Sinners are Winners (KPD Motorcycle Patrol 5)

Pissy now and thinking that this couldn’t possibly get any worse, I grabbed a box and exited my apartment, heading straight for my car.

Only I never made it to my car because someone called my name, making me stall in my tracks.

The last person in the world I expected to see first thing that morning as I was loading my car up was Lock.

But as I glanced up, there he was.

He was in uniform, and my breath stalled in my chest.

“Wow,” I said, taking it all in. “You look, ummm….”

“If you say I look like an extra out of Chips, I’ll take back everything that I said to you last night about you being beautiful.”

I started to giggle.

“That actually hadn’t even crossed my mind.” I looked behind me to see where my parents were in correlation to where I was standing. When I remembered that they had left to get the U-Haul, I turned back. “I was going to say fuckable.”

Lock’s grin was infectious as he said, “That’s allowed then.”

My smile was pure feminine satisfaction.

“What are you doing here?” I asked as I looked at my watch. “It’s not even six in the morning yet.”

He gestured to his police-issued motorcycle.

“Working…or about to,” he admitted. “I don’t start for another thirty minutes.”

“Oh,” I paused. “What are you doing here?”

He looked at my boxes, then at me.

“I talked to my mom last night,” he said.

I blinked. “Okay…”

“My mom owns her own business,” he continued.

I stayed silent, wondering where he was going with this.

“My mom owns an independent imaging company that caters to soon-to-be mothers.” He kept going. “She does sonograms and shit.”

My lips peeled away from my teeth as I started to laugh.

“Your mom owns Baby Gaze?” I guessed.

I’d applied there but hadn’t ever heard back.

“Yeah,” he nodded. “That one.” He started walking toward me and took the box right out of my hands. Placing it on the hood of my car, he started explaining. “She opened the place up a couple of years ago. Something that she wanted to get started and do on the side while my dad worked. Something that she could do at her own pace, in her own way.”

I nodded.

That sounded like heaven.

“I didn’t realize that you were an ultrasound technician until the day we were making cakes.” He paused. “And it didn’t even occur to me until yesterday, when my mom called bitching about her new hire quitting, that I could get y’all in touch.”

My heart started to pound.

“I went to talk to her last night. Told her about you.” He grinned. “And she has no problem hiring someone that junk-punched her date on national television.”

I burst out laughing.

I couldn’t help it.

But then I sobered and wiped my eyes.

“I can’t,” I said to Lock. “As much as I’d like to, I have to move out of the apartment. They’ve already signed the lease with someone else.”

He frowned, looking thoughtful for a second.

“I have a pool house,” he said. “It’s not nice by any means…but it’ll do until you can find yourself another place.”

That was when my dad pulled up in his truck, hauling a U-Haul behind it.

Lock’s eyes moved to the moving truck, then back to me.

“Don’t go,” he said softly.

I didn’t want to go.

I wanted to stay.

“If I stay…will I get to see you a lot? I mean, your mom does work there,” I hedged.

Will we be able to see each other and spend time with each other? Date?

He seemed to read between the lines, but he teased me anyway.

“I don’t often go over there,” he admitted. “It’s not really a place that single men like me go. There are a bunch of hormonal, pregnant women and their families there. It’s kind of the last place that I’d really want to be.”

“Are you?” I found myself asking.

“Am I what?” he wondered.

“Single.”

His grin went into a full-blown smile that took my breath away.

“Not if you don’t want me to be,” he said.

No, I definitely didn’t want him to be.

But then I started thinking about living at his place.

“I don’t know if moving into your place is a great idea,” I admitted. “If I’m working with your mom and living in your pool house…”

He seemed to read between the lines.

“Then we’ll wait until you’re moved out,” he suggested.

Was that all it took?

Waiting?

I could wait.

I could wait if he could.

An alarm went off on his watch, and he cursed.

Reaching into his pocket, he produced a set of keys and tossed them my way.

“Keys to the pool house,” he said. “I have two driveways. Use the second one. Also, you have an interview with my mother at one o’clock…she won’t care what you’re wearing.” He paused. “And before you start saying that you can’t move into a house before you know if you have a job, this is all a formality. She wants to meet you. Get you set up in the system. Paperwork filled out, etc.”