“Provence PD. Bridget speaking.”
“Hi… Bridget. This might sound silly, but do you happen to know if Sheriff—”
And here I realize I don’t even know how name. I was about to get in the car with him, without knowing his name. I checked out his ass, without knowing his name.
“Locke. Sheriff Finnegan Locke,” he says, and inexplicably the sound of his name, spoken with a husky twang made my insides melt. He sounds like a man in the middle of sex, a man close to climax, and oh god why am imagining how his face would look, all taut and pained, arrested with the sweetest agony?
I’ve never thought a man looked sexy that way, rutting and sweating and grunting. I’ve only ever seen Stefano that way, but it’s something I never want to see again.
It would be different with Finn. I know that as surely as I know that he won’t hurt me.
“Yes, he’s Sheriff Finnegan Locke. Can you confirm that he’s on patrol?”
A snort over the line. “Finn? Yeah, he’s around here somewhere. Causing trouble, I suppose.” And then, rather shockingly, she shouts over the phone. “Finn, you sonuvabitch. Why are you bothering this nice girl?”
I jerk the phone away from her ear, wincing a little.
Then cautiously pull it back. “Um,” I say, “I’m not sure he heard you.”
Finn’s eyes dance with laughter, which means he knows my ear is ringing and why. I like him better this way, his brown eyes bright with laughter. It softens up his whole face, makes him look even more handsome, which I do need to be thinking about at all.
“Well, you tell that man to get his ass back here,” Bridget says. “His burger was delivered two hours ago. Nothing more disgusting than cold fries. Tell him that for me, will you?”
I close my eyes, trying to hold in a laugh. And that’s the greatest accomplishment of all, that I could find anything amusing on this night. “Bridget says dinner’s waiting.”
Finn shrugs, his lips twitching. “Had a protein bar on the road. Besides, the fries are probably cold.”
“Right,” I say into the phone. “Thank you for your assistance.”
“Don’t let him give you any trouble. He’s a good man, but you know, ever since the accident, he’s had a stick is so far up his—”
“Great, thanks, bye.” The words come out in a rush as I end the call. I run my eyes over his body, as if checking for injuries. “You were in an accident?”
A shadow passes over his face, wiping away any trace of softness. “No.”
Message received. We won’t talk about his past.
Does that agreement extend to my past?
I grant him a regal nod. “Okay, Sheriff. Take me to jail.”
CHAPTER SEVEN
And so the curse came true, leaving the princess to sleep for a hundred years, her coffin made of glass, a thick wood with thorns grown up around the castle.
Finn
I run my hand over my face, hoping to wake up myself up.
It’s only a thirty minute drive to the station, but coming at the end of a ten hour shift, it feels longer. Or maybe that’s the sleepy vibes from the woman behind me.
When we got about a mile away from her car, she went out like a light, snoozing as peacefully as her baby. I’m glad I caught her before she’d wrapped that broken little car around a tree trunk.
Something about her sleep seemed to call to me, making me want to wrap myself around her, use my body as a shield. To protect her, the instinct stronger and more primal than I felt for ordinary people.
The cruiser slides through the inky black night.
This is my favorite time to patrol, when everyone’s tucked safely in their homes, when I don’t have to wear a fake smile lest anyone worry I was going to fall apart again.
A glimmer of that old panic hit me when I saw the swerving tail lights in the distance. I flashed back in time to when I saw a car careening toward me instead of away. I hadn’t been a cop then. Just a guy out for a night on the town, with a woman in the passenger seat, no fucking clue what would happen next.
A squeal of tires and a horrifying crunch of metal is all I remember after that.
Of course, Jessica wasn’t a drunk driver. Only a drowsy one.
A scared one too.
I recognized that lost look, as if she didn’t know where to go, as if she didn’t think there was any place left, because I felt that way after the accident. I still felt that way, at times, but I kept on pushing, kept on faking it, because I didn’t know how to do anything else.
And then there’s the little boy, the one with adorable footy socks and a new carseat, fully stocked in baby supplies even while the mother wore faded jeans and shadows under her eyes.
Jessica slid sideways in the backseat, leaning on the carseat as if protecting the child even in sleep. Who are they running from? The father, probably. The thought made his blood run hot.
Her head dipped to the side, giving me a flash of her face lit by moonlight in the rearview mirror. Dusky eyebrows that hide ocean-blue eyes. Lips that are full and pink and begging to be kissed. These days I mostly avoid human touch, especially the female kind. But there’s something about this night, so expansive, so isolating. So very random that one woman, years ago, died on this road, and this one safe and alive—and comforting when I believed myself beyond comfort.
I pull into the parking lot behind the station, relieved to see Bridget’s dirt-spattered truck still here. Her shift ends when mine does, but she tended to wait until I return before leaving. It’s her way of looking after me—the whole town did that, as if the depression that held me captive after the accident is still after me and would one day catch up. And maybe they were right.
I circle the car and open the door. Resolutely ignoring the soft skin of her arm or the snuffling sound she makes, I nudge her away from the carseat. I unlatch it and pull it from the car, along with the baby bag.
Bridget meets me at the back entrance of the station, her eyes worried. “Look at the poor dear. She didn’t mention she had a baby with her.”
“I don’t think she wants to be found,” I say, keeping my voice low.
Sadness flickers over Bridget’s face. “You know my lips are sealed. We don’t have to file an official report. Here give me that child. I’ll see if his diaper’s wet.”
Bridget raised three grown men, so I trust her to take care of the child. And she also survived a true asshole of a husband until he went too far. Beaten and bloodied, she took his hunting rifle down and shot him. Self defense, of course.
I return to the patrol car to find Jessica still asleep. God, she must be exhausted.
Bridget would probably take good care of her, too, but Jessica’s stuck with me. Reaching inside I unbuckle her seatbelt and carefully lift her slight weight from the car. Slamming the door shut with my foot, I head inside, carefully not thinking about why I hesitated to wake her, not thinking at all about how good it felt to have a woman in my arms after so long alone.
I carry Jessica through the station and into the single cell. I lay her down on the cot, keeping my eyes averted, as if even a dressed woman on a bed is a sexual tableau.
With her it is.
She’s a beautiful woman—stunning despite her tiredness. Her disarray and shadowed eyes give her a tragic look, stirring something deep inside me, making me want to find a white horse just so I could ride in and save her. It’s goddamned ironic.