Under the Lights

by Shannon Stacey

  Chase did just that, stopping to drop a buck in the banjo player’s hat—which had an Eagles Fest sign on it—on his way to the pistachio bars. There was a crowd around the baked goods booth, and he hoped he wasn’t too late.

  He got in line and saw the back of Sam Leavitt’s head several people ahead of him. Damn. “Hey, Leavitt!”

  The quarterback turned to face him, as did almost everybody else, including the women in front of him. He’d been so focused on the booth he hadn’t realized Kelly, Jen and Gretchen were in line.

  “What?” Sam called.

  “No cutting,” Gretchen said.

  “What are you ladies after?”

  “Brownies,” they all said in unison.

  “Good.” He looked over their heads to Sam. “Don’t you dare take all the pistachio bars.”

  His old friend shrugged. “You gotta be faster, Sanders. Come to think of it, I think I used to say that to you back in high school, too.”

  Chase wanted to flip him off, but the street fair was a family event. Instead, all he could do was glare and hope there were plenty of pistachio bars left. With the golden cookie-type crust loaded with pistachio pudding and whipped cream, they’d always been his favorite treat at Old Home Day, and now he had his heart set on one.

  “How are you feeling today?” Kelly asked, a deceptively innocent smile on her face.

  “Fine.” He wondered what, if anything, she’d told her best friends, who seemed more interested in whatever they’d been talking about than him. “How ’bout you? Did you have your ice cream?”

  “I did. Do you remember last night?”

  “Of course.” He wasn’t that drunk. Buzzed enough to break into the high school and try to get her to make out with him on the bridge, but not enough to obliterate his memory.

  He wondered if she was aware of the way her question sounded, because Jen and Gretchen both stopped talking. They didn’t turn around, but he could tell they were interested now and wanted to listen more than talk.

  “I’m sure Alex and Sam appreciate your help as much as I do, Officer McDonnell,” he said, just to let the eavesdroppers know they were going to be disappointed if they thought he and Kelly had been up to something else last night.

  “You really need to start calling me Kelly,” she muttered.

  “Off duty today?”

  She shrugged. “For about another hour. Then I’ll run home and get my uniform on and come back.”

  “I left you one,” he heard Sam say, and he looked up in time to see the guy biting into a pistachio bar, while holding two more on a napkin in his other hand.

  The women in front of him each picked up a brownie, and then Kelly’s hand hovered over the last pistachio bar.

  “Don’t do it,” he warned.

  She grinned. “I’m wondering what you’ll do for a pistachio bar.”

  “Are you going to make me beg?” He dropped his voice, making the question as suggestive as possible in the hopes she’d rather put distance between them than steal his pistachio bar.

  “I was thinking more along the lines of cleaning the grout in my bathroom.”

  He leaned close. “If you take that pistachio bar, I’ll tell you in detail, in a very loud voice that carries, exactly what I’d be willing to exchange for it. And it won’t include grout.”

  “Maybe I should buy the last pistachio bar,” Jen said, and Chase realized both women had given up being stealthy and were blatantly watching them.

  “No,” Gretchen said, waving her hand between Chase and Kelly. “Please do go on. In detail.”

  “What’s the holdup?” somebody shouted from farther back in the line.

  “Enjoy your pistachio bar,” Kelly said, tucking her money in her pocket so she could pick up her brownie.

  “I think I would have enjoyed trying to get it from you more.”

  Kelly walked away, but Gretchen stopped to whisper, “She would have, too.”

  —

  A few hours later, Kelly fell into step beside her mom, wishing she was still in her jeans and T-shirt. It was a beautiful day, but hanging out with her friends had been a lot more fun than patrolling the street fair on foot.

  “Hi, honey,” her mom said. “Having fun?”

  “It was more fun before I went on duty, but everybody’s having a good time and the dollars are adding up. Jen and Gretchen have been circling around emptying the fund buckets every so often, and it looks like it’ll be worth the work.”

