Page 53 of Nixon’s Promise

Duke barked from somewhere in the house and I glanced over at the large-faced clock hanging on the wall in the kitchen. The kids were home.

We were finishing up the huge plate of nachos I’d made us for lunch. This was after Nixon had held me for a good long while in my bed while he told me about his morning.

He’d called his friends and they were on board. Jameson, Chasin, Weston, and Holden were all driving in this evening. Jameson and Holden both still lived in Virginia Beach, Weston lived in West Virginia, and Chasin was coming up from South Carolina.

Selfishly, this worried me. The last few weeks, I’d been living in this weird bubble. Nixon had become a part of my life. Zack’s, too. We’d monopolized a lot of his time. Now that his friends would be in town and they’d be working, I was wondering how much of his time I’d get.

I knew it made me bitchy, thinking that way, but I didn’t want to lose what we’d started. And it felt like this was the beginning of it slipping through my fingers.

We’d come downstairs and he’d asked about my day. While I was making lunch, I filled him in. I’d finally completed the job I’d been working on. I’d sent the email to my client with my invoice attached, right before Nix had shown up. It was a good thing, too. If I wanted to continue to feed all of the animals we’d collected, and the kids, I needed to get paid.

The inheritance from my parents was sitting in an account for Zack and Mandy. There was no way I could afford to send them to college, so that money would go to their education. As well as making sure they had what they needed to concentrate on their studies and not working.

This of course pissed Mandy off. She thought I should be using it to keep her in the latest trendy clothes, expensive cell phones, and a new car. That wasn’t going to happen.

Nixon had just finished telling me about the sheriff following him to my house. I didn’t have a good feeling about this. We lived in a small town and if one cop had it out for you, they all did.

“What a dick,” I told Nixon.

“Yep.”

The back door opened and Mandy and Zack strode in. I braced for today’s drama and Mandy didn’t disappoint.

“I got pulled over,” she announced.

“What? Where?” I inquired.

“I was passing the park, right by the old rec building where the recycling bins are. Everyone knows you don’t speed there. It’s a thirty zone. You go thirty. A cop is always either in the driveway of the old park and rec building or at the park. I was going thirty. And I still got pulled over. It was so embarrassing. Everyone from school was driving by.”

Both of her hands were on her hips and she looked like she was getting ready to launch into an all-out teenage girl snit.

My gaze slid to Zack and he looked pissed, not embarrassed.

“She was going thirty,” he confirmed. “No reason to pull her over.”

“Who was it?”

Three sets of eyes swung to Nixon. Oh, boy, he looked madder than he’d sounded.

“What?” Mandy asked.

“The cop. Town, state trooper, or county sheriff?”

“Oh. County sheriff. His name badge said Clifford.”

“Did he write you a ticket?”

Mandy shook her head.

“A warning?”

Again, she gestured in the negative.

“He took her license, registration, proof of insurance back to his car. He came back a few minutes later, told her he was giving her a verbal warning. The way he said it gave me the creeps. He didn’t tell her to slow down. Didn’t even tell her why he pulled her over. He said, this is your only verbal warning. Then walked away. He didn’t even tell her to have a nice day. He was a total dick.”

I must note, through Zack’s retelling of the story, Nixon had gone from mad to furious. So furious, in fact, I was afraid of what he was going to do.

“Nixon,” I murmured. His angry eyes came to mine and the words died on my tongue.