by Rhyll Biest
Evert raised his brows. ‘Hitting the hard stuff already?’
She shrugged. Sobriety paid off in a place like this.
‘Schnitzel okay with you?’
She nodded. With her stomach doing its best to eat itself for the last two hours she was in no position to be picky. She scanned the tavern tables. All full. Looked like they’d have to eat standing.
The publican slid their drinks in front of them and Evert ponied up.
‘Thanks, next one’s on me.’ She inspected her glass. It was passably clean.
‘Don’t go thinking your wage as an inspector will stretch to cover this kind of extravagant Diet Coke habit, Daily.’
Evert’s banter had made a long day much easier and they’d slipped into a relaxed patter of inappropriateness. ‘Don’t forget that I like my Coke with … ice.’ She winked.
He gave a snort. ‘Yeah, well, plenty of that to be found around here these days.’ He sipped his beer and closed his eyes. ‘Ahh. So, let’s pretend you’re back home and you’re about to write up your case notes for the day.’
She nodded, discarded the drinking straw in her glass. Her teeth would suffer enamel erosion from the beverage anyway but the straw would make it worse. Plus, the plastic contained polypropylene and Bisphenol A, which could leak into her drink. And straws were bad for the environment.
‘Where are you going to start?’ Evert rested his beer glass on the bar.
She closed the file in her head called ‘straws are bad’ and opened ‘what I did at work today’. ‘I’d sort the cases by priority rather than chronologically.’
‘So …’ He pulled a job sheet from the back pocket of his pants. ‘What would you write up?’
The sound of the poker machines faded as she mentally ran through their day. ‘Lowest priority would be the dog carcasses out at Chadston. They looked like they’d been dumped so it’s impossible to tie them to the property where they were found, or any person. While the cause of death wasn’t clear some of their wounds looked consistent with dog fighting, so we need to monitor the area for reports of that. We took photographic evidence and asked the council to dispose of the bodies.’
Evert nodded. ‘Go on.’
‘There was the complaint about a dog left in a yard without shade, but the dog turned out to be a garden ornament.’ She glanced at Evert. ‘Does that happen very often?’
‘You’d be surprised.’
‘Okay. The report about a puppy farm was misleading. The property of the dog breeder we visited only had seven dogs there at the time. According to the owners we spoke to the neighbour’s report is part of a vendetta against them.’
‘Ah, yes, the RSPCA, your tool for getting even with your neighbours.’
‘So we dismiss that report. With the abandoned guard dogs in Gardner you said the guy’s been at it before, right? Leaving them on their own for weeks at a time?’
‘Ah, yes, Lance, the gentle Wordsworth of Gardner Scrap Metal. A shame you didn’t get to meet him. I’ll pay him another visit once I’ve procured a pair of bolt cutters.’
‘Sounds like fun.’
Evert held up a finger as his phone rang. ‘Hello? Hey, Stace. Where am I? Having dinner at the Walgarra Tavern with Daily. You in?’ He laughed. ‘Yeah, I’ll order you the roadkill special. See you soon.’
Daily. She’d been assigned a new name. She chewed on an ice cube as Evert said his farewells to Stacey.
Evert raised his beer. ‘Where were we?’
‘You were about to tell me how you fight crime with just a cape and your superpowers.’
‘Right you are.’
When Stacey arrived she wasn’t alone. The vet patted Belovuk’s door-busting shoulders with affection. ‘Look what I found loitering in the parking lot.’
Probably looking for people to arrest. Kat repressed a frown. Why couldn’t Stacey have left him there? Now Kat would have to deal with all the uncomfortable sensations Belovuk stirred in her lady regions. She nodded a greeting and registered the gleam of amusement that lit Belovuk’s eyes at her less than enthusiastic welcome.
‘Do we have somewhere to sit?’ Stacey raised her brows at the publican before nodding at Belovuk.
As if exhausted by her question the publican slowly raised his eyes and pointed. ‘Over there, corner table.’
Kat glanced from said corner table to Belovuk. Hmmm. If she worked in a tavern frequented by bikers she’d reserve a table for law enforcement too.
