Borrowing Trouble

by Stacy Finz

  She shuddered one more time and he kissed his way up her outstanding body while she tried to unbuckle his belt.

  “What do you want there, sweetness?”

  “You . . . more.”

  Somewhere at the back of his brain he knew this was a colossally bad idea, but right now another organ was doing the talking. So he lifted her up and carried her in all her naked glory to his bedroom, where he quickly got rid of his pants, found a condom in the nightstand, and checked the expiration date. They were still good, but not for much longer.

  She pulled him on top of her and he laughed. “Just let me suit up, sweetness, then I’ll give you what you want.”

  “Hurry.”

  Yep. His kind of woman—as long as she didn’t turn out to be psycho. Brady ignored that last part as he slid into her warm tightness. Sloane had put him under her spell. He’d worry about the consequences later.

  They spent most of the night and much of the early morning having sex. Sloane liked trying new things and Brady was all too happy to oblige. She blew him away. She was sweet and beautiful and sexy and . . . damn, was he in over his head. This was the worst possible time to get involved with someone. Not with psycho Sandra lurking in the background, waiting to pounce. And not when he’d always been a love-’em-and-leave-’em kind of guy. Having only a thin wall to separate them would make that hella awkward.

  At least when he woke up the next morning she was gone. No kiss goodbye. No note. No strings attached. Just the way he liked it. But it didn’t stop him from grabbing his shorts off the floor, pulling them on, and peeking out the window to see if Sloane’s truck was gone and feeling disappointed when it was. She must’ve left for work.

  He had the day off. Besides writing up instructions for the catering crew on Jake and Cecilia’s wedding, he was free to do whatever he wanted. Since they hadn’t gotten much snow in the last month, skiing was out of the question. Depending on the weather, maybe he’d take his kayak out on the lake. Or maybe he’d head into Reno and catch a movie.

  But by the middle of the day he broke down and called Sloane. He’d forgotten that she was filling in for Rhys, and Connie patched him right through to her phone.

  “Hey.” She let out a nervous giggle. In a low voice she said, “I hope I didn’t wake you this morning.”

  “Nope. Is it okay if I swing by and get your keys to install those locks?”

  “Uh, yeah, sure.”

  “See you in a few, then.” He clicked off, grabbed a jacket, and headed to his van.

  Sloane was sitting in Rhys’s glass office when he got there, and after Connie gave him the third degree about the menu for Jake and Cecilia’s wedding, she directed him to go on back.

  “How you doing, Chief?”

  She giggled again and cocked her head at Rhys’s big oak desk. “Pretty cool, huh?”

  “Yep. Anything going on?”

  “As Rhys likes to say, ‘All quiet on the Western front.’ But I’m using the opportunity to go through more missing persons databases.”

  “You have lunch yet?” He was hungry, is all. “If not, we can grab something at the Ponderosa.”

  “I haven’t. But I don’t know if I’m allowed to leave. Let me ask Connie.”

  She rounded the desk and headed for Connie’s station. He laughed to himself, wondering who was really running the show. A few minutes later she returned.

  “I just have to take the radio,” she said, and shrugged into her jacket.

  They walked over to the restaurant together and for a crazy second he almost took her hand. Sophie was on hostess duty today and told them to sit wherever they wanted. Sloane picked a booth in the back corner, where they sat across from each other.

  The server brought them water and asked if they knew what they wanted. Sloane got a chicken Caesar salad and he got a steak sandwich with fries. They made small talk until the food came, and dug in.

  “We’ve never been to a restaurant together,” she said, and he caught something in her eyes that looked a lot like we’re a couple now.

  Not good!

  Brady leaned across the table. “Sloane, last night . . . it was the best night of my life. But things got heated pretty quickly and, well, I should’ve been straight with you. I’m not looking for anything permanent.”

  Suddenly becoming fixated on the table, she said, “Okay,” but her voice cracked and he felt like a first-class heel.

