AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Quickly looking away, I could already feel her charms working their magic on me, and I wasn’t ready to like her yet. Dammit. But somebody needed to clue my subconscious into that stubborn fact.
Plus, she was totally checking me out. I could feel her eyes on me as we made our way to the highway through town, and it wasn’t the first time.
And fine, I’d checked her out too. She had legs for days. She was at least half a foot taller than me, with an athletic build. She was strong but thin. I wondered if she worked out to stay in shape for her job. Or maybe she had just been born naturally perfect.
I’d seen her in action several times, not including the two times she’d hauled me to the station. Which was why I still held a grudge. Okay, fine, so I didn’t have a permit when I tried to hold a gay rights protest in front of the sporting goods store owned by the local jerkoff curmudgeon, Red Graves, and she did warn us that morning not to block the fire hydrant. Technically, she could have just issued a fine, but then I went and ran my mouth. Apparently, calling the sheriff a “good ol’ boy suck-up” was grounds for arrest. He never charged me formally. Mostly, he used it as a “time-out” for the loud-mouth contrarian I was proud to be.
Only in Wisper, Wyoming.
But the second time was one-hundred-percent unjustified. That jackass Red made it his mission to catch me in front of his store every time I walked past, just to argue with me and cause problems. He called me a carpet muncher, so I socked him one. I couldn’t reach his face, so I punched him in the gut. And then Abey was there, appearing out of nowhere to slap cuffs around my wrists, and she threw me in the same holding cell she’d stuck me in the first time.
Another time-out. But whatever. Red deserved it.
But every time I ran into her in town, I remembered the two times she’d had her hands on my shoulders as she led me to jail. There was no way for me to forget because she was always stopping by my job. Her boss thought she was a better choice to help us deal with the troubled teenagers and the few women who’d come to Ace’s House to escape bad home situations or abusive marriages.
I couldn’t complain about Abey then. She was helpful, and I knew it had to be more comfortable for the women to talk to her than it would’ve been for them to talk to Sheriff Michaels or Deputy Sims ’cause they were both extremely male. Frank Sims was like a big boulder that patrolled Wisper in his truck, oozing testosterone out of his manly pores.
Abey was the better choice in those situations by a mile, and she really did have a beautiful soul, always ready and willing to help people in need. She’d volunteered more than once to help out with some of the fundraisers we’d held over the last couple of years.
It was annoying, in a super sweet, totally endearing way.
And her smile itself? Drop-dead gorgeous. Her lips were the softest shade of pink I’d ever seen, like the lightest pink peony petal.
And behind her friendly eyes and the lazy tilt of her lips, there was a ferociousness inside her. But she never let it out. At least not that I’d ever seen. She could joke with the raunchiest of men, she never seemed to be in a serious mood, and she made light of things in hard situations if it wasn’t inappropriate.
Maybe that was how she dealt with difficult things, by trying to lighten the darkness they often brought.
The sexiest thing about her, though, was her belief in and passion for justice. I kind of felt bad that I had been on the wrong end of that conviction a couple times.
We had that in common, though my belief in justice was what paid her salary. It was why I kept getting locked up. So far, I hadn’t gotten into too much trouble, and nobody’d pressed charges. Although, if I pushed my luck much further, I wasn’t sure my boss would have my back. He was still mad at me for punching a fellow Wisper business owner. And it didn’t help that The Red Wild Outdoors sat directly across Main Street from Ace’s House.
“So why didn’t your date drive you home?” I asked, hoping she’d keep talking and I wouldn’t keep thinking about the color of her eyes, or her hair, or how I wanted to know what it would feel like to swipe my thumb slowly over that perfectly pink bottom lip.
“Well, probably ’cause I ran outta there quicker than a cat in a dog storm.”
I laughed. I couldn’t help myself. “Why?”
“Well, first, she pronounced my name wrong even though we had a whole conversation over the phone about it. And second, she was wearin’ these fake eyelashes. It was all I could see when I looked at her, like big ol’ spiders were takin’ over her eyes.”
I snorted. I could picture it, a tarantula over each eye, its legs dangling down. “How did she pronounce your name?”
“She called me Abby.”
“That happens to me too. When people see my full name, spelled D-E-V-O-N-A, they assume it sounds like ‘Dev-vona’ instead of ‘Dee-vona’. Pretty common mistake. And then instead of Dee-vo, they call me ‘Dev-vo’.” I rolled my eyes. Who would go by the name ‘Dev-vo’?
Abey nodded. “It’s annoyin’. I didn’t think it was too much for me to expect her to get that right.”
Huh. Something we had in common. Go figure.
“My friend Millie wears fake lashes,” I said, “but hers are subtle.”
“Yeah, my sister-in-law used to wear ’em, too, when she and my brother would go out dancin’. Sometimes, when I’d stop by the house in the mornin’, they’d be stuck to her cheek like some weird spiny bug.”
A giggle slipped through my lips, and I had to admit, “You’re funny.”
“Been accused of worse,” she said, smiling, and relaxed back against the seat. It felt like such an odd thing to see her loosening up around me when, not even an hour ago, I’d been convinced I hated her guts. But from what little I knew about her, that was just Abey, and feeling her relax beside me made me feel more at ease too.
I still felt her eyes on me, though, as we took the turn onto Route 20 and drove into the darkness. Silence had descended between us, but it felt like she wanted to talk.
