by Falon Gold
Obviously, falling deeply for a woman before she can say she’s reporting for duty doesn’t meet the requirements for not getting the department sued. Neither does being able to work two shifts, six days a week. My only deputy, Copper Miles, who came with the job, volunteers for double shifts on Sunday, gets out of going to church with his wife and three kids, but he gets home at five every day. It doesn’t matter that I keep a family together, despite their religious differences, maintain the peace by using my workaholic tendencies to get out of family dinners with my parents, and dodge getting up every morning since I’m not an early riser.
None of those points work for the city council, who have the power to appoint extra manpower… make that woman power, whenever the hell they feel like it.
I suspect my parents have something to do with the council’s decision that brought Astrid into my life, a decision which backfired in my face. They needed an excuse to free up my time for their own purposes. Rising car thefts and burglaries during the tourist season, along with a seventy-eight-year-old hotelier on the edge of town who doubles as a nuisance caller, works in their favor. Mr. Lindsey has the ear of every official in my county and gets spooked at every creak and squeak around his building.
No agency has enough officers to cover his calls, and the council members agree with me. Yet, they conspire with Arrow’s influential citizens to fill empty deputy positions anyway. My world has been twisted up ever since they started that crap. Another chair plops out of my hands and down onto the thick grass.
“Go easy on the furniture, Blake!” Uncle Tommy yells across the lane between the bride’s and groom’s side. “They’re rentals. Your Uncle Luke’s wife’s rentals. I told you he’s a grumpy ass bear today and Natalia hasn’t given him his porridge. You only have one star to throw at him, Sheriff. It doesn’t have pointed edges to stick in his ass and slow him down while we run, and you don’t have your gun. Do you really want him on our asses right now?”
As always with the self-proclaimed comedian who deliberately missed his chance at fame to make sure his family has plenty to laugh at daily, Uncle Tommy gets a chuckle out of me. “Sorry, Unk.”
Tommy’s brother, Uncle Luke, is definitely someone I don’t want to tangle with about his wife’s event equipment, even if he’s all bark and no bite when it comes to his family. Still, I stop using unnecessary force with the lilac-covered banquet chairs and walk to the outer edges of the area where more seats wait to be put in place. I reach for one. My mind picks right back up with my first-time meeting Astrid.
After she showed up on my shift two years ago, well, the evening one, I slammed my office door right back closed. Then, I rushed to my office phone to harass every city council member on my speed dial until I found out who hired her. All thirteen, gray-haired members did. I demanded they send her right back to wherever she came from. But all Astrid’s clean background, five years of experience with no incidents on the job, and a superb recommendation from the sheriff in Harrison, Utah got me was politely told to shut the hell up and deal with her.
If Karma is truly a bitch, she’ll stick every man on the council in a cruiser with Astrid, while her uniform is fitting her curves like latex and that hypnotic jasmine scent is wafting off her flawless skin. Nothing like shared agony to make someone appreciate your point of view.
For six months, I seriously considered standing on my head every day during patrolling and training with Astrid, just to make my blood rush north instead of south for a change. The constant erections her presence causes are like a sickness. They plague me even when she isn’t around. There’s only so much illness a man can take before he goes looking for the cure. Astrid fell into keeping our office romance on the low without me having to say the actual words. Her reputation always being at stake in any world where the good old boys rule is motivation for being tight-lipped about sleeping with her boss. Our first time wasn’t anywhere near a respectable bed but on my desk during night shift. I would’ve waited. She couldn’t. Copper and the department’s receptionist, Meagan Long, had gone home hours before.
The janitor’s closet next door to my office would become the place to rendezvous during Meagan’s lunch break, a single-mom that hates being away from her four-year old daughter. Any chance she gets, she’s out the door to check on her at her mom’s home ten minutes away. Astrid and I take... took advantage, but it takes one time to learn that Astrid is a screamer. I’ve been lying about having rats in the station ever since.
Lying, I hate it and the regrets I have for not giving Astrid her own shift after training her, but I just couldn’t bring myself to do it. A lone woman on duty doesn’t sit well with me. It would be nice if I could blame someone else for what went left between us. I have no actual proof that something’s wrong, but something’s damn sure not right, or she wouldn’t have said goodbye to me without saying goodbye. Since I made the decision to not keep my hands to myself without thinking about the consequences, whatever it is, is all on me.
Don’t forget how you wanted her close at all times, too.
If I hadn’t, things would’ve worked out better for us both. I’d have my whole heart. She wouldn’t have taken pieces of it with her after she suddenly quit a year later, but she should’ve confiscated it all. What’s left just reminds me that there’s something missing… and someone.
The phone vibrates in my pocket, again. I stand in place, balling my fists in the material that Mama O and the wedding planner tossed over the chairs only an hour ago. This is how I spend the few moments it takes to ignore a call whenever my sixth sense tells me it’s Astrid, but I want to hear her voice so damn bad. I worry if she’s okay, but the woman is tougher than I am mentally, almost physically too. She has to be one of the best in our profession, or some bigot would’ve used her weakness to force her out of uniform.
