Total pages in book: 42
Estimated words: 47531 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 238(@200wpm)___ 190(@250wpm)___ 158(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 47531 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 238(@200wpm)___ 190(@250wpm)___ 158(@300wpm)
“Fuck!” I scream out to the empty parking lot before heading to my cruiser. I don’t give it a thought. I flip on the blue lights and the siren, chasing after them.
Butch pulls to the side of the road and I follow suit, turning off the siren but leaving the lights on. Butch goes to open his door, probably to argue with me, but I give him the same voice I used on thugs on the streets of Chicago when I worked patrol.
“Hands on the wheel and don’t so much as fucking move a finger.” It’s a dick move, using my power for my own ends, but I can’t bring myself to care. There isn’t anything I won’t do to have my sweet Josephine, even pissing a year-old case down the drain. I’ll find another way.
I go over to the passenger side, pulling the door open. Reaching in, I pop her seatbelt and pull her out of the car and sling her over my shoulder. She gives me a little bit of a fight, but she’s just so tiny it’s easy to get her under control.
Butch hops out of the car and I stop looking at him. I can tell from the indecisive look on his face that he’s debating what he wants to do. He may want to come at me, but I’m still the Sheriff.
“You made her cry. I’ve never seen her cry before, Law.”
His words are like stones dropping into water. The first impact is brutal, the aftermath rips through my body, reaching to my soul. I did the very thing I was trying to prevent, and now I’m going to lay my cards on the table.
“I’m going to fix it,” I tell him, letting all my emotion out in my words. I won’t get any points with Josephine if I knock her best friend out on the side of the highway because she’s not going with him. Over my fucking dead body.
“I’m not fucking with you, Law. Fix it or Paine and I will be so far up your ass…”
“Butch! What the fuck? You’re just going to let this lying cheating bastard take me?” She starts kicking her feet again, and I slap her ass. I’m trying to get her under control before she tries to buck off my shoulder and I land her ass on the hard blacktop.
“Call me in the morning, Joey.” Butch gets back in his car and takes off, but Josephine still yells until she realizes he’s gone.
I go to the passenger side of the cruiser and place her on her feet, caging her in. She bucks against me, trying to free herself. She’s hitting at my chest while tears stream down her face. Each verbal blow she lands is a direct hit to my heart.
“I fucking loved you! But I was just some dirty secret to you. Not good enough to take out in public. Not good enough to meet your parents.”
When the fight finally leaves her body, getting all of what she was holding in out, she sags against the car.
I drop to my knees in front of her, my hands engulfing her narrow hips, looking up as she looks down at me. The moon makes her big green eyes seem brighter than normal, and my heart aches twice as hard.
“You were right about my dirty secrets.” She starts to push my hands off her hips, but I just hold her tighter. “They are my secrets that I’ve been trying to hide from you. I didn’t want them touching you. I don’t want them anywhere near you.”
“I don’t believe you.” Her words say one thing, but her eyes fill with hope. Her hands come to rest on my shoulders, and I’m thankful she isn’t trying to push me back with them.
“I hate my father and can‘t stand to be in the same room as my stepmother.” I don’t let her know it’s because the woman has been trying to get in my fucking pants for years, something that makes me want to throw up, but I don’t want to make my girl jealous. Jealousy eats me up when it comes to her. Fuck, last week I got jealous of the goddamn straw in her drink, and I don’t want her to have those feelings. I want her to have no questions about what she is to me, or that I’d ever give another woman the time of day because I wouldn’t. Hell, women haven’t even been on my radar for years. I poured everything into my job. Until her. She turned my world upside down.
“That may be true, Law, but I saw you with another woman. You were holding her hand.”
“She’s with the FBI.” Her fingers tighten on my shoulders waiting for me to continue. “I’ve been building a case against my father, and she’s part of it. About a year ago he asked me to come back here to Springfield and run for Sheriff. At first I told him no, but he kept pressing. Then the FBI reached out to me, told me that things around my dad didn’t smell too good. I didn’t like that one bit. I just wanted to wash my hands of him, but I’d heard him talk about my sister. About roping her into coming back here, and I knew then he had plans to get her under his thumb. We may have never been close, but I couldn’t let him do that.”
“I went on the date tonight as a decoy. Go out to dinner, then back to my dad’s for drinks. I’d distract good old Dad and my stepmom while Debra, my fake date,” I emphasize ‘fake’ so she gets the point, “went to snoop around a little. But that all went out the window when you wouldn’t respond to my text messages.” I tell her even though I don’t care that the plan went to hell. I’ll find another way. Josephine is my number one priority. Not the cons my dad has been doing to move himself up in life.