  “Have I mentioned today how proud I am of you girls?”

  “At least twice.” Kelly laughed and hooked her arm through her mom’s. “Hey, do you have a recipe for pistachio bars?”

  “No, but I could get you one. That’s an odd request, seeing as how you don’t like them.”

  Busted. “Asking for a friend.”

  “Mmhmm.” They walked in silence for a moment but, as always, it didn’t last long. “Chase told me you got the call when they broke into the school to see the trophy.”

  Kelly stopped in her tracks, her arm sliding free from her mom’s. The transition from pistachio bars to Chase made her wonder if Jen and Gretchen had run their mouths. And she was surprised Chase had confessed so quickly. “He told you about that?”

  Her mom chuckled. “I asked when he’d seen you, and not many people lie in front of your father. Especially his boys.”

  That was true. “The dispatcher called me personally even though I was off duty, thankfully. I don’t think the guys would have arrested them, either, but this way I don’t have to listen to it or owe anybody any favors.”

  “Speak of the little devils . . .”

  Kelly followed her mom’s gaze to where the alumni team members were holding court on the steps of the gazebo. Though she couldn’t hear them, she saw the men laughing and, of course, she couldn’t look away from Chase.

  He looked relaxed, standing on the top step and leaning against one of the gazebo’s support beams. His mouth moved and she wished she could hear his words as the people around him laughed some more.

  “Nothing there but heartache, honey.”

  Her mother’s words were softly spoken, but Kelly heard the message loud and clear. She could have tried to deny she was attracted to Chase, but there was no sense in it. Not with her mom. “Nobody said anything about my heart.”

  “I’ve been keeping an eye on you today, and every time you cross paths with him, the chemistry’s obvious. But there’s affection there, too. You enjoy each other’s company, and sex will muddy the waters. Especially if the sex is good.”

  Kelly felt her cheeks grow hot, and she glanced around to make sure nobody else was in earshot. “Mom!”

  “I’m just saying.”

  The sex would be good. Kelly had no doubt about that. “Now that the other guys are around, we won’t see as much of each other.”

  Even as she said the words, they watched Chase’s head turn as he scanned the area until he spotted her. They locked gazes for a long beat, and then he smiled slightly before turning back to the crowd.

  “It’s time to start the dunking booth,” Kelly said before her mother could comment.

  It took her a few minutes to find Gretchen, who was definitely the loudest of them, so she could climb up on a picnic table and yell loud enough to be heard that it was dunk tank time. Word spread quickly through the crowd, who moved to gather around.

  Coach climbed to the top step of the tank, and it seemed like everybody sucked in a breath, which made him laugh. “No, I’m not getting in. I just want to make sure everybody can hear me.”

  Years of yelling over noisy football fans had served him well, and most people could hear him. Kelly wanted to kick herself for not having some kind of microphone system or at least a bullhorn. They probably had one at the station, but by the time she could get there, her dad’s speech
would be over.

  “Everybody having a good time?” he bellowed, and the crowd cheered. “Well, it’s about to get better. The highlight of the street fair’s about to start, as soon as we get a volunteer. And, because it’s so much fun and it takes time to reset the platform, we’re going to want five dollars for three balls.”

  People were already digging in their pockets for the money, which Kelly took as a good sign. They’d almost decided against the tank because it was so much work, but it was probably going to rake in some cash.

  “All we need is our first volunteer,” her dad announced.

  Simon Ward’s voice rose over the rest. “I’ll write a check for a thousand dollars to the football fund right now if Kelly McDonnell does a half-hour shift in the dunk tank.”

  Everybody quieted, staring at her, but she shook her head. Simon had had a hair across his ass where she was concerned since she’d had his precious Escalade towed during a blizzard. He had more money than most everybody else in town, so apparently he thought winter parking bans didn’t apply to him. And now he thought he would humiliate her in front of the town, but he was going to be disappointed. She couldn’t very well ask some random person in the crowd to hold her gun.