‘Hey, Stace, take a look at this picture of Molly’s puppies.’ Evert waved his phone.
Stacey abandoned Belovuk to look at the pictures and before she could say ‘cruelty and neglect’ Kat found herself stranded with Walgarra’s bossiest and most attractive law enforcement officer.
He inspected the dregs of her drink. ‘What’re you drinking?’
‘The blood of my enemies.’
He raised an eyebrow. ‘They have that on tap now?’
She shrugged. ‘I’ll settle for Diet Coke.’ She fished a fiver from her canvas travel wallet and held it out to him. ‘But I prefer to pay for my own drink, even if it’s just soda.’
‘Miss Independence.’
‘That’s me.’
She frowned as he pushed her fiver aside and pulled his wallet from his back pocket. He caught the publican’s eye. ‘Two Diet Cokes, please.’
Pushy fucker. Her arm radiated weird, confused signals where he’d touched her. To salve her pride she delivered a verbal jab. ‘Diet soda. Aren’t you worried about your masculinity quotient?’
‘Do I look worried?’
No, he looked the very opposite of worried, more like big, sternly placid and un-fuckable with. Desire struck sharp as a needle stick, and without permission her gaze roamed his bullishly broad shoulders and narrow flanks. If Jesus were gay he’d sell his own mother to ride those hips.
She bit her lip to keep a snort of laughter in. That was the problem with thoughts, they slipped the leash whenever they could and before you knew it you had a pack of horny mutts roaming your head.
He handed her drink to her and raised his glass in a silent toast. The glass, slick and cold under her fingers, receded as she watched him. Everything, from the hard lines of his face to his powerful build, screamed danger—and yet he was ordering Diet Coke. What gave?
For a man who wore danger and surliness thick as a bear pelt, Diet Coke sure as hell seemed a tame drink choice.
Recovering alcoholic? But then why torture himself by visiting a bar?
But with each slide of his Adam’s apple up and down the thick column of his throat with each mouthful of Diet Coke, her interest in answers dissolved.
He was sexy as.
Rough looking.
Jacked.
Perfect.
Even as he went about the routine business of weighing up everyone in the room to determine their threat level, the likelihood they’d resist arrest, and the likelihood he’d have to bust their biker heads.
His square jaw told her not to say it, but as soon as she told herself not to say it Galenka became desperate to say it. ‘So, are you happy or disappointed that I survived my first day on the job?’
Ugh, had that sounded flirty?
He frowned, seemed about to speak when instead his eyes narrowed, hardened to a degree that gave her pause.
She looked over her shoulder and spotted …
A mullet—the hairstyle that polarised.
She knew her aversion was class-based, a form of snotty prejudice, and yet her upbringing shaped her opinion as distinctly as the scissors that had shaped the approaching giant’s hair. He was clearly a smuggler of impotency cures made from animal parts, and she picked him for a rhino horn kind of guy.
The ’party’ section of his ginger mullet reached all the way down to brush the shoulders of his ratty, sleeveless leather vest festooned with patches. She neither knew nor cared what his biker badges of bullshit signified, was far more interested in the stare Belovuk trained on him like a
sniper’s rifle. Belovuk studied him as if working out the best way to take the man apart.
Interesting.
Mullet man had the glassy eyes of a fourth or fifth beer and was slow to perceive Belovuk—which astounded Kat given that Belovuk was the size of a small mountain—but once the man did spot him his expression darkened and he veered off in another direction.
‘Who was that?’ she murmured, the blare of the poker machines almost drowning her out. Belovuk’s eyes remained trained on the retreating man’s solid bulk.
‘Hello, Earth to Officer Belovuk.’
Like a pit bull reluctant to be torn from another dog, Belovuk dragged his gaze away. ‘Sorry?’
‘Who was that? The guy with the mullet.’
He gave a slow blink, like he was switching gears. ‘Daryl Hicks. Someone you need to steer clear of.’
His tone, bossy and dick-ish, was like biting into tin foil. ‘You mean someone to avoid unless I have police back-up?’
