Complicated

by Kristen Ashley

  “I need to get you home and then get to work, baby,” he said.

  “Right,” she mumbled, still looking sleepy but now adding unhappy.

  “I’m gonna be there, Greta.”

  She pushed up on her elbows, looking down at her body in the bed. “Mm-hmm.”

  “Babe.”

  Her head turned to him.

  “He’s in a cell. I get you home. You’re there with me. I leave when you settle and I know you’re good. I do my thing. You do yours. I pick you up from work, take you to the hospital to get your dressing changed. And tonight is Monday Night Football. Shaw’s with me full-time now so we make that night a thing. Tonight, you’re gonna be our special guest.”

  Her eyes grew more alert as the sleep left her and she replied, “I can’t horn in on your and Shaw’s thing.”

  “If you don’t, he’ll probably go to your house and get you himself.”

  “Hixon—”

  “Babe, you agreed to complicated. You might as well give it all it’s worth.”

  Her pretty lips quirked under that big white bandage. “I have noted your son is much like his father when it comes to kicking in when a damsel is in distress.”

  “Don’t say shit that might mean they’ll have to reset your nose seein’ as I’m wantin’ to kiss you and do it hard,” he warned and exited the bed before he did something else. “Get up, sweetheart. Let’s get you home.”

  “All right,” she said like she didn’t want to and tossed the covers aside.

  Hix looked away because he hadn’t just carried her to bed the night before.

  She’d woken up groggy in the middle of him trying to help her put on his tee before he’d put her in his bed.

  And she looked way too good in it.

  “I need my dress back, Hix,” she told him as he moved toward the door to get her a travel mug of coffee.

  “Just wear Cor’s stuff again,” he told the door.

  “You know, you’re depriving me of my Halloween costume,” she joked.

  He stopped at the door and looked back at her.

  Standing by his bed, her hair a beautiful mess from sleep, her eyes still lazy from the same, wearing his shirt, outside deciding to start a family, Hix knew in that instant she was the best decision he’d made in his life.

  “I’ll give it back for trick or treat,” he returned. “Now you want coffee?”

  “Am I breathing?”

  “Yup.”

  “Then yup.”

  He grinned.

  She gave that back.

  Then Hix went to get his woman coffee.

  “It’s a kitchen.”

  “Unh-hunh.”

  “It’s your kitchen.”

  “Yep.”

  “With your stuff. Where you make great pancakes. And look amazing wearing a robe.”

  Greta was standing in his arms in her kitchen, now wearing his daughter’s clothes and a pair of Corinne’s flip-flops.

  Greta’s purse was on the island. Her Cherokee in the drive. His Bronco behind it where he’d parked it after following her there.

  As he’d asked, without bitching, Hal had gone to her place the day before and cleaned up the blood drips that had fallen on the kitchen island and the flagstone floors. How he managed it, Hix didn’t know. That porous stone would normally soak the blood and leave a stain.

  But he’d done it.

  Hix made a note to buy his deputy a bottle as Greta tipped her head back to look at him.

  “What makes a man do something like that?” she asked.

  He drew her deeper into his body and dipped his face closer to hers.

  “I’m not that man so I don’t know. I also don’t care seein’ as there’s no excuse for it, no reason I’d believe that was even close to valid behind it. All I know is he did it and now he’ll pay for it.”

  “He said I don’t matter,” she reminded him, because he’d heard her tell Hal that same thing while giving her statement at his dining room table the day before.

  And yeah.

  It was good she looked cute even with a broken nose or Hix would be fighting the urge to murder someone.

  “If I don’t matter, why go through the trouble?” she asked.

  “I wish I had answers but I’ve seen a lot of shit people have done that have no answers, sweetheart, so I’ve learned not to wreck my head and my peace of mind trying to figure it out. It’s their problem. He made it yours doin’ what he did. Don’t make the rest of it yours tryin’ to figure it out.”

