Maybe Swearing Will Help (SWAT Generation 2.0 3)

I was in my final year of obtaining my master’s in criminal psychology.

“If you join the police department,” she said, “you’re not going to want to move to Dallas.”

She had a point.

I probably wasn’t.

“Maybe, maybe not,” I admitted. “But I’m going to do this.”

“Why are you doing this?” she asked again.

I debated whether to tell her or not, then decided that she would understand.

“I want him to donate his portion of the calendar proceeds to my charity,” I admitted.

My mother sighed.

“You and those cats, Ashe.”

I grinned. “Give Daddy a kiss for me. I gotta go. I have a paper due tonight, and I have to look up the requirements to get onto the SWAT team.”

“Daddy says he loves you, and he also says that you should probably start working out.”

***

Ford

“What was that?”

I blinked, turning to stare at Louis and Sammy, my cousins.

“What was what?” I asked.

“That.” Sammy gestured to Ashe who was walking away with a sweep of his hand. “All that sexual tension in the air, I could practically cut it with a knife.”

I grimaced.

“There’s no sexual tension between us,” I disagreed. “There’s only the pain of a thousand upsets.”

Sammy and Louis both snorted.

I decided to ignore both of them.

“Why didn’t you tell her that you were already doing the photoshoot?” he asked. “Were actually in the process of doing it right now?”

I looked around the room at all the members of the SWAT team that would be taking part in today’s photoshoot for the charity calendar.

Then grinned.

“Because life’s more interesting when Ashe Trammel is riled,” I answered.

“She can’t make the SWAT team,” Louis said. “I’ve never seen any woman able to run in full gear for two miles in under fifteen minutes.”

I didn’t contradict him because I didn’t think she could do it, either.

“When this was originally set,” Louis said. “I heard that they made the local soccer team at LeTourneau run it. I’m not even sure that there’s a woman’s time available.”

“March?”

I looked up just as the cute little geek in glasses, better known as our photographer, called out my month.

“Gotta go,” I said as I made my way into the room where she was shooting. “Wish me luck.”

Louis and Sammy snorted.

“You don’t need luck, pretty boy,” Louis countered.

Little did he know…

“Where do you want me?” I asked as I shut the door of the room.

She pointed at a large black panel at the back of the room where a bunch of lamps and shit were set up all around it.

“The black screen back there,” she said. “Are you going shirtless?”

No, no the hell I wasn’t.

“Ummm,” I said. “I’ll go half shirtless.”

She frowned.

I lifted my shirt over my head and she winced when she saw the scars on my right and left side.

“Hmm,” she said. “I’m understanding that you don’t want the scars to be seen at all?”

I nodded. “Please.”

She looked as if she wanted to ask why.

So I decided to take pity on her and told her.

“It’ll invite people to ask how I got the scars, then I’ll have to explain at least a little bit, and then I’ll have to remember just that little bit. And sometimes the only times that I can safely remember these times are when I’m in the comfort of my own home and half drunk,” I told her. “I can’t be explaining this shit while I’m on duty and expected to actually perform said duties.”

Avery, the cute little geek photographer, grinned.

“I gotcha,” she said as she looked around the room. “Don’t you have a SWAT vest somewhere in here?”

I walked to it and shrugged it on, getting ready to zip it.

“Don’t worry about zipping it,” she said. “I’ll position you to where you don’t see anything at all. Oh, and can you turn your hat around? I want to be able to see your eyes. You have beautiful eyes.”

I mumbled under my breath but did as she asked, and ten minutes later, I was done and once again wearing all of my clothes.

“How was it?”

I looked over to find Hayes, another member of the SWAT team, staring at me with a worried look in his eyes.

“Wasn’t too bad,” I admitted. “Just tell her that you don’t want your face shown, man. She won’t. She was cool with my scars.”

Hayes nodded once.

“Okay,” he sighed. “Thanks.”

I nodded once at him and left the training room completely.

I didn’t stay in the SWAT rooms. Instead, I headed straight for the chief’s office.

The chief was a cool guy, and I liked him a lot.

Which was the only reason that I was doing what I was about to do.

I found him at the coffeepot in the middle of the bullpen.

Walking up to him, I said, “Chief, do you have a minute?”

He snorted. “I have about half of one.”

“I can say what I have to say fast,” I told him.