Special Ops Cowboy

by Addison Fox

  Or something like that.

  Holding his hat against his chest, he nodded and put on his most charming self. “Good afternoon, ma’am.”

  “How may I help you?” While she didn’t fully smile, he was pleased to see a small twinkle in the deep brown eyes that looked out over her half-moon spectacles. “Mr. Reynolds.”

  “You remember me?”

  “I remember every student who went to this school. You’re no exception.”

  “Well then. Ma’am,” he added for good measure. “I’d like to speak with someone who manages security.”

  “What’s the problem?”

  “I’d prefer not to say.”

  Humor fled that dark gaze, something steely and hard taking its place. If he’d been fifteen years younger, he’d have said she was trying to scare him. But with age had come wisdom and he saw what was really happening instead: she was taking his measure. “Very well. Retired Officer Zacks is in the office next door. I’ll let him know he has a visitor.”

  Hoyt followed her directions and walked into the room he remembered as a computer lab. The room still had computers, but it had been converted into some sort of central security office, replete with computers, video feeds of various parts of the grounds highlighted on TV monitors and a large wall of maps and what looked like bus routes.

  “Officer Zacks?” Hoyt called out from the door.

  An older man looked up from one of the computers and waved him in. Years had etched themselves in a face that looked like it had seen more than a few dirty fights, but even around the crooked nose and scarred chin, Hoyt couldn’t miss the sharp eyes and even sharper focus. “You found me. Though I think it’ll be fine if you just call me Alan.”

  Hoyt shook the man’s extended hand. “Hoyt Reynolds. It’s good to meet you, Alan.”

  “What can I do for you? We don’t get many cowboys wandering these hallowed halls.”

  Hoyt glanced down at his jeans and boots and realized what he must have looked like: someone heading in, just off the ranch. “I usually clean up a bit when I’m headed into town but I had an idea and I wanted to run it by you.”

  “Oh?”

  It might have been many years since Alan Zacks wore a uniform, but Hoyt got the same sense with him as he got with Belle: unwavering attention and a determination to do what was right. With that in the forefront of his thoughts, he filled Alan in on the events of the past few days, including his concerns over a spider from the bio lab that magically found its way out of a secured school.

  “Let’s take a look then.” Alan waved him over toward the wall of monitors and a rather sophisticated-looking desk console. “I have to tell you, I had my concerns when I was offered this job. Watching over kids with cameras and security guards and the like, it doesn’t sit all that well with me. I have come to appreciate the necessity, though.”

  “Things sure have changed since my siblings and I went here.”

  “That they have. And they changed fast. All the good and bad that comes with technological advancement.”

  Hoyt knew there were limits—safe or not, kids were going to be kids and deserved to get away with a certain amount of hijinks—but he also couldn’t deny how much better he felt knowing Reese was safe. That any possible threat made here could be managed and likely contained.

  Alan busied himself with the monitors and Hoyt could see the date and time changing at the bottom of the screen. “When Belle spoke with the science teacher, he said both spiders were in his classroom as late as Monday afternoon.”

  Alan shook his head. “Let me see what we can find.”

  The retired officer might wish things were different with school security, but Hoyt couldn’t fault him for his ability to quickly move through the tools at his disposal. In a matter of minutes, he had various feeds from around the campus lined up on monitors.

  “I’m going to fast forward through the evening hours for now since we have different alarms set to capture motion around the school after dark.”

  It took another twenty minutes, but by the time he and Alan had reviewed various angles around the school, all they’d seen were adults coming and going from the building. No one looked suspicious or like they didn’t belong. Alan even knew most of them by name.

  “Other than that small group of students here yesterday morning for football practice, not a kid’s been around,” Alan said.

  “And all of those students were confined to the practice field. Not a single one appeared suspicious or to be carrying something he ought not to be?”

  “Not a one.”

  Alan paused the screen and turned to face Hoyt. “Any chance this is just a weird coincidence? Critters can be a problem in this part of Texas. Heck, my wife screamed so loud they heard her in El Paso last weekend when I ran over a snake mowing the lawn.”

  Hoyt knew it was true. It was the reason he wore boots that went up to his calf. Everyone in the Pass shared their home with some unsavory animals and it was useless to pretend otherwise. “I suppose you’re right.” Hoyt picked up his hat off a nearby desk. “I appreciate your time, Alan. I really do.”

  “You can be sure I’ll keep an eye out, though. And an extra one on Miss Grantham.”

  Before Hoyt could add a final word of thanks, the object of his concern filled the doorway to the security office. “And just what has prompted this?”

  Chapter 10

  If there was one thing Reese hated the most about small-town life, it was the endless scrutiny. She’d always loathed being the object of that focused attention, but she did take some small solace when that scrutiny worked out in her favor.

  Or when it at least gave her advance warning of impending doom.

  It had taken Alma Larson all of eighty-seven seconds to alert Jake Walters to the fact that Hoyt Reynolds was nosing around the building, asking to speak to the security office. It had taken him even less time to figure out that the presence of a Reynolds at MPHS was likely associated with Reese and he’d hightailed it down to her classroom to tell her privately before Alma could make much more of the situation.

