“They pay me the usual salary. Why?”
“Your home is amazing!” I hadn’t been sure houses like this were real. Sure, I’d seen them from the outside, but I’d always assumed they were just as much of a dump inside as my dad’s place had been. “Where’s all your broken furniture?” I wondered if he had a room for it.
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, what do you do with all the broken stuff after things make you mad when you’re drunk?”
“It’s never happened.”
I didn’t rightly believe him. Saturday night on my street had always been a concert of glass breaking, furniture cracking and people fighting. Growing up, all the kids on the street had known when the warning signs started. Adults over the drinking age had always been a bit like dogs. When dogs heard other dogs barking, they had to do it, too. And when adults heard other adults yelling at each other, they found reasons to join in.
It seemed weird that Mr. Cop was the only guy in America who didn’t lose it when his sports team came second.
“You’re eighteen, right?” he asked me.
I nodded. “Eighteen and four months.”
“Did you get good grades?”
I shook my head. “Not really. Never even finished high school.”
“Why not?”
“It’s pretty hard to finish school when you end up homeless before the end of your final year. I got different priorities, right now.”
“I see.” His tone had changed. “Anyway, here’s a glass of water, I’ll show you to your room.”
He led the way upstairs. I followed him, still trying to figure out whether he’d been bothered by the fact I hadn’t finished high school or not.
He threw the door open to the room that was to be mine. I stood in the doorway staring around in amazement. After the rest of the house, it shouldn’t have surprised me, but it did.
“This is where you’ll sleep. There’s a bolt on the back of the door in case you need to feel safe. It’s maybe a little old-fashioned. It’s where one of my brothers and his wife usually stay when they’re in town.”
I loved it. The decor was very... blue. But that was a lot better than it might have been. Largely, I didn’t care what was on the walls, floor or comforter as long as it was clean and the roof didn’t leak.
“You don’t have your own bathroom, but the main one is down the hallway there.” He waved a hand indicating where it was. “When you’re done with the shower, be sure to turn the faucet off as dripping taps waste water.”
What a thing to say. Like I was a child who didn’t know what to do when I was done showering. I’d show him.
“Thanks,” I said, trying to mean it. I couldn’t make up my mind about how to feel. I kept switching between being amazed and more grateful than I could ever show, and being mildly irritated with the way he spoke to me.
“I’ll be in there. That’s my room. Sleeping. I’ll be sleeping. Not the room. That wouldn’t make sense.” His words sounded gruff. He disappeared behind a door and closed it, leaving me holding a glass of water while I stood awkwardly in the room he was letting me stay in.
Sleep sounded pretty good. Especially on a mattress, under a comforter. The heat of the day was picking up about now but an air conditioner whispered a lullaby to me in one corner of the room. After putting the glass down on the little bedside table in front of a lamp, I climbed into bed without bothering to get changed. I think I fell asleep before my head had finished sinking into the pillow.
I was awakened by hammering on the door downstairs. At first, I forgot where I was and thought my dad was locked out and mad at me. I threw the cover off and looked around the room in confusion. Rick’s house. That was right. I nodded to myself and got back into bed, pulling the pillow over my head.
The hammering was obnoxious. I didn’t know why people felt they had to make so much noise. Duke started barking somewhere in the house. Eventually, I heard a thud-thud-thud of feet running down the stairs, and finally the hammering stopped. I thought I’d fall back asleep, especially since I was so tired, but the stress had got me wide awake again.
Long after I heard Rick going back to his room, I still couldn’t fall asleep.
I gave up in the end, and sat up. Now I had a dilemma. This wasn’t my house. I couldn’t just wander around. He might think I was robbing the place and then he’d throw me out. I wished I could lay back down and fall asleep. Stupid brain didn’t work that way, I guessed. It never had, even when I was a child. Used to make my mom real mad that I couldn’t sleep through the night. Probably had something to do with why she left.
I was still dressed from the night before, so I opened the bedroom door as quietly as possible, trying not to disturb Rick. I sneaked down the stairs, pausing every time I heard a creak, until I made it to the hallway.
Now what?
A drink would be nice about now. I went to the kitchen and opened the huge fridge. My eyes almost fell out in amazement.
The shelves were filled with food and drink. It was a large, family-sized refrigerator anyway, and Rick clearly went to the grocery store regularly. I took a couple of minutes to look at everything here.
Bleep-bleep-bleep.
I startled and dropped the fridge door. It swung closed on some kind of weighted hinge. Why had it made that weird noise? Was it a burglar alarm, in case someone tried to steal Rick’s cheese slices? The thought was bizarre, and yet, what other explanation was there?
Deciding to leave the refrigerator alone after all, I opened a cupboard instead. At least, I had thought it was a cupboard. It was actually a dishwasher. Another shiny door disguised the washing machine. Where did he store his food? I finally found some in a corner unit. Three shelves of dry goods. Cans, pasta, rice and breakfast cereal were all neatly organized.
Now I had a new problem. Did I mess up his cupboard to make some food? Maybe it would be better to leave it all alone.
