by Ranae Rose
Not that the food didn’t look good. He got the same thing every time: scrambled eggs and bacon with a couple beignets on the side. He liked to save those for last and dip them in his coffee.
“Looks great. Thanks.”
She grinned. “Anytime, Jackson. You let me know if you need anything.”
She said it as though she was going to go make herself useful elsewhere, but she didn’t. Instead, she found things to wipe down and coffee mugs to inspect at his end of the counter.
She put on the same show every time, even though he never left her with anything more than his standard twenty percent tip. He wouldn’t have had the heart to tell her if she’d asked, but she excited him about as much as watching paint dry.
It wasn’t that there was anything wrong with her. If anything, there was something wrong with him. He always wanted what he couldn’t have instead of what came easy.
Right now, that was Belle.
Who the hell was he kidding? It had always been Belle.
CHAPTER 3
“Zackary, you shouldn’t have. Really.” Belle glanced down at the offering the student worker had placed on her desk. The sandwich wrapped in wax paper might as well have come with ribbon and a greeting card.
“It was no problem. I was there, so…” He shrugged. “I know you like turkey and Swiss.”
She reached under her desk for her purse. “How much?”
She knew very well he’d meant the sandwich as a gift, but she wasn’t about to let him get away with that. The day she started letting students buy her lunch would be the day she’d start looking for a new job.
“Don’t worry about it.” He waved a hand, as if he wasn’t a student working thirty hours a week in the admissions office to help finance his education.
“Zackary, listen to me.” She sat up straight in her office chair and met his gaze, focusing on the widening eyes behind his glasses. “I remember what it was like to live on a student’s budget. You’re not buying me lunch. Not today, and not ever. It was a nice gesture, but…”
She pulled out a bill and held it out.
When he made no move to take it, she arched a brow.
“Take it,” she said. “Don’t make me play the boss card.”
With a sigh, he finally took the money.
It wasn’t the first time she’d had to remind him she was his boss and not a peer. He was a decent worker when he actually focused on his job, but lately he’d been too busy trying to work his way into her good graces.
At twenty-seven, she was barely his elder. But the years between them might as well have been a lifetime. She hadn’t been all that impressed by college guys when she’d been a student herself, and now she felt the same way about them as she had about the neighborhood kids she’d babysat as a teen.
“It only cost seven bucks,” he said, staring down at the ten she’d given him.
“You can pay me back later.”
His expression brightened. “Or maybe I could buy you a cup of coffee to make it up to you. There’s a new café down in the student center.”
Jesus. What had she done?
“If you ever find yourself bringing coffee for the office, I like mine with two sugars and two creams.”
“Oh, right.” He pocketed the bill. “Or we could walk down there sometime. Or whatever. Hey, do you still need me to call and check in on the status of that transcript?”
She relaxed a little in her seat, biting back a sigh. “Yes, I do.”
“All right. I’ll go do that.”
He straightened, standing to his full, considerable height. He was tall, but slender in a way that made him seem even younger than he really was. If Belle hadn’t known better, she might’ve thought he was a high schooler.
Sometimes, she felt bad over how blatantly he forced her to shoot him down. There was no telling whether he flirted with her for entertainment or truly thought she might succumb to his charm.
Hopefully, it was the former. The thought that he might actually be anticipating getting into her pants was unsettling.
Of course, just last night, she’d wondered whether Jackson Calder had been anticipating the same thing. That look he’d given her…
She’d attributed it to their history, but now she was starting to wonder. Did she give off some kind of fuck-me vibe so cheap that even college kids picked up on it?
“Let me know when you get an update on that transcript.” She turned back to her computer before Zackary could see her frown. “And shut the door behind you, please.”
Alone in her office, she unwrapped the sandwich. She’d payed for it, and she might as well eat it. She wasn’t a student anymore, but she wasn’t exactly a Rockefeller, either.
As she took her unofficial lunch break, it wasn’t Zackary who haunted her thoughts, but Jackson. He was all man, no tactless adolescent. The image of him in his South Island PD uniform had been burnt into her mind’s eye and a shiver hit her every time she summoned it to memory.
Thinking of him caused a tightening in her core and an ache in her chest – she wasn’t sure which was more unbearable.
She almost wished she could be as uninhibited – and naïve – as she’d once been and jump into his arms, just for the pleasure of it. But not being taken seriously was a recurring motif in her life, and it’d been the source of so much heartbreak that she finally knew better than to encourage it.
Jackson was the only man who’d never disappointed her, and she wasn’t about to offer him the chance.
She’d obviously been a good time for him, and the impression seemed to have weathered the years. He’d made it clear he was interested, but interested in what? Something serious, or another fling?
He’d taken her by surprise last night, and she’d been too flustered to ask. The ball was in her court now – if she wanted to see him again, she needed to call. The idea was appealing and intimidating at the same time.
She’d spent so many years putting Jackson up on a pedestal, relishing the memory of their night together, that she didn’t want to tarnish it. She didn’t like the idea of trying and failing to recapture the magic of it, either.
