“I bet she knows what they are but knows you won’t buy them for her. She probably has other ways of getting them,” I explained.
I mean, there was no possible way that a child just didn’t know that donuts existed. She saw them other places. For instance, other kids I knew had them in their lunches at school
I packed Rowen’s lunch, and she never went without something sweet of some sort. Whether it was cookies, snack cakes, fruit snacks. I know that it’s not healthy, but come on, a child has to live!
“I’m not saying that she’s never been exposed to it. I’m saying that she’s never eaten it. She doesn’t know what she’s missing,” he clarified.
I snorted. The man was a cop for god’s sake! He couldn’t be that naïve.
“Where is Katerina now?”
He looked at me, wondering what trap I was trying to lead him to. “A friend’s place.”
“Come on, let’s go over there right now and see what she’s eating. It’s eight in the morning. I’ll bet you anything in the world that she eats badly when she’s not with you,” I countered.
“Fine,” he said, filling a to-go cup of coffee for the road. “Let’s go.”
***
“This is a nice place,” I said, scanning the area.
“Yeah,” he said as he parked in the front of the business we were at. “They’ve done a lot of work to it over the past five years.”
He took me to a place called Free.
Apparently, there were houses in the back. Ones I would’ve never thought to even look for if I hadn’t known they were there.
It was fairly non-descript from the front…if you didn’t count the large ten-foot fence surrounding the property with razor wire on top.
I took a sip of my hot chocolate, from McDonald’s, and looked around. “I need to get my oil changed. Is this a good place to go?”
He gave me a level look. “Bring it by my place anytime you want. I’ll do it for you.”
“I would, but you wouldn’t let me pay you,” I drawled.
He gave me a leer. “Oh, you’d pay me. Just not in money.”
I snorted and got out.
He told me that normally they’d just drive up to Max’s house, but he didn’t want to tip him off that we were there.
He was very serious about the bet, and he was out to prove me wrong.
“Let’s go,” he said, taking my hand and leading me around the building.
I was surprised to see a long line of what looked like duplexes about a hundred yards out from the back of the garage.
They were all plain, brown brick. However, in the distance, I could see two houses behind those, and another one in the process of being built.
“Why do they all live so close together?” I mused.
One of Luke’s strides was around five of mine, so I was having to hurry to keep up with him.
When he caught sight of my near sprint (okay, more like fast walk) he slowed, then answered.
“They were all a team in the Rangers a few years back. Then a lot of shit happened, and they decided to stay where they were. James lives here again, too. That’s their house right there,” he said, indicating a house off in the distance.
One I hadn’t seen until he pointed it out.
“So who lives in these places?” I asked.
He shrugged. “I think the first three are empty. The last two are still being used.”
Where did they get the money to live like this?
I wanted a compound!
Although the only ones on it would be my sister, her man, and my parents. Which didn’t necessarily constitute a compound.
This place, though, was the shit.
“Are they, like, hardcore bad-asses like you?” I asked cheekily.
He looked down at me and winked.
“Nobody’s as badass as me,” he quipped.
“Oh,” a voice drawled from in front of us. “I’d beg to differ.”
I jumped and squeaked, turning in time to see a large man walking toward us from the woods.
Luke didn’t jump, though.
Only me.
Luke was obviously paying attention when I wasn’t.
“Sam,” Luke rumbled, acknowledging the other man.
The other man walked up, two little girls following closely behind him.
They were dressed in camo, as was the man. And the man had a large hunting rifle slung over his shoulder.
Hunting season.
Imagine that.
Did he hunt for trespassers on his land, and let his children tag along to help torture the trespassers?
Then I smiled to myself. I really did crack myself up sometimes.
The girls were too cute, though.
I’d guess they were around Rowen’s age, give or take a few months.
They were the spitting image of their father, only with long blonde hair and hazel eyes.
They watched me with an intensity that had the possibility of making me uncomfortable. I just knew that later on in life some man was going to have his balls handed to him with that stare.
The smaller of the two, but only just, smiled at me. “Are you Rowen’s mom?”
I nodded. “Yes.”
“I’m Pru. This is Piper. Phoebe’s lost,” Pru, the curly haired cutie, said.
I blinked, and looked up at the man, worried.
He grinned. “We’re playing hide and seek.”
“With a gun?” I blurted out before I could think.
He shrugged. “There’s shit in the woods I’d rather not run into without being properly prepared.”
I tilted my head. “Like an elephant?”
The scar under his eye scrunched when he smiled.
He nodded. “Whatever. I’m prepared, either way.”
Movement above the man’s head had me looking up to see the elusive Phoebe shift her weight in the tree. The only thing that had given her away was the bright green inner lining of her jacket.
“So…would you be upset if she were say…in a tree?” I asked, eyes never moving from the tree.
Sam grinned. “Is she now? I never even saw her.”
I nodded, eyebrows raised. “Yeah. How’d she get up there?”
He turned and surveyed the tree. “Scaled it, I’d guess. She’s been climbing trees since she was nine months old, starting with the Christmas tree. Now, at nearly four, she can climb a tree faster than me.”
