BADGE BUNNIES: The Full 5-Book Box Set

by Mazzy King

  “That’s better than nothing, I guess.” I give her more kisses on top of her head, then step out of the room. “No wild parties. Be home in a few—I promise.”

  I arrive at the restaurant ten to seven. There’s a dusting of snow on the ground, and Napoli’s is all lit up with Christmas lights and a big wreath on the door. I haven’t been too much in the Christmas spirit but suddenly, I feel a little stirring at the bottom of my heart.

  The area where the restaurant is situated is removed enough from the grittiness of downtown. It’s an older, cobblestoned area called Hearth Stone, and there’s a few older businesses here but a lot of old buildings that have been renovated into new, trendy eateries, lounges, and bars. There’s also a French bakery with a fireplace inside. Christmas lights are draped across buildings, offering a sort of brightly lit canopy overhead, and speakers play Christmas music. There’s also a horse-drawn carriage driven by a merry-looking dude dressed as Santa offering rides to young couples and families.

  It’s all very…romantic.

  Across the street, a car pulls up to the curb in front of Napoli’s. I notice the Lyft sign in the window. A moment later, a dark-haired woman pops out and shuts the door. She’s wearing a knee-length black overcoat, tight jeans, and boots.

  Could that be her?

  As if hearing my thoughts, the woman glances over her shoulder and her gaze finds me. All the breath in my lungs whooshes out as if yanked.

  Wow.

  Somehow, she’s more beautiful than I remember. Of course, the last time I saw her in person was in the hospital while she was unconscious. But it has nothing to do with the face that her hair is styled or that she’s wearing makeup or attractive clothing. It’s the light in her eyes, the vivacity in her face…the radiance of her smile as her full lips spread into a huge grin.

  My heart actually twinges with an intense, slightly burst that’s not exactly what I’d call unpleasant.

  Oh fuck.

  I’m in love.

  Chapter 4

  Hazel

  My stomach is a jumble of nerves when I get out of my Lyft. I could have driven here, maybe should have, but I plan to have some wine with dinner, and, well…he’s a cop. I don’t want him to think I’m irresponsible.

  When I left my house, the lieutenant was curled on the couch where we usually snuggle, the tip of his tail flicking as he studied me through narrowed eyes. It’s hard not to feel judged when a cat looks at you like that. He also seemed unimpressed. After trying on a dozen different outfits ranging from just plain boring to trying way too hard, I settled on an outfit that’s me—tight gray jeans, a snug, soft cream sweater, and black suede ankle boots. No minidresses or sequins tonight. I want him to see the real me, and not be blinded by any flash.

  I don’t usually wear a ton of makeup, but tonight I wanted to play up my eyes, so I followed a YouTube tutorial to give myself a soft brown smoky eye. I have just enough skill to manage pulling it off—or at least, I think I do. For all I know, someone else might think I have to black eyes. But when I checked myself out before I left, I liked what I saw. The makeup put a sparkle in my brown eyes.

  Or maybe that’s just the excitement and nerves.

  I haven’t been on anything resembling a date in so long. None of the few relationships I’ve had in my life have amounted to anything—obviously. None were particularly traumatic, but all of them were boring and unfulfilling. And then my life was dumped on its head a couple months ago, and there was a short period of time right after the attack where I felt I may as well crawl into a hole and die. I thought I was never going to mend. Never going to be whole again. Never going to become a person good enough for the right guy. I thought I’d never meet the right guy.

  Well, that’s not quite accurate.

  I did meet the right guy. I just never thought I’d ever be good enough. That the passionate crush I harbored for him would ever manifest into something real.

  I’m so glad I didn’t listen to that version of myself.

  Because, as I turn around and survey my surroundings, there he is.

  Across the cobblestoned street, with people bustling about us on both of our respective sidewalks, Officer Jaxson Rivers stands with his hands in the pocket of a navy blue peacoat, the collar turned up against the slight, cold breeze.

  “Wow,” I whisper.

  He’s even more gorgeous than I remembered.