  After her assistant principal left, Reese had sat quietly and fumed for a few minutes, determined to focus on what she’d come to school to do and finish setting up her classroom. But Hoyt’s unexpected visit, coupled with her mother’s disinterest and even distaste for the subject of becoming a grandmother, already had her raw. What was supposed to be a quiet afternoon for herself, designed to get some of her equilibrium back, had taken a sharp turn off My-Life’s-A-Mess Lane straight into Life-Sucks Ville. And to think she had expected a quiet afternoon at the high school after that disastrous visit to her mother.

  If Alma caught on that Hoyt was somehow involved with her, she might as well kiss her privacy goodbye and put a for-sale sign on her house now. That was still a likely possibility when the PTA ran her out of town with pitchforks once its members discovered they had a young, unwed, soon-to-be single mother on their teaching roster.

  Which was the only reason she’d stayed in her classroom for twenty-seven additional minutes after Jake departed before rushing down to Officer Zacks’s office. It still prickled her that they even had to have a security center, but she pushed that ongoing grumble aside as she marched into the small room where she’d learned to use a computer and which now served as Security Central at Midnight Pass High School.

  The object of her ire was there, just as rumored, leaning over a computer monitor with sweet Officer Zacks. Although the older man had told her to call him Alan more times than she could count, she still remembered him as Officer Zacks, a man who her father had always respected and worked under during his early days on the force. She’d grown up seeing him around town, and calling him by his first name seemed weird and disrespectful. Yet another by-product of small-town life.

  Everyone knew everyone and even becoming an adult didn’t guarantee you
felt like one on the inside.

  “Hi, Reese.” Alan waved her in, his expression serious. “Hoyt here was just telling me about that situation with a spider on your front porch.”

  She avoided shooting eye daggers at Hoyt—just barely—and kept her smile firmly in place for Officer Zacks. “I think Mr. Reynolds has made a bit too much of this.”

  “Maybe, maybe not.” Alan pointed to the screen. “But I take seriously anyone who would steal while on school grounds and, creepy or not, that animal is Fred McNamara’s property.”

  “Of course.”

  Reese wasn’t quite ready to back down, but Alan did have a point. Moving farther into the room, she kept her gaze focused on the screens. “Did you find anything?”

  “No.” Hoyt spoke first, his frustration more than evident in that lone syllable. What really got her, though, was the sullen, oddly defeated set of his shoulders. He stood there, so stiff and straight she could practically see the tension quivering off him like heat waves.

  “Well, I still say it’s kids pulling a prank,” she started in, convinced if she said it often enough she could make it true. “I know we have cameras and I’m grateful for you taking a look into this, but I think we’re going to have to chalk this up to summer hijinks and leave it at that.”

  Alan Zacks nodded. “Don’t think I won’t still be keeping an eye out.”

  “I appreciate that,” she assured him before nodding to Hoyt. “If we’re done here, I’d like to borrow Hoyt for a few minutes. I have a high spot on my bulletin board I can’t reach and you’ve shown up just in time. Room one forty-two.”

  “Of course.”

  Reese waved and headed out, more than anxious to avoid any possible lurking from Alma. It was only when she cleared the left turn for her classroom’s hallway that she let out her first easy breath.

  Why was Hoyt making such a big deal out of this? And why did he refuse to accept her explanation that it was likely just a prank? It was almost like he was trying to make the scare on her front porch more than it was.

  And why are you trying to make it less?

  That light nudge from her conscience grew in intensity as she thought of her child. At the idea that she was downplaying a threat, she laid a protective hand over her still-flat midsection and gave Hoyt’s concerns a moment to roost.

  Could someone be trying to hurt her?

  It seemed far-fetched, but it wasn’t impossible. There were a lot of crazies out there and her father’s actions had ensured the name Grantham was known across Texas and even the US. Had she taken things too lightly, believing the fuss would die down as the news cycle continued its relentless tide?

  “I haven’t been here in years. This is old Mrs. Sinestra’s classroom, isn’t it?”

  Reese shifted from contemplating the parking lot through the window and thoughts of the mysterious threat that possibly lurked and turned to find six feet two inches of cowboy standing in her classroom doorway. Goodness, did he practice that pose? Casual, with a side of lazy grace to top it off?

  Helpless to resist, her gaze traveled from the top of his wide-brimmed hat, over the firm lines of his jaw, down over the blue button-down shirt that had to add thirty degrees in the August heat. Her perusal continued, over the slim hips, the distressed denim that fit those hips like a glove and on down to the boots. Pointy-toed and well-worn, they were the boots of a man who knew what he was about. A man who worked hard and had a body to show for it.

  And good Lord, when had she grown so fanciful that all she could imagine was grabbing handfuls of chambray, pulling him close against her and losing herself in all that strength?

  This was a special brand of hormone-induced madness; one that heightened the senses, even as it dulled every bit of impulse restraint she possessed. And she well knew she couldn’t even blame it on the baby. Oh, no. Hoyt Reynolds managed to rile up her hormones all by his lonesome, sexy self.

