Men In Uniform Anthology

by Delilah Devlin

“My home? Even if I did that, which I am not going to do, I’d never share that with you. Off. Get out of here, Robert. Go beg for money somewhere else. The Bank of Faith is closed.”

  His aw shucks I need help gaze fled, and in its place was the calculating cruelty she’d come to first blame herself for when she’d first noticed it and later resent the fuck out of it before they ended. In any case, she was done with his crap for today. She turned her back, but in classic Robert style he couldn’t help but get in another dig.

  “I did the right thing. Every day I’m surer of it, leaving you.”

  He’d said this before. She shut the door. Who left who was of constant debate. The point was, it was over. And it was better to have a horrible ending than horrors without end. Or so Faith’s German grandmother had told her. She didn’t know if she made up that saying or if it was just one of those things, but it really worked for her when she found herself in a tough bind.

  She didn’t believe him about the money. She’d even been thinking of taking him back to court. His uncle had died, and his mother had let slip, on purpose or accidentally—who knew with that family—that he’d inherited a bit from the man. How much Faith wasn’t sure of, but certainly enough he didn’t need to be begging her for cash on her teacher salary while she tried really hard to keep a roof over her head and their daughters fed.

  Lemonade.

  That was what she needed.

  She was going to make some quickly and drink the whole thing herself.

  …

  He drove down a back road, having been pulled from the meeting from hell to answer a dispute between two neighbors that had gotten out of hand. One of them accused the other of taking down a tree on their land. They were going to get surveyors out, and Wyatt would have this taken care of before the end of the week. In the meantime, the two men needed to keep their fists to themselves.

  Wyatt shook his head. Seventy years old and both men were still pounding on each other? He could remember when he was a child, those two having eruptions. You would think by now one of them would have moved. For a second there, he’d thought both of those men were going to strike him. He leaned on the back of the seat. He had a date tonight. That was the best possible news and…

  He slowed down his truck. Driving past the Olsens’ house didn’t usually catch his attention. On the outskirts of town, surrounded by woods, and lately a hot spot for ten-year-olds making lots of noise, the Olsens were another family that had been around forever.

  Like him, they were from somewhat nefarious backgrounds. Way back when, Old Man Olsen had been said to be a bootlegger, and they’d all been in some kind of minor trouble ever since. Never anything serious like assault with a deadly weapon, but more like massive misdemeanors and a propensity to act like jackasses.

  They were also poor as could be, which always indicated to Wyatt that great-granddaddy had been a pretty lousy bootlegger.

  The expensive racing go-kart caught his attention and pulled him to the side of the road. Situated at the end of the driveway was a painted red go-kart the likes of which he had only seen once before and then in an advertisement at a car show. If it was what he thought it was, then it was worth several thousand dollars.

  With his senses tingling, he got out of his truck and walked toward the go-kart. It was absolutely not illegal for the Olsens to have this go-kart, just surprising. His years on the force had taught him some things, and one of them was not to mistrust his gut. If he heard hooves stampeding in the distance, he was going to look for the horses and find them.

  This was making a stampede go off in his head.

  He squatted down, pulling out his phone as he examined the go-kart with his eyes. Technically, he hadn’t even set foot on the Olsens’ property. He googled the go-kart, having to take a picture of it to get the exact model and stick that into a search engine to even find out what it was. Modern technology really did help with police work.

  A car backed down the driveway, and a woman parked the car before getting out of it. He immediately recognized Kristy Olsen. She’d been Kristy Manatee when he’d known her. She’d gotten pregnant with her now-grown son, Bastian, when she’d been in high school. It had been quite the scandal at the time. But she and Martin Olsen were still married, and that was saying something, considering that Wyatt hadn’t managed to take the plunge even once.

  “Sheriff.” She nodded to him. “I’m glad to see you, and I see you noticed the item. I don’t know where Luke got it. We’re not thieves, and he won’t tell me where he got the money for it. I put it here in case it belonged to someone else. They might see it and come and get it. The kids insist it’s theirs.” She held up her hands. “We didn’t steal it.”