  His hair is short, slightly longer on top, buzzed on the sides. Even from here, I can tell he styled it a little—it looks tousled and windblown and hot and I want to run my fingers through it. His face is cleanshaven, which makes him look sort of boyish, but the set of his jaw gives him an edge that lets me know he’s all man.

  I can’t stop the huge grin from spreading across my face.

  He gazes back at me for a moment, then checks both ways before crossing the street. He walks with long strides, sure and confident and assertive. As he crosses, some of the women in the area—some guys, too—stop to watch him. He turns heads, but he only has eyes for me.

  Holy Jesus Christ. My stomach executes a complicated floor routine.

  When he reaches me, he walks right up to me, stopping a few inches away. He’s taller than I remembered, too. I’m only five-four, so it’s not hard to impress me with height, but he’s got to be at least six feet tall.

  He’s even sexier than what I’ve been fantasizing about the past couple of months. I swallow hard, looking up into his face, and something deep between my thighs tingles.

  “Hi,” he says, one side of his mouth curling up.

  It takes everything in me not to bite my lip. I want that mouth. On my lips, on my skin…in other places. I smile back. “Hi. It’s…wow. It’s really good to see you.”

  Then I hug him.

  I’m not sure what prompts me to do that. It’s just a natural, reflexive move. I’m so filled with happiness at the sight of him, the man who brought me out of the darkness when I never thought I’d see life again.

  I hug him tight.

  His body tenses for a second in surprise, but then he hugs me back, his arms going around me swiftly. I almost lose my breath.

  I almost start crying.

  “It’s really good,” he murmurs, “to see you too. You look beautiful…Hazel.”

  I’m so used to him calling me “Ms. Summers” that hearing my name almost knocks me over.

  He pulls back and gently cups my face in his large, warm hands. He strokes his thumbs over my cheeks. The pads of his thumbs are rough.

  A memory of calloused hands touching my face flashes through my mind.

  No way. That was a dream.

  Wasn’t it?

  “Let’s go in,” he says, and pulls open the door.

  The scents of delicious Italian food waft around us, like they’re hosts rushing out to greet long-lost guests. We’re taken to a two-person table near the back of the room by the window.

  Jaxson rests his hands lightly on my shoulders. I turn my head in surprise. His face is inches from mine. “Your coat?” he asks quietly.

  Swoon.

  I shimmy out of my coat and he drapes it over my chair, then pulls it out for me before taking his own seat. What a gentleman. It makes the thrill in my belly increase even more—or maybe that was having his face so close to mine for a second.

  I watch from beneath my lashes as he removes his own coat. Underneath he’s wearing a gray, long-sleeved sweater that shows off the shape of his heavily muscled arms and skims his body. It leaves something to the imagination, but it shows just enough to make my imagination run wild.

  No other man I’ve ever met or known in my adult life has ever made me feel like this before. My attraction to Jaxson began in the darkest moment of my life. That has to mean something.

  When he’s settled, he fixes me with a soft, almost thoughtful smile.

  I shift shyly in my chair, and I’m not normally a shy person. At all. The fact that I’ve held onto that quality about myself after everything i
s one of my proudest accomplishments. “What is it?”

  He shakes his head. “Sorry. I guess I’m struck a little speechless. You’re so beautiful.”

  I flush. It’s not just the compliment, but the earnestness of his words. He not saying something nice to say something nice…he really means it. That kind of sincerity can’t be faked.

  A server comes to greet us, offer us menus, and take our drink orders. I go with a glass of pinot noir and Jaxson orders an Old Fashioned. We make some small talk about the weather until our drinks arrive.

  I hold up my glass and smile at him. “To…new friendships.”

  His beautiful eyes gleam at me as he gently taps my glass with his. “To new friendships.” We drink, then he sets down his glass. “So. I’m really happy you asked me to dinner.”

  “You are?” I hope I’m not coming off like some simpering schoolgirl, but I can’t help feeling like I’m sixteen on a date with my first crush, who just so happens to be the captain of the football team.

