Hayes nodded. Better now that you’re here.
Obviously, done with the fatherly lesson he’d come to give, Dad tipped the rim of his cowboy hat at Maisie. “I better be on my way.” To Hayes, he added, “You’ll think about what I said?”
Hayes inclined his head as his answer, instead of flat-out refusing. His life as a cop was in his past. No going back.
Once his father’s SUV was halfway down the driveway, Maisie whistled. “Wow. The tension between you two was near stifling. What’s up?”
Hayes gestured for Maisie to follow him over to the Adirondack chairs on the small stone patio near the flower garden. “He wants me to come work for him.”
She sat next to him, her eyebrows raising over her sparkling baby blues. “I had no idea you were considering being a cop again.”
“I’m not,” he clarified, stretching out his legs, resting a boot on the big rocks around the firepit. “My father thinks I’m wasting myself at the horse farm or determined to kill myself.”
“You won’t hear me disagreeing with him there.”
Hayes’s brows shot up. “You think he’s right?”
She gave a little shrug. “Only someone looking to punish themselves would take the risks you do.”
Most times he liked that Maisie always cut through the bullshit. Whatever came to her mind came out of her mouth. For him, being so tightlipped, he found her openness refreshing. Only he didn’t much like it directed at him. “I’m not punishing myself.”
She gave him a knowing look. “What would you call it, then?”
“Doing the job no one else wants to do,” he managed.
She snorted a laugh. “Yeah, because it’s really dangerous, and seeing that you’re doing it without wearing full body gear like Beckett told you to, I’d say you’re doing it to hurt yourself.”
“You think I’d hurt myself on purpose?”
“Yes.”
He recoiled. “Seriously?”
She gave a firm nod. “Sometimes when we hurt inside and can’t deal with that, we make our outsides hurt instead.” She glanced away and changed the subject. “Do you think you’ll ever go back to the force?”
He still reeled from her earlier statement and barely managed, “No.”
“That was a quick answer.”
He shrugged. “I don’t need to think about it. Being a cop was another life.”
“Did you tell your father that?”
Hayes nodded. “He just happens to disagree with me.”
She watched him a long moment. “Well, I knew you as a cop, and I know you now, and you know what?”
“Do I even want to know?”
Her smile filled the hollowest parts of his chest. “I liked you as a cop. And I like you as a horse trainer, even if I seriously question your sanity. So, I say you just keep doing you. Your dad will simply have to deal.”
Hayes felt the tension slowly melt away. “Want to tell him that?”
“Ha,” she said with a grin. “Don’t dare me. You totally know I would.”
Yeah, she would. Nothing stopped her, even when faced with a situation where she knew she might not come out on top. “I’m afraid of what you’d do if you unleashed on him. My father hasn’t met honest Maisie.”
“He probably wouldn’t like her,” she agreed with a laugh. “You know, you being the son of police chief and all, I’d probably get in a whole lot of trouble.”