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Wake chose to use our proximity to throw his arm around my shoulder, and I had to fight a different sort of anxiety.
This time, at the way his body felt pressed to mine, and the way his smell seemed to permeate all of my senses.
“Where were you last night from the hours of eight in the evening to eleven?” Sheriff Graydon asked smugly.
That’s when I knew I was about to be drug into this with Wake. I all but felt the thought spark into his brain, then he was pulling me in tighter to his body, his hold becoming more of a ‘hold’ and less of a ‘help.’ Which was what he was doing. He’d seen my silent freak out at the appearance of the sheriff, and he’d been trying to calm me down so I didn’t do or say something that might tip the man off.
“I was with her.” Wake grinned wickedly. “We were on a road trip.”
I cursed inwardly but luckily had years and years of practice to conceal my emotions.
Wake Westfield knew about last night.
Had he been serious about me marrying him?
God. Dammit.
I knew Wake Westfield was trouble.
CHAPTER 11
What do you call two crows sitting on a park bench? Attempted murder.
-Wake to Dutch
WAKE
I could all but feel the way she tensed up completely at my side.
Not in a way that her appearance changed, but definitely in the way her muscles felt underneath my arm and against my left side.
Her hand snuck underneath the fabric of my shirt. Then she pinched me on the love handle. Hard.
I didn’t react, but my heart practically sang.
I loved that she wasn’t going to roll over and die.
That she was going to roll with this.
Even if she rolled and clawed at me the entire way.
I couldn’t fuckin’ wait.
“You were… what?” Sheriff Graydon hadn’t been expecting that.
My usual MO was me hanging out by myself because I didn’t have a job, friends, or a life, for that matter.
The last ten times he’d come out here, I’d been alone. I’d had to show him my security cam footage of me being on the property for him to leave me alone.
Though Dutch didn’t need to know that. All she needed to know was that I needed an alibi, and she was going to be it.
Tit for tat, after all.
She squirmed underneath my arm, and I knew that she was pissed as hell.
“Why were you contacting me?” I asked curiously. “Something happen?”
Sheriff Graydon looked offended that I spoke to him at all.
God, the man was annoying as hell.
I couldn’t wait until we found someone to run against him, and replace his old, stubborn, making shit up, ass.
“There was a disappearance,” he said.
I blinked. “A what?”
“A disappearance,” he repeated.
I blinked again. “Okay… and you felt that I was complicit in this disappearance because?”
“Because,” he hesitated. “It was once alleged that he was involved in assaulting his child.” He spoke rapidly. “Even though he didn’t do it.”
“Well, who is this person?” I asked. “And sorry, but I really was with her last night. We were riding around the Bay roads. Went to my sister’s place. There’s camera footage if you want to see it.”
Of me.
I had actually gone out last night after I’d gotten home from watching Dutch.
I’d driven out to my sister’s restaurant, DJ’s, and helped out with a burst pipe that’d occurred in the middle of the night. I’d been there for over four hours.
“Of course, you have an alibi and camera footage.” Graydon almost sounded petulant as he spoke. “Didn’t think you’d stoop so low as to bring an actual good person into your den of sin, though.”
Dutch stiffened. “I’m sorry, but what, exactly, are you still doing here if you’ve received his alibi, and know that he wasn’t wherever you must’ve wanted him to be…”
“Texas,” Graydon said. “The senator disappeared from Texas.”
I all but clamped my arm around Dutch’s shoulder to keep her exactly where she was.
What were the fuckin’ odds?
“Certainly didn’t have time to go to Texas,” I lied. After I’d gotten home from watching over Dutch, I’d then spent the night at DJ’s so Dan could keep the kids at home and in bed. I’d only gotten home an hour and a half ago, actually. Where I’d then gone on a run. Which I had proof of, too, thanks to the new fancy watch that my sister had bought me for a birthday gift last week.
“I’ll get you for something, Westfield. And when I do, you’ll go down for life this time,” Graydon promised.
That’s when Dutch snapped out of her stupor.
“I think that’s a threat.” Dutch looked at him with anger in her eyes. Goddamn, she was sexy as hell.
Today, she was wearing a black skirt, a black T-shirt, and black tennis shoes.
I was really digging the all-black thing.
Not only did it look sexy as hell on her curvy frame, but it also seemed to highlight her shock of red hair.
