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Chapter2
Tate
Hattie smirks as she pulls me over and kisses me on the cheek. “There you are, dear. I’m so happy that you agreed to help out. This festival is going to be so much fun and I want everything to be perfect.”
I nod my head and pull myself out of her clutches as soon as I can. “Hello, Mayor.” I grimace when she shoots me a glare. “I mean, Hattie.”
She smiles and pulls my arm through hers as she turns me to face Ruth. A pale Ruth with just a touch of a fiery rose to her cheeks.
“So I want you two to work together. Is that going to be a problem? I hear you’ve been kinda hard on Miss Jenkins.”
I don’t let her see by even one tiny flinch that I know what she’s talking about. Ruth on the other hand glares at me like she’d like to kick my ass. Her warm brown eyes light up with her thoughts as clearly as if she just told me to go to hell. Her cheeks are flushed so red now that the spray of freckles on her little upturned nose are hidden by the color.
“Hattie? I really don’t think this is a good idea.”
The older lady’s head turns to Ruth and she shoots her a wide, crocodile smile. “I think this is a perfect idea. And I want you two to make up. These tickets are a ridiculous thing, Officer Reynolds.” I flinch and try not to stomp off. “I want you to start getting to know the people of this town and this is a perfect way to meet everyone. And Ruth is a wonderful woman. She’s the most organized person in town. So I know she’ll do an amazing job. And this gives you the chance to get to know her so that you can freaking apologize for the stupid tickets you keep giving her. I know you’ve given your tickets to some other people in town but by far, you’ve hammered her the worst. I can’t quite figure it out since Ruth has never hurt anyone in her life and you’re best friends with her brother. Who is the one who asked me to speak with you two by the way.”
“I’m going to kill Jeremiah,” Ruth mutters. And for once I’m fully in agreement with her. He sicced the mayor on us.
“Not just him. That wonderful girl, Harvey, also asked me to come up with a way for you two to work things out. This is perfect.” A strange light shows up in her eyes. “Don’t you think so?”
Ruth shakes her head, glaring at me like I’m the one that came up with this fucking mess.
Hattie pats me on the back. “I’ve got to go back to the office. But I can trust you two to take care of everything right? Amanda will be in touch with you both with all the information that you need.”
And with that she flounces out of the store and leaves me standing in front of Ruth, tongue-tied and for some reason, so damn shy I can’t say a thing.
Her cinnamon eyes close and she takes a deep breath. Her full pink lips open and close and a strange tingle runs up and down my spine. I can’t stop thinking about her lips and what they’d feel like wrapped around my dick. Which is straining at my pants so hard it feels like I’ve got teeth marks from my zipper.
“Hey!” She snaps slender fingers in front of my face. “Wake the hell up! Why did you agree to this? I don’t want to work with you! Hell, I don’t want to spend any time with you at all!” She stomps off to the back of the jumbled store.
I sigh and follow her. I know this is all my own fault. When I first got here I wanted to make a name for myself and I had a lot of anger issues. I had to leave my last station when I was passed over multiple times for a detective position so I decided that I might have a better shot at detective if I went to a smaller station.
Needless to say, I kinda had a chip on my shoulder and took it out on others. Especially Ruth. For some reason the tiny woman makes me crazy. I can’t decide whether I want to strangle her when she’s yelling at me or I want to kiss her and shut her up.
I wake up every night from dreams. I haven’t had a full night’s sleep since I met her. My dick is hard as a rock from the time I wake up until I wake up the next day. So all the time basically. It’s like a fucking itch I can’t scratch. An unnatural stirring under my skin that’s building day by day. And watching her standing in front of me, her warm, golden-brown eyes sparking flames of desire through me, it’s all I can do not to grab her and yank her to me.
I stalk through the cluttered aisles, tripping over some of the bigger items.
I fall into the swinging door in the back, glancing right and left. I still don’t see Ruth but I can hear movement off to the left. I follow it and find her in the back, carefully studying a golden lamp with an alabaster shade. She plumps her lips up when she sees me but doesn’t look me in the eye.
“I’m sorry about how I’ve been acting since I got here, Ruth.” Her eyes shoot to me and she glares. “Okay…Miss Jenkins. If you ask your brother you’ll find out I wasn’t super nice to him when we met either.”
She turns to face me and I feel swamped under that golden gaze. “And yet, you managed to get past it and be great friends with him. Me? You just kept going. Ticket after ticket.”
I nod my head and run my hands through my dark hair. “I know. I’m afraid that you remind me of somebody. And I guess I haven’t quite gotten past some bad feelings. But I never should have taken it out on you.”
“That’s true.” She pauses and then she looks me in the eye. “Ex?”
“Doesn’t matter. We’ve all got mistakes that we’ve had to get over. But it was stupid of me to treat you so badly.”
She nods her head and her long blond hair shot with fiery red slides on her shoulders, silky-smooth and soft-looking. My fingers itch to touch it, slide it between them and see how soft it is.
I yank myself back to the present. I need to get myself under control because this woman makes me lose it every time I’m near her. I growl, “this place needs to get straightened up. It’s a fire hazard waiting to happen.”
Her lips firm and she glares at me, flames erupting in her warm eyes. “And there’s that sunny attitude that everyone in town just loves.”
The phone rings and she picks it up without looking. “Hello?” she says, holding it on her shoulder while she attempts to set the lamp down without dropping it.