I watched as he walked to the tree, the two little girls following dutifully behind, as he spoke to Phoebe in her position high above him.
“Check you later,” Luke called to the man.
“Luke. Reese. It was nice to meet you,” he said, raising his hand up high above his head.
My mouth dropped open. “How did he know my name?”
His laugh slid across my skin like a sensual caress.
“Sam’s a tad on the paranoid side when it comes to his children and his wife. I’ve got a hell of a story to tell you later of how we met. It’s bound to put you on the edge of your seat,” he teased, finally coming to a stop at the second to last duplex.
Knocking on the door, he cast a wide-eyed look at me when it sounded like a herd of elephants barreling toward where we were standing.
Reflexively, I took a step back, worried that the door might not withstand the sheer momentum of the tiny feet eating up the distance, but they all stopped in time.
“How many kids do they have in there?” I asked.
“They have one of their own. Plus mine. Possibly some of the other kids that live here. And the brother’s kid stays over a lot too. So there’s really no telling,” he explained, watching as the doorknob turned and a messy faced little girl with dirty blonde hair stood naked in all her glory.
“Hello, Harleigh Belle. Where’s your momma?” Luke asked, apparently not surprised by the nakedness.
“She’s cleaning up the kitchen. We had homemade funn
el cakes!” Harleigh Belle screeched. “And I licked the egg beaters. Momma says I was lucky that she unplugged them before I got a hold of them. Daddy’s changing his pants because…”
Her tirade was cut off by a small blonde woman with purple highlights that came up behind Harleigh, covering Harleigh’s mouth with her hand.
“Hey, Luke. You’re early,” she said before her eyes turned on me.
Then I watched in fascination as her eyes lit with sudden alertness and intrigue. “Hi, I’m Payton. Who’re you?”
Luke shook his head, but before he could answer, Katerina launched herself from around Payton and hurdled into her father.
“Daddy!” She exclaimed
Luke picked her up and wrapped his large arms around her, smiling softly as Katy wrapped her arms around her father’s neck.
Turning back to Payton, I extended my hand and said, “I’m Reese. It’s nice to meet you, Payton.”
She shook my hand quickly and stepped back, allowing us inside. “Sorry it’s such a mess. We made funnel cakes for breakfast.”
I smiled triumphantly up at Luke, then turned to survey the room.
Amazingly, it didn’t look like a duplex from the inside. It looked like a normal house.
The walls were painted a beige color, and a large deer head hung on the wall next to a family portrait of a man, woman, and tiny infant.
“Oh, wow. She’s tiny!” I exclaimed.
Payton walked over to the picture and smiled fondly. “Yeah, Harleigh was born premature. She weighed in at one pound and fourteen ounces when she was born at twenty-six weeks.”
My mouth fell open in surprise. “Holy sh-er…crap. Did you get one of those pictures with her hand through your wedding ring? When I was doing clinicals during nursing school, we had a baby that was born at twenty-two weeks gestation, and they took a picture with the mother’s wedding band around her ankle.”
She nodded and walked over to a collage of pictures over the fireplace, one of which contained a picture of a tiny hand clutching her father’s wedding band.
The other showed her in a Route 44 Sonic cup.
“That’s adorable,” I said. “How long was she in the NICU for?”
“Seventy-seven days,” I heard said from behind me.
I turned to see a large blonde man with a scar running down the middle of his forehead standing directly behind me, standing next to Luke. He had a large German Shepherd leaning against one leg, and a little girl hanging on the other.
He was a big man, too. Nearly Luke’s size but not quite. Smaller and more compact. About two or three inches shorter than Luke’s height of six foot three.
I wonder if he ever gets called Harry Potter with that wicked looking scar down his forehead. Would he bonk me on the head with his ham hock fist if I said it?
My mouth twitched, and his eyes narrowed. Almost as if he knew exactly what I was thinking.
I pressed my lips together to keep the words from slipping out.
I seriously had no control sometimes.
“Max, this is Reese. Reese, Max,” Luke introduced us.
I walked forward and extended my hand to him. “It’s nice to meet you, Harry.”
Payton burst out laughing, and Max narrowed his eyes at me again.
My hand covered my mouth before he could return the shake. “I’m so sorry!”
Luke chuckled softly. “Reese.”
“Nurse Doherty is a nurse at my school. She shot me in the leg at school two weeks ago,” Katy said proudly.
All eyes turned to me and I blushed. “I didn’t shoot her in the leg, per say. I gave her the epinephrine out of her pen.”
Payton nodded. “I’ve never had to do that in my years as a nurse. Not once. That’s pretty impressive.”
Payton gestured to the couch that was covered in blankets and stuffed animals, and I sat.
“I wouldn’t say I wasn’t freaked out. I’d never done it either, and I’ve been a nurse for six years now,” I expounded.
She nodded. “When Harleigh was a baby they thought she was allergic to cats, but we found out that she had a mild form of asthma after further testing. Scared the crap out of us when the talk of anaphylaxis and EpiPens was brought up.”
