by Lexi Ostrow
He’d gone up to Bridget on a whim. He never had problems getting girls when he tried, but she’d been so stunning that he’d watched her for almost twenty minutes. The way her body moved to the music mesmerized him and he had to have her.
When she’d broken away from the pack of abnormally attractive women she’d been with, he’d made his move. Sure, he’d only wanted a one-night stand, but there was nothing about that woman that he was ready to give up in one night. She was intelligent, sexy as hell and a firecracker in the sack.
Jeremy pushed open the door to the small makeshift classroom and froze in his tracks.
She was also standing right in front of him.
His mind spun out of control. His eyes traveled up and down her form so quickly he forgot to close the door as he took take another step inside. His eyes drifted over the way her black hair was tied back into a short little tail. The brown eyes he’d stared into last night as they had sex. Jeremy found himself admiring the small, but delicious curves of her body, that the outfit practically hid but he had memorized last night.
She wasn’t breathing either. Her lips were parted and her eyes bore into his own, but she wasn’t moving. This couldn’t have happened. There just couldn’t be a way she could be standing in front of him right now. Dressed in that uniform.
“Detective Trellins, everything alright?” Lieutenant Chase’s question snapped him out of his shock just enough for him to move into the room.
“Sorry, yea.”
Jeremy couldn’t seem to take his eyes off her, and tried to convince himself that the woman couldn’t be the same as the one he’d met the night before Because if she was, they certainly couldn’t date. Jeremy dropped the paperwork down on the desk, and shook the confusion and dread he felt off.
“Good afternoon, recruits! I’m Detective Trellins. You’ll be stuck with me every time you need a T crossed or an I dotted. So get used to seeing me, because I promise you’ll hate me if you fuck your forms up.” Jeremy barked out the order just as he did in every class he walked into.
Not only was he in charge of one of the learning segments, he was also the poor sap stuck with forms on the first day after they were briefed on how things would work and had a good lunch.
He couldn’t help but notice the way Bridget sunk down into her seat. Jeremy wanted to frown; he much preferred the way her body had trembled when he’d spoken to her last night.
Shake it off, Trellins. Shake it off now.
“For the next hour, you’re going to be filling out these forms. They’re telling you everything from what time you wake up each morning to when the classroom and PT hours are. Do not scan them. Read them thoroughly.”
Jeremy sat down in the second chair next to Stephen Chase, and watched as they all scrambled to orderly get up and grab the papers he’d set down.
When Bridget grabbed hers, their fingers touched. She gasped, but said nothing as she turned back to her seat.
Jeremy watched as they all filled out and read the forms. Day one had to be the most boring for a recruit. But he had a feeling Bridget wasn’t feeling to bored right now. His brain didn’t want to be in the same room with Bridget. It was too much of an aggravation for him to process, since he needed to say something to her.
“Times up.” Jeremy heard Chase bark and they both stood to grab the forms.
He couldn’t help but smirk at the few still scrambling to finish. There was no penalty. They weren’t in some military boot camp, but he always liked instilling a little urgency in the new recruits.
“File outside and head to the lockers you were shown to earlier. Time for a little midday PT to see how much work you need.” Nervous chatter erupted amongst some of the recruits as they rushed to their feet. “And Miss O’Casey, could you see me for a moment?”
What he was doing was ballsy, but they needed to talk now. He also needed to get someone else to help Chase with the first round of PT testing. Jeremy had a feeling that watching her sweat would wreak havoc on his libido.
He left the room before she did, but hung back as he waited for her to approach him. Jeremy knew he couldn’t pull her over to a corner, which meant he’d have to control his volume and his expressions as they talked. All he wanted to do was a mix between shake her for not telling him and kiss her because of all the pent-up energy.
When she finally walked out of the room, she stopped so close to him that the toes of her boots touched his own dress shoes. Her eyes landed on his, though he couldn’t make out what lurked in their depths. Neither of them spoke and Jeremy finally broke the silence by blowing out a breath.