  Once more imagining the wagging tongue of Alma Larson, Reese pulled herself out of the fantasy of losing herself in big strong arms and settled into the matter at hand.

  “Thanks for coming to help me.” Reese pointed to the back of her classroom. “I would appreciate an extra pair of hands on the very top of that bulletin board.”

  “I didn’t realize you were here.”

  “Would it have stopped you from coming?” Reese knew damn well when she was putting her personal shields up and this conversation certainly warranted that. Add on the fact that her hormones were still racing around her bloodstream with all the finesse of a cat in heat, and she needed all the help she could get.

  “Hardly. But I’d have come in to say hi first and tell you what I was about.”

  “My car’s out in the driveway.”

  “I’m around the side in visitor parking. I didn’t see your car.”

  “Oh.”

  Hoyt stepped fully into the classroom, closing the thick metal door behind him with a hard snick. “I’m worried about you and, whether you get all prickly about it or not, I’m not going to change my mind. I’m going to see to it that you’re safe.”

  “Even if I think you’re making much too big a deal about all this.” She waved a hand to encompass the all this and was surprised when Hoyt reached out, neatly capturing that hand in his larger one.

  “If all this is worrying about you and my child then yes, all this.” He leaned closer, his lips hovering near to her forehead as his voice dropped to a softer, lower register. “If that makes me overprotective and overbearing, I’m willing to accept it. I’ve certainly been called overbearing before and I’m sure I will be again.”

  “And overprotective?”

  His voice remained low and he stood in place, close but not so close that his lips were against her skin. It was only when he used his thumb to stroke against the back of her hand that she let a distinct shiver roll down her spine. “It’s a new one for me.”

  “It’s a waste of time.”

  “Oh, I don’t know about that. I find I sort of like it.”

  “What if I don’t?”

  “Then I’d say you’d better find a way to get used to it.”

  Reese wanted to push back. She wanted to rant and rail and all-around piss and moan about his bossy ways and his sudden territorial takeover of her life.

  She wanted to do all those things.

  But she didn’t. Instead, she stood there, their faces not quite touching, and reveled in the warm moment. And allowed herself the fantasy that maybe the father of her child cared about her just a little bit.

  * * *

  Belle Granger was used to taking charge. It was an expected part of her job as a member of the Midnight Pass Police Department, and it had been ingrained in her at an even younger age as she lived the life of a child of an addict. Her mother’s alcoholism had ensured that Belle knew how to cook dinner, pay bills and basically act as the grown-up in their relationship by the time she was ten.

  That same relationship had ensured she saw far more than she let on to others, and she wasn’t afraid to confront someone to hash it out.

  And right now, Reese Grantham was at the top of her list.

  She’d given things time to settle, especially after Reese got the full-court press Tuesday night over dinner at the Reynolds ranch house. Dinner with the four Reynolds siblings could shake anyone, no matter how firm their foundation, but Belle knew Reese was on a bit of shaky ground. A surprise baby with a man she wasn’t exactly in a relationship with could do that to a woman.

  Which bugged Belle, too, and she’d already started working on Tate over that one. What was wrong with his brother? He might have the hardest head in south Texas, but couldn’t Hoyt see how perfect Reese was for him?

  Tate had done his level best to shut her up with steamy kisses and some distracting kitchen sex, but she’d won out in the end, pushing and poking at him until he fi
nally gave in and agreed to talk to his little brother again.

  Score one, Granger. Score zero, Reynolds.

  Unless, she admitted to herself with a sly smile, you acknowledged just how well they both scored.

  With memories of outstanding kitchen sex still humming in her veins, Belle rang Reese’s doorbell. A little Friday afternoon visit was in order and she wasn’t leaving until she said what she had to.

  And saw to it that Reese fully understood she had a support system that wasn’t going anywhere.

  “Belle!” Reese gestured her into the house, her smile wide. “It’s good to see you.”

  Belle didn’t miss the momentary puzzlement that stamped itself on Reese’s face, nor the quick efforts she made to hide her surprise. “I’m sorry to just drop in but I’ve been wanting to visit and when I hit the wall on paperwork, I figured it was the universe telling me it was time to go visit my friend.”

  “Does that mean you’re off duty?”

  “Technically, yes.”

  “Then can I offer you some wine? It’s getting lonely on my shelf all by itself and it’ll give me a chance to stare at you longingly as you drink it. Maybe a few of those tannins will even waft in my direction if I breathe deep enough.”

  Belle took the reference to Reese’s pregnancy in stride, secretly pleased the woman had given her such an easy entrée. “Sounds perfect.”

  She’d been to Reese’s home several times and had always enjoyed the cozy feeling she got when she was there. Everything was neatly in its place, yet that sense of order couldn’t detract from the pervasive sense of welcome.

  As Belle meandered into the kitchen, Reese already had a bottle out of a small wine rack built into the lower side of her cabinets and was fitting a corkscrew into the top.