Outside, the cold winter night pressed against the windows, heavy with frost. Inside, the heat hummed, and I was stripped down to skin and nerves, with the image of a man I shouldn’t want lingering like smoke in the room.
And for one dangerous second, it felt almost like warmth.
CHAPTER 18
HARLAN - TIGHTEN THE BOLTS
The station lights flickered again. Third time this week.
If I believed in signs, I might’ve taken that as one.
Instead, I muttered a curse under my breath and went back to fiddling with the stack of index cards in my hand, the bare bones of a speech I wasn’t even sure I wanted to give.
Outside, a thin rain tapped at the windows. Not the heavy kind that broke branches, but the kind that blurred the world at the edges, that turned the gravel lot into mud and made the air smell like wet earth. Spring was coming, you could feel it in the air, but winter hadn’t loosened its grip yet. That limbo season. Too raw to be warm, too restless to stay cold.
I had no business planning a fundraiser.
I wasn’t a politician. I wasn’t a glad-handing sheriff in a western. I was just a guy who stepped into his father’s boots before they stopped smelling like grief and gasoline.
But Remi had planted the idea like it was obvious. Natural.
And damn it, once she said it, I couldn’t stop turning it over in my head.
“Looks like a hostage note,” her voice called out behind me.
I turned and there she was, standing in the doorway like she owned the room. Sundress under a worn denim jacket, her wild hair damp at the ends from the drizzle, a paper coffee cup warming her hands. Her smile was half amusement, half challenge.
“I thought you had clinic hours,” I said.
“I swapped with Ava. Figured I’d swing by and make sure you weren’t planning to open this fundraiser with a lecture on traffic codes.”
I held up the index cards before tossing them on my desk. “They’re colour coded.”
She snorted and dropped into the chair across from me. “Even worse than I thought.”
Her gaze skimmed the cards, not touching, not rearranging, just... reading the shape of my panic like it was written in neon.
“How nervous are you?” she asked.
“Somewhere between a root canal and a colonoscopy.”
“Charming, Chief.”
She sipped her coffee, and I waited.
“You’ll be fine,” she said finally. “Start with a story. Make it personal. Then tell them why it matters.”
“That easy, huh?”
She shrugged. “You’re not trying to impress them. You’re trying to remind them they give a damn.”
I rubbed the back of my neck. “You know what the real problem is?”
Her eyes sharpened. “Go on.”
“I’ve got MCs throwing punches in parking lots... starting wars on back roads, cartel whispers circling the border, trafficking rumours I can’t pin down, and half my team acting like every complaint is a personal insult. This town doesn’t need a fundraiser. It needs a damn miracle.”
“The MC stuff... getting worse?” she asked.