“Why they hell didn’t you tell me this was the job you had to be at in the morning?” His voice rose several octaves higher than he’d meant it to.
He lowered his head and moved his body in front of hers to try and block off some of their visibility. She was like a pixie compared to his tall frame.
“Excuse me, but why would I tell the man I’m randomly hooking up with during a one night stand where my career path is taking me?” her voice remained low, but it didn’t lack any venom as she spat the words at him.
He flinched at the comment. Jeremy tried to not bring up the point that they were supposedly going to see each other again, and not at the precinct.
“That’s not the point.” He bit the words out and did his best not to back her into the wall.
“Yes, it is the point. You never said what your job was either.”
He hadn’t done so on purpose. “Because women tend to want to fuck me simply because of what I do for a career. and the others run screaming because I won’t be able to treat them right with such a job.”
Bridget didn’t say a word. She blinked furiously fast but she didn’t say anything.
“Nothing to say?”
“My father was a cop. I would’ve understood. I would have even said something to avoid a situation like this one.” She gestured between them. “I really did want to see you later tonight.” her tone was sullen, and he took a little comfort in knowing she was upset, too.
“Well, we’re going to have to put that idea in the no pile. One thing you’re going to learn about me while you train, I don’t break rules. Ever.”
Even when I want to, he thought.
“Well, it’s not as if I’d want to jeopardize this. While being a model certainly offered a hefty paycheck, this is what I’ve always wanted to do, to be like my father. He’s dead, in case you were wondering, so I will not ruin this.”
She didn’t wait for him to say anything else. It grated on his nerves that she thought she could just turn on her heel and walk away, which is exactly what she did.
That DEA job was looking better and better if that’s what the offer really was, because he had a damned good feeling there was no way he and Bridget could pull off a side by side platonic relationship. Not if the erection he was sporting after just standing close to her was any indication.
She wasn’t certain what to make of things as she stalked away from Jeremy. Thanks to her decade in modeling, she knew how to hold her shoulders and not stamp her feet like a child, but in her mind that’s exactly what she was doing.
There wasn’t a clear winner on what about the situation had pissed her off the most. The simple fact that he had to tell her to keep her mouth shut and that it couldn’t happen again rankled her. He’d treated her as if she was some sort of a moron who didn’t know any better. Or if what was pissing her off was the way she’d been dying to press her lips to his and tangle her hands in his hair while he’d been ranting at her.
“Wonderful. Your first one-night stand in almost eight years, and not only do you wind up wanting more than a one night stand, you pick a cop. A detective, no less.” she muttered as she walked towards the lockers.
Bridget pulled open the door and hurried inside, not realizing how loud the booming metal door would be as it slammed into the frame. She cringed just as she reached her locker. The girl next to her laughed. Bridget turned, and must h
ave been shooting daggers, because the other woman immediately apologized.
“Sorry. I’ve just never been able to resist laughing when people jump at a loud sound. I had a messed up childhood with some horror movies.” The other girl offered her a hand, mirth shining in her light blue eyes. “I’m Ashley Pendle. Nice to meet you.”
Bridget hadn’t realized how badly she’d been looking for a friend today. She’d been hoping that someone wouldn’t look at her and sneer the way Ashley had done. She yanked open the locker and pulled out the regulation sweats.
“Bridget O’Casey.”
“You’re not related to Jimmy O’Casey, are you?”
Ashley’s voice rose a little and was tinged with excitement. Bridget pulled herself back, unsure as to how someone could have known that.
“Um, yes.”
She unbuttoned her uniform and pulled the short-sleeved shirt off. She’d already put on a sports bra that morning, so she tugged the dark blue cotton shirt over her head and tried not to grimace at how rough it felt. She should have bought them in advance and washed them first.