  “Yeah. I wanted to see you too. See how you’re doing,” he hastily amends, scratching the back of his neck. “You went through a lot.”

  Normally, I’m not open to discussing my ordeal with anyone but my therapist, but Jaxson is an exception for obvious reasons. And he hasn’t exactly asked a question, but the invitation to step into the topic is there, in a non-intrusive way I appreciate.

  “Yeah,” I agree, then chuckle a little. “That’s putting it mildly. It’s been the fastest and the longest, most painful two months of my life.”

  He nods, his gaze sympathetic but not pitying. I don’t want to be pitied by anyone—least of all him.

  “I think to do what you’re about to do on Wednesday is incredibly brave,” he says, stretching a hand toward mine then resting it on the table, like he catches himself.

  I lift a shoulder. “I don’t know about brave, but I want to look that bastard in the face while I tell everyone what he did to me in detail. I want him to see he didn’t destroy me. Not even close.”

  “You’re amazing,” Jaxson tells me.

  “Thank you,” I say softly.

  What Howard Barber did to me doesn’t compare with what he did to the women whose lives he did end. Apart from not killing me, he never raped or mutilated me, as he did to them, but he did terrorize me, beat me, starve me. He did make me feel that my life was about to be over. He does, occasionally, still haunt my dreams.

  “Can I ask you something about that night?” Jaxson asks.

  I steel myself. “Yes. You can ask me anything.”

  He doesn’t miss that emphasis, and a look of gratitude crosses his face. “When those little girls found you in that basement—the ones who said they’d been playing in the woods and came across the shed—why didn’t you go with them?”

  I take a deep breath, recalling that moment. The basement Howard kept me in was in an old shed on property he owned in the woods. That day, he “checked” on me before heading out to do God knows what—run some errands, maybe, and he forgot to lock the door. Two girls who weren’t more than ten years old wandered across the shed by mistake, and found me tied up in the basement.

  “They tried to help me, but I wouldn’t let them,” I told him, my eyes on my wineglass as I toy with the stem. “I was too weak to run. Too weak to keep up with them. I would have slowed them down, and Howard would have found us. I didn’t want to risk anything happening to them because of me, so I decided the best way they could help me was to call the cops for me. If Howard came back early from whatever he was doing and found us, I wouldn’t have the energy to protect them.”

  It’s starting to be too much, talking about that day. It was the both the best and worst day of my life. I thought I was going to die. And then I got to keep living.

  My lungs tighten. It’s suddenly impossible to breathe, but I can smell the damp scent of the shed, fabric softener that came off the girls’ clothing, the smell of early autumn that clung to their hair like they’d been rolling around in leaves. I saw their frightened faces. Faces too young to see what they were seeing, but still determined to try to help me anyway.

  I think about those girls every single day. I never got to thank them.

  Strangely, it’s that thought that brings the tears.

  Air moves at my side, and sudden warmth encompasses me. It’s enough to jar me out of my stupor. Gentle fingers touch my chin, and my head moves in the direction it’s encouraged.

  I stare into his hazel eyes, so full of compassion and strength and sorrow and…

  If I didn’t know better, I’d call it love.

  “Hey,” he says softly. His large frame shields me from any nosy people who might be watching me meltdown right now. Not that I really care. Nearly dying tends to put things like public embarrassment into perspective. “Stay with me. Here. Can you do that?”

  His hand slides to lightly cup my jaw, and his fingers trace light, tingle-inducing circles on the side of my neck. Oh shit. That’s nice. I could fall asleep to that.

  “I’m here,” I murmur, sniffling.

  He reaches for his dinner napkin and gently blots my tears. I’m sure my makeup is destroyed, but I can’t find it in me to care about that, either.

  “He couldn’t break you,” Jaxson tells me. “He couldn’t destroy you. You were too strong for him. He can’t ever hurt you again, Hazel. I will never let that happen. I swear it on my life.” He tilts his head. “You believe me?”

  I swallow and nod. “I believe you.”