  He believed her. He didn’t have any concrete evidence for that except she looked pissed, not guilty. Maybe it was her hands on her hips and the tilt of her head. If it was stolen, it was news to her. “Mind I talk to Luke?”

  The youngest of her brood, Luke had been through his office door a couple times now. Mostly petty theft and fighting.

  She nodded but wagged her finger at Wyatt. “I want it on the record that we are cooperating with this.”

  He didn’t know why she thought that was going to matter. “Sure.”

  Wyatt followed her down her long driveway. That gut feeling he couldn’t let himself ignore? Yeah, it was going off big-time. Like someone was continuously kicking him there, over and over.

  …

  Luke fiddled with his shoelaces. Wyatt couldn’t say he’d seen anyone exactly do that before. Luke had to pick his feet up to do it and practically twist his body, but he’d managed.

  “I guess I didn’t see what the problem was. An adult asked us to do it.”

  The young boy, whose mother sat right next to him, had repeated the same thing several times. Wyatt wasn’t pushing him. Mom seemed unable to get the answers, while Wyatt often felt staying quiet let people stumble into incriminating themselves just fine. He didn’t think Luke had walked into a store and stolen a go-kart the size of the one sitting at the end of his driveway. In fact, Wyatt hadn’t used the word “theft” once. That had come from Luke’s own mother.

  He was very interested in what was coming from this. All he’d done so far was pull over to look at a piece of machinery.

  Luke finally spoke again. “All we had to do was dress up.”

  Kristy sputtered. “Some adult told you to dress up and then gave you a go-kart?”

  Wyatt’s blood pressure rose. He could always feel it thanks to the surge of adrenaline that came with it. “Luke?”

  “No, Mom. I bought the go-kart. Uncle Robbie said that if we dressed up as aliens three or four times and walked around at the edge of the woods he’d pay us. He did. I bought the go-kart.” He shrugged. “No big frickin’ deal.”

  Except it was. It so was. Wyatt scooted to the edge of his seat. “Luke, I think you’d better explain.”

  And so he listened, each word they spoke making his jaw clench, his anger surge, and although his years of training kept his face passive, he thought his head might actually explode. Sheets. Covering their trails. Dressing up and running. All of it perfectly timed to make Robbie’s ex-wife think she was nuts. Wyatt rubbed the back of his neck.

  This was a frickin’ nightmare, and among other things he was going to say that day, he owed the woman who had fucked him so sweetly the night before, and whose scent alone had sent him to the bathroom to jerk off in the middle of a meeting, a big, giant apology.

  He’d give it to her. After he managed not to give Robbie the beatdown he so obviously deserved. Kristy slumped down in her seat. “I’m so relieved. It’s only something stupid.”

  None of this was stupid. But he needed Luke to keep talking. Wyatt forced himself to remain calm, at least on the outside. “I know the woman you guys were fooling. She’s been a little bit freaked out.” And he’d been way too dismissive. “So I think we should start from the beginning.”

  …

  Wyatt pu
lled up to Robbie’s trailer and put the truck in park. He took a deep breath. He was five trailers down from the one Wyatt grew up in. The deep breathing wasn’t helping. No one would know he was upset, but he knew it. Coming here hadn’t been a great idea. He needed calm, and instead he wanted to pound the man to the ground.

  Intellectually, he knew this trailer park wasn’t cursed with the worst human beings on the planet. There were people here, good people, who were going about their business, not doing unspeakable things to screw up their children and their exes. It just seemed like it housed an abundance of people causing problems, his own mother included.

  Wyatt got out of the truck. Nothing was going to get better by sitting there. He wanted a confession. He’d get one, and he wasn’t going to have to beat Robbie for it. At the end of the day, the man was a coward.

  He knocked on the door, hearing the loud volume of the television, and a second later the door swung open. Robbie was staring down at him from the slight step up Wyatt would need to take to get into the trailer.

  “Aliens?”

