Fireball (Cheap Thrills 1)

That’s when I saw the open doors and windows like someone was letting fresh air in. What burglar airs out the house? It could be a homeless person, but would they have a car packed with new boxes and bags? Doubtful, but not entirely out of the realm of possibility.

Hand on the weapon on my side, I walked carefully and quietly through the open door, scanning my surroundings with each step. Expect the unexpected wasn’t an empty saying to a member of law enforcement, it was the rule.

I was just at the entrance to what looked like a massive lounge, when I saw the flash of bright pink on the floor. I’d been so focused on looking around, that I’d missed the most obvious thing – the damn floor. I blamed the old people I’d just dealt with and all the drama that had come from the callout. We were obviously in some sort of full moon so they were acting crazily and it was driving us all out of our minds. It had to be that.

Staying where I was, I scanned the body of the woman lying on her back on the floor, arms and legs spread wide out, with pink hair which was almost the same shade as the highlighter on my desk. She didn’t appear to have any weapons, but she wasn’t moving, so there was the possibility that she was unconscious, and if she was I needed to know why. Walking over, I squatted down and quickly checked her over to make sure she had nothing dangerous on her. After that was confirmed, I dropped onto my knees and picked up her wrist to take her pulse, my eyes moving to the peacock tattoo that ran down the arm I was holding. It was intricate, done in bright colors and looked real enough that I absentmindedly rubbed my thumb over the tuft nearest to it.

Out of everything, it was that soft touch that woke her up.

“What the hell are you doing? Stranger danger, stranger danger,” she screeched, sitting upright and clipping my chin with her forehead.

For me, it was painful and snapped my head back on my shoulders. For her, it must have been even worse because she clapped her hands over the injured area, lay back down, and groaned, “Owey.”

Did it strike me as odd that the woman who’d just been screaming stranger danger was now lying on the floor again with the aforementioned stranger right next to her still? That would be a really dumb question because yes, yes it did.

Taking a deep breath in, I got a lungful of whatever perfume she was wearing. It wasn’t strong, it wasn’t harsh, it wasn’t bitter, it was light and fresh, but it clashed with the image her appearance would give a lot of people. That said, the whole thing was really working for me, so it was a shame she could potentially be a criminal.

“I’m David Bell,” I introduced. “The sheriff.”

Her eyelids snapped open again, and dark green eyes glared back at me.

“I gathered that after we collided and I saw your badge. What it doesn’t do is explain why you’re in this house.”

It had to be said, I was a man of simple means. The women I’d dated were usually ok women in that they behaved nice enough, were pleasant enough, and were put together nicely – and by that I mean they usually ended up being a pain in my ass, but they looked good. That wasn’t what I purposefully looked for, it’s just the kind of women I’d ended up with. It was also fair to say that I didn’t have a good track record with women because they all turned into boundary challenged rabid spider monkeys. I’d never met one who acted like this though, and I’ve got to say – I kind of liked it.

Her bright pink hair was unusual, and the tattoos up her arms were diverse and colorful drawing your eyes to them but they totally suited her. The denim shorts she was wearing looked frayed to within an inch of their lives and her tank top had small holes all over it, but up close I could see that it wasn’t because they were old, they were just made like that. As she pulled her legs up past me, I noticed she had hot pink toenails with black skulls on them that had sparkly diamonds stuck in their eyes. Staring at them a beat, the only way to describe them was as outrageously adorable. In fact, all of her was - she was her own person, and the attitude worked for her too.

That’s why it sucked so much that I was going to have to arrest her for trespassing.

“Ma’am, do you know that it’s illegal to break in and enter a house?”