For now, she’s not working anywhere and living in Harrison, Utah with her parents. I’ll catch pure divine hell from her when I go there to get her back. She’s means too damn much to me to just leave blowing in the wind, but I’m not going to answer her call right now. Yes, that sounds insane when I want her back badly, but insane is how I’ve been feeling since she split and started calling out of the blue, so I’m almost used to it.
Every time the phone rings, I think about the way that she blew out of town, and I take a vicious blow to the midsection. Talking to her on the phone is inviting her into my life to leave all over again. Somehow, I know that’s exactly what she’ll do, and I can’t handle that. I’m not going to let her go next time, but her absence is making life less complex for me right now. She’s one less person for me to have to choose over my parents who’ve been pressing me to become a true Powers every chance they get.
First, I must find a way to explain that I felt attracted to Malisa too many years ago to count, but that doesn’t make Astrid a replacement. They look that much alike, and someone will mention it to her. Arrow is a small town. Everything is noticed by somebody. Most people don’t have anything better to do than make a mountain out of a molehill, like Mr. Lindsey for instance. Nothing is ever truly a secret here, the woman’s resemblance no more than a freakish coincidence. Still, Astrid deserves an advance notice before I make her truly mine. Trust me, I know women. Astrid will want to know about this before I ask her for her hand in marriage.
That’s only one other problem that’s eating at me. My parents are the much bigger other, and I don’t know how I’m going to resolve it. They’re relentless with their demands for me to take over the businesses only run by Powers. Astrid deserves better than a man who can’t put his parents in their place simply because they gave me life and one of them could be feeble enough to die if I say ‘No, but thank you’ to stepping in their shoes. I’d rather steer clear of their shoes and them altogether, and I sure as hell don’t want to drag someone else into this mess.
Astrid did herself a favor when she left me, and she should stay away. Well, for now anyway. My instincts swear a confrontation with my par
ents is coming soon, and it’ll be brutal. They’ll make her life a living hell just because she’s in mine, so I’m letting all her calls go to voicemail until it’s over.
When I place another chair semi-softly on the ground then slide it over, knocking its seat against the next one, Uncle Tommy hisses from a few feet away, “Blake! Luke is bear with no porridge. You sheriff with no weapon. Stop it, dammit!”
Thoroughly chastised at twenty-seven-years-old, I murmur, “Sorry, Unk… again.”
My parents can be just as grumpy as Uncle Luke, when they don’t get their way. Just imagining spending time with my mother in an exotic location after Colorado’s winters aggravate her arthritis makes me cringe. Running the family ski-resorts spread throughout the state with my father breathing down my neck will be a headache. Mingling with them and their like-minded friends at fundraisers for various charities damn near makes my skin crawl.
Mostly snobs attend the functions started by my parents twenty-one years ago, when my oldest sister succumbed to cerebral palsy right after birth. I was seven when some damn good luck on my end made sure that an invitation was sent to Mama O and Pops. Who knows where I’d have ended up if they hadn’t come? Being raised with Malisa saved me from becoming a delinquent, just to get my parents’ attention.
When I got comfortable with never being their first priority while preparing to enlist in the military, Ashley and Martin Powers approached me about taking over the day to day operations of their businesses. Suddenly, they remembered that they had a son and an heir. That caused a big fight between us. I’d always felt like sloppy seconds to their lifestyle up to that point, and I didn’t give a shit that my idea for my future was beneath a Powers as far as they were concerned. I told them so. My father gave me a choice, the front door or the throne at the head of the Powers. My plans for moving out in a few months bit the dust. Joining the army, becoming a military cop, and getting a criminal justice degree happened much sooner than I wanted it to. I was really looking forward to the debauchery I’d planned for the summer after graduation.
Ashley and Martin Powers’ interference with my life doesn’t stop there. My father’s stroke three years ago brought me back to Arrow. He never misses a chance to remind me of how he can drop dead at any minute because of ‘mismanaging his health’ or so he calls it, and my mother’s inability to manage money. He stands up straight, walks, and talks as well he did before, so I’m convinced that he doesn’t have one foot in the grave like he wants me to think. But it’s planted in the middle of my world, threatening to push the Owens right out of it, and preventing me from creating what I want the most with Astrid, a family of my own.
Avoiding the third generation of Powers in Arrow that immigrated from Italy is a fulltime job. Taking over their obligations will eat up my spare time and ties to everyone outside the Powers’ circle. Since I feel a tiny amount of loyalty to my parents, the struggle not to choose between them and someone else is real. When I do pick, someone is going to be in pain. Hurting feelings is enough to keep me off-balance and away from the one woman who was more than a secret lay to me before she ever took off her uniform.
Luckily, she’s focusing on her career not settling down, which is the pits for the animalistic part of me that wants to bite her neck and roar mine to any man in a hundred-mile radius. But I have a little more time to set things straight here before I put all my efforts into convincing her that I’m the one for her. She’s not going to be career-minded forever. I don’t know how much longer I can go without her. Speaking with her now would be torture, so I don’t.
A buzzing sensation skips down my hip again. A dull ache forms in the middle of what’s left of my heart. The slice of a blunt-edged machete, instead of a razor-sharp one, cuts my intestines wide open, so it’s not Astrid who’s calling. It is bad news though. I pull the phone out. Malisa Owens’ name screams at me from the display.