  “Good advice,” she muttered to his shoulder.

  He gave her a careful shake and got her attention back.

  “I need to know you’re good before I get to the department, Greta,” he told her quietly.

  She looked from his eyes through the room then back to him.

  “It’s my kitchen,” she replied.

  He gave her a grin. “Yeah, it is.”

  She suddenly looked hesitant.

  “I can . . . uh, call you if I get, well . . . tweaked?”

  “I’d be pissed if you didn’t.”

  She relaxed against him. “Okay.”

  “You’re good?” he pushed.

  She nodded. “At least I think I can take a shower and get to work, and then I’ll tackle Monday Night Football with the two Drake men and after that, we’ll see.”

  “Shaw won’t mind you spending the night tonight, baby,” he assured her.

  “I don’t think he will and he seems very mature for his age but he’s still only seventeen, so as complicated as this is, darlin’, maybe we should do what we can to make it less complicated for your kids.”

  When he opened his mouth to say something, she gave him a shake.

  “I might not be able to do it, being here alone . . . uh, just now. So I might need to stay with you tonight. But I should also not let it go on too long.” Her lips tipped up. “And anyway, I can call you, right?”

  His lips tipped up too. “Anytime.”

  She moved her hands to bunch them in the fabric of his shirt at his sides and she swayed him, ordering, “Then get to work, Sheriff.”

  He moved his hands to either side of her neck, bent in and took her mouth with a touch that included a touch of his tongue against her lips.

  She parted them so his tongue touched hers.

  He gave it that and necessarily pulled away before he felt compelled to give more.

  “I’ll meet you at the salon at one to take you to the hospital.”

  “Okay, Hix.”

  “You want me to bring Harlequin?”

  “Maybe we can go there later in the week when I don’t look like I went a round with Muhammed Ali.”

  Fuck yes.

  “I’d like that.”

  She smiled. “Me too.”

  He gave her neck a squeeze, kissed her forehead then let her go.

  He felt her at his heels as he walked to the kitchen door.

  Oh yeah.

  That ass in a cell in his station without Greta around breathing and joking and being Greta, that urge he was fighting was going to get harder to hold back.

  She had her hand on the door before he even cleared it.

  He turned in it and looked deep in her eyes.

  “You’re safe, sweetheart.”

  She nodded and swallowed.

  “One o’clock,” he said.

  “See you then, darlin’.”

  “Yeah, you will.”

  She forced a smile.

  He started moving to his truck, hearing the door close and the lock go before he was two feet into that journey.

  He idled at the side of the road two houses down with his phone in his hand just in case.

  She didn’t call.

  So Hix went to work.

  Hix walked into his department to see Reva in dispatch, Larry at the back at the copier, Bets at her desk and Hal at his.

  He did not look to the cells at the back.

  He would not look to the cells at the back.


  That asshole existed but Hix didn’t need to remind himself that he did or waste even the energy it would take to aim his gaze at him, because he wasn’t worth it.

  He walked right to Hal and stopped beside his desk.

  “Weekend on call deputies get Monday off, Hal,” he reminded him.

  Hal’s face got hard and he replied, “I wanna take that jackhole to his bail hearing.”

  “Larry and Bets can do that.”

  “I brought him in.”

  “Yeah, and I get why you’d wanna see that through. So you and me will sit in the gallery during the hearing.”

  Hal stared at him.

  Hix ignored it.

  “Greta was hesitant about bein’ back at her place this morning. Think that’s gonna take some time,” he told Hal. “She didn’t mention it because she probably didn’t notice it because she’s not there in her head but I know for a fact it helped, not seein’ her own blood on her island and all over the floor. You mighta done that because I asked you to do it as my deputy, but mostly you did it because you’re a good man. And I appreciate it. So, it’s Macallan, right?”

  Hal stared at him a second, lifted the side of his fist to his mouth and coughed in it and dropped his hand before he answered, “Yeah. It is. But you don’t have to do that.”