  Robert paled, dropping his bag of potato chips. The stink of the inside of the trailer hit him hard. These places weren’t well designed or well ventilated.

  “Which one of them told?”

  This might be even easier than he’d thought it was going to be. “Let’s take a ride down to the station. You and I have a talk.”

  He clenched his fists. Yes, he needed out of there. They had to get to the station. In front of people. Where Wyatt was less likely to want to beat this piece of shit into the ground.

  …

  Wyatt pulled up to Faith’s house and got out of the truck fast. The only person who didn’t know yet what had happened was the woman he couldn’t stop obsessing over and only then because he’d insisted on telling her himself, in person. When a man had to eat crow, he needed to do it face-to-face.

  Maybe with some flowers and candy. Only he’d had no time to stop for that. Faith wasn’t answering her cell phone.

  He took her stairs two by two and when he didn’t get an answer, ran around the back of the house. There was Faith, asleep in her chair on the back porch, with her shotgun next to her and half a glass of lemonade on the other side. A piece of her hair had fallen in her eyes. She took his breath away. Had anyone ever been so was adorable?

  He was a sensible person. He knew you didn’t just go and fall in love with someone because they were cute in their chair, and yet there she was and his heart went kaplow in his chest. He was smitten. That word worked for how he felt, and he was going for it. Wyatt walked over to her, moving the shotgun out of the way before he knelt down to touch her arm. She jumped as she came awake.

  “Wyatt? I guess I nodded off.” She sat up straight. “Did you see them? Is it time?”

  He kissed her cheek. “They won’t be coming tonight. You were right. You saw little green men in your backyard. Only they were small green ten-year-olds wearing costumes under the specific instructions of your ex-husband, who was paying them.”

  A muscle in her jaw ticked. “I’m going to kill him.”

  “Not tonight. Or ever, if I have my way. He’s in jail right now. There are laws against this sort of gaslighting. In any case, he interfered with a minor and encouraged said minors, plural, to break the law. That’s a very bad thing. They won’t be coming by anymore. They put sheets on the ground, covered their tracks, but it’s entirely possible my years away have also made me a sloppy tracker. I’ll be amending that, and I owe you an apology.”

  She shook her head before she made a frustrated sound. A second later she rose to her feet. “Why’d he do this?”

  “Wanted you to sell the house.”

  Wyatt loved that she seemed angry, not sad or scared. “As I told him, even if I did that, he wouldn’t get the money from it. And if he had the money to pay those kids why not use that instead of trying to fool me?”

  “He had enough to pay them. It wouldn’t have gotten far. He wanted to discredit you. Get custody of the girls. Take the kids. Use the money from the house that would go to the kids on himself. He loved talking once I got him to the station.” He shook his head. “He’s not…well.”

  Faith took Wyatt’s hand in hers. How was her skin so soft? “I could have shot those kids.”

  Relief flooded him. “Your first instinct wasn’t for the gun, thank goodness. Let’s not obsess about what didn’t happen. Let’s consider ourselves lucky it didn’t. I’m sorry about this. I’ve got a lot to learn and I…”

  Her lips came to his, a soft caress. “Can you be done for the night like you were last night?”

  He sighed against her mouth. “I can. I promised you dinner. A night on the town.”

  “Thank you for that. But what I want right now is not a prime rib and a baked potato. I want you upstairs. Maybe telling me when I can and can’t have an orgasm.”

  He rubbed the back of his neck. “That isn’t always the way it goes with me. I was feeling…inspired.”

  She was lit up like a light bulb. “Call me crazy, but I’m good with you being inspired that way any time you want.”

  Chapter Four

  She didn’t know what had come over her.

  Dealing with the fact that her scumbag ex-husband had now tried to gaslight her was not so easy to digest. But she found that maybe she didn’t care that much right then. It was over. She’d be on alert for similar tactics in the future, protect the girls, and get on with her life. Wyatt was here.

  Tall, dark, handsome, apologizing—he might be the first man she’d ever met to actually do that—and she wanted him.

  Badly.