“My daughter, Rowen, had an allergic reaction to some antibiotics when she was two. I, being a nurse and all, knew what was going on as soon as it happened. That didn’t make it any easier for me to handle, though. I just knew more of what could possibly go wrong if it got any worse than the large rash that spread all over her body. Luckily, it only gave her hives and stopped there,” I said, leaning back until my head rested against the couch.
I heard the front door close, seeing that the two men, as well as the children, were no longer in the room.
When I looked back, I saw Payton’s eyes positively gleaming with excitement. “So…tell me how y’all met. Is he good in bed?”
***
“Thank you for the ride,” I said softly, standing on the top step of my front porch.
He shrugged. “It’s the least I could do since you enlightened me to the error of my ways.”
I giggled. Payton and I had walked out nearly an hour after the two men had left and got an ear full of Luke telling Max how funnel cake wasn’t an ‘adequate breakfast food.’
Payton and I had had a good laugh about Luke’s expectation of his child not eating junk food when he wasn’t around. In fact, it was quite comical to see how surprised he’d been at hearing Katy tell him about how good the funnel cakes were. And what type of donut was her favorite, as well as favoring Twinkies over Hostess cupcakes.
“Oh, the pleasure was all mine,” I informed him.
Luke leaned down for a kiss, brushing his lips across mine twice before we heard the sound of a diesel truck pulling into my driveway.
Of course that’d be when Weston came.
Of, fucking, course.
Chapter 13
If you open your heart to a man, he’ll probably try to stick his dick in there, too.
-Reese to Tru
Reese
November- The week before Thanksgiving
“Hello?” I snapped angrily into the phone.
“What’s wrong?” Luke asked as soon as I answered.
I sighed. “Nothing. Listen, I’ve got to go.”
Silence met my statement, and I knew that lie wasn’t going to go over well with him, but I wasn’t ready to talk about it yet.
I was pissed.
So pissed, in fact, that I was ready to punch something.
Anything.
I’d started my day out sick. As I had for the last eight days. Luckily, I was at the end of my illness.
Sadly, I still had no energy to deal with people’s shit.
I had the flu at the worst possible time. This was the week that I usually started planning my Thanksgiving, but I couldn’t do a single plan when I could barely hold open my eyes.
My mom was still on the road to recovery after her chemo with her lowered immune system, so I was the last person she needed to be around with her compromised immune system. Which meant no help from anyone. Mom, dad, or sister. I suffered alone, none of them even knowing I’d been sick.
Although, that was the way of life for a single parent, and I was used to it by now.
So, of course, what better time for me to get the flu?
Saying that I was no longer ‘sick’ wasn’t really accurate. It just meant that I was no longer running a fever, but still having the tiredness and utter lack of desire to move.
I was glad to finally be able to breathe again. That and sleep without my head pounding.
And bonus! Rowen had one more day of school until she was out for break.
Then someone had knocked on my door, and I’d stupidly gotten up to answer it.
My day had gotten even worse when I’d answered it and found Weston on the front porch.
The man responsible for makin
g my life a living hell for the past four months.
At first, it’d only been Weston being Weston.
Then his wife had gotten into the picture, and that’s when my life had gone from awesome to shit. I’d been high on life after the night I’d spent with Luke. Then, from the moment Luke had left, leaving me to deal with Weston on my own, I’d had nothing but trouble out of him since.
I’d started getting anonymous reports about a week later from CPS about my daughter having bruises on her arms and legs from where I’d supposedly ‘beaten’ her with a broom stick.
The bruises had morphed into burns from where I’d held her hands over burners on the stove when she wouldn’t listen. Or stuck her feet into hot, boiling water.
The week after the second report to CPS, Weston and his wife, Anita, moved to Kilgore to ‘be closer to their daughter.’
I’d hated Anita as soon as I’d met her.
She was everything that I wasn’t. And a bitch to boot.
A catty bitch that I didn’t want anywhere near my daughter.
And oh, my God, could she play up the pregnancy card. The more I saw her, the meaner and meaner she got.
I knew she was the one behind the false allegations to CPS.
That was how I’d gotten to know Shiloh. Shiloh was married to one of Luke’s fellow officers, James.
She’d assured me that the false allegations were being investigated, but that still didn’t stop the threats from coming.
One good thing that had come from them moving closer was Weston not pursuing full custody. He’d been happy with having her on his weekends, and I’d been grateful.
I didn’t want my little girl to be in the middle of a tug-a-war match between us. Especially not when she was finally getting to be around her father more, like she wanted.
One good thing to come out of it all was Luke and I getting closer.
He’d been my rock over these past four months.
The shoulder I cried on each time a new false report on me came in; not to mention a great support system.
And Rowen loved him.
However, right now, I just wanted to lay here and wallow.
Then, like the pain in the ass cop that he was, he called back.
“Hello?” I answered.
“Reese,” he said quietly.
Code 11- KPD SWAT Box Set Page 9