  Hix felt his lips curl up. “I know. If you thought I did, I wouldn’t drop a hundred bucks on a bottle of single malt.”

  “It’s only fifty, Hix.”

  “You cleanin’ blood from flagstone is worth the fifteen-year, man.”

  Hal smiled at him.

  “We’ll walk over to the courthouse together, drop by and get a coffee at Babycakes on the way back, and then you need to go home and take your day off, Hal.”

  “Right, boss.”

  Hix nodded.

  Larry gave him a grin and a shake of his head as Hix walked by him on his way to his office.

  Bets muttered under her breath, “You’re the shit, boss,” as he walked past her desk, but she did it with her eyes studiously fixed to her computer screen so he replied, “Mornin’ to you too, Bets.”

  Her lips quirked.

  Hix’s cell beeped as he was walking through the door to his office.

  He pulled it out of his breast pocket and felt the warm hit to his chest when he saw Greta’s name above the text on the screen.

  He stopped and took it.

  It said, Reporting in, I’ve survived the first fifteen minutes. I made coffee and everything. All good.

  Hix replied, Great, babe. Keep it up. See you at one.

  He hit send and waited.

  It sent immediately, no block, and he had only turned on his computer when he got back, One, and until then, pray my next bandage isn’t also the size of a mini diaper.

  Getting that, Hix didn’t set the phone aside and tap in his password.

  He busted out laughing.

  “Bail set at two hundred and fifty thousand dollars,” Judge Bereford announced.

  The defense attorney jumped up, shouting, “Two hundred and fifty thousand? That’s twenty-five thousand in bond!”

  “I do understand the bond percentage, councilor,” Bereford replied.

  “Your honor, that’s outrageous! My client has never been arrested in his life. He has a business in Sheridan County with clients who count on him and employees who need him on the job, so he’s not a flight risk. He—” the defense attorney began.

  Bereford cut him off. “I hazard to say those thoughts should have occurred to him before this weekend’s events.”

  “Your honor—”

  Sitting in the gallery beside Hal watching this, Hix tensed as, uncharacteristically, Bereford swiftly lost patience, lifted a finger and jabbed it at the attorney.

  “Listen to me, councilor.” His finger curled in, his thumb came out and he thrust it toward himself. “This is my county. And I’ll share with you right now that in my county men don’t shoot young fathers on the side of the road and they also don’t attack women in their kitchens. If they do, the message will be relayed with a clarity that cannot be missed that they should not.”

  When the defense attorney was screwing up to say something, Bereford slapped his hand on his bench, lifted up a piece of paper and kept talking.

  “Now, I’ve read the victim’s statement.” He slapped it down and lifted up another piece of paper. “And I’ve read the witness statement.” Again with the slapping and the lifting, this time the blank side out. “And I’ve seen the pictures the hospital sent to our sheriff’s deputy of the victim after the attack.” Another slap down and lift. “And right here I have details of why this man has a protection order on him as lodged by his ex-wife.” He also slapped that down. “Now, he may not have been arrested in the past, councilor, but I assume you have passed the bar. So I’ll advise you to have a conversation with your client. Because, you see, if this court is forced to convene a jury to look into this matter, wasting time and county resources, during sentencing I’m going to be in a very bad mood.”

  “You’ve tried and convicted him yourself, Judge,” the defense attorney spat.

  “It’s not my job to try and convict him, sir,” Bereford returned. “What I’m trying to communicate to you is that you’ll have to wring miracles to come through with what I’m assuming with what’s been laid before me this morning is a very foolhardy promise you’ve made your client.”

  “There are glaring issues with this case. He was held at gunpoint by a civilian, for God’s sake,” the attorney retorted.