My stomach growled. I really wanted to eat something. I found some Coco Pops and ate fistfuls straight from the packet, because I didn’t know where his bowls were kept. Anyway, if I’d wanted milk, I would have to open the noisy refrigerator again.
I heard Rick coming down the stairs. He waked into the kitchen and nodded to me.
He was only wearing his underpants. I stared and stared.
His body was... well, it was something else. Beautiful. Perfect. Sculpted for an art gallery. His muscles were shapely and well-defined. He had the lightest dusting of body hair running from his chest down the center of his rock-hard abs. It led down below the waistband of his underwear.
His chest was firm and toned, but one pectoral had a white mark on it. A scar. Small and round, it stood out like a tiny white moon because the rest of his body was so tanned.
“Like what you see?” he teased, and I realized I had been openly staring and he’d caught me.
My face got hot and I looked away in embarrassment.
“You haven’t shaved,” I mumbled, trying to divert his attention away from the fact I’d been looking at him.
“I do it when I’ve had my breakfast,” he countered. His fast, slick response irritated me. There was no getting around him. He had an answer for everything. “What did you eat and drink?”
I indicated the Coco Pops.
“That all?” he asked.
I nodded.
“Your refrigerator is alarmed.”
“Huh?” he frowned in confusion.
“It started bleeping at me while I was trying to see what was in there.”
“Oh, that’s the door. It’s to tell you when the fridge door has been open too long.”
“Why?”
“Saves your food from getting warm if you leave the door open, I guess.”
That made more sense than the idea that he might have had an alarm to stop anyone robbing the contents of his fridge.
“Okay,” I said, not knowing what else to say. “Where’s Duke?”
“He’ll be outside about now,
burning off some energy in the yard.”
I nodded. Presumably, Rick had a dog flap somewhere. He seemed pretty laid back about security for a cop. I wondered why that was, but I didn’t know how to ask.
“You want coffee? It’s better than the stuff at the precinct.”
He picked up a pack of coffee from the top shelf and held it out. I got up from where I’d perched at the counter and I looked at the packet. I didn’t know what I was supposed to notice about it.
“I guess it’s already open?” I hazarded.
“I was holding it out so you could smell it.”
“Why?”
He looked at me like I’d just announced that aliens existed.
“Avery, have you ever had a packet of real coffee in your house?”
I shook my head.
He unfastened the top of the pack and held it out in front of my face.
“Smell this.”
I breathed in. Fresh coffee. My mouth watered. I’d had no idea it smelled so good before it was in a cup.
“Wow,” I muttered.
“Want a cup?”
I nodded. “Only if you’re making it anyway. I don’t want to be any trouble.”
“I’m going to have some, too. Can’t start the day without coffee.” He took the container across the room and started doing something with one of the odd kitchen gadgets. There were so many. I assumed he was putting the coffee in the coffee machine but it might have been a bread maker for all I knew.
“Sure. Technically it’s the early afternoon but okay.”
“Yeah, usually I sleep for about eight hours and use the other four hours to get outside. What with working the night shift, it’s important to get sunlight whenever I can,” he said.
It made sense. “Do you just walk or sit in your yard or something?”
He shook his head. “I run for at least one hour each day. I drink my morning coffee out on the decking. I sometimes eat my meals out there, too, depending what time I finish cooking.”
“You cook?” I wasn’t sure why I was surprised. This kitchen clearly didn’t belong to someone in the habit of ordering takeout.
“Yeah. You could say that.”
I guessed that explained why his fridge was full of so much food.
We fell into a slightly awkward silence. It was interrupted by the loud hissing and spurting of the coffee machine as it filled its jug with hot, black liquid.
It seemed unfair that one man had been dealt all the aces in life. He was a cop with a steady job, he could cook, he knew how to keep things tidy and he had a killer dry sense of humor.
And I was stuck in his amazing house like a kid sister, feeling out of place and very dependent on his goodwill to survive in the world.
I wanted to be independent. Then I could come back to him in a Mercedes cabriolet and roll past his house, real slow. He would stop mowing his lawn and stare at me, like he wouldn’t even know it was me. I’d have my hair in bouncy soft curls and golden highlights. Subtle makeup. Just something to accentuate my natural features. I’d wear a new dress and cute heels. And right away, he’d realize we would be perfect together and he’d insist on marrying me on the spot. Okay, we’d need to find a church and such, but that was all fine details.
Except I didn’t have a Mercedes. Or bouncy curls. I had one dress which I’d been wearing for days. Anyway, I’d dropped out of high school before I finished. The chances of me ever making it big, landing a good job and being on the same level as him were almost zero.
I was so far beneath him, I doubted he’d want to date me if I was the last woman on Earth. I mean, he’d probably have more important things to do if that were the case, anyway, like figure out what had happened to all the other women. I imagined that would be quite a mystery and, being a cop, he’d probably want to spend time solving it.
But if he wasn’t even a tiny bit interested, why had he spanked me this morning? And when his fingers had brushed against my breasts... I gulped and my nipples hardened from the memory.
There were too many mixed messages, here. I needed to figure out whether he liked me or not.
I also needed to drink some of that delicious-smelling coffee.