Her time with him – that one night – had been pretty much perfect. The romantic experiences she’d had since had been anything but, and the humiliation of her last failed grasp at happiness still stung. She’d never had much luck with love, and she always took the fallout of her attempts hard.
She didn’t want it to be that way with the one person who’d made her truly happy, even if it had only been for a night. She wasn’t sure she was ready to put herself in the line of fire for more heartache.
Taking a chance with Jackson would be gambling with some of her most precious memories … and hottest fantasies.
* * * * *
The worst part of being a police officer was responding to calls that reminded Jackson of where he’d come from. At any given time, he was only a 911 call away from a domestic dispute that’d bring the first seventeen years of his life rushing back, threatening to drag him straight through a rift in time and into a cesspool of shitty memories.
But he was good at compartmentalizing. He had to be. Whenever he responded to a domestic, disgust would rear its ugly head for a minute until he locked it away and let himself be the man he was instead of the boy he’d once been.
On his way to a domestic on Thursday afternoon, he was already discarding his own emotions in favor of cold professionalism. Still, his MDT screen told him that a woman had called claiming her husband had hit her.
He hated the pieces of shit who beat on women and children.
They were all the same, and he would’ve hated them no matter what, even if he’d grown up behind a white picket fence with a Brady Bunch-type family.
But he hadn’t, and that leant a personal element to his hate.
He kept his sirens silent but let his lights flash as he sped through traffic toward the address displayed on the screen. Getting there a minute faster might mean the difference be
tween a bruise or a broken jaw, a concussion or a fractured skull. Even life and death.
Within minutes, he arrived at a stucco ranch house. It was modest, maybe a thousand square feet, but the columned porch looked freshly-painted and potted ferns hung from its rafters. Brass numbers next to the door told him he had the right address.
Glancing at his screen, he hit On Scene and exited his Charger.
The sun beat down on the back of his neck and a familiar stiffness swept down his spine. He was aware of the Glock on his hip as he approached the house. Sometimes domestics were nothing more than tears and melodrama. Sometimes they were serious. And occasionally they threw curveballs: he wouldn’t be the first officer to be assaulted or even shot at by a possessive, violent asshole angry at police interference.
When he reached the door, he stood to the side and knocked, listening for the sounds of an argument or violence.
All was silent. Sweat beaded on his forehead, and he hoped he wasn’t too late.
“Police,” he called, and knocked again.
A couple more seconds and the door swung inward.
There was no sign of the woman who’d called in. A dark-haired man in his thirties stood in the doorway, dressed in jeans and a white undershirt. He stared at Jackson as if he’d never seen a police officer before.
“The hell?” He peered past Jackson, at the cruiser. “Something going on?”
“Got a call about a domestic dispute at this address. Who else is home?”
The man’s jaw dropped, then tightened visibly. “There’s no dispute here.”
“A caller named Kate says differently. That your wife?”
His face began to redden. “Get back in your cruiser, Calder. There’s no problem here.”
Calder. As his name left the other man’s lips, realization clicked.
“Sanders.” He was an officer with the South Island PD, though he belonged to a different platoon than Jackson.
Sanders gave an irritated jerk of his head, which might’ve been intended as a nod, then began to shut the door.
Jackson planted a hand against it before it was halfway closed. “I need to speak to your wife.”
He narrowed his eyes. “She doesn’t have anything to say to you.”
“She called 911 asking for help. Says you hit her.”
For a few seconds, they both stood frozen with hands on the door, gazes locked. A sour taste filled Jackson’s mouth, and if the expression on Sanders’ face was any indication, he was experiencing something similar.
“You gonna make me call for back-up?”
Sanders sneered, then twisted to yell over his shoulder. “Kate!”
A thin brunette in capris and a cotton tank top emerged from the hallway beyond the kitchen. She was pale, and her dark eyes looked huge in her small face. Her hair had fallen – or been pulled – halfway out of a bun, and as she stepped into the light, the redness rimming her eyes became apparent.
“Calder here needs to hear from you that there’s no problem.”
Her gaze darted to her husband, then to Jackson. When her eyes locked with his, the hair on the back of his neck stood up.
It wasn’t hard to tell when someone had really been abused. Not for someone who’d lived it. And the look in Kate’s eyes planted bitter certainty in Jackson’s mind.
They were wide, pleading – as if she were trying to communicate with him without words. He could see her pulse jumping in the hollow of her slender neck, and her hands were shaking. She was terrified. As she opened her mouth to speak, she shrank in on herself as if she were bracing for a blow.
“Greg, I—” Her voice was hoarse, probably from crying. If it’d been from being strangled, there would’ve been marks on her neck.
There were none – Jackson had looked immediately.
“Tell him there’s not a goddamn problem!”
“I’m sorry. I can’t live like this anymore. I—”
“Cut the crap, Kate! You like having a roof over your head? You don’t lie to the fucking cops. You don’t mess around with me like this.”
Sanders’ entire face was red. Jackson took advantage of the other man’s distraction, moving in close enough to smell the stale tang of whiskey. He was hungover, maybe even still intoxicated.