A smile prowled by his lips, almost paused there before slinking away. ‘Nope, I mean someone to stay away from. Coming?’ Belovuk rested a light hand on her elbow to steer her towards the table and her nerves lit up more brightly than the trilling and tweeting poker machines they passed.
Why did his presence pull her lever so firmly? Big, dominating types were not her thing. They were the opposite of her thing, if she had one at all. Dominating men overwhelmed, could make her lose herself, and she didn’t want to be erased by a stronger personality, or have to engage in the kind of ugly guerrilla warfare—like her mother’s campaign—designed to avoid ceding control.
She just wanted to be herself.
That thought faded as they crossed the crowded tavern and she let the well-built law enforcement officer take point. The crowds parted before him, even people not looking his way picked up vibe and moved, like they used to for her dad.
Don’t think about him.
Once they’d reached their table he removed his hand from her elbow, but the aftershock of his touch lingered.
She was one giant, raw, walking nerve. She rested a hand on the table, ran a finger over the scarred wood. ‘So, you were telling me why I need to avoid Hicks.’
‘Nope, from memory I just plain told you to do it.’ His voice, deep and rusty, rested pleasantly in her ears, in stark contrast to the incendiary words.
She held his gaze. ‘You mean you’d just tell me to do something with no explanation, like some knuckle-dragging jerk?’
He nodded, unperturbed. ‘Like some knuckle-dragging jerk.’
At least he was a self-aware jerk. ‘So why do you have a hard-on for this Hicks?’
He smirked. ‘If I have one of those it’s certainly not for Hicks.’
Jesus. ‘Cute. You know what I mean, why do you want to arrest him?’
‘Can’t talk about it.’
‘Except to tell me what to do?’
‘That’s right.’ He lowered his eyes to sip his drink, but not before she’d seen the gleam of provocation in his eyes.
‘Did you invite me to drink soda with you just so you could bait me?’
‘No, ma’am. I’m drinking soda with you because my shift starts in a bit and I need to be stone cold sober for it.’ His eyes scanned the room, a reflex he probably wasn’t even aware of.
Good that he didn’t deny the baiting.
His gaze landed back on her. ‘The real question is why you’re not drinking anything harder since you’re at the soft end of your first day on the job.’ He raised his glass, caught an ice cube between his teeth and crunched down on it.
Kat knew just how that ice cube felt, the soft end of her day no longer feeling so soft. Funny how he made her fluctuate between anxiety and attraction.
‘I’m not much of a drinker.’
He cocked his head at her curt answer, gave her a steady look that said ‘I’m going to give you a pass for now but next time I’ll pin you down and get a full explanation’.
Dammit, now she was picturing him doing exactly that, pinning her down. And enjoying the visual way too much. ‘What kind of name is Belovuk?’
‘Serbian.’ His tone dared her to comment.
So his parents were immigrants too. He wrongly interpreted her question as having a dig at his heritage, she was simply curious. In Russian the word ‘belo’ meant ‘white’ and she wanted to know whether it meant the same in Serb.
‘Does it mean anything, your surname?’
‘It means my mother married my father, an uncommon thing in this part of town.’ He scanned the tavern’s inhabitants.
‘Does it mean ‘white something’?’
He broke off his scrutiny of the room to meet her eyes. ‘Yes, it does. White wolf.’
Despite her long day, despite the confronting nature of much of what she’d dealt with—a house filled with cat faeces, dog carcasses, the ribs of the starving dogs—she smiled.
If that surname didn’t perfectly encapsulate the man, she didn’t know what did. He was a wolf among livestock, the Walgarra herd ever uneasy around him. Did the wolf protect or prey upon them? Or a bit of both?
‘Something funny?’ His tone was mild enough.
‘Just wondering what kind of wolf you are. The big, bad type or some other.’
‘Find out for yourself.’
A cocoon of heat enveloped her—if that wasn’t both a challenge and a come-on she didn’t know what was.
He backed it up with a lazy smile that left her oxygen challenged. Dammit, did her cheeks look as flambéed as they felt?
Officer Belovuk was cool, intimidating and civil while in uniform—and an aggressive flirt when out of it. She filed the piece of information away.