  Bereford leaned into his bench. “Son, if you think for one second a jury of Nebraskans is gonna have an issue with a neighbor hearin’ their female neighbor screamin’ and they see her racin’ away with a face full of blood then that neighbor joggin’ out with his pistol to see to things, you obviously come from somewhere else.” He waved his hand to the prosecution table. “Talk. Be smart. Do right by your client. And just to make things even more clear, if this gentleman posts bond and he’s within one hundred yards of the victim, he’ll be accommodated by McCook County for some time seein’ as he’ll be held without bail until this matter is settled.” Before the defense lawyer could say another word, Bereford stood while slamming down his gavel and shouting, “Adjourned!”

  “All rise!” the bailiff called.

  Hix had barely got his ass off the bench before Bereford disappeared through the side door, his robes flapping behind him.

  Larry and Bets came forward to get the defendant while Gemini moved from his seat two rows back and approached Hix and Hal.

  Gemini stopped and looked up at them.

  “I’ll just wait for you outside, Hix,” Hal murmured and said, “Jones,” as greeting to Gemini while he shifted by him.

  “Deputy,” Gemini replied.

  They watched Hal go, and he was halfway down the aisle when Gemini turned back to Hix.

  “It would seem I made you a promise I unintentionally didn’t keep, Sheriff.”

  “You’re about as much to blame for that asshole attacking Greta as I am,” Hix returned, finishing with, “And it’s Hix.”

  Gemini smiled but it died as his gaze shifted to the defense table.

  “There are some who listen and learn and there are some who need to experience harder lessons.”

  “Yup,” Hix agreed.

  Gemini looked back to him. “He’ll make bail.”

  That morning Hix had learned the man who attacked Greta was some rich muckity-muck who did something with construction over in Sheridan County. This, maybe, being why he thought his shit didn’t stink enough to shovel a colossal amount of it his ex-wife’s way during their divorce.

  This also, maybe, why he thought he could sit in his car and face off against Gemini, his man and Hix in staking a claim to Greta he’d never have, thinking, maybe, if she knew who he was and how loaded, she’d feel flattered. Or thinking he had the money to elevate himself above any shit they piled on him, thus convincing himself he was untouchable.<
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  He could just be psychotic.

  He just was an asshole.

  And until he made bail, he was now incarcerated and things would go worse for him if he approached Greta again.

  It wasn’t a guarantee.

  But he’d have to be an asshole, a moron and a tool not to catch Bereford’s message just now, and he didn’t get as loaded as he was being the middle of those.

  The other two were a given.

  “She’ll be all right,” Hix assured.

  Gemini’s focus intensified. “Will she?”

  That was when Hix’s focus intensified. “Yes.”

  Gemini studied him a beat before he murmured, “I see.”

  Hix suspected Gemini saw a lot.

  So he confirmed, “Yup.”

  Gemini smiled again but said, “I’m sorry you’ll need to be keeping his company at your department until he posts bond and scurries back to Sheridan County.”

  “Not a lot of folk who take temporary residence in one of our cells are a bundle of laughs so me and my deputies will survive.”

  Still smiling, Gemini nodded.

  The smile died again when he asked, “Is she okay?”

  “You may need to find another act for a week or two, Gemini. She’s okay but he did a number on her nose. I’m sure she’ll call and talk to you about it.”

  “Call me and try to explain how she can still sing so she doesn’t lose her weekly installments to her keep-Andy-settled pot.”

  “Sorry?” Hix asked.

  “She looks after her brother,” Gemini told him.

  “I know.”

  “I mean financially as well. She’s his guardian.”

  That wasn’t a surprise, knowing what little he knew about her mother, but that little was enough.

  “So she sings because she loves it and she sings because she has to,” he murmured mostly to himself.

  “I try to focus on the first part,” Gemini said.

  Hix wanted to as well.

  He knew Sunnydown. It was a nice place. But any of those places cost a whack.

  “She’s a hairstylist,” he noted.

  “Yes, but before that, well before that, Hix, Greta is a loving sister.”

  “Shit,” he whispered.

  With all that was going on, none of this had occurred to him.