  “Are you okay to stay?” he asks. “Or would you rather leave? Go home? I’m not going anywhere. So if you need a raincheck, that’s more than okay. I’ll be waiting.”

  He would wait…for me. I smile through my tears. “No. I want to stay. I want you to tell me all about you.”

  Jaxson smiles back, tucks a lock of my hair behind my ear, and returns to his seat. He immediately reaches for my hand like it was always meant to be in his.

  Maybe it was.

  Chapter 5

  Jaxson

  Holding her hand like she’s mine is the most natural thing in the world. Reaching for it felt like breathing—involuntary and a life-continuing action. The best part is that she wants me to hold it. If I got even the slightest hint she wasn’t okay with me touching her, I would have removed my hand and apologized profusely.

  But instead, she smiles down at where my hand cups her fingers and rests her other hand on top of mine.

  The server comes to take our orders. She goes for the shrimp scampi and I order the steak marsala.

  We talk about what feels like everything—our childhoods, our families. College. She’s curious about my criminal justice degree and what made me want to be a cop. I tell her about Saint, about how close we are, about our matching tattoos—crosses in the middle of our chests, at the top of our sternums, and the word “trust” on our uppermost left ribs. Hazel seems delighted to know that we’re as close as twins even though we’re a year apart.

  In turn, she tells me about her family—dad, one older sister, a brother-in-law, and a new baby on the way.

  “I didn’t think I was going to live to know what they’re going to have,” Hazel adds softly, “but they’re having a boy.” She smiles.

  “Congratulations,” I say warmly. “I bet your parents are over the moon.”

  “My dad is,” she says. She clears her throat. “My mom actually passed away a few years ago. She had cancer.”

  I shake my head, a twinge of pain in my heart. “I’m really sorry. Saint and I, we lost our grandpa to cancer this spring. He was like a second dad, he was so involved in our lives. He was a Ridge City cop, too.”

  “Fuck cancer,” Hazel says with enough vehemence to surprise me. She lifts her wineglass in a toast. I smile and lift my Old Fashioned.

  “Fuck cancer,” I reply, and she nods gravely. We clink glasses and drink.

  Suddenly Hazel sets her glass down as if she’s startled. She rummages through her small purse and pulls o
ut her phone.

  Am I being fake-emergency-called? I wonder. I don’t think I’ve done anything offensive. I’m pretty sure I smell good, too.

  She frowns, then rolls her eyes at the screen before she glances up at me. “Sorry about that. I get notifications whenever my security camera gets tripped.”

  I’m instantly alert. “Is everything okay?”

  She nods and rolls her eyes again. “It’s just the lieutenant.”

  The lieu— Who?

  Hazel flips her phone around, a wry smirk on her face. I watch the camera feed. The camera points toward the front door from an upper corner in what looks like her living room. All is still for about ten seconds, then I see a small shape saunter into the frame.

  A cat.

  The cat—the “lieutenant,” I guess—actually glances over its shoulder up toward the camera, then continues his journey toward a narrow table pushed against the front window. A small Christmas tree sits on the table. The cat leaps onto the table and—wait for it—knocks it over with a single, well-placed bat of his paw.

  I burst out laughing.

  Hazel utters a dry chuckle, shaking her head as she tucks her phone away. “Lieutenant Dan isn’t too happy I left him to go on a date tonight.”

  I’m not sure what catches me off guard more—her cat’s awesome name, or the fact that she called this dinner a date. “He certainly seems like a character,” I say. “With a hell of a name.”

  “He was already called that when I adopted him,” she tells me. “He was about one when I brought him home. He’s nine now. I never asked where that name came from, and I never wanted to change it. He’s totally a Lieutenant Dan, except he has his legs. Do you like cats?”

  “I like all animals,” I answer, swirling my drink. “I grew up with dogs, cats, fish, rabbits, birds. Currently I have a dog named Cookie.”

  “Cookie,” Hazel coos. “What kind of dog is she?”

  “Lab mixed with a border collie, I think. I adopted her, too. She’s my best friend.”