A high-pitched cry echoed from down the hall, the reedy wail of a newborn.
Jackson tensed, his heart slamming against his ribs as disgust settled over him, thick as molasses.
Kate turned immediately, taking half a step backward. Now, she looked back and forth between Jackson and the hallway, where the baby must’ve been sleeping before Sanders’ yelling had woken it.
“Is anyone hurt?” Jackson asked. “The baby, or any other kids?”
Kate shook her head, then dropped her gaze. “There are no other kids. It’s just us.”
It was something to be grateful for, but it wasn’t enough. How long did that baby have before its father started beating on it too?
It’d happen, of that Jackson was certain. Unless someone put an end to this before it reached that point.
“Tell me what happened,” he said, watching Sanders and his wife at the same time.
“I told you, nothing fucking happened.” Sanders glared at him as if he were the densest idiot on Earth.
Jackson ignored him.
Kate’s voice was so low it could barely be heard over the baby’s crying. “He got mad and hit me.”
She kept her gaze down and turned her palms up, as if there was nothing more to say.
“With his fist?”
She nodded, moisture making the red, puffy skin below her eyes shine.
“How many times?”
She held up two fingers. “My stomach. It … it wasn’t the first time.”
Sanders snorted. “You don’t actually believe this shit, do you Calder?”
He met Sanders’ gaze and saw the hatred there.
“She’s pissed at me. Who the fuck knows why? You know how women are – always bitching about something.”
Kate flinched and shrank in on herself even further. She didn’t look pissed, just scared.
“I don’t hear her giving you a hard time about anything.” Jackson made a real effort to keep his voice level, as if he were talking to a run-of-the-mill loser instead of a sworn officer whose badge was probably resting on his dresser.
Sanders’ face went a deeper shade of red. “I didn’t touch her. You wanna know why she’s so upset, ask her about her damned boyfriend. Maybe he hits her, or maybe she’s pissed that she has to see my face when she gets home from their little dates – I don’t fucking know.”
Sanders’ story changed as quickly as the color of his face, which was bordering on purple now.
Kate flinched again. “I don’t have a boyfriend, Greg! How many times do I—”
“Shut up! Just shut the fuck up, Kate.”
The newborn’s screaming reached a higher pitch, and Jackson half expected the neighborhood dogs to start howling.
“I have to feed the baby,” Kate said, taking another step backward. Tears were streaming freely down her face, though she didn’t sob. She’d had plenty of practice weathering pain in silence, Jackson was sure.
“He hit you, and you want to press charges,” Jackson summarized before she could walk away.
“Yes.” She was trembling.
“You heard her, Sanders. Come on.”
He’d made his decision silently, as Kate had cried and her husband had raged. Her silent fear stood in stark contrast to Sanders’ venom, and Jackson recognized the disparity. When you lived with a tyrant who wasn’t afraid to get physical, you tried to keep your head down – tried to keep them from blowing up. Letting them see your pain only fueled them.
It was what they wanted – to make you hurt. To punish you for existing, for problems that had nothing to do with you. You were there, and you were their punching bag.
Sanders gaped. “Jesus, Calder. You serious? I can’t believe you’re that fucking s
tupid and I haven’t heard about it yet. How many years you been with the department?”
“I’m taking you in. You know how this goes, and you know I have to do it. Don’t make it any harder than it has to be.”
He couldn’t ignore Kate’s cry for help. It’d probably taken her years to get to this point, to reach out for help. If he turned his back on her, he’d crush whatever faith she had in other people and whatever will she had to escape the cycle of abuse.
For a second, Sanders looked as if he might do anything. Throw a punch, even go for Jackson’s weapon. But as the baby’s crying died down, he looked Jackson straight in the eye, his whiskey breath coming in hard bursts.
“You’re gonna fucking regret this, Calder.”
CHAPTER 4
Jackson drew the cuffs from his duty belt and reached for Sanders’ wrists. He almost had the first one secured when Sanders moved.
He jerked with surprising speed, escaping the cuff and turning on Jackson. In a split second, he threw a punch.
Jackson barely dodged it, stepping to the right, his shoulder colliding with Sanders’.
Sanders grunted, releasing a cloud of stale liquor breath. The smell triggered a hundred shitty memories, but Jackson pushed them out of his mind so all that remained was a feeling of disgust.
For a few seconds, he and Sanders wrestled. They had the same training, and there was no doubt that Sanders knew exactly what Jackson was trying to do and purposely made it difficult. But Sanders was clumsy with anger and intoxication.
Jackson forced him against a wall and cuffed his hands behind his back.
“Stupid fuck,” Sanders huffed, his cheek against the wood paneling.
Kate appeared in the hallway, a bundle of blue blankets cradled against her chest. Jackson caught her big, dark eyes as he pulled her husband away from the wall and turned him toward the front door.
She didn’t seem surprised by the struggle.
Sanders cursed her and spent the walk out to the cruiser alternating between continuing to verbally abuse her and telling Jackson how stupid he was.