“My dad’s Mark Pendle. They were partners–”
“- right out of the academy!” Bridget’s own voice rose to match Ashley’s excitement as she tugged off her shoes and pants, and slid into the workout gear.
“Exactly!”
“I didn’t realize he had a daughter.”
Her father hadn’t spoken about Pendle since the man had moved away to Florida when she was a little girl. Bridget remembered some of the stories he’d told her, as well as the picture of him and Ashley’s dad tacked to the wall in his office. Her mother would most likely never take it down.
“Stepdaughter, actually. He just retired. We’ve talked about this since I was in school. He wanted me to be a dispatcher. Which I was, for the last five years here, but it was time to go for broke and be on the other side of the helpful line. After about a year of begging, he helped me.”
“Let’s go, ladies. Time for chitchat can happen after class, if you aren’t dead on your feet.”
A female cop grinned down the locker room at them and all eight women in the room groaned, Bridget included. As they jogged out of the locker room to the indoor gym, she couldn’t help but think about how interesting it was to be in the same class as her father’s old partner’s daughter. It almost kept her distracted from the way the men kept staring at her and gasping incredulously whenever she’d complete a set as instructed.
One thing was certain, even without the complication of Jeremy Trellins in her life, no one was going to make the academy easy for such a beautiful woman.
“This is never going to get any easier, is it?” Ashley groaned as she hit the unlock button on the key fob of her shiny yellow Jeep.
“Physically? God, it better.”
Bridget agreed with every sore muscle and fiber of her being as she opened up the passenger door and flopped into the seat. Jeremy had been relentless in physical fitness today. What was worse, it had been a week, and he hadn’t so much as looked at her.
A chuckle from the backseat made her turn and glare at Marcus Cochrin, a recruit that had been paired with them on a simulation last week. They’d bonded when they’d gotten the highest score.
“If you so much as say how it is for you, I swear I will run this car into the nearest pole just to make you hurt.”
Ashley slipped a pair of sunglasses on her face and twisted the key into the ignition as she made the threat.
Bridget glanced at him through the rear-view mirror and smirked at him. They’d all become fast friends, carpooling and studying up after class when they weren’t too dead to move. He was almost as good looking as Jeremy. Almost.
Jeremy would be like the night, all dark hair and sharp facial lines, but Marcus was light. He looked like a beach bum, whereas Jeremy held himself like a military officer. Marcus’ hair was so blond that it appeared to be white, and it hung loosely at his shoulders now that the day was over. He’d been warned once that he was supposed to cut it. They were headed for the barber’s. Lieutenant Chase threatened to have Marcus’s hair shaved off if he didn’t cut it. Somehow, they suspected that the lieutenant hadn’t been screwing around when he’d said as much.
Marcus’ skin was also deeply tanned from his days out on a fishing boat before he got tired of sea life and wanted to try something new. His face was the only clue that Marcus wasn’t in his prime. Tight wrinkles played at the corners of his honey brown eyes that depicted an older man. To some extent, he was. He was thirty-seven years old, but he was proving that he could keep up with them every step of the way. Bridget wasn’t entirely certain how he’d slipped past the age requirement, and when he’d been asked, Marcus had cracked a joke instead of answering.
“Aww, come on, Ashley, a guy’s got to have some fun while being stuck with you two knockouts all day long.”
He flashed a smile, his teeth gleaming white against his tanned skin. He chuckled as Ashley shook her head at him.
“Do you think you can take Mr. Smartass to get his hair cut? I want to grab something from the market since it’s next door.”
She needed to get an ace bandage, but she didn’t want to tell them that. In the last week, she’d gotten the reputation of being a little Harpy based on how quickly she had taken some of the bigger guys down during defense training. Apparently, having a cop for a father hadn’t impressed upon them enough that she wasn’t pathetic. Grabbing the bandage would be like admitting she was just a slip of a woman and would undo all the work she’d done during the last week.
“Sure, I bet I can keep him looking handsome on his own.”
