Trouble (B-Squad 2.75)

"Thanks, Lexie."

"Catch you next time you're in Fort Worth," she said. "I want all the details about Mr. Big Dick with a good voice."

Drew's eyebrow arched. "I have a name, you know."

"And a hot official photo too, Sheriff Drew Jackson," Lexie said with a laugh.

"Never get a job in the real world, Lexie." Leah shook her head, wondering not for the first time how Lexie—a legitimate Texas heiress and all around quirk fest—had ever ended up at B-Squad Investigations and Security. "You'd be fired in a heartbeat."

"Probably. Toodles, kids."

After Lexie hung up, she and Drew sat and drank their coffee in silence for a few minutes. Leah assumed he was working his way around to the same solution to Law as she had. She was wrong.

"You spend a lot of time in Fort Worth?" he asked, pushing the last remains of his breakfast around his plate with his fork.

"My mom's there with my stepfather. My brother's there with his fiancée. I go back every two or three months."

"Ever think of moving back down?"

A short bark of a laugh escaped. "Not unless Texas gets a political makeover and pot becomes legal. Believe it or not, I like what I do. I like the people. I like the challenge of running a business. I like that I made a move into a kind of business that a lot of people who got their business master’s at the same time as I did wouldn't touch with a twenty-foot pole—not that they aren't regretting it now."

"So why not apply those skills to another kind of business?" he asked, snagging her cup of coffee and stealing a drink.

Letting the question soak in for a minute, she tried to find some of the nose-in-the-air judgment he'd used before when asking about her bu

siness, but it wasn't there. It was like he was just...curious. The realization did something to her insides, filling her with a soft warmness she wasn't used to and didn't know how to process. So she did what she always did in that situation and made herself harder.

"Because I like selling pot." She jerked her chin higher and straightened her spine, not letting herself drop eye contact. "It's not just the hipsters who want to get high. It's a legal product that a lot of people enjoy. It's also a Godsend for folks with glaucoma, cancer and other illnesses. Plus, it's fun as hell to show up to work in my Doc Martens and T-shirt and scare the shit out of the uptight suits who stop in on a regular basis and try to buy me out."

"You always did love standing up to the man," he said before finishing off her coffee.

She snagged her now empty cup from him, her fingers tingling at the contact and her nerves more than a bit jangly at this new side to Drew, and walked over to the coffee maker to start another cup. "Talk like that makes you sound like a Baby Boomer burn out."

"I'm an old soul."

"Nah, just one who thinks there's only one path and is going to shoehorn himself onto it no matter what," she said as she turned and watched his jaw tense. Shit. The snark had just popped out. Drew was wrong, she didn't just run when cornered, she built defenses out of brick-sized attitude mortared together with bitchiness. That needed to change. If being here in Catfish Creek had taught her anything so far it was that she really needed to let all the old shit go—including the hurt that had festered since that summer with Drew. "Sorry, it's not my place to say anything."

"If you didn't, no one else would," he said, his shoulders tense. Then, he got up and cleared his spot, loading the dishes into the dishwasher in silence. After clicking it closed, he leaned one hip against the counter and watched her as she drank her coffee. "So we can't let Law get the diamond."

"Agreed," she said, relieved to be back on familiar ground.

"But that doesn't mean he shouldn't think he is."

She couldn't help her grin because she just knew this was gonna be good. "Go on."

"We set up an exchange, but we'll only give it to Law."

Oh yeah, she liked it. "Because it's the only way to guarantee Wynn and Miller won't hightail it to the buyer themselves and leave us vulnerable to Law's retribution."

"Exactly." He nodded.

"I like it." She looked up at him, a new appreciation for him softening her defenses. "You've got kind of a devious mind."

"Nothing of the sort. I just believe the shortest distance between two points is a straight line."

"That and a pair of handcuffs," she teased.

His gaze dropped to her mouth. "They never hurt."