If only she could make her body listen to common sense but it had long taken the bit between its teeth and galloped off full-tilt, bolting towards the intersection of Bad Decision and Recklessly Turned On, Galenka no doubt spurring it on.
No. She had rules, and one of those rules was that she didn’t mess with cops or dominating types. He was both.
She tugged at her necklace chain, slid her fake engagement ring up and down its length.
Subtle, Galenka rolled her kohl-rimmed eyes.
Shut up.
The ring is nothing. You knows—and he knows—you wants him.
Belovuk eyed her. ‘How did you know? That ‘belo’ meant white?’
‘My mother was Russian.’ And a lot of other things.
‘You speak Russian?’
‘Some.’ What she remembered. ‘What about you, do you speak Serb?’
‘Some.’
She’d bet it sounded hot when he did, because his deep, husky voice, truth be told, could make anything from a shopping list to a death threat sound dark and sexy.
An ample denim-clad arse bumped their table as a hairy biker lumbered past. Kat’s almost empty glass toppled over and a small lake of soda spread across the wood tabletop.
She glanced at Belovuk, unsure how he’d respond. If he was anything like her old man, he’d tackle the biker from behind and pound his head repeatedly against the floor until he apologised, or would at least make some pissed-off comment to assert his dominance. But Belovuk just sat and stared at the spreading lake of soda on the table as if it were radioactive, his jaw clenched so hard a muscle twitched and leaped.
‘I’ve got it.’ She pulled a couple of tissues from her pocket and mopped up the mess.
He snapped to. ‘Sorry, I’ll get it.’
Yeah, I’m sure you would have except you were in another space and time dimension just then. ‘No problem.’
His expression smoothed out. ‘Can I get you another?’ He raised his own empty glass.
‘Don’t you have to go?’
‘Not yet.’ He checked his watch. ‘I still have a good fifteen minutes to sway you.’
‘Sway me?’ Into doing what? Indiscretion? According to Galenka not that much persuasion was necessary.
‘Into attending de-escalation training.’ And
anything else you might be amenable to, his look suggested.
Her need not to break her own rules warred with an unfamiliar curiosity. If she rested a hand on one of his jacked biceps, would it feel like it looked—hard, round, swollen? And what would it feel like to be mauled by such a sizeable creature? Oh, the heady temptation of security in the form of a hard body. The cosy carnal scenarios it prompted, like kitchen bench sex and shared showers that lasted longer than the hot water.
But that was the problem with desire, it danced too close to dependency, a machine that hammered love into destructive obsession and left nothing but wreckage in its wake. She rubbed her forearm, the one broken so long ago in that childhood non-accident. The ache was a good friend, a sensible one, reminding her not to follow in her mother’s footsteps and fuck up by tangling with a cop.
Relationships were dangerous enough—like crossing a land-mined field while wearing a blindfold—without one party being vested with state-sanctioned power.
Which was to say ‘too much’ power.
She chose not to sashay through that minefield, and the first step towards achieving that goal was to ignore the brawny arm resting on the table near hers. ‘We were so busy today I didn’t even think about the training.’ Before she could speak further a wide red and white polka dot skirt paused by their table.
Kat raised her eyes, took in the full impact of Sharon’s rockabilly glory—the poof, bangs and pigtails, the red flower in her hair, make-up applied with a trowel, half-sleeve tattoos, the black top cut so low that her front bumpers were one button away from indecent exposure.
Kat’s poo-brown uniform was humbled.
‘Hi, Luka.’ Sharon’s breathy, little girl voice was laden with the promise of long walks on beaches as she gazed at him.
‘Hi, Sharon, nice to see you.’ Kat straightened in her chair.
‘Hi, Kat.’ A tiny, almost imperceptible frown marred Sharon’s blemish-free forehead.
‘Hey, Sharon. What’s up?’ Belovuk’s deep voice carried, filled with calm, kindness and … guilt.
Oh. Oh. Kat glanced between him and Sharon. The poor woman. Looked like she needed a sexorcism to get over whatever had happened in the pants department between her and Belovuk.