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“Hey!” she cried incredulously. “What the hell? I was just getting started.”
I snatched her up by the waist and tossed her over my shoulder, giving her lush, naked ass a firm slap. “Shower. Work. We can pick up where we left off later tonight.”
I caught her pout in the mirror as I walked by it. “I’m holding you to that.”
God, this woman was perfect for me in every single way.
* * *
I pulledmy truck up as close to the entrance to the library as I could get. The nasty weather seemed to be holding strong over the Smoky Mountain foothills, and the dark gray sky had already dumped a good amount of rain by the time we left the house earlier.
“You sure you don’t want me to walk you in? It’s really coming down now.”
She giggled as she threw the strap of her purse over her shoulder. “I appreciate that, but I’m more than capable of holding my own umbrella. Besides,” she lifted her shoulder in a shrug, “I love the rain.”
I shook my head good naturedly. “You’re crazy. You know that?”
“And you love me for it.”
I sure as hell did.
Lyric leaned over the console, her lips puckered and waiting for me. I took the kiss she offered before reaching up to touch her face, dragging the pad of my thumb along her cheekbone. “Have a good day, Dove.”
“You too. Catch some bad guys and try to stay dry.” She turned to blow Churro a kiss before throwing the passenger door open on a squeal as a gust of wind blew a stream of rain right into her face. She popped the umbrella open and took off, bolting toward the library doors, and I waited until she was in before throwing my truck into drive and heading to the station.
The rain outside hadn’t lightened any by the time I got there, and sure enough, I spotted a few coffee mugs and cereal bowls placed around the floor in the bullpen to catch the dripping water coming in through the shitty roof.
“This fucking building is a pit,” I grunted with a shake of my head as I put Churro’s setup together under my desk. She turned in a circle in her tiny bed a few times before dropping down and promptly falling asleep.
“It has some issues, sure. But I think it also has character,” Hernandez said.
Sheffield snorted. “What character? The place looks like something you’d expect to see in a porno from the 70s.”
I snorted just as I took a pull of coffee from the travel mug I was carrying. It was an apt description to say the least. “Jesus, Shef. Give a guy some warning, would you?”
She shrugged unrepentantly. “I mean, come on! The carpet issticky. Why the hell is the carpet sticky, huh? I don’t know about you guys, but I personally find that disturbing as shit.”
Hernandez hit me with a shit-eating grin as he leaned back and kicked his boots up on his desk. “Who knows. When boss man here takes over, maybe he’ll think of a way for us to give this place a facelift.”
Normally I would have rolled my eyes or grunted about how I wasn’t their boss. But after the talk I’d had with Lyric the night before, I was seeing things in a whole new light.
With Churro settled, I made my way across the bullpen and stopped in front of the sheriff’s office, lifting my hand to rap my knuckles against the dated, flimsy particle board door.
“Come in,” his gruff baritone called out.
I pushed the door open and stepped across the threshold. “Hey, Sheriff. You got a minute?”
He sat back in his chair, lacing his fingers together and laying them across his protruding gut. “Depends on what you gotta say? Is it gonna piss me off? ’Cause I haven’t had my mornin’ coffee yet.”
I closed the door to give us some privacy and lowered myself into one of the chairs in front of his desk. “I’ve thought about it, and I’m gonna run for sheriff,” I announced.
His chair let out an ominous squeal as he leaned even farther back and pushed out a huge gust of air. “Thank fuckin’ Christ. You’ve been driving me up the goddamn wall, taking your sweet time with this decision. ’Cause of the stress you’ve put me through, I’ve got about a million extra gray hairs and another fifteen pounds.”
I was pretty sure the gray hair was due to the fact the guy was in his sixties, and as far as the extra fifteen pounds, I refused to accept blame for that when the company that stocks our vending machines has to come in twice as often as normal because of his penchant for jumbo honey buns.
But I wasn’t going to say any of that.
“Sorry for stressing you out. I just needed to think things through. It was a big decision to make.” One that, until my talk with Lyric, I didn’t think I deserved. But she managed to help me pull my head out of my ass so I could see things clearly. This was my calling. I was meant for this, and I’d bust my ass for this town and the people in it. I’d do the job to the very best of my ability, but I’d also be mindful of what Lyric had said about being fair to myself.
