AllFreeNovel
Share Us
I glare down at the palm pressing against my chest before looking up at Walker. There’s a warning in his eyes.
“I’ll have the cook remake your dinner. I expected you sooner.”
“Don’t worry about it. I’m not hungry.”
“A man in uniform needs dinner just as much as the next person,” Walker says, his choice of words hitting me right where they’re intended.
I’m on the clock, technically working for the city right now. Beating the shit out of someone in front of witnesses wouldn’tbe received well. The climate surrounding cops isn’t the greatest, and I’ve always prided myself in being part of a team that takes its oath to serve and protect very seriously. I didn’t even rough up that man who was hurting his wife the way I really wanted to. He made it to jail with no injuries, even though his wife was sitting in the hospital with a broken arm and enough fear that she didn’t want to press charges.
I swallow before speaking.
“I need something else.”
“So not the burger and fries? We have chicken strips, and I think there might be some corn dogs in the freezer if you—”
“Whiskey,” I snap. “A full bottle.”
His eyes dart back down to the badge pinned on the left side of my uniform. “I don’t think that’s a good idea.”
“I’ll take it with me.”
“That’s illegal, champ.”
“Leave it on the back stoop,” I tell him, locking eyes with Adalynn when she diverts her attention from her date.
He looks over his shoulder, and it surprises me that I don’t recognize him. Normally, Adalynn wouldn’t give an outsider her attention. She’s the most Lindell-loyal person I know.
Something flashes in her eyes, but I’m in no position in my anger to recognize it. She’s either upset that I’m here in the first place or she’s feeling a little bad about getting caught.
Either way, it doesn’t matter.
“The whiskey, Walker,” I growl before turning around to walk out of the bar.
“I love a man in uniform,” a woman says, blocking my path to the door. “For when you get off shift.”
I don’t stop her when she pushes a slip of paper into my pocket. If she had reached into my right pocket, just below my firearm, I might have had to put my hands on her, but she mustbe truthful about her uniform fetish because she keeps to my left side.
The paper goes in the outside trash the second I leave the bar. I’ve never had time for badge bunnies, and even with the way I feel right now, I don’t plan on entertaining the idea of them.
I wait by my patrol car, the stench still permeating the inside. I watch as light flashes in the back, telling me that the back door opened and closed, before heading back there.
I feel like a complete asshole when I get around the back and see the Styrofoam clam shell sitting beside the bottle of whiskey. I put Walker in a position that could make him lose his livelihood and instead of refusing me, he also included my dinner.
That regret doesn’t stop me from scooping up both items and going back to my patrol car. I radio out to the sheriff department’s dispatch when I pull up in my driveway.
I’m off tomorrow, and I have every intention of spending it with the worst hangover this bottle will give me. I put the dinner Walker left me in the fridge because I don’t want a damn thing keeping me from punishing myself for how fucked up I let things get with Adalynn.
Chapter 36
Adalynn
Making a plan and following through with a plan are two very different things, I realize, when I sneeze the second I step into the small animal rescue that Corbin McBride has with his veterinary clinic.
My plan was simple. If I was going to be the woman who stays single for her entire life, then it’s only right to do it as a cat lady.
Apparently, the allergies I had to pet dander didn’t get the memo.
“Are you okay?” Claire asks when I press my nose into the crook of my arm.
