Butterfly Bayou (Butterfly Bayou 1)

She gave him what she hoped was a friendly smile. “All right, then. Sorry about the misunderstanding. I’ll be on my way. I was hoping to get everything in the new house before it gets dark.”

“License and registration.”

She gritted her teeth and reached for her purse. “The only reason I sped up was to get away from that freaking alligator.” A thought occurred to her as she opened the Chanel wallet her brother had given her for Christmas. “Did you put that alligator out there as part of your speed trap?”

The sunglasses came off and she was staring into the bluest eyes she’d ever seen. Well, she’d seen them before, but not up close. They were even more devastating up close. “Did you accuse me of colluding with a reptile?”

“Yes.”

His laughter seemed to fill her whole world. When that man lit up so did the sky around him. He doubled over, his laughter infectious. When he finally took a breath there was a chuckle in his words. “Oh, that is absolutely the best joke I’ve heard all day. Your sister never mentioned your sense of humor.”

Probably because Lisa didn’t think she had one. “Well, I’m known for my quick wit.”

He stared at her for a moment and she could feel the connection. It was like an invisible tether drawing her to him. She’d been right to run the first time she’d seen him. Something deep inside had told her she wasn’t capable of handling this man.

Didn’t want to handle a man like him, she mentally corrected.

Oh, you had it right the first time. That man wouldn’t let you be in charge all the time. He would challenge you.

Bully her was more like it. A man that gorgeous was used to getting his way.

But if it meant she would get out of this ticket, she could flirt a little.

He shook his head and sighed. “Unfortunately, you’re also known for your lead foot. License and registration.”

She bit back a growl because her first day in the new town wasn’t going the way she’d hoped, and the officer, while gorgeous, was an ass.

Same shit. Different town.* * *• • •

“There are no warrants. No BOLOs,” the voice over the radio said. “You know you have a computer in the vehicle. It’s connected to everything I have here at the station.”

His admin was one hundred percent right. He had a very high-tech system that he didn’t completely understand, and it was way easier to get Noelle on the radio and have her run it. Besides, he’d wanted a couple of minutes to consider the problem currently sitting in the tiny Audi crossover that was absolutely going to get stuck in the mud this spring.

Lila Daley. Damn, he’d forgotten how pretty she was. He glanced down at her driver’s license. It showed a serious woman. Lovely, but serious. In the photo he couldn’t see how long her hair was. It was pulled back and she looked a bit stark.

In real life her eyes were luminous, her lips a little too big for her face and all the sexier for it. Her hair was brown, but that was a stingy word to describe it. There was gold and hints of red threaded through all that warm silk. He wasn’t sure why—he’d dated women who were technically more beautiful—but that woman did something for him. Not that he’d managed to talk to her before today. He’d tried to ask the woman to dance at Remy and Lisa’s wedding, but she’d proven elusive. She was stuck in his head even all these months later.

“Did you know Doc Ham is replacing himself with a nurse?” He started the paperwork on the ticket. The microwave in the break room back at the station was on the fritz, hence today’s speed trap. The damn thing either didn’t work at all or heated anything put into it to volcanic-lava levels of heat. As he was forced to eat most of his meals in the break room, that microwave was critical, and it wasn’t like the damn government was going to gift them with a new one.

He needed to get to Guidry’s more often. Guidry’s Bar and Grill was the gossip hub of the parish. He might have been ready for Nurse Practitioner Lila Daley if he’d been up on the gossip. There wasn’t much to his department. It was him and his two deputies, Roxie and Major, and one junior officer, a young man named Vince. There were two other officers-in-training who would come on in a few weeks. For now, they took turns working night shifts, and he’d gotten to where he spent all his time either at the station house or holed up at home with his daughter. How long had it been since he went out and had some fun? Once a month playing poker at his friend Rene’s was about all he’d kept up with after the accident, and only because for the first few months, his friends had shown up on his doorstep and insisted on coming in.