West fell into step. “Come on. Roxy’s got the talent of a star and a heart like a wheel. Can you really see her sticking around Bluelick to wait tables at the diner, sing at Rawley’s, and give guitar lessons to pint-sized wannabees?” He reached the glass doors first and held one open.
“Don’t know,” Shaun replied as he walked into the building, “but I do know a happy woman when I see one, and she looks happy. Could be she just needs the right person to convince her to stay?”
West mulled that over as they checked in and received directions to the room where Cadet Brixton and her classmates were finishing up the second hour of field tactics. Roxy did seem happy, at present, but happy enough to kiss her wanderlust—and dreams of stardom—good-bye to settle in Bluelick for the long-term? Could one slightly world-weary cop in the process of rebuilding his sense of community sway her? At times he thought yes—when her smile went full-watt dazzling simply because he walked into the diner or her hand found its way into his as they sat on the porch swing and watched lightning bugs dance in the dusk or how his insomniac nightingale generally fell asleep right away if he pulled her in close and surrounded her body with his. She’d entrusted painful aspects of her past to him.
But he couldn’t ignore the contrary evidence, either. Sometimes when he caught her unaware, he detected a faraway look in her eyes and a hint of anxiousness in her expression. There were plenty of pieces of her past she kept to herself, including what had motivated her sudden desire to search out the grandmother she’d never met in a small town she’d never visited. And though she’d generously and enthusiastically shared most every part of her body with him, she still wouldn’t kiss him. The pull of temptation grew stronger every time they came together, but still she resisted. Resisted that specific intimacy. Resisted him. Why?
Perhaps because he was back in the training facility, the question took the form of a pop quiz in his mind.
A. She doesn’t want to get too close to you.
B. She doesn’t want you to get too close to her.
C. She doesn’t want to do anything that will make it harder for her to leave.
D. All of the above.
Yeah. Good old D. That led him to the real question.
What could he do about it?
Strategizing the answer would have to wait, because he followed Shaun into the classroom where an instructor and a handful of cadets stood in a semi-circle, observing a training scenario already underway. At the front of the room, Cadet Brixton—Amazonian and undeniably feminine despite the severe ponytail, standard-issue sweatpants, and white crewneck with BRIXTON stenciled across the back—maneuvered a formidable, similarly attired cadet so he faced the whiteboard, his back to the class. SWAIN stretched across the blank canvas of his shirt.
As they watched, she ordered him to place his palms against the wall and step out of his shoes. Then she used her boot to position his feet shoulder-width apart in a classic frisk position. The “suspect” had a good six inches on her and at least two hundred pounds of well-honed muscles, but her low, cool voice betrayed nothing but confidence in her ability to handle the situation.
“This what you had in mind, ma chouchoutte?” Swain drawled in an accent that dripped bayou water and Spanish moss. His unperturbed grin suggested he enjoyed his bad-boy role…or baiting his all-business classmate.
The grin only widened when she knocked his foot a little harder than necessary to get him to widen his stance and replied, “I’m going to pat you down now, sir. Remain as you are unless I instruct you to move. Understand?”
“It’s like my dreams comin’ true, choux.”
Some of the cadets in attendance laughed. Brixton ignored both the innuendo and the classmate reaction and instead got started on the frisk. West knew the drill. One cadet played the role of suspect and concealed a weapon of some sort on his person. The other cadet acted as the detaining officer and conducted the search, ideally thoroughly enough to discover the weapon. Cadet Brixton appeared to be more than up to the task. She approached the pat down methodically, starting at the head, running fingers through Cadet Swain’s short-cropped blond hair, and then advancing to open-palmed pats along his shoulders, back, chest, and torso. From West’s vantage point, he saw Swain’s jaw tighten as Brixton’s hands moved down his abs and roamed lower. He made a warning sound when she patted the fronts of his thighs and then honed-in on an area around his right pocket.
“Weapon of some type hidden in his pants,” she announced, feeling the dimensions. “Blackjack, or”—she traced the length of the object—“possibly a gun.”
“I hate to break it to you, choux, but that weapon you’re handling is one I’ve been packing since birth.”
“What are you talking about?” Despite the annoyance in her voice, Brixton’s hand slowly ceased its movements as his words sank in. Then she yanked it back. Over classmate laughter, and the instructor’s call for quiet, she muttered, “You’re disgusting.”
“Hey, I’m just a red-blooded boy doing my best to submit to your search. It’s not my fault you found more than you bargained for.”
“More than I…oh, please.” Brixton pushed him face front again. “Don’t flatter yourself, Swain. I detected a small caliber weapon, at best, and I stand by the ‘small’ part of that assessment.”
The volume of laughter rose several notches at her comeback, but she simply continued the search, crouching to feel around his ankles. “Knife concealed in the left sock.” She withdrew the switchblade as she spoke, holding it aloft for the class and her instructor to view.
While the instructor took the weapon and ran through the finer points of the procedure, West leaned toward Shaun and murmured, “Brixton’s got balls. I like her for our team. Who’s the guy?”
“That’s Marcus Swain,” Shaun said out of the corner of his mouth. “Sheriff Malone’s cadet. Former marine and anticipated counterpart for our joint op.”
West rocked back on his heels and blew out a breath. “Those two, undercover together? That should be interesting.”
r /> “Yep.”
…
From her perch on a barstool in a well-lit corner of Rawley’s main room, Roxy strummed the final notes of “Friends in Low Places” while she scanned the crowd. They’d drawn a good turnout for a Wednesday night, but West wasn’t in the house. He usually arrived midway through her first set and stuck around until she’d wrapped up the second to give her a ride home. She secretly dedicated the second set to seducing him from the stage, turning the hot summer evenings into a slow burn with a little musical foreplay. If she did her job right, they wouldn’t make it all the way home. West would steer his pickup down a dirt road, spread a blanket in the bed of the truck, and send her to heaven while a star-strewn sky glittered overhead.
But tonight, she might have to catch a ride with Junior and Lou Ann, because West had gone to Richmond with Shaun to meet a new recruit. Assuming the meet-up also involved dinner, and factoring in the ninety-mile drive back, she’d be lucky to see him at the pub before closing.