  She took his hand. Yesterday had been all about his pushing her against the truck and her submitting to it because she’d never imagined anything hotter. Today, he seemed to be following her lead. That was fine with her, too. She couldn’t fathom sex with Wyatt ever being dull, no matter how they did it.

  Right then she wanted him on her bed, which fortunately she’d made when she was looking for things to do around the house.

  He took off his hat, setting it on the table next to her bed, followed by his firearm. She ran her hand over his smooth head. “What does your hair look like when you let it grow? You kept it short in high school, too.”

  Wyatt’s smile was slow. “Some people have hair that grows down. Mine grows out and just bigger and bigger.”

  She had a hard time picturing it. “Then I guess it’s a good thing it’s so sexy shaved down like this.”

  “You touch my hair and it goes straight to my groin.” He kissed her neck, seeming to breathe her in when he did it. Her knees shook. “Like so hard, baby.”

  Faith cupped him on the outside of his pants. He really was hard. “And I hadn’t even touched you yet.”

  He flared his nostrils. “Here’s the truth. I was hard when I left here. I’ve been hard through really obnoxious meetings all day. And then I wanted to kill your ex for frightening you. All of this is a lot of…adrenaline for me when most of the time I am a pretty mellow guy. I’ve had to be. There are things in my life that have made it better that I just stayed cool and collected. I don’t get overly worked up. But you? You make me want to explode with all kinds of pent-up…everything.”

  As if to illustrate his point, his cock hardened in her hand. That had to be painful. “Well, maybe we can work out a way for us to do something about that.”

  “Think so?” His voice lowered. He almost whispered. It gave the moment a sense of being special, like they didn’t want to let the rest of the world intrude on it.

  She tugged on his shirt until he walked forward, and then he let her push him down on the bed. She had no doubt she couldn’t have done that if he hadn’t let her. He was solidly built and muscular. Her jogs and small weights she lifted weren’t going to help her shove him around if he didn’t want to be shoved. Besides, she liked that he was playing along with her.

  Still dressed, she climbed onto the bed, straddling his body. He stared up
at her, his expression mostly unreadable. The heat in his gaze was evident. She couldn’t have missed that.

  Faith leaned over, kissing his lips. He met her caress, kissing her back, lighter than the night before. He seemed happy to let her lead. She made love to his mouth. Had she noticed how soft his lips were the night before? Maybe she had, but she really noticed it now.

  Wyatt made a sound in the back of his throat. It was somewhere between a gasp and a moan. It was the sexiest thing she’d ever heard. She pressed her forehead to his, just breathing him for long moments. He kept his eyes closed.

  This man was sex and heat…

  Where had he been her whole life, or why hadn’t she noticed him a million years ago?

  She wanted to be skin-to-skin with him. No, “want” was too small a word. She craved it. Her nipples peaked straining against her shirt. She wanted their clothes off.

  “Take your shirt off.” So far, they’d just been playing. Would he actually do what she said or take back control of this immediately?

  He scooted back, which jarred her a little bit, but he pulled his shirt off. She stared down at him. His muscles were so well defined. She ran her hands over his chest, loving the feel of the dusting of hair there and trace the lines of his chest and stomach muscles.

  His stomach jumped beneath her touch. She didn’t stop stroking him, running her fingers over his nipple. She tweaked it, and he hissed in a breath. “Shit.”

  She lifted her eyes to meet his gaze. “Good or bad?”

  “Anywhere you want to touch me would be good. That’s very fucking good.”

  Faith grinned at the way he panted. She leaned back, pulling her own shirt off. If she’d known they would be back here so fast, she’d have left her bra off entirely. As it was, she got to feel like she was putting on a show.

  When she finally discarded the bra to the side, he reached out to squeeze her nipple. “Did I tell you that you could do that?”

  He shook his head slowly. “No, but I did it anyway.”

  Yes, he had. She scooted down, unzipping his pants. “I was thinking about it yesterday, but this is twice now I get to take you out of your uniform. That’s hot, Wyatt.”