Tonight's The Night (Night #5)

by Lauren Milson

  xx, Lauren

  1

  Lilly

  I push my sunglasses up my nose. There’s a woman blocking my driveway with her U-Haul, and she’s calling the police.

  “Is this really necessary?” I plead. I don’t want the cops involved. I want this woman off my parents’ property and I want to go to bed.

  “You promised it to me!” she yelps from inside her trailer. She raises her cell phone to her ear when her moment of screeching is done.

  I promised this woman nothing. It was all a misunderstanding on her part, or at least I thought it was. Now I’m starting to believe she might be a little crazy. Or maybe she’s as sleep-deprived as I am.

  Under my breath, I curse the chirping birds. They’re in a nest in the white oak in my front yard; they’re perched on the power-line across the street; they’re rousing from a good night’s sleep, trading places with the crickets. The moon is still a pale saucer in the sky and the sun is coming up.

  It is well past time for me to go to bed.

  I collapse onto the curb on the edge of the property, parking myself in front of the stranger’s U-Haul.

  “There’s no criminal matter here, ma’am,” I say in a voice loud enough for her to hear, but at a decibel lower than a shout. The last thing I want, aside from being out here, is for her to get angrier with me than she already is.

  “You stole from me,” she shouts. Her voice crackles through the swishing early-morning trees.

  “If I stole from you, then why don't you have it?”

  “You promised it to me, which means it’s mine!”

  “Right,” I reply with a sarcastic wave of my hand, “and that means I stole it, right?”

  I bury my face in my hands as someone on the other end of her phone finally picks up.

  “Yes? Yes, I’d like to report a burglary,” the woman says.

  I didn’t think it possible for her face to become more red than it was twenty minutes ago. She cranes her neck to double check my address, then gives it to the police dispatcher. I think it’s Emily on the dispatch desk today. U-Haul lady ends the call and tosses her phone into the passenger seat. I expect her to get out of her car and march over to me to stick her finger in my face or bark out another string of insults. Instead, she remains in her U-Haul.

  But the rolling hutch I was giving away isn't returning.

  The hutch is probably rolling over the New York - Connecticut state line by now.

  “Look,” I say, bringing myself to my feet. “Why don’t you let me buy you breakfast? Call it equal and move on? It’s not worth all this trouble, and there's nothing I can do about it right now. You can buy a new one at Ikea for like eighty bucks.”

  “Then I’ll leave if you give me eighty dollars,” she barks. I never did get her name, which was probably my first mistake. My second mistake was trusting a stranger on the internet.

  In the process of cleaning my things out of my parents’ house, I realized there was a lot of stuff I could give away.

  This lady was very sweet when she’d first said she’d like to claim the hutch. She was even pretty nice when I’d told her I would not be able to provide transport for it. She played dumb when she gave me her address and told me she’d like me to arrive with it in twenty minutes.

  And now she’s called the cops on me.

  I’m starting to think she’s not a very sweet lady after all.

  “You cannot do this to people,” she barks at me. “We’ll see what the cops say when they show up.”

  Our town is a quiet town. This is probably the most interesting thing to happen this week, or maybe this month. The last time I read the police blotter, the most exciting thing was a skunk getting stuck on someone’s roof. The little guy smelled up the whole block, and no one knew how he got up there, but once rescued, he was free to stink up the whole neighborhood again.

  The silver lining in all this is the possibility of seeing Chris.

  I hear the slow grinding of gravel as a car turns the corner onto my little block, and there's a tug in my belly.

  2

  Chris

  We have a call from Maple Road. 72 Maple. A woman is saying property was stolen. Caller is not the resident of the property.

  Emily’s voice crackles through the radio on the dashboard of my patrol car.

  72 Maple is the Sonders’ house.

  There’s really no need for a patrolman to be out here at this hour. It’s odd that a call like this would be coming from the Sonders’. There’s a lurch in my belly and I hope one of Lilly’s lawn gnomes was stolen and it wasn’t something more valuable.

  It’s odd that there’s someone on her property calling in something stolen, though. I pick up speed and take a sharp left toward her street.

  She’s living with her parents, but that’s ending shortly. As a senior at nearby Benton College, she’s decided it would be easier for her to live on campus for her final year.

  I smile as I roll up to the house to see Lilly sitting calmly on the curb in front of her parents’ place. It’s a cute two-story home in the Victorian style like the others on the street. She’s always said she loves this house. Even though I understand her desire to be on her own at college for her last year, I know she’s going to miss being here. She and her parents are very close, and with Lilly as the only child, they’ve always been overprotective.

  I pull my patrol car over to the curb and get out. It’s still very early, though I’m usually up earlier than I need to be. When I get a better look at Lilly, I see that she’s exhausted and annoyed, and I’m glad that whatever’s going on isn’t an emergency.

  “Lilly, what seems to be the trouble?” I ask. She stands up and brushes her hands together, getting some cracked pebbles of asphalt and blades of grass off her palms.

  Even at sunrise and in her pajamas, she is by far the most stunning woman I’ve ever seen. She’s petite and curvy, with fair skin, long brown hair and big, intense brown eyes. She’s always been a little bit on the bigger side, with thick hips and thighs and a small waist, and breasts that are truly a damn sight to behold. I have to fight with myself to not think of her in a way that’s bordering on inappropriate, but when I’m around her, there’s always a struggle to keep my damn mind out of the gutter.

  She throws a glance behind her shoulder and lets out a big, exasperated sigh.

  “It’s not me who called,” she says. “It was her.”

  My eyes flicker behind Lilly’s shoulder. A woman who seems to have blown a gasket hours ago gets out of her U-Haul in a fury and tornados over to me. In an action movie, this would be about the time that a cartel of drug dealers peel onto the street and stuff this woman into the back of a van, and I suppress a chuckle so I can assist her like I promised to back when I became a cop.

