But it wasn’t their looks that had me frozen to my seat—well, not just their looks, anyway. It was also the matching badges they had clipped to their belts with HVPD in bold arched letters.
These men were cops, and although I’d done nothing wrong—recently—it was engrained in me to bolt my ass in the opposite direction any time a cop approached.
“Scott,” the cowboy cop said congenially. “Good to see you.” His eyes came to me then, and the intensity in them sent a shiver up my spine. “Heard you landed yourself a woman.” All of a sudden he smiled, and I shivered again for a totally different reason. I didn’t know what the hell was in the water in this damn town, but if they bottled it and sold it, the people of Hope Valley would be swimming in money. “About damn time.”
What the fresh hell?
“It’s too early for your shit,” West said. “At least let me finish my first cup of coffee before you start gossiping like old, blue-haired ladies.”
Brushing West off, Cowboy Cop faced me and extended his hand. “Hayes Walker. And this here’s my partner, Patrick Wanderly.”
“But you can call me Trick,” Suit Cop said, shaking my hand once his partner was finished. “We’ve heard all about you.”
“It’s not true,” I blurted before I could stop myself. “Well, at least not all of it. Maybe a quarter. Okay, half, at most. But that’s it, I swear!”
West casually draped his arm over the back of my chair, wrapping it around my shoulders and calmly placing his hand over my mouth to cut off my rambling. “This is Stella Ryan. Don’t mind her, she’s already on her second cup.”
Trick looked down at my coffee cup and arched a brow. “And I see she got the monster size. That explains things.”
All right, so I might have been in the middle of a pretty good caffeine high, but still, I wasn’t used to being around cops, especially cops who were friends with my . . . whatever West was. Boyfriend? Man? Temporary Bang Bud?
That last one made my stomach lurch and the coffee I’d just downed threaten to come back up.
“Stella, Hayes here is married to Tempie, your nurse that night I had to take you to the hospital. And Trick’s married to Nona.”
Okay, so not only was my . . . West . . . friends with these guys, but they were also married to two women I’d gotten to know a bit during my recent time in Hope Valley and was kinda sorta developing friendships of my own with.
“It’s nice to meet you, both,” I said once West uncovered my mouth and I could speak.
“Speaking of the hospital,” Hayes said, his expression growing hard as his eyes shifted to West. “You taking care of that situation?”
“I’m on it,” West answered cryptically.
“On what?” I leaned in to ask.
“Well, let us know if you need help with anything,” Trick added.
West gave him a nod. “Will do. So how are things now that the Markoff case is closed?”
That name rang familiar in my head and it took me a second to remember where I’d heard it from. Then it hit me. The very first night West and I met, he’d been trailing a bad guy named Alex Markoff on a job for the police. These must have been the cops that had enlisted him to trudge into that gray area their rules prevented them from venturing into.
“Well, that asshole’s currently enjoying five to ten in the state penitentiary, but we’re still trying to nail down his associate,” Hayes complained. “The guy’s slippery as a fucking eel.”
“How do you mean?” West asked.
“We haven’t been able to figure out where he’s keeping his stash, but as far as we know, he transports the product himself,” Trick explained. “Drives some piece of shit snot green hatchback. But the guy’s given us no reason to pull him over and do a search. I’ve never seen someone obey every single traffic law to the letter. Doesn’t even drive five over the speed limit. Not even so much as a busted tail light or blown turn signal.”
“Well, if you guys need our help, don’t hesitate to call us in,” West offered.
Hayes jerked his chin up in appreciation. “Will do, brother. We gotta get back to the station, just wanted to stop by. Stella.” He tilted his head, and if he’d been wearing a cowboy hat, I could have sworn he would have tipped it to me. I dug the hell out of the old-school chivalry.
“Good luck with your bad guy,” I told them. “Hope you bust him soon.”
The men both smiled, and shiver, then they offered one last wave before exiting the coffee shop and starting down the sidewalk.
They’d been perfectly pleasant—nice even—but I still blew out a breath of relief when the door slid closed behind them.
West was giving me a curious look as I lifted my ginormous coffee cup to my lips and sipped. “What?”
His yummy chuckle coated me like a warm blanket. “You good? I thought for a second there you were going to have a coronary.”
My mouth pulled into a cringe. “Sorry. Force of habit.”
“Nothing to apologize for,” he informed me before popping the last bite of his Danish into his mouth. In turn, I reluctantly set my coffee cup down and snatched up one of the two banana nut muffins he’d gotten me. “Just know, for future reference, you don’t have to feel weird around those guys. Or any of the cops here. They’re good people, sweetheart. They aren’t looking to bust you or your family.”
I appreciated the assurance, but I had a feeling it was going to take some time before I was able to let my guard down fully. Thirty-three years of training wasn’t going to fix itself in a day.
“Noted,” I said around a mouthful of nutty, banana-y goodness. “So what was that whole ‘situation’ thing you guys were talking about so cryptically?”
He lifted his own coffee—black with zero frills—to his lips and drank while casting his gaze across the room. “Nothing you need to worry about, grift.”
It wasn’t a lie, I’d have been able to tell, and West had made it a point to never lie to me in the time we’d known each other. But he was still keeping something from me, and there was only one reason he’d keep a secret.
“You were talking about Grady O’Brien, weren’t you?” I asked, a knot suddenly forming in my throat.
“Baby, it’s not a big deal—”
“You need to stay out of it,” I demanded, panic gripping my chest. “O’Brien is a seriously bad dude. If something were to happen to you—” My voice broke. I couldn’t fathom the thought of it. “This isn’t your fight, West. Please, promise me you’re not going to do anything.”
He twisted in his chair and reached down to grab mine, swiveling it around until my knees were bracketed between his strong thighs. “I can’t make that promise.”
“Yes, you can!” I argued manically. “All you have to say is, ‘Stella, I promise not to get involved,’ that’s it. It’s easy really. So just say it.”
“Stella—” I held my breath while I waited for the rest of that promise. “I’m meeting with Seamus Byrne tomorrow at noon.”
My mouth fell open. If there was one name I knew that was scarier than Grady O’Brien, it was Seamus Byrne. “Seamus Byrne?” I squeaked. “As in the head of the freaking Irish mob in every one of the Northeast states? That Seamus Byrne?”