  “I’m in uniform.” As far as she was concerned, that put an end to the subject.

  “Come on, Officer McDonnell!” one of the kids yelled. “Do it for Coach!”

  “I’m in uniform,” she said again, this time more slowly, and she patted her holstered weapon for good measure.

  “I’ll hold your weapon,” the chief said, having come up behind her. “And your belt.”

  The gathering crowd cheered, which masked the curses Kelly muttered under her breath. If she climbed into that tank, the line to dunk her would probably wrap around the park. And every person in that line would cough up money to see her get wet, which meant even more money into the Eagles’ fund.

  She spotted Hunter Cass in the crowd and remembered the night he’d opened up to her on the bridge. If letting Simon Ward think he’d gotten the better of her put a thousand dollars of his money into the team’s pocket and kept Hunter and the rest of the boys dreaming of their futures instead of giving up, she’d take it.

  When she unbuckled her belt, the cheering reached an earsplitting decibel and she knew she’d guessed right about people wanting to see her get dunked. After handing her weapon and belt to the chief, she unbuttoned her short-sleeve uniform shirt and yanked it free of her pants. Once she’d removed her vest so she was in the plain T-shirt she wore under it, she sat on the steps to the tank and took her boots off.

  After sweeping everybody with a stern, warning glare that made them laugh, she made a show of slowly climbing the stairs, as if she were going to the gallows. Silence fell on the crowd and then, as she reached the top step and turned, she heard Simon Ward’s voice again.

  “I’ll add fifty dollars for every dunking of Officer McDonnell by a player from the first championship team, up to five hundred dollars!”

  Kelly’s eyes met Chase’s, and her stomach sank when she saw the slow grin that lit up his face. She was going down, multiple times, and he was going to enjoy every minute of it.

  10

  Chase wasn’t accustomed to being booed by anybody, never mind by the entire town of Stewart Mills. So much for being a hero, he thought as he missed the dunk tank’s smaller-than-it-looked target for the second time.

  Kelly laughed at him.

  “Hey, I played football, not baseball, and I was a running back,” he shouted over his shoulder to his audience. “Catching the ball was my job. Throwing it was Sam’s.”

  “Then get out of the way and let Leavitt try,” somebody yelled back.

  Like hell he would. Not after he’d shoved and even thrown a few elbows getting to the front of the line. “I was just getting warmed up.”

  “Last ball, Sanders,” Kelly called to him from the tank’s platform, her voice taunting.

  If he missed his next throw, he’d never live it down. Trying to block out the noise around him, he focused on Kelly’s face for a moment. Her lips were tilted up in amusement, and he couldn’t miss the challenge in her eyes.

  She was going down.

  Chase went through an exaggerated pitcher’s windup because it made the little kids laugh, and then released the ball.

  It hit the center of the target, and he had just enough time to watch her eyes get big before the platform released and she was in the tank. She came up sputtering and everybody cheered.

  “That’s fifty dollars in the Eagles fund, everybody,” Jen yelled. “Sam Leavitt, you’re up!”

  Sam went two for three and by the time Alex had gone—getting only one hit—Chase could see that Kelly was shivering. When Deck stepped up, the crowd cheered so loudly Chase thought the water in the tank might have rippled. Not only was Deck a member of the championship team, but he’d also stayed in Stewart Mills and was obviously a hometown favorite.

  Maybe it was from playing ball with his boys, but Deck had a great arm and put Kelly in the water with all three throws. Philly dunked her once, and then it was Coach’s turn.

  “Dad, really?”

  Coach grinned and Chase joined most of Stewart Mills in cheering him on as he dunked his daughter three times in a row.

  Even though there were probably a lot of citizens who’d like the opportunity to dunk one of their police officers, they were after the bounty Simon Ward offered, so Chase found himself up again.

  As nice as the day had been, he knew the water in the tank—which had been filled with and was being replenished by the hose—was freezing, and Kelly’s lips were chattering now. The taunting challenge he’d seen on her face the first time he’d faced her had been replaced by determination, and he knew she wouldn’t quit.

