Gas N’ Mart has been the most exciting thing to happen on one of my shifts since last January when those tourists didn’t check out of the Snow Creek Lodge by eleven o’clock.”
She clamped her lips tightly together after she spoke. Why did she do that? Why did she always downplay the importance of her job—the value of her abilities? Shrinks would probably say it was some type of residual defense mechanism from growing up in her oversize machismo family or trying not to stand out in a male-dominated profession.
“Still, I know they’re in good hands with you.” Did the man ever stop smiling? “Coop said you outwrestled half his force in defensive tactics training last week.”
“That’s not saying much considering we only have four other officers on staff.” There she went again. She should be proud that she was an expert in martial arts. But she didn’t want Luke to think of her as some juiced-up, studly gladiator. She wanted him to see her as…
Stop. It was this kind of foolish thinking that would seriously undermine all the work she’d put into getting her mind right and her head back in the game since she’d broken up with Mark and moved here. Man, she needed to get away from Luke and her AWOL thoughts.
Thinking quickly, she reached beneath the dashboard and double clicked on the mic of her bandwidth radio, causing the volunteer dispatcher to respond. Carmen clicked on the mic again, then leaned down toward the radio as though she was listening to something Luke couldn’t hear.
The resulting static probably wouldn’t fool a former SEAL, but she went through the pretense of answering a phony call out. “Ten-four. I’m en route.”
She looked back at him as she put the vehicle in gear. “Gotta run,” she said, barely waiting for him to move his arms off the window before tearing out of the dirt lot.
That was the worst fake radio call out Luke had ever seen. And he should know. He’d trained as a communications specialist before going through Basic Underwater Demolition/SEAL training.
He watched Officer Delgado drive off, gravel crunching and dust flying. Why had she been in such a hurry to get away from him? Was he giving off that lonely “I need to talk to someone who understands kids” vibe again? He rubbed his forehead, then dragged his fingers through his hair before shoving his hands in his jeans pockets.
His twin brother, Drew, said it was obvious whenever Luke was missing the guys from his unit—or worse, when he’d been in the cabin all weekend with his squirrelly sons and he needed adult conversation—because it was the only time Luke uttered more than a few sentences.
But moving to Sugar Falls to become a full-time dad, changing assignments from team leader of an elite Special Forces unit to pushing paper at the naval recruiting office outside of Boise…well, it was all proving to be more challenging than he’d anticipated.
Luke poked his athletic shoe at some tiny rocks that had been kicked up from Carmen’s patrol car as she’d blasted out of the lot. The action was instinctive, as though his feet needed the physical reminder that he was actually standing on solid ground.
He thought back to the night before Samantha’s accident several years ago. Luke had been in a training exercise where the team was being hoisted from the ocean and into a hovering Osprey helicopter. It was dark and the water was choppy, with waves crashing over his head. When it had been his turn, part of his safety harness ripped and he’d had to hold on to the cable with his bare hands to keep from dropping. He’d dangled like that, with the chopper blades stirring up more wind force than the actual storm, for at least a minute before being pulled up to safety.
Ever since his wife had died, he hadn’t been able to shake that feeling of being suspended in the air, swinging above a raging dark sea and holding on as if his life depended on it.
“Hey, Dad,” Aiden yelled from the outfield. “Are ya comin’ or what?”
He waved at the boy and started to jog toward the dugout. He needed a good run tonight. Something that would clear his thoughts or at least make his mind too tired to think.
“How’s Officer Delgado today?” Alex Russell, the team coach, asked Luke when he finally made it back to the dugout. He liked Alex, whose family owned the local sporting goods store, but he didn’t like the sly half smile the man was now wearing.
“What’s that supposed to mean?” Even Luke heard the unfamiliar agitation in his voice.
“I’ve just noticed that she’s been dropping the boys off at practice a few weeks in a row.”
“Yeah, that mentorship program at the school finally found someone who was willing to take them on. Once a week, I have to stay at the recruiting office later and can’t pick the boys up, so I think Delgado must’ve taken pity on them—the people who work at the after-school program, that is.”
“Some kids have all the luck.”
His kids? Lucky? No way. They’d already lost their mom before they could really remember her and they’d been bounced around with various relatives while Luke had played Captain Save-the-World. Now it was taking a whole ski resort village to raise the lovable little hellions. “What do you mean?”
“Not only do they get to hang out with a cop, which would be any boy’s dream, but they get to ride around with the hottest one on the force.”
“Officer Delgado?” Okay, so Luke was faking the surprise in his voice. The woman was naturally beautiful with those classic high cheekbones and full lips, but he’d quickly gotten the impression from the woman herself, as well as most of the other men in town, that she definitely was not on the market—not that he was, either. So then why was Alex bringing up her hotness?
“C’mon. Like you haven’t noticed the way she fills out that uniform.”
Sure he had, and he wanted to take the aluminum bat leaning against the fence and swing it at the head coach for even suggesting that he’d noticed, too.
Whoa. Shake it off, Gregson. What was up with the irrational jealousy?
“I try not to,” Luke said, his jaw locking around each word. And that was true. He felt guilty sometimes just for looking at her.
“Hell, we all try not to, Luke. She obviously isn’t the type to flaunt anything and probably wouldn’t appreciate it if we were noticing. She’s all business, that one.” Alex picked up a glove and patted his shoulder before walking out of the dugout. “Let’s get started, boys!”
Maybe Luke wasn’t the only guy in town who Officer Delgado wasn’t warming up to. He should be somewhat relieved that it wasn’t just him. Still, the woman turned into a block of ice whenever he spoke to her, and he didn’t know what to make of that. Luke wasn’t usually so chatty, but he’d tried to talk to her about things they could possibly have in common—like the military or martial arts. Once, he even asked her what she bench-pressed because, clearly, the shapely woman worked out. Yet, unless they were talking about the twins, she shut down completely every time.
She’d made it plain that she was indifferent to him, but for some damn reason, anytime he was within a few feet of her, he couldn’t get his mouth to stop yapping.
Not that he was actually interested in Carmen like that. Or in any woman, for that
