosaur descended from a flying saucer and started stomping through the crowd. Alexander takes a cameraman in front of me and picks him up, bodily, from the ground and lifts him out of my way.

  “You fucking heard me,” he booms. “Get out of the way!”

  I run for my front door and Alexander keeps pace with me, shoving through the crowd. I put Carrie down, not by choice, and she clings to my leg and wails while I fumble with the door.

  I finally get it open, just as one of the jackasses steps onto my porch. “Broadside, are you and this cop an item?”

  “What?” he snarls. “What the hell are you talking about?”

  “She’s not really your type. When did you start seeing each other? After the arrest?”

  “It was a citation!” I shout, “Not an arrest!”

  “Get out of here,” Alexander snarls.

  “I want him arrested for assault!” someone yells. It’s the guy he lifted out of the way. Great.

  “Get in here,” I yell at him.

  “What?”

  “Inside, now.”

  He looks at me for a moment as if he’s about to say something about my tone and then pushes me inside with one big hand on the small of my back.

  My god, it’s like I weigh nothing at all. He’d have as hard a time lifting a doll.

  He slams the door shut and I grab my belt radio. “Bill, it’s me. There’s a freaking riot on my front lawn. Send everybody.”

  It crackles. “What? A riot what?”

  “Just send me some backup! Get them out of my yard!”

  Carrie runs around shutting all the blinds and drapes while I awkwardly stand in my living room with Alexander Wright, the guy whose multimillion-dollar career I kind of ruined. Technically, he ruined it. It’s his fault!

  He looks at me. “Got anything to eat?”

  “You’re joking.”

  He walks past me, into my kitchen, and picks up the Cheesy Beef box from where it came to rest on top of the garbage can. “What is this? Are you feeding a kid this crap?”

  “Um,” I say. “Go home. Yeah. Go home. Why are you still in my house?”

  “If I go out there, I’m ending up in your holding tank again. Do we want that?”

  I glance at the door. I can see the silhouette of someone aiming a camera at it. “No. I don’t. I want you gone. If I could go back in time and never give you that ticket, I’d do it right now, you better fu…” I trail off when Carrie looks at me. “You better flipping believe it.”

  “Mom, language,” Carrie says.

  “Are you still doing ‘language’?” Alexander says with a chuckle.

  “Fine, just sit in the living room until I can get rid of you,” I tell him.

  After I finish wiping Carrie’s tears and de-snotting her, she furtively creeps into the living room with him.

  He looks at her, and I tense.

  My God, he’s huge. When he sits on the couch, it barely comes a third of the way up his back. I swear, one of his legs is bigger than my daughter. Sitting down, he’s twice as tall as she is standing.

  She gingerly sits down on the other side of the couch. I can’t help but watch this. He very pointedly doesn’t look at her.

  “Hi,” she says.

  Alexander glances back at me. I give him a plaintive look. She adores him. If he’s mean to her, I swear I’ll take a rolling pin to him.

  “Hi,” she says, very softly.

  “Hi, kid.”

  “My name’s Carrie.”

  “Mine’s Alexander.”

  I blink a few times when he holds out his hand. He gives her the world’s most ridiculous handshake, her tiny little hand vanishing into a two-finger-and-thumb grip.

  “Hi.”

  “Want to watch some cartoons?”

  “She has homework,” I remind her.

  “Mom, it’s Broadside.”

  “She can do homework later,” he says. My glare intensifies. He shrugs his huge shoulders.

  Carrie’s only reply is, “Yay!” as she turns on the television.

  “So how about some dinner?” he says. “I need to keep up my macros.”

  “Your what?”

  “I’m hungry.”

  I retreat into the kitchen and lean on the counter. “You have to be kidding me,” I tell myself.

  Chapter Three

  Alex

  You know what?

  She’d look great in an apron, and not much else.

  As Maguire saunters around the room, I quickly conclude she has an amazing ass. She left me with the kid to dart upstairs and change, and as she ascended I had a great view of her rump stretching the seat of her uniform pants.

  Now, she’s in the kitchen in an apron, tank top, and jean shorts. It’s a really good look for her, even if the shorts are cut like mom jeans. She may be slender, but she has the kind of c
urvy hips that make a high waist work to accentuate her assets.

  She works out, too. I could watch those legs all day, but I turn back so I don’t pop a boner over the mom while I’m sitting next to the kid.

  This is awkward. I look at her. She looks at me.

  “Do you like Ninja Turtles?” I ask her, trying to be conversational.

  “What? No. I like football.”

  My eyebrows twitch a little. What kind of little girl gives a shit about football? If I was sitting next to a boy, I would expect that, but…

  “I want to be like you when I grow up.”

  I jerk back a little. Why the hell would anyone want to be like me?

  “You really don’t,” I say with a sigh, turning back to the television.

  The kid keeps staring at me. Usually this is where the autograph request comes in, but she’s silent. She just looks at me, then glances at her mom. I smell food, and my stomach rumbles. I’m hungry. I had my usual post-workout dinner after I left my new gym, but I need about another four thousand calories for the day.

  I’m not going back to my house now. The mob of reporters are still outside. I can see them milling around the freaking windows like we’re in a horror movie hiding from an army of zombies.

  I’d rather have the zombies.

  The kid is doing that look-at-me-look-at-her thing again. “Her name is Phoebe,” she says.

  “What? Who?”

  “My mom.”

  “Oh. Okay.”

  I shrug. Why is she telling me that?

  Phoebe Maguire.

  “I just talked to the chief,” the woman herself says, emerging from the kitchen. “The rest of the department and a couple state troopers are on their way here. You should be able to leave soon.”

  Her voice is cold, but something about that apron turns me on. The way it’s tied up with her tank top and the frayed legs of her shorts just poking out under the bottom, I could totally picture her naked under it. My eyes fall from her scowling face to the strong but feminine curves of her neck and shoulders. The little hint of sweat on her forehead and the way her hair has gone all frizzy and hangs in loose curls around her face makes my heart beat a little faster.

  She turns around and heads back into the kitchen and my eyes lock right on her slender back and her meaty ass. I always was an ass man.