Chapter 6
Rick
The hottest girl in Snake Eye was now in my house, waiting for coffee. And I got the impression patience wasn’t her strong suit. Everything in my house seemed to surprise her.
“Here.” I handed her a cup of black brew and led the way out through the patio doors onto the deck.
Further down the yard, Duke was bouncing around in his dog run, where he had a big, cool kennel where I put his food and water. I’d put him out there when I’d answered the door, earlier. I wished packages would show up when I wasn’t asleep. It was rare for me to leave him loose in the house but he’d been at the vets a couple days ago and I’d needed to keep an eye on him until today. Bobby Suarez, the fourteen-year-old who lived next door, would be around to walk Duke and play with him later.
My favorite thing about this house was the view. The backyard sloped downward meaning the deck had a panoramic view of the distant mountains. This part of the world was unique in its landscape and it was one of the many reasons I was proud to call Arizona home.
“Whoa, they look like something out of a movie,” Avery exclaimed. She waved in the direction of the mountains, which looked like they had been carved from stone.
“You’ve never seen them before? I thought they were iconic.”
“Iconic?”
“Like the Grand Canyon. Real famous.”
She nodded. “I’d like to see that, one day.”
“What?” I couldn’t hide my surprise. “You’ve never been to the Grand Canyon? How long have you lived in Arizona?”
“All my life.” She sounded embarrassed. I hadn’t meant to make her feel bad. “We weren’t the sort of family who went places.”
I remembered what she’d asked me about where I stored my broken furniture. Her background was totally foreign to me. I wanted to make sense of her past, and how it had shaped her, but at the same time, I didn’t want her to think I was prying. I guessed there was a time and a place for inane questions, and we didn’t know each other nearly well enough to go down those avenues, yet.
The silence between us got longer again. I was in no hurry to fill it. The view was more than enough to occupy my eyes. Not a day went by when I wasn’t grateful for that view. I figured about half of the residents in Snake Eye had a similar view, because of the way the town was built. But when I gazed out with my coffee in one hand, it seemed like the landscape had been created just for me to look at.
Rick
Avery had needed a few things so I insisted on taking her to the store before we started work. She literally had what she was wearing, and nothing else. I wasn’t partial to shopping, so I gave her a hundred bucks then sat in Chick-Fil-A and sipped a root beer while she tried things on next door.
She returned with a small bag and put my change on the table. All ninety-two dollars.
“I thought you were going to get what you needed.” I was confused.
“I did. Thank you. I got exactly thirty-five dollars of things. So I used my twenty-seven and eight from you. I’ll pay you back.” She looked at me nervously, like she expected me to demand my eight dollars immediately.
“I think you misunderstood,” I told her. “I gave you that hundred dollars so you could get the things you needed for yourself. You can’t wear the same dress forever.”
“I got a different one. And some panties and a nightdress. I don’t need anything else.”
I raised a single brow in disbelief and looked inside the bag. She had picked things in the cheapest style possible. I wasn’t sure whether to congratulate her for achieving such impressive thriftiness or whether to have words about the fact she wasn’t putting herself first even though I’d given her a specific instruction to do just that.
“Here, I saved you some root beer.” I passed her my cup. She
looked at it and frowned.
“But that’s yours.”
“And I’m sharing it.”
There was a pause, like she didn’t know how to respond, then she took the cup. I breathed out a very slow, quiet sigh of relief. Getting Avery to trust me was like trying to tame a deer. If I put a foot wrong, she would flee and I might lose her. I didn’t want her to go, so I resolved to take care.
We drove back to Snake Eye and arrived at the precinct with ten minutes to spare. I liked being early, it meant I was ready to work as soon as Bob and the others left for the day.
Rick
It had been a dull, sleepy day like any other when the phone rang. I noted the time out of habit. Twenty-three hundred hours. I had a pen and pad ready to take notes, but I doubted it would be anything serious.
“Snake Eye Police Department, Officer Rick Porteous speaking, how may I help?”
“Rick? It’s Marybeth Shaw. My dog Gizmo didn’t come home tonight. I’ve shouted until I was hoarse.”
A missing dog? That was usually what we got called out for around these parts.
“Did you search your backyard?”
“Oh, sure, three times. And Jimmy drove up the street in case... in case... in case Gizmo had gotten out.” Her voice broke a little as she contemplated the possibility that Gizmo might have been hit by a car. It told me everything I needed to know about this situation. I would have been following procedures to simply log the incident and promise to call Mrs. Shaw if we found her dog. It was entirely down to my judgement whether to attend the call or not, since it was something so minor. But this woman was deeply upset and a cop looking into things was going to reassure her. Anyway, it beat being in the precinct.
“I’ll be right over.” I noted the details of the call. We kept records of everything.
“Trouble in the small town?” Avery teased.
I nodded. “C’mon. You can’t be here by yourself.”
“Why not?” She sounded a little surprised.
“That’s the rules. There has to be an officer of the law with any civilian while they’re inside the precinct.”
“And you always follow the rules.” She sounded like she didn’t approve. I wondered why. Surely following rules, keeping law and order, were better than the chaos that would follow if everyone did whatever they wanted?
Stay All Night: Arizona Law 2 (Arizona Heat Book 6) Page 4