  “Sloane, honey, look at me.” She lifted her head and locked eyes with him. Man, they were blue. “I left some trouble behind in LA. It hasn’t followed me yet . . . but now’s not a good time for me to get involved.” It wasn’t safe for either of them. And then there was the fact that he didn’t do involvement. Ever.

  “What kind of trouble?” she asked, her chin held high.

  “Bad trouble.” He wanted to leave it at that, but she was looking at him skeptically. Like she thought he was either wanted by the mob or feeding her a lie after he’d gotten her in the sack. “I have a stalker. She’s delusional and dangerous and I don’t want to put you on the other side of that. You understand?”

  He watched her morph back into cop mode. “What happened?”

  “It’s a long story. I like you, Sloane. You’re beautiful, smart, and tough. And you’ve got enough on your plate. You don’t need my pot of problems to add to it.”

  “Have you gone to the police?”

  “Santa Monica PD is working the case. But my stalker is as canny as she is crazy. So far they have nothing to arrest her for. Their best advice to me was to get out of LA while the getting was good. That’s why I’m here.”

  “You ran from her?”

  He didn’t like the way she’d phrased that, but yeah, that’s exactly what he’d done. “She broke into my apartment, she trashed my restaurant, she violated the restraining order I took out on her . . . and that’s not the half of it. But she didn’t leave a trace of evidence. Just my word against hers. Sloane, hurting a woman goes against everything I know and believe in, but if I didn’t get the hell out of there I was gonna hurt her.”

  “Was she your girlfriend?”

  He gave a bitter laugh. “Nope. But she thought so. Still does. I met her in the bar of my restaurant, went home with her that night, and the next thing I know she’s threatening to kill herself if I won’t see her again. It’s too surreal to explain. Even I have trouble understanding it, and believe me, I’ve read all the literature there is about this kind of warped obsession, trying to comprehend how this happened. But if she ever finds me, I don’t want her finding you.”

  “Did you tell Nugget PD about this?”

  He held her gaze. “I just did.”

  “So this is official?”

  “Sloane, I’m not talking to you as a cop. I’m telling you because this woman is unhinged . . . seriously scary. Last night shouldn’t have happened. But this chemistry between us . . . Ah, hell . . . it was selfish of me.” He scrubbed his hand through his hair. “If anything happened to you, I couldn’t live with that.” It appeared that thinking with his dick instead of using common sense had become a pattern.

  “Did you forget what I do for a living? If you’re just looking for a way to disentangle yourself from me, be a man about it, Brady.” She reached inside her handbag and got out her wallet. “Look, I’ve got to get back to work.”

  “I’ve got this.” He quickly handed his credit card to a nearby server.

  “Let me guess: This is the story you feed women because you’re hiding from your wife.” Sloane got to her feet.

  “Hang on a sec.” He went after her, wondering if that married detective she’d dated had done a number on her. “That was a cheap shot, Sloane. But check it out for yourself if you don’t believe me. Just don’t leave any bread crumbs. I’ve worked hard at staying under the radar. Now give me your house key for the locks.”

  “Don’t worry about it.”

  “Ah, come on, Sloane, don’t be that way.” Not willing to take no for an answer, he held
out his hand, waiting.

  “Fine.” She took the key off her chain and passed it to him. Then she walked out of the Ponderosa with her head held high and Brady’s eyes pinned to her ass in those olive-green police pants.

  No way would he drag her into psycho Sandra’s sights.

  Chapter 11

  Sloane went back to the office feeling dejected. It’s not like she wanted to marry him, but Brady was the first guy in a long time who’d held her interest. He was generous, kind, smart, amazing to look at, and he was right, the chemistry between them was combustible. She’d never been one to sleep with a man she wasn’t already in a relationship with, but Brady had made her feel safe and comfortable. And the sex . . . well, it had been above and beyond anything she’d ever experienced.