“What’s wrong, Lisa Poo?”
“Blake, get your ass to the house right now and stop calling me Lisa Poo! You know I hate that!” she screams for real, completely distressed.
I panic and run down the path beside the groom’s chairs that I’ve been manhandling. “What happened, Malisa? Is it the babies? You need to hang up and dial 911. I’m coming. Apollo!”
Apollo better be coming, too. I have no idea what end of the property he’s vanished in, but he needs to get his ass to the house before I do. My duties consist of only getting him and Malisa through this wedding then settled in the monstrosity of a house that they’re calling a castle resurrected thirty miles away, and make sure their babies have everything they need in the uncle-territory. Not the father’s.
“No, it’s not my babies!” she yells back. “It’s your baby, you idiot!”
Feet begin to pound the ground around me. Thankfully, I’m not alone with whatever crisis is occurring in the house. I know absolutely nothing about delivering babies. One birth, I could figure out as I go, but three is just asking for something to go wrong today.
Just like I knew it would. Wait a minute. My baby? Idiot?
Since she’s calling me names, she’s not distressed but quite angry, and possibly delusional. I stop in my tracks, pretty sure I left some tread marks in the lawn. “What? I don’t have a—”
“Yes the hell you do have a baby, Blake, and he just left the front porch with his mother that’s still carrying him!”
Apollo, Uncle Tommy, Derek rocket past me on my left. My aunts Chrys, Jen, and Barbie race by on the other side of me. A golf cart barrels towards me from the opposite side of the property at a sensible rate of speed, with Pops driving. Mama O twists frenziedly in her seat beside him while shouting in his ear, “Go faster, Frank!”
He glances at her. “Sweetheart, I’m going as fast as it will let me. Calm down, or you can run with everyone else if you think you’ll get there faster.”
She leans back, raises her hand, and slaps him in the back of the head.
He should’ve saw that coming, even from behind. I did.
“Don’t you tell me to calm down or run with everyone else, Frank! Something has happened to our child in the house!”
Pops reaches up and rubs the place she popped. “Lydia, I’m driving!”
“She’s fine!” I shout at them. “Physically anyway!”
Mama O and Pops may not make it to the house alive to find out for themselves though.
“Blake, go find your baby mama!” Malisa screeches in my ear. “She’s carrying precious cargo that’s getting away!”
I look down at the phone, wondering has pregnancy cooked my sister’s brain fully. “Malisa, what are you—”
“I’m talking about the woman that just left with your child that this family won’t get to know if she gets her way!”
I huff, “Can I get a word in please?”
“No, you need to get in your damn car and get your son back here!”
My son! Yep, she’s nuts, but something happened to make her this way.
I take a deep breath, and decide to approach this conversation from my patient sheriff's mode. “Calm down and start from the beginning, Malisa.”
“Don’t tell me to calm down and start from the beginning, Blake! If you were here, I’d knock the shit out of you! A woman that looks rather damn familiar by the way just left here, after greeting me by name at the door. She told me that she’s been calling your ass to tell you that she’s pregnant and your son will be born in a month! But she doesn’t want anything from you. Then she left in a blue truck, real old-looking. Her knowing my name rocked me, so I forget to ask what hers is. I know I’ve never seen her in my life, but she sure as hell knows me. You will be clarifying why that is after you find her and bring her back here with the baby. Owens don’t let their family slip away, Blake.”
Malisa can’t be all that crazy after giving me that much specific information. My mind starts to scramble back through it. I’ve only slept with one woman who drives a high-mileage Yukon Denali faithfully. She knows just
enough about Malisa to recognize her, and she fits neatly in the time frame to have my child soon… and she could possibly be pregnant by me. We didn’t always think to use protection when sleeping together.
“Astrid,” I whisper, as things start to click into place. The calls, the pregnancy make sense. “That’s why she’s been calling me all week.”
“Yes, Blake. Now, I have a question. Why didn’t you tell me? We’re family… and I didn’t have to be pregnant by myself all this time,” she ends on a whiny note.
Astrid’s reasons for coming back aren’t ideal. Missing the hell out of me and unable to stay away any longer would’ve been a better reason, love the best of all. The racing organ above my ribcage doesn’t give two shits about why she’s back, and insists that I don’t let her get away again.
Something unfurls in the pit of my stomach. It doesn’t take long to recognize it’s a ball of stress unwinding slowly. I no longer have to wait to go to her. She’s come to me. The situation could have happened under better settings though, and she didn’t have to leave because she’s pregnant. It’s just more incentive to get my shit together.
“So Astrid’s her first name,” my sister snipes, completely pissy now. “It’s pretty by the way. She got a last one?”
“Daniels,” I answer distracted. “I didn’t answer her calls, Lisa Poo. Not a one.”
A wave of pain slams into my midsection and threatens to drop me to my knees. If Astrid wasn’t hurt when she left six months ago, she is now. What woman who’s trying to reach their baby daddy and couldn’t wouldn’t be hurt? It’s fine when I’m in pain, but not when it’s her, especially when I’m the cause of it.