They laughed at Ashley’s statement and fell into an easy bickering pattern over what part was going to be the hardest during training.
“Look, I’m just saying, not all of us can be a toothpick and drop a man to the floor, Bridget. I’m going to have problems in defense training.” Ashley commented as they pulled into the lot with a Great Clips and Vons. “I’m not saying the remembering shit won’t suck, but you can force your brain to take on a lot more than you can force your body to be able to attack.”
Marcus hopped out of the back of the Jeep. “She actually has a bit of a point. You’re a beast out there, O’Casey. But not everyone can just magically do it. I, of course, will take you down in the next simulation for certain.”
She snorted and closed the car door as she stepped out of it. “If you think so.”
“Personally, I think she’s waiting to take down Detective Trellins.” Though Ashley’s voice didn’t hold a semblance of malice, Bridget stopped dead in her tracks.
“What makes you say that?” Marcus asked, beating her to the punch.
She remained frozen in place, unable to face them.
“Woman’s intuition.” Ashley laughed. “Have you seen the way they look at each other? Not that I can blame her. He’s one of the hottest men I’ve ever seen. Add in his arrest record, and I’d jump him. Policy notwithstanding, of course.”
Bridget blew out a deep breath, and still wasn’t able to control her next comment. “You’ve heard the man all week in training. Don’t break the rules or you’re out on your ass. Even if I was looking at him like I wanted to sleep with him, it’s not like it would matter.”
Ashley’s hand wrapped around Bridget’s wrist and jerked her closer before she had a chance to move away. Bridget was spun around to face her friend’s eyes.
“You did it already, didn’t you?”
Bridget bit down hard on her lower lip. She hated liars. Absolutely hated them. If Ashley had noticed something between them, there was a good shot someone else had, as well.
So pick a side. Lie, or tell the truth. Trust your partners, or don’t.
The last thought was her father’s outlook on life. He’d always added in that not trusting your partner lead you both into a hell that was hard to climb out of. Her shoulders sagged as she let out a sigh.
“Not when you think we did.” B
ridget finally admitted out loud.
Ashley barely withheld a squeal and Bridget definitely heard Marcus cough behind her. “It was before training. Literally actually. Neither of us decided to disclose what we did for a living. The first time we found out was when he came in with those damned papers.”
“Well, isn’t that a story!” Marcus laughed. “Too damn bad that boy is as by the book as I’ve seen them. He sure as shit doesn’t know what he’s missing out on with you.”
Bridget flushed at his words. She somehow knew the older man meant them. He may have been laid back, but she hadn’t seen him be anything but brutally honest and assertive when he needed to be.
“It doesn’t matter. We had a discussion that day, the first one, and it didn’t happen as far as he is concerned. Neither of us can be reprimanded because I hadn’t officially started and it won’t happen again.” She refused to acknowledge the bite of sadness she felt as she thought about things, especially since she’d clearly been visibly pining after him for a week. “So, let’s just drop it.”
“Fine, fine. But you may want to stop drooling every time he speaks in that sexy southern accent of his.” Ashley laughed.
“Yea, easier said than done, but thanks for the warning.”
“If you two are done being girls, can we run into Best Buy for a sec? I promised my brother I’d pick up a copy of the last Halo for him. I accidentally stole his, and then lost it overboard one night.”
“Now that sounds very much like the Marcus I’ve come to know. Nothing at all like a cop.” joked Ashley
“You just like me for my boyish charm, and the fact that when your shooting isn’t enough, you’ll know I can kick someone down.”
They all laughed as they walked into the Best Buy. Like every other store she’d ever been to, it was a mass of colorful advertisements, bright blue shirts, and almost no customers. Her eyes skimmed over the displays from left to right –appliances, videos, cell phones and computers were scattered about. The back wall seemed to be composed of nothing but TVs. Marcus took off in the direction of the TVs, and she caught sight of the video games to the right of where she stood.