  His stalker story seemed like a handy excuse not to become involved. She was a cop, for God’s sake, and could hold her own. Still, she got the sense Brady hadn’t told her everything. That’s why she shut the door to Rhys’s office and picked up the phone. She told herself that it was official business. In order to protect its residents, the Nugget police should be privy to the case, especially if this woman was as dangerous as Brady had indicated. Clearly, he thought she was capable of coming here and making trouble. Furthermore, Brady had been the one who’d demanded that Rhys be thoroughly briefed on the details of her LAPD problems.

  Well, Mr. Benson, what’s good for the goose is good for the gander.

  She found the number for Santa Monica PD, dialed, and within minutes was on the phone with the case detective. After making the proper introductions—McBride was common enough that he didn’t seem to register her name—Detective Rinek spent a half hour getting her up to speed on Brady’s stalker, making the hairs on the back of Sloane’s neck stand at attention.

  “She’s slick,” he told her. “Knows how to cover her tracks or stay within the narrow confines of the law. You ever see Fatal Attraction? This woman makes Glenn Close look like a pussycat. But there’s not been a damned thing we could do about it. Off the record, I told the guy to get a gun. I don’t know what you’ve got up there in that jurisdiction of yours, but I’ve seen how these things end . . . It’s either him or her.”

  After they hung up, Sloane closed the blinds on the glass door and fired up Rhys’s computer. It didn’t take long to see that Sandra Lockhart was a busy beaver on social media. According to her posts, she and Brady had taken quite a few trips together in the last several months. The pictures were so obviously Photoshopped that a twelve-year-old could’ve done better.

  On Tumblr, Sandra put on one hell of a show. Sloane had spent a fair share of her job in LA visiting porn sites, but this was pretty raunchy stuff. A lot of close-ups of genitalia and loud moaning and groaning. Brady’s tattoos made a command performance, but while the man in the film doing the bumping and grinding had the same color hair and the same build as Brady, he wasn’t Brady. After last night, Sloane could definitely attest to that. She compared Sandra’s Facebook pictures to the woman in the video and thought they could be one and the same. Regardless, she had achieved the illusion that she and Brady were going at it like bunnies for the camera. Not the best image for a chef on his way to becoming the next Jamie Oliver.

  He was certainly a cautionary tale against having a one-night stand with a stranger. But she wasn’t blaming him. Sandra had turned his life upside down.

  Someone knocked at the door and she quickly closed out of Tumblr. “Come in.”

  “What are you doing in here?” Connie glanced around the room.

  “I was sifting through missing persons databases and the glare from the light was hurting my eyes.”

  “We’ve got a fight at the high school. Two girls. One had pepper spray. I thought it best if we sent you.”

  Sloane grabbed her jacket off the hook behind Rhys’s desk. “Pepper spray? Seriously?”

  Connie shrugged. “That’s what the principal said.”

  “Okay. I’m on my way.”

  It took her less than ten minutes to get to the school. No traffic in Nugget. A nice perk, given that in LA, even with her lights flashing and her siren sounding, it could take thirty minutes to get to a crime scene in rush hour. Cars so thick, the roads were like parking lots. Here you could zip around the city proper in no time at all. You just had to watch out for deer crossing the road.

  She parked in the red zone in front of Nugget High, a stucco building with a red tile roof and double-sash windows. From the outside it looked a little like a fortress, but inside the walls were decorated with brightly colored posters and the floors—the same hardwood found in a gymnasium—held a polished shine. The lockers had been painted glossy royal blue and gold—the school’s colors. The hallway carried that same familiar scent of schools everywhere: a mixture of ammonia and sweaty sneakers. It should’ve been terrible but was oddly comforting.

  Sloane found the principal’s office. Two girls sat at opposite sides of the room glaring at each other while a couple of secretaries clacked away on computers. The principal, a round woman with wiry silver hair that reached her shoulders, came out to greet Sloane and call her back into her private domain. Mrs. Saddler, that was her name, explained the situation, and by the time they went back out, one of the girls’ parents had arrived. Mrs. Saddler escorted the family into her office, leaving Sloane to deal with the other girl.

  “Is there a private place we can go?” Sloane asked one of the secretaries.

  “There’s a small conference room in the back.” The woman pointed across the room.