  Serve and protect - and that means everyone. It’s not my place to make judgments, as much as my snap-decision in this moment would be to tell this woman to fuck off so I can attend to Lilly instead.

  “This girl promised me that I could have a piece of furniture she was giving away. And then when I got here, it was gone. She is a scammer and I want her arrested.”

  The woman crosses her arms in front of her chest, in something between a defensive posture and incredulity at the injustice that’s been foisted upon her.

  “Is this true?” I turn toward Lilly and she peers up at me with pursed lips.

  “Partly,” she offers. “I did tell her that I was giving away some old stuff, but I didn’t promise her anything. And even if I’d promised something to her, I don’t understand how it’s a crime to just change your mind.”

  “So you changed your mind, and you think that’s just okay?” the woman gasps. It’s as though Lilly went into her house and walked off with her cat.

  “No,” Lilly says, “I didn’t change my mind. I told you what the deal was, and then it simply didn’t work out. That’s it!”

  “M’am,” I say, turning to the woman, “what’s your name?”

&
nbsp; “I don’t have to tell you that.”

  She recoils from me and marches over to her U-Haul.

  For a person who wants help from the police, she isn’t really giving me much to work with. I glance over at Lilly, who’s becoming more annoyed by the moment. U-Haul lady gets back into her truck and plants her fists on the top of her steering wheel. I turn my attention back to Lilly.

  “Lilly, what’s going on?”

  She lets out a big yawn and covers her mouth. Tears squeeze at the corners of her eyes and she wipes them away. She’s not crying; she’s just dead tired. I glance over to the U-Haul and shield the sun from my eyes.

  “Okay, this is what happened,” she says, “I was giving away some stuff from my parents’ house and this lady was totally waffling over this one thing I wanted to get rid of, and I gave it to someone else.”

  I purse my lips into a straight line.

  “It doesn’t sound like a criminal matter. In fact, it doesn’t sound like a civil matter, either. Sounds like a friendly misunderstanding.”

  “Thank you,” Lilly replies. “That’s what I tried to tell her.”

  “Is there anything else I can do to help?”

  “I just want her to leave.”

  I put a hand on Lilly’s shoulder to comfort her. She smiles up at me with a little bite of her bottom lip. I tell myself to get my damn head together and take my hand away from her. Even if I were interested in taking her out for coffee, this is not the time or the place.

  I start away from Lilly and smile over at her as I get to the driver’s side of the U-Haul. I watch as the woman inside starts for the button to raise the window.

  “M’am,” I say, “please don’t do that. I’m not going to make any arrests today. If you’d like to come down to the station to make a statement, you can, but I am not putting that young woman in handcuffs. Now, I’m going to ask you to remove your U-Haul from the property.”

  “I don’t have to do anything you say.”

  Now I’m getting annoyed. I cast a reassuring glance over at Lilly and put my hand out softly to tell her to just stay put while I take care of the situation.

  The woman raises her window a little, and I ask her not to. She complies with my instructions.

  “I’m going to ask you to move your truck, m’am.”

  She cracks under my authority and turns the key in the ignition. She curses at me under her breath and peels away.

  “Well,” I say. Lilly comes over to me.

  “Thank you,” she says in that honey-sweet voice. “For a second I thought you were going to have to take out your handcuffs.”

  I swallow a chuckle in the back of my throat.

  “Not unless I have to,” I say.

  “Can I make you a cup of coffee or something?” she asks. “To say thank you.”

  “No, that’s alright,” I say. “Just doing my job.”

  “Okay,” she says. “Thank you again.”

  She starts to walk away from me toward her parents’ house. I allow myself to take her in for a moment, catching a glance of her perfect, round ass as she says goodbye again over her shoulder. In some other universe, maybe on some other planet, she and I could have met under different circumstances, and she wouldn’t be my friend’s daughter.

  Still, I can’t ignore the way her smile pulls at me a little inside when she peeks over her shoulder. My cock begins to stiffen as I let myself enjoy the view of that round ass of hers moving in those tight black pants.

  Oofa. She’s sexy.

  A tiny part of me thinks a tiny part of her is saying come and get me.

  Maybe in another life, old man, I say to myself. But not in this one. No fucking way.

  She turns toward me once more as she gets to her front porch. She waves goodbye and I realize I was staring at her. I wave back and tell myself I was just doing my job by watching her walk to her front door. I think it’s called plausible deniability.

  I was just making sure she got inside safe. I certainly wasn’t imagining my fingers lacing together behind her head. I wasn’t thinking of commanding her to get down on her knees or telling her to bend over my lap so I can get a better, closer look at the swell of that fantastic ass of hers.

  I choke back a chuckle and get inside my patrol car. My shift is nearly over.

  Just another day in the neighborhood.

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  Also by Lauren Milson

  Night Series (standalones):

  Night Fever

  Night Moves

  Night Shift

  Bump in the Night

  Hometown Series (holiday standalones):

  Jack Frost

  Dirty Treat

  Falling for my Friend’s Dad

  For Him Series (holiday standalones):

  Always For Him

  Only For Him

  The One and Only Series (standalones):

  Buy Me, Love

  All My Love

  Crazy In Love

  Non-series standalones:

  The Wedding Date

  Summer Crush

  Her Friend’s Father

  Her Friend’s Dad

  Her Cowboy

  All His

  Touch

  The Older Man Next Door Series

  Mechanic Next Door

  Protector Next Door

  Dad’s Mountain Man Friend

  With Daniella Cole (45-minute short reads)

  Pining For My Professor

  Pining For My Dad’s Friend