  “The half hour is almost up,” Jen announced. “Make your throws count, Chase.”

  He’d been considering deliberately missing, to give her a break, but now the pressure was on again. The first throw was a dead-center hit, and the cheering drowned out the sound of the splash as Kelly hit the water.

  The second throw was a somewhat legitimate miss. He might have pulled it sideways just a bit when a shudder wracked Kelly’s spine. With a sigh, he took the third ball from Gretchen and looked her in the eye.

  Despite the fact that she was freezing, she gave him a slight, shaky smile and arched her eyebrow. She wanted that fifty dollars for the Eagles fund, and what the hell was he waiting for? Still, he hesitated. Under the bravado, she was miserable and he didn’t want to add to it.

  “Get it over with so she can get out of there,” Jen muttered at his side.

  Good point. He showboated for a moment, giving the crowd a performance that would hopefully keep interest in the tank high and the five-dollar bills flowing. Then he went through his comedic windup routine and let the ball fly.

  She went down like a rock and actually stayed under long enough that he and Coach each took a step forward before she surfaced. After waving to the crowd, who gave her a healthy round of applause, Kelly climbed out of the tank and ducked behind it.

  Chase knew her mom had a towel, but he didn’t think it would do much to dry her off, never mind warm her up. As Coach and Jen worked the crowd and found a new volunteer to take a dunking, Chase made his way around the contraption and found Mrs. McDonnell squeezing the water from her daughter’s scalp and ponytail with a towel while Kelly grabbed bunches of her T-shirt in her hand, trying to wring the water out of it.

  “That water was freaking cold,” Kelly was saying.

  “We probably should have filled it days ago and let the sun warm it,” Mrs. McDonnell said. “But every time water splashes out, we have to add more from the hose, anyway.”

  “You okay?”

  Both women looked up at him and Kelly nodded. “Thanks to Simon Ward hating me, we raised a lot more
than we anticipated. The spaghetti dinner might actually put us over the top.”

  Even with her bottom lip trembling with cold, her smile was so proud and triumphant, he had to smile back. “I hope so.”

  “Good job, Kelly.” The chief joined them, still holding the miscellaneous pieces of cop stuff that couldn’t get wet. “I’m going to hang around for the duration, so you can end your shift early. Go home and change. Get warm.”

  “Thanks, Chief.” She grimaced as she shoved her feet into her boots, and then she took her belongings from her boss. “That sounds like a great idea.”

  “They’re trying to get your husband in the tank,” the chief told Mrs. McDonnell.

  “What?” She handed Kelly the towel. “Absolutely not. Honey, I need to go keep an eye on your father before he gets pneumonia. You go home and get warm and I’ll talk to you later.”

  Mrs. McDonnell and the chief—who Chase thought had gone to school together—walked around the dunk tank, leaving Kelly and Chase alone.

  “If it’s any consolation,” he said, “I feel bad about dunking you.”

  “Don’t.” She buckled on her belt and secured her weapon, though she skipped the button-down shirt and vest. “Every splash was fifty dollars in the fund.”

  “Still, you’re freezing.”

  “Not for long. I’m going to do exactly what they said and go home to change.”

  “I’ll walk with you.”

  She stopped dabbing at her face with the towel to look at him. “That’s not necessary.”

  “You’re shaking and you’ve spent a good chunk of the last half hour under water. I’ll end up so worried about you, I’ll just follow you anyway.” She didn’t look convinced. “Just to the door, and I’ll carry the vest. It’s the least I can do.”

  “Just to the door,” she said finally, holding the vest out to him.

  They walked away from the dunk tank, the angle keeping them mostly out of sight of the crowd. The streets were mostly empty since the dunking booth was probably the most exciting thing to happen in town for a long time, and Chase noticed it was cooling off pretty quickly. Kelly had to be freezing.