  “Let’s talk in there, Rose.”

  The girl’s head sprung up, like she was surprised Sloane knew her name. They went back to the room and Sloane shut the door. Rose sat in a chair at the table and folded her arms over her chest.

  “When will your parents be here?”

  “My mother works nights for Union Pacific.” Rose gave a half shrug. “I doubt she’s coming.”

  “Where did you get the pepper spray?”

  Rose answered Sloane’s question with a stony glare. Dumb question. You could get the stuff anywhere, including the Internet.

  “Was it because Taylor and her friends were bullying you?”

  More silence, but Sloane detected a slight twitch in Rose’s right cheek.

  “You can talk to me about it. I understand what it’s like.”

  Rose snorted. “I doubt it, if you looked like that in high school.”

  Sloane couldn’t really argue with that, since her bullying hadn’t started until adulthood. “Don’t pretend to know anything about my life and I won’t pretend to know about yours.”

  That got Rose’s attention. “Taylor is a bitch.”

  “Rose, I’m gonna be real straight with you. There are a lot of bitches out there. You can’t take them all on with a can of pepper spray.”

  “Just Taylor would be enough.”

  “Mrs. Saddler said you dropped the canister and started to cry when she got in your face.”

  Again with the half shrug. “I didn’t want to go all Columbine over some bimbo with bad highlights.”

  “What do you know about Columbine?” Rose hadn’t even been born when that happened. “Because it was god-awful, Rose. The worst thing you can imagine.”

  Her bottom lip trembled. “I just want Taylor and her hos to leave me alone.”

  “What do they do to you?”

  “I’ll let you guess.” Rose waved her hand over herself. She carried about twenty extra pounds, had a bad case of acne, and her hair could use a good washing.

  “They do anything physical to you?”

  “Four of them tried to shove my head into the toilet. Good thing I’m fat and could get them off me.”

  “Don’t mistake strong with fat,” Sloane said, trying to hide how much she’d like to haul those girls in and lock them in a jail cell. “What else did they do?”

  “They hide my underwear and bra, so after gym I can’t find them. They tape pictures of elephants to my desk,
and generally make my life a living hell.” Rose tried to act indifferent, but Sloane could see her pain clear as day. “You gonna arrest me?”

  “Bringing a weapon to school and threatening another student with it is a felony, Rose. You’ve got to know you’re getting suspended. The thing is, Mrs. Saddler says you’re a good student. And I don’t think you’re a bad person. I just think you’ve been pushed to the edge. But that’s not an excuse for bringing pepper spray to school. So there has to be some consequences. What do you think I should do?”

  “How would I know? I’m only fifteen.”

  Sloane let out a long breath. “I’ll need to sleep on it. Tomorrow, I’ll expect you at the police station at nine in the morning. Make sure you show up or you’ll be in even more trouble. Come on.”

  “Where are we going?”

  “I’m taking you home.”

  “I can walk.” Rose thrust her chin out.

  “Not today.”

  Rose followed Sloane to her police SUV, raised her brows, and started to get in the backseat. Bullet-proof glass and steel mesh separated it from the front. “Nice ride.”

  “Sit up here in the passenger seat and buckle up,” Sloane said, and got her address before starting the engine.

  Rose lived in a cruddy part of town. A lot of tiny, run-down houses set on postage-stamp-sized lawns right next to the railroad tracks. A primer-gray Camaro sat up on blocks in Rose’s front yard and half the steps to her porch were rotted.

  As soon as they parked, Rose bolted out of the car. Sloane followed.

  “What are you doing?”

  “You said your mother works at night. I want to make sure you’re okay alone.”

  But when they got inside there was a young man sitting at the kitchen table. There were dishes piled in the sink and a cat licking leftover food off of the counter. The man continued to sit there in his wifebeater, letting his eyes roam over Sloane in a way that gave her the creeps. Then he turned away, grabbed his Coors can, and took a swig.

  “You get in trouble, Rosie?”

  “That’s my brother, Skeeter,” Rose told Sloane.