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I can’t get away with those kinds of outbursts. I need to do a better job of controlling myself. Besides, Thompson’s right. Detective’s daughters are off limits and that includes me.
I round a corner and stop when I see a commotion going on in an alleyway to my left. I frown and when I get closer, my frown turns into an expression of shock that almost immediately turns to anger.
McKenzie stands in the alleyway with two men dressed in the typical slovenly bad boy outfit of violent insecure tweens who think they look tough in ragged hoodies and jeans three sizes too big for them. She stands with her back on the wall of the alley, looking down at her feet and hugging her arms to her chest. She is dressed in a skirt that is shorter than most panties with stiletto heels and a tight halter top that clearly shows off her incredible upper body. She never dresses this way. Ah… there’s a long jacket on the ground by the men.
She’s dressed like she’s advertising herself and these men are responding to that advertisement and not accepting any other answers. I park next to the alley so I block the exit and step out of the car. I don’t put the light on the top of the car and I don’t turn it on. I don’t want them to know I’m a cop until it’s too late.
The taller of the two men looks at me. When he sees me, he smiles non-threateningly and says, “Hey, Officer, nothing to worry about here. I’m just taking my sister home.”
“She’s not your sister, shit face,” I say.
He frowns and opens his mouth to speak, but my fist connects with his jaw before he can say anything more. He hits the ground with a thud and remains motionless. His companion shows signs of at least one or two working brain cells when he sprints past me, leaping onto my car’s hood, sliding across, and taking off down the street.
I turn to McKenzie, who looks at me with a worshipful expression that does nothing to help me control my feelings for her. “Are you hurt?” I ask.
She shakes her head and I say, “Use words to answer me, McKenzie.”
I don’t change my tone or put any kind of command in my voice, but she gasps and blushes and her tone of voice when she says, “No, Grant, I’m not hurt,” betrays an attraction to me that I can’t acknowledge.
So, I don’t acknowledge it. I decide that she doesn’t feel what she so obviously feels and there’s no reason for me to think about it anymore.
That works about as well as I might imagine it does and there’s a little more irritation in my voice when I say, “What happened? What the hell were you doing with these guys?”
McKenzie hangs her head and shrugs, her lip pooched out in a pout. “I was just having fun. I was at the eighteen-plus club up the street and these guys said they had some alcohol for me, so I followed them outside.”
I need to address that, but I don’t address it right away because the kid I knocked out begins to stir and moan. I look down at him with disgust before I reach down and lift him to his feet.
“Get in the goddamned car, Mack,” I say as I drag him that direction, “And get your damned jacket.”
At the car, though, I let him go. If I bring him along, I’ll need to bring him to the station. If I bring him to the station, that means McKenzie comes along. I’ll be damned if she catches hell about this from Hank. I’ll be damned if she catches hell about this from anyone…but me.
Chapter 2
McKenzie
This isn’t the first time Grant Stone saves me. It isn’t even the thousandth time. Of course, it’s the first time he does it in the real world and not in my idle daydreams or far less idle night dreams. What do you call the kinds of dreams that you intentionally manufacture in your head while you…
Okay, I’m embarrassing myself.
Let’s just say this is the first time he actually saves me, but I have a great many fantasies that all start out with him rescuing me from this danger or that danger. My repertoire includes hostage situations, near misses from busses and trains, kidnappings, and unrest in the streets. I occasionally think about being lost in the woods only to see his perfect form crest a hill to rescue me. When the heroines in the books I read are rescued by the heroes, I am the heroine and Grant Stone is always the hero.
In all my daydreams, night dreams, and other dreams, something always follows my rescue.
I can say if you somehow magically see all of my fantasies from start to finish one right after the other. I’d end up embarrassed about the adolescent schoolgirl rom-com stuff, giggly about the more recent contemporary romance inclinations, and utterly horrified that anyone knows about the fantasies that involve post-rescue activity far more fit for movies with titles likeEighteen-Year-Old Girl Fucked Hard by CoporTeen Services Older Man.
Yeah, I sometimes watch those movies. Whenever I do, I think of Grant. I think of Grant and imagine myself in those movies. I certainly don’t have any experience of my own to imagine. That’s doubly dumb if you consider that I don’t have the skinny, perfect bodies of any of the girls in those movies. Nice people call me curvy or voluptuous. Mean people call me, well, much meaner things. Go ahead and really think of me as stupid but I’m saving myself for him.
Or my husband, I guess, if I ever finally accept that I can’t have Grant…an admission of sanity that won’t come anytime soon.
But in all the fantasy rescues, all the times I owe Grant Stone my life, not once do I imagine that what happens next is me waiting nervously and guiltily in the passenger seat and hoping like hell my father doesn’t find out about the rescue.
My God, I’m stupid!
I know I ought to feel stupid for putting myself in that situation. I’d like to say that’s why I feel stupid now but if I do, I’ll be lying. I mean, I guess it’s fair to say it never occurs to me a guy might want a girl like me. I mean, I guess in general I don’t imagine anyone having ulterior, sexual motives when I’m the girl in question. Still, I know I ought to feel stupid about that. I don’t. It’s another reason. I feel stupid because my nipples are hard as hell despite my nervousness as I think about the way Grant’s body moved, how he dealt with… with… My God, I don’t even know those guys’ names! I put myself in danger with guys I don’t know and my reaction is just to consider how images of Grant rescuing me will provide fresh, new direction to fantasies when I manage to get some time alone.
“Get up and out of the car, Mack,” Grant says, opening the door to his place, not mine. It makes me hope he’s not going to tell my dad. He’s the only person who calls me Mack. I don’t know why he settles on that. My parents call me by my full name. I’m Kenzie to my friends.
I stare at him for a second and